The demonstratives ovaj, taj and onaj

In a shop you point. English gives you two words for pointing — this for what is close and that for everything else. Serbian gives you three, and the third one is the reason this lesson exists.

Three distances

Serbian sorts the world into what is next to me, what is next to you, and what is away from both of us.

So a customer holding a hat says ovaj, points at the one in the shop assistant's hands and says taj, and points across the shop at one in the window and says onaj. taj is also what you use for a thing that was just mentioned, even if nobody is pointing at anything.

They agree, like adjectives

A demonstrative is not one fixed word. It changes its ending to match its noun in gender and number, exactly the way an adjective does. Each one has its own masculine singular form to learn — ovaj, taj, onaj — and everything else is built on the short stem ov-, t-, on- with the endings you already know from adjectives: -a for feminine, -o for neuter, and in the plural -i / -e / -a.

Learn one column and you have learned all three: ovaj — ova — ovo — ovi — ove — ova, and the other two follow the same track. The demonstrative stands in front of its noun: ova majica, ti šeširi, ono odelo.

The feminine singular and the neuter plural fall together in a way worth watching: ova is both this with a feminine singular noun (ova majica) and these with a neuter plural one (ova odela). The noun tells you which. The same is true of ta and ona.

Pointing with no noun

When you point at something and do not name it, Serbian uses the neuter singular form on its own: Ovo je majica. This is a T-shirt. To je moja torba. That's my bag. Use the neuter here whatever the thing turns out to be — you are pointing at a thing in general, not yet at a T-shirt.

Watch out: ona, ono, oni and one are also the personal pronouns she, it and they. If a noun follows, the word is a demonstrative: ona haljina is that dress over there, not she dress, and one cipele is those shoes over there, not they shoes. If no noun follows, it is the pronoun.