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Serbian Alphabet

Pronouns
   - Personal
   - Possesive
   - Demonstrative
   - Interrogative
   - Reflexive
   - Indefinite or impersonal
   - Universal

Adjectives

Prepositions

Adverbs

Question words

Serbian Interrogative Pronouns (Upitne zamenice)
(PDF version)

Interrogative pronouns are used when you want to ask a question, as in: Ko dolazi? “Who is coming?” Šta je ovo? “What is that?” We use both ko ‘who’ and šta ‘what’ to ask questions about a person and about a thing.

As you probably know by now, in Serbian, interrogative pronouns have six different case forms: nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, locative, instrumental. We use a specific case depending on whether we are asking about an object, subject, object of a preposition, etc.

Table 1: Declension of Serbian Interrogative Pronouns: ko and šta

SINGULAR	*ko ‘who’ – asking about persons*	*šta ‘what’ – asking about things*
Nominative	ko	šta, što
Accusative	koga, kog	čega, čeg
Genitive	koga, kog	šta, što
Dative	kome, kom	čemu
Locative	kome, kom	čemu
Instrumental	kime, kim	čime, čim

Table 2: Some examples of interrogative pronouns ko and šta used in sentences

	Serbian	English (the relevant pronoun is underlined)	Grammatical function of the pronoun in a sentence and its case
1.	Ko je ona?	Who is she?	ko = subject (nominative)
2.	Ko su oni.	Who are they.	ko= subject (nominative)
3.	Koga vidiš.	Whom do you see?	koga = object (accusative)
4.	S kime pričaš?	With whom do you talk?	kime = object of preposition (instrumental)
5.	Kome si dao knjigu?	(To) whom did you give book?	kome = indirect object (dative)
6.	Šta je ovo?	What is this?	šta = subject (nominative)
7.	Šta gledaš?	What do you want?	šta = object (accusative)
8.	Čega se plašiš?	What are you afraid of?	čega = object (genitive)
9.	Čemu se nadaš?	What do you hope for?	čemu = object (dative)
10.	Čime putuješ?	How are you traveling?	čime = object (instrumental)

Besides ko ‘who’ and šta ‘what’, there are various other interrogative pronouns:

Table 3: Other interrogative pronouns

čiji ‘whose’	koliko ‘how much’
koji ‘which’	koliki ‘how big’
koji ‘which, who’	kako ‘how, what’
kakav ‘what kind’

Table 4: Some examples of interrogative pronouns used in sentences

	Serbian	English (the relevant pronoun is underlined)
1.	Čije je to dete?	Whose child is it?
2.	Čiju knjigu su našao?	Whose book did you find?
3.	Koji su to došli?	Who came?
4.	Kakav on ima temperament?	What kind of temper does he have?
5.	Koliko to košta?	How much does that cost?
6.	Kako se zoveš?	What is your name?

lz stop here continue from this point mention čiji – and cross reference it with possessive pronouns.

In addition to interrogative pronouns, there are some interrogative words which function is also to ask a question.

These are:

gde ‘where’	Gde ideš?	Where are you going?
kuda ‘where’	Od kuda dolaziš?	From where are you coming?
kada ‘when’	Kada putuješ?	When are you traveling?

You can see how similar in pronunciation kada ‘when’ and kuda ‘where’ is. Try not to mix them up.

In example 8, Daj nam vremena, the verb form daj ‘give’ is the imperative verb form.

In example 10, the clitic genitive pronoun ih is used. The genitive case is used in constructions with nema ‘there isn’t’,

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 appropriate case forms of personal pronouns in sentences below

Using the pronouns below (underlined in the English gloss) insert their appropriate case forms. For convenience, I have indicated which case of a pronoun goes with which sentence.

For this exercise, use both full and short forms of pronouns. Remember that short or clitic pronouns always go in the second place in the sentence.

1. genitive	4. dative	7. instrumental
2. genitive	5. nominative	8. genitive
3. accusative	6. nominative	9. accusative

1.	Ja se bojim __________.	I’m afraid of him.
2.	On se setio __________.	He remembered me.
3.	Marija voli __________.	Marija likes them
4.	Dragan je dao ružu __________.	Dragan gave a rose to her.
5.	__________ su dobri.	They (feminine) are good.
6.	__________ su nemirna.	They (neuter) are good.
6.	Volim __________.	I love you (plural)
7.	Marija ide sa __________.	Marija is going with me.
8.	Zorica stalno sedi pored __________.	Zorica always sits by them.
9.	Milan stoji uz __________.	Milan is standing by her.

Exercise 2 – Translate the following sentences

For this exercise you need to know both the present tense and past tense. 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.

1.	He played with them. (them – masculine)
2.	They (feminine) don’t speak to her.
3.	She and I are going to the store.
4.	They (masculine) gave her a book.
5.	She hates him.
6.	I don’t like them.
7.	We see them.
8.	She is singing with me.