Genitive plural of nouns

You have been using this form since A1 without a name for it. Every time you said pet jabuka, deset dinara or koliko sati, the noun after the number was in the genitive plural. This lesson gives you the whole pattern, so that you can build the form for any noun you meet — and so you know why jabuka after pet looks like the singular while krušaka after pet does not.

The one ending: -a

For most nouns of all three genders the genitive plural ends in -a. Take the noun's stem (the singular without its ending, or the masculine singular as it is) and add -a. The vowel is pronounced long, which is what tells a Serbian ear that jabuka in pet jabuka is the genitive plural and not the singular — in writing, the two look identical.

So krompir — krompira, paradajz — paradajza, limun — limuna; jabuka — jabuka, šljiva — šljiva, banana — banana; jaje — jaja, selo — sela, jelo — jela. Notice that a neuter genitive plural is spelled exactly like its nominative plural, and a feminine one exactly like its nominative singular. Only the context — a number, a quantity word, ima/nema, a preposition — tells you which form you are looking at.

A short masculine noun that took the extra syllable -ov- in the nominative plural at A1 keeps it here: grad — gradovi — gradova, sok — sokovi — sokova. Build the genitive plural on the plural stem, not on the bare singular.

The inserted -a- in consonant clusters

If the stem ends in two consonants together, Serbian does not like to put the long -a straight after them. It breaks the cluster by inserting an extra -a- between the two consonants. This is the single most common mistake with this form, so learn to expect it: kruška has the stem krušk-, so its genitive plural is not kruška but krušaka.

In breskva the v also drops out before the inserted vowel: bresaka. And krastavac shows the other side of the same thing: the a of the singular vanishes in krastavci (you saw this fleeting a in the nominative plural at A1) and comes back in the genitive plural krastavaca, because there the cluster -vc- must be broken again.

Some nouns with a cluster escape the problem another way: instead of inserting a vowel they take the ending -i. Pomorandža — pomorandži, tezga — tezgi, and beside krušaka you will also hear kruški. Both routes are correct for a fair number of nouns; the forms in this lesson are the standard ones, and when in doubt the dictionary decides.

The -i group: learn these as items

Feminine nouns that end in a consonant in the singular (stvar, noć, reč, ljubav) form their genitive plural in -i, not -a: stvari, noći, reči, ljubavi. It is the same shape as their nominative plural, and again only the context tells you which case you have. A handful of masculine nouns have joined this group, and you already know two of them from the clock: sati (pet sati) and meseci (šest meseci). Ljudi (people, the plural of čovek) is also in it: mnogo ljudi.

• stvar — stvari (things)
• noć — noći (nights)
• reč — reči (words)
• sat — sati (hours; masculine)
• mesec — meseci (months; masculine)
• ljudi — ljudi (people)

This is a closed group, not a productive rule. Do not put -i on ordinary masculine or neuter nouns: it is pet krompira, never pet krompiri. When you learn a new feminine noun ending in a consonant, file it under -i.

A few oddities you will hear at the market

A small group of body-part and household nouns takes -iju: oko — očiju (eyes), uho — ušiju (ears), prst — prstiju (fingers), gost — gostiju (guests). Two very common feminine nouns keep a short -u with no ending at all: ruka — ruku (hands), noga — nogu (legs). You do not need to produce these yet; just recognise pet prstiju and nema gostiju when you hear them.

Mass nouns have no plural at all. Voće (fruit), povrće (vegetables), grožđe (grapes), luk (onions), kupus (cabbage) and pasulj (beans) name a substance, not countable pieces, so after a quantity word they stand in the genitive singular you learned at A1: kilogram luka, malo grožđa, mnogo voća. The genitive plural is only for things you count: pet jabuka, deset krastavaca.

Where the genitive plural is used

• after the numbers from five up: pet paradajza, dvanaest jaja
• after quantity words: mnogo, malo, nekoliko, koliko — mnogo stvari, nekoliko jagoda
• after ima and nema when the thing is plural: Nema krušaka.
• after the genitive prepositions you know with a plural noun: od, iz, kod, bez — sok od pomorandži, kolač bez jaja
• for possession with a plural owner: cena jabuka (the price of the apples)

Keep the counting forms apart. After dva, tri and četiri the noun takes the counting form from A1 (dva krompira, tri jabuke, tri jaja); from pet on it is the genitive plural (pet krompira, pet jabuka, pet jaja). For masculine and neuter nouns the two often look the same; it is the feminine that shows the difference: tri kruške but pet krušaka.