Adverbs formed from adjectives

You already know how to say what a person or thing is like: Marko je brz (Marko is fast), Ana je pažljiva (Ana is careful). The adjective agrees with the noun it describes, so it ends in -∅, -a or -o depending on gender. This lesson is about the other job: saying how an action is done — quickly, carefully, quietly, well. English does it by adding -ly to the adjective. Serbian does something even simpler.

The neuter form does double duty

To describe an action, Serbian takes the neuter singular form of the adjective — the one ending in -o (or -e after a soft consonant like š, ć, ž) — and uses it as is. That word is now an adverb of manner: it describes the verb, not a noun, so it never changes for gender, number or case. Whoever is doing the washing, the washing is done brzo.

Notice that the neuter picks up whatever the feminine stem does: dobar loses its a (dobra, dobro), glasan and uredan do the same (glasno, uredno), and težak turns k into š (teška, teško). If you can form the feminine, you can form the adverb.

Describing a noun or describing an action?

This is the choice every sentence in this lesson makes you face. Ask what the word is about. If it is about a person or thing — what they are like — it is an adjective and it agrees: Marko je brz, Ana je pažljiva, deca su tiha. If it is about the action — how it is done — it is the adverb, always in -o/-e: Marko brzo čisti kuhinju, Ana pažljivo pegla košulje, deca tiho spremaju sobu.

• Ana je pažljiva. — Ana is careful. (about Ana → agrees, feminine)
• Ana pažljivo pegla košulje. — Ana irons the shirts carefully. (about the ironing → adverb, no agreement)
• Marija loše pere prozore. — Marija washes the windows badly. (about the washing → loše, never loša)
• Komšija glasno usisava. — The neighbour vacuums loudly. (glasno, not glasan)

The trap is agreement by habit. A learner who has just spent many lessons matching adjectives to nouns will want to write Ana pažljiva pegla or ona brza pere sudove. Stop and ask: is this word describing Ana, or describing how she irons? If it answers how, it stays in -o/-e whoever the subject is — a woman, a man, or a whole family.

The same form with no subject at all: hladno je, teško je

The neuter form has one more use. Some statements have no subject: it is cold, it is hard, it is nice. English needs a dummy it; Serbian uses nothing at all. The neuter form of the adjective stands with je, and that is the whole sentence: Hladno je. Teško je. Lepo je. Prljavo je. Because there is no noun to agree with, the neuter is the only form possible.

• Hladno je u kupatilu. — It is cold in the bathroom.
• Danas je vruće. — It is hot today.
• Teško je prati prozore. — It is hard to wash the windows. (what follows can be an infinitive)
• Ovde je prljavo. — It is dirty here. (no subject: prljavo, not prljav or prljava)
• Zar nije lepo kad je kuhinja čista? — Isn't it nice when the kitchen is clean? (lepo has no subject; čista agrees with kuhinja)

Remember that je is a clitic and sits in second position, exactly as you learnt earlier. So it is Hladno je and Danas je hladno, and with a place first: U kupatilu je hladno. A negative uses nije in the same spot: Nije teško oprati jednu šerpu.

Words like vrlo (very), previše (too much) and tako (so) also stand next to adverbs — tako loše, vrlo pažljivo — but they are not made from adjectives and have no forms to choose between. Only the adjective-based word carries the choice this lesson is about.