Comparative constructions with od, nego and kao

You can already make an adjective comparative: viši, bolji, skuplji, jeftiniji. But a real comparison usually names the second thing too: taller than my brother, warmer than in Belgrade, better than I expected. Serbian has two words for English than, and which one you use depends on what kind of thing follows it.

od + genitive: the everyday way

When the second thing is a simple person or object — a noun, a name, a pronoun, a possessive — use od and put that word in the genitive. This is the same od you know from od brata ("from my brother"), and it takes the same case: viši od Jovana, skuplja od one, starija od mene, manji od tvog.

After od a pronoun must be the full stressed form: od mene, od tebe, od njega, od nje, od nas, od vas, od njih. A clitic (me, te, ga) can never stand after a preposition.

nego: when od cannot work

od can only take a noun phrase in the genitive. As soon as the second thing is anything else, you need nego. nego is a conjunction, not a preposition, so it changes nothing: whatever follows it stays exactly in the form it would have on its own. Use nego when the second thing is:

• a whole clause — Film je bolji nego što sam očekivao. / Film je bio bolji nego što sam mislio. (the clause is introduced by nego što)
• a place, time or manner phrase — U Nišu je toplije nego u Beogradu. / Danas radim više nego juče.
• an object compared with another object — Više volim kafu nego čaj. The first thing (kafu) is accusative, so the second stays accusative too.
• a subject you are contrasting through its verb — Ona radi više nego ja. (ja is the subject of an understood radim, so it stays nominative)

When the second thing is a plain noun in the nominative, both work: Marko je viši od Jovana and Marko je viši nego Jovan mean the same. In everyday speech od is the usual choice, so treat nego as the word for the cases where od is impossible.

The test when you hesitate: could you say od + this word as "from ...", with the word in the genitive? If yes, od works. If the next word is a verb, a preposition like u or na, or an adverb, it is nego — never od.

More and less of something: više / manje + genitive

To compare amounts rather than qualities, use više ("more") and manje ("less, fewer") followed by the genitive, exactly like mnogo and malo: više posla, manje novca, više prijatelja. The second thing then follows by the same rules as above — od for a noun or pronoun in the genitive, nego for everything else: Imam više posla nego ti. / On ima manje novca od mene.

Saying two things are the same: (isto) tako ... kao

You already know kao for "like" or "as": peva kao ptica. To say two things are equal in some quality, keep the adjective or adverb in its plain form — not the comparative — and put kao before the second thing: Moj brat je visok kao ja ("My brother is as tall as I am"), Ona je visoka kao ja. Adding isto tako in front makes the "just as" explicit: Ova kafa je isto tako dobra kao ona u kafiću. After kao the second thing keeps the same case as the first, as you learned at A1.

To deny equality you use tako ... kao with a negated verb: Nije tako star kao ti ("He isn't as old as you"). Nije tako ... kao is one of the most common ways to compare in speech, often softer than saying somebody is mlađi.

The trap is mixing the two systems. A comparative adjective (viši, bolji) goes with od or nego; a plain adjective (visok, dobar) goes with kao. Viša kao ja and visoka od mene are both wrong.