Word order

Verbs and Tenses

Nouns
   - Noun Declensions
   - Gender of nouns
   - Nominative case
   - Genitive case
   - Dative case
   - Accusative case
   - Locative case
   - Instrumental case
   - Vocative case
   - Irregular nouns

Pronouns

Adjectives

Prepositions

Adverbs

Question words

The Serbian Genitive Case: Endings and Usage
(PDF version)

The genitive case endings for the three possible classes of nouns are given in Table 1 below.

 Notes on phonology and pronunciation of genitives

• Masculine and Neuter nouns have the same endings in Genitive Singular: –a.
   
• The genitive case for both masculine and neuter nouns is the same as the accusative case for the masculine animate nouns (ex. Jovana, prozora)
   
• Thus, there is no distinction between animate and non-animate nouns in genitive masculine singular (e.g prozora, vs. Jovana).
   
• For feminine nouns that end in a consonant, the genitive singular ending is –i (stvari), but the adjective is –e (dobre stvari), just like the adjective for the regular feminine nouns (dobre žene). .
   
• Class I and Class III nouns have the same endings in singular and plural: –a for Class I nouns and –i for Class III nouns. Easy? Yes, but…
   
• The respective genitive endings –a and –i are pronounced long, as well as the vowel that precedes it. This can dramatically change the pronunciation.

• Also, if a plural noun in the nominative (default) case ends in a consonant cluster for any declension class, a long –a may (but not always!) be inserted in the stem before the –a ending. For example:

  nominative plural:	studenti   ‘students’	devojke   ‘girls’
  genitive plural:	studenata   ‘of students’	devojaka   ‘of girls’

• Some Class II nouns that end in a consonant cluster get the –i ending in genitive plural instead of the regular –a ending. Here is an example:

  nominative plural:	borbe   ‘fights’	primedba   ‘remarks’
  genitive plural:	borbi   ‘of fights’	primedbi   ‘of remarks’

• And some Class II and Class III nouns end the genitive plural in –u or –iju, respectively. These types of nouns generally denote something that comes in pairs or denote body parts. Some examples:

  	Class II nouns	Class III nouns
  nominative plural:	ruke   hands’ noge   legs’	oči   ‘eyes’ uši   ‘ears’  kosti   ‘bones’ prsti   ‘fingers’
  genitive plural:	ruku   ‘of hands’ nogu   ‘of legs’	očiju   ‘of eyes’ ušiju   ‘of ears’ kostiju   ‘of bones’ prstiju   ‘of fingers’

When to use the genitive case in sentences?

The genitive case is used with many ‘se’ or reflexive verbs that denote some psychological state. For example: fear (plašiti se), happiness (radovati se), remembrance (sećati se), bodily or psychological satisfaction (najesti se ‘eat until full’, napiti se ‘booze, get drunk’, naigrati se ‘play, dance enough’). Here is a list of the most frequently used ‘se’ verbs.

The most common usage of genitive case is to denote possession (like the English prepositions ‘of’ and ‘s).

Examples 1 and 2 illustrate that the genitive case occurs as the object of a noun, just as in English (e.g., ‘a student’s book’). In addition to the genitive, in Serbian we use the possessive adjective to denote possession: Majčina slika ‘mother’s picture’. As you can see, the possessive majčina corresponds to the Saxon genitive in English, ‘mother‘s’.

Examples 3 and 4 show that the genitive case occurs after quantity words, such as: puno ‘a lot’ and pet ‘five’.

Examples 5-8 show that the genitive case occurs with the verb imati ‘to have’. Such genitives nouns are indefinite or unspecified.

The genitive case is also used as an object of many prepositions

• The following prepositions require only the genitive case on the noun that follows. These genitives denote a place, destination or time: blizu ‘near’, duž ‘alongside’, iznad ‘above’, ispod ‘below’, ispred ‘in front of’, iza ‘behind’, između ‘between’, kod ‘at’, mimo, ‘past by’, nasred ‘in the middle of’, oko ‘around’, pored ‘beside, by’, pokraj ‘by, beside, next to’, preko ‘across, via’, put ‘toward’. These genitives denote a place, destination or time. Some examples in Table 4 illustrate this. Some examples in Table 4 illustrate this meaning. Note that the genitive noun with the preposition kod means ‘at somebody’s place’.
   
• With the prepositions od ‘from’ and do ‘until, to’, the genitive denotes the initial and final point of location or time, respectively (examples 10 and 11).

• With the preposition u ‘in, at’, the genitive denotes possession. This usage is used in poetry, not so much in everyday language (example 17 below).
   
• With the prepositions iz ‘from’ and sa 'from, off, at’, the genitive denotes a separation, detachment, or origination (examples 18 and 19). Note that the preposition sa also takes the instrumental case, but the instrumental case denotes the act of accompanying someone or something, or a means of doing something.

And now some exercises! If you get stuck or are not sure you got it right, please email me for help.

Exercise 1 – Fill out the genitive case forms in sentences below

Exercise 2 – Translate the following sentences

For this exercise you need to know both the present tense and past tense. The boldface nouns require the genitive case. If you don’t have a bi-directional Serbian-English-Serbian dictionary, you may go to the website: http://www.krstarica.com/dictionary/ to get the words you need for this exercise.  Note that for nouns, a dictionary will only give you the nominative case forms.