Lingomir
A2 — elementaryAdjectives

Adjective declension

Lesson opening

This is the first part of the lesson. The rest, the exercises and the reviews are in the app.

Adjective declension: endings borrowed from pronouns

You can already make an adjective agree with its noun in the nominative: nov grad, nova kuća, novo selo. Now it is time to take the adjective through all the cases, as the lessons “Adjective agreement” and “Possessive pronouns” promised. For an English speaker this is genuinely new: an English adjective never changes (a new town, of the new town, with the new town), while a Serbian adjective follows its noun into every case. And here the Serbian adjective has a surprise in store. It does not decline like a noun. It follows the pronoun pattern, the same one that ovaj, taj and moj follow: novog grada, with -og on the adjective and -a on the noun.

The good news: the set of endings is small, and you will meet it again and again. Four short endings, -og, -om, -im and -oj, do most of the work, and the same endings serve adjectives, demonstratives and possessives alike. Below we go through the full table, the difference between hard and soft stems, and the way an adjective keeps the case of its noun.

The full table: the hard stem nov

Let’s take the model adjective nov (new). Its stem, the part of the word without the ending, ends in a hard consonant. Let’s run it through every case. Masculine and neuter go together in one column, feminine has its own, and the plural has a third:

English keeps traces of case only in pronouns (he, him, his); Serbian runs it through every adjective. And the g of -og is fully pronounced, as in English go: novog is “NO-vog”. One cell needs a comment: the masculine singular accusative depends on animacy, that is, on whether the noun names a living being. With a thing, the accusative is the same as the nominative (vidim nov grad, I see a new town); with a person or an animal, it is the same as the genitive (vidim novog prijatelja, I see a new friend). This is exactly the rule you know from masculine nouns: the adjective simply echoes its noun. In the plural, animacy plays no part: vidim nove prijatelje, I see new friends. The vocative is missing from the table because an adjective in the vocative looks like the long nominative form: Dragi prijatelju! (“Dear friend!”).

The neuter goes along with the masculine everywhere except the nominative-accusative singular (novo) and the nominative plural (nova): novog sela, novom selu, novim selom, the same endings as with grad. So “masculine and neuter together” is not a shortcut in the table but a real saving: two thirds of the forms are shared.

The soft stem: letnji next to novi

Adjectives whose stem ends in a soft consonant, č, ć, dž, đ, j, lj, nj, š or ž, take the vowel e instead of o. Where nov has -og, letnji (summer, as in “a summer day”) has -eg:

Cheat sheet

The cheat sheet — everything essential from the lesson on one page. In the app it opens at any time.

Adjective declension: endings borrowed from pronouns

The adjective declines not like a noun but by the pronoun pattern of ovaj, taj, moj. It agrees with its noun in gender, number and case.

Full table: hard stem nov (new)

  • Masculine singular Acc. follows animacy: vidim nov grad (thing = Nom.), but vidim novog prijatelja (living being = Gen.). Not in the plural: vidim nove prijatelje.
  • Neuter = masculine except Nom./Acc. singular (novo) and Nom. plural (nova): novog sela, novom selu.
  • Vocative = the long Nom.: Dragi prijatelju!
  • Long novoga, novome are more bookish; both correct.

Soft stem: e instead of o

A stem ending in č, ć, dž, đ, j, lj, nj, š, ž takes e for o: -eg, -em. -im and the feminine -oj don’t change.

Likewise: vruć → vrućeg (hot), treći → trećeg (third), domaći → domaćeg (home-made), jučerašnji (yesterday’s), mlađi → mlađeg (younger) and other comparatives.

Agreement: one case, different endings

The case matches, not the letters. A chain moves into one case as a whole: u onom velikom novom stanu in that big new flat; sa mojim starim dobrim drugom with my good old friend; bez tvoje mlađe sestre without your younger sister; na svežem letnjem vazduhu in the fresh summer air.

The same endings on pronouns

Possessives too: mog, svog (moj also has mojeg).