Accusative plural of nouns

One ending per gender

You already know how a direct object behaves in the singular: haljina becomes haljinu, kaput and odelo stay as they are, and a masculine noun for a person or an animal, like prodavac, becomes prodavca. In the plural things get simpler. Each gender has exactly one accusative plural ending, and there is nothing else to decide.

Look at the last two columns. For feminine and neuter nouns the accusative plural is the same word as the nominative plural. The only gender that actually changes is the masculine: the nominative plural -i becomes accusative plural -e.

Masculine: the one that changes

• Take the nominative plural you know and swap -i for -e: kaputi → kapute, džemperi → džempere.
• Short masculines keep their extra syllable: šalovi → šalove, satovi → satove.
• A fleeting a stays out, just as in the nominative plural: prodavci → prodavce, kupci → kupce.
• Nouns ending in -k, -g, -h: in the nominative plural the consonant softens (novčanik → novčanici), but the accusative plural keeps the original consonant: novčanike. The softening happens only in front of -i.

In the singular you had to ask whether a masculine noun was alive: vidim prodavca but vidim kaput. In the plural you never ask. People, animals and things all take the same -e: vidim prodavce, vidim kapute, vidim kupce.

Feminine nouns in -a: the plural you already know

Haljine, košulje, rukavice, čarape, igračke: the nominative plural in -e does double duty as the accusative plural. Kupujem košulje, tražim rukavice, deca vole igračke. Nothing to change.

Feminine nouns in a consonant keep -i

Feminine nouns that end in a consonant (stvar, noć, reč, vest) form their plural in -i, and that -i stays in the accusative: tražim stvari, učim reči, čitam vesti, volim noći. Do not give them the -e of haljine: it is stvari, never stvare, and noći, never noće. The way to tell the two feminine groups apart is the singular: haljina ends in -a, stvar ends in a consonant.

Neuter: nothing new to learn

Odela, ogledala, jaja: the accusative plural of a neuter noun is its nominative plural, exactly as in the singular, where odelo was both subject and object.

Where you will use it

Any verb that takes a direct object: kupujem, tražim, nosim, probam, vidim, vraćam, plaćam. And after prepositions that take the accusative, such as za and u for direction: pakujem stvari u kese, kupujem poklone za decu.