Free-choice pronouns with god, bilo and ma

When you want to say that any choice at all is fine — anyone, anything, whenever you like, wherever you want — Serbian takes the question words you already know (ko, šta, koji, kad, gde) and attaches a small fixed word to them: god, bilo or ma. These are called free-choice (generalizing) pronouns and adverbs.

god: whoever, whatever, whenever

god follows the question word, and the phrase usually opens a little clause of its own: šta god hoćeš (whatever you want), kad god želiš (whenever you like), gde god ti je udobno (wherever you are comfortable). It answers to English words ending in -ever.

bilo and ma: anyone, anything, any

bilo stands in front of the question word and makes a pronoun that works on its own, like English any(one) at all: Bilo ko može da nauči. (Anyone can learn.) ma does the same job — ma koji odgovor (any answer whatsoever) — but sounds more emphatic and bookish; in everyday speech it is mostly heard with koji.

The pronoun part still declines

This is the important bit, and it is why this lesson follows the one on koga, kome, čega, čemu. The words god, bilo and ma never change. The question word inside takes whatever case the sentence needs, exactly as it would on its own.

koji inside the series declines like the adjective it is and agrees with its noun: bilo koju sobu, u ma kojoj prodavnici, ma kojom karticom.

Watch where the preposition goes. With bilo and ma it usually stands in FRONT of the whole thing: sa bilo kim, o bilo čemu, u ma kojoj prodavnici. You will also hear it between the two parts — bilo sa kim, bilo o čemu — and that is correct too; this lesson uses the first, more common order. With god it stands before the question word: sa kim god, o čemu god.

Adverbs: kad god, gde god

The adverbs work the same way: kad god (whenever), gde god (wherever), and with bilo bilo kad (any time), bilo gde (anywhere). Adverbs have no cases, so nothing changes inside them.

Do not confuse bilo koji with svaki. Svaka soba ima balkon means EVERY room has one — all of them, each one. Uzmite bilo koju sobu means take ANY room — pick one, it does not matter which. svaki counts all of them; bilo koji lets you choose one.

In this lesson god clauses are free choices: Uzmi šta god hoćeš (take whatever you want). The 'no matter what happens' use, šta god da uradiš..., is a different construction and comes in a later lesson.