B1 — intermediateThe genitive case

Genitive of negation

Lesson opening

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

The genitive after a negative: where Serbian insists and where it lets go

In English, saying no to a sentence changes almost nothing: “I see the book” becomes “I don’t see the book”, and the book stays exactly as it was. The good news of this lesson is that Serbian mostly does the same: Vidim knjigu “I see the book” → Ne vidim knjigu “I don’t see the book”. You add ne in front of the verb, and the object keeps its accusative ending. Nothing else moves.

So why a whole lesson? Because there is one corner where a negative does change the case, and there it is not optional: saying that something is not there. “There is no bread” is Nema hleba, “there’s no time” is Nema vremena, and the noun must go into the genitive, the case you already know as the case of “of” and of quantities (čaša vode “a glass of water”, Daj mi hleba “give me some bread”). This is the genitive of negation of the lesson’s title. Long ago it also covered the object of a negated verb; in Serbian it has shrunk to a few zones, and this lesson maps them.

“There’s no …”: nema and its family take the genitive

Start with the strict zone. When a Serb says that something isn’t there (it doesn’t exist, it’s missing, it has run out), they use the word nema “there is no” and put the thing into the genitive. There is no freedom here: “Nema hleb” is a mistake; only Nema hleba is right.

Examples

Phrase	Translation	Tense
Nema hleba.	There's no bread.	present
Nema vremena.	There's no time.	present
Nije bilo struje.	There was no electricity.	past
Neće biti problema.	There won't be any problems.	future
Nema nikoga kod kuće.	There's nobody at home.	present

Watch the tenses. “There is no” is nema, “there was no” is nije bilo, “there will be no” is neće biti, and in all three the thing stays in the genitive: Nema vode, Nije bilo vode, Neće biti vode “there’s no water, there was no water, there won’t be any water”. And notice that nije bilo never changes to agree with the noun: it is a fixed, impersonal “it was not” frame, neuter singular, whether you are missing water, electricity or a hundred problems. Where English switches to “there were no problems”, Serbian keeps the frame frozen: Nije bilo problema, Nije bilo ljudi “there were no people”, never “Nisu bili problemi”. Neće biti is just as fixed: Neće biti mesta “there won’t be any room”.

Nisu bili “(they) were not” is simply the past of a sentence with a subject: Studenti nisu bili na času “the students weren’t in class”. “There were no students in class” is again nije bilo with the genitive: Studenata nije bilo na času.

People work the same way when they are not around: Marka nema “Marko isn’t here”, Nema ga kod kuće “he isn’t at home”. Here ga is the short genitive form from the lesson “Full & clitic pronoun forms” (me, te, ga, je, nas, vas, ih). The past and the future follow suit: Juče ga nije bilo na poslu “he wasn’t at work yesterday”, Sutra ih neće biti “they won’t be here tomorrow”.

Negative words follow the same pattern. “There’s nobody here”, “there was nothing”, “there wasn’t a single bus” are Nema nikoga, Nije bilo ničega, Nije bilo nijednog autobusa, where nikoga “nobody”, ničega “nothing” and nijednog “not a single” are genitive forms. To the question Ima li koga? “Is anybody there?” the answer is Nema nikoga “There’s nobody”: a genitive question, a genitive answer. The lesson “Indefinite & negative pronouns” covers all these words.

A handful of everyday formulas are built on nema: Nema veze, literally “there’s no connection”, in practice “never mind, it doesn’t matter, no big deal”; Nema problema “no problem”; Nema šanse “no way, no chance”; Nema smisla “there’s no point”. Behind each of them hides the same obligatory genitive (veze, from veza “connection, link”), frozen into a ready-made phrase. One familiar formula is built differently: Nema na čemu “you’re welcome” (literally “there’s nothing to thank for”) uses a preposition phrase, na čemu, which is in the locative.

Deeper grammar

Nema hleba: a negative that takes existence away

The pair ima / nema is the heart of how Serbian talks about existence. ima “there is, there are” builds existence; nema “there isn’t, there aren’t” cancels it. And here lies the key asymmetry. After existential ima the thing can stand in the nominative (a single countable item: Ima jedan park “there’s a park”) or in the partitive genitive (a substance or an indefinite amount: Ima hleba “there’s some bread”, Ima ljudi “there are people”). After nema it is always and only the genitive. Like French il y a or Spanish hay, Serbian builds “there is” on the verb “to have”: ima is literally “it has”. And nema is a fusion of ne + ima, an impersonal “it has not”, so the noun after it is not the subject but the thing that is lacking. Hence the case: not a nominative “bread is absent”, but a genitive “there’s none of bread”.

English once had exactly this kind of fusion. Old English said nabban “not to have” (from ne + habban) and nis “is not” (ne + is), and a trace survives in willy-nilly, from “will I, nill I”, where nill is ne + will. Serbian nema is the same kind of word: the negative is built in, not added in front.

In practice: build every “there’s no …” with nema + genitive, and never leave the noun in its dictionary form the way English leaves it (“no bread”, “no problem”). Nema struje “the power’s out” is the everyday case, and so are most of the formulas: notice how many set phrases have grown out of this one word. And “there isn’t” is never ne + je: “ne je hleb” does not exist. Learn nema as one solid brick meaning “there’s none of”, and the genitive will come along with it.

Cheat sheet

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

The genitive after a negative: where Serbian insists and where it lets go

Two different situations. 1) “There’s no …”: the genitive is required: nema / nije bilo / neće biti + genitive. 2) The object of a negated verb: usually the accusative: Ne vidim knjigu; the genitive (Ne vidim knjige) is only a bookish variant.

“There’s no …”: nema + genitive

Examples

Phrase	Translation
Nema hleba.	There’s no bread.
Nema vremena.	There’s no time.
Nema nikoga kod kuće.	There’s nobody at home.
Nema ga kod kuće.	He isn’t at home.
Nije bilo struje.	There was no electricity.
Nije bilo problema.	There were no problems.
Neće biti mesta.	There won’t be any room.
Neće biti problema.	There won’t be any problems.

The frame never agrees, the noun is always genitive (nema vode, nije bilo vode), never “Nisu bili problemi”. “Nema hleb” is a mistake.
People: Marka nema, Juče ga nije bilo na poslu, Sutra ih neće biti. But Studenti nisu bili na času is an ordinary past.
Negative words: Ima li koga? → Nema nikoga; Nije bilo ničega.
Set formulas: Nema veze (never mind), Nema problema, Nema šanse (no way), Nema smisla (there’s no point), Nema na čemu (you’re welcome; locative).
“There isn’t” is nema, never nije: To nije hleb = “that isn’t bread”.

The direct object: the case stays

Examples

Positive	Negative (the norm)	Translation
Vidim knjigu.	Ne vidim knjigu.	I don’t see the book.
Znam odgovor.	Ne znam odgovor.	I don’t know the answer.
Čitam novine.	Ne čitam novine.	I don’t read the paper.
Pijem kafu.	Ne pijem kafu.	I don’t drink coffee.

The bookish Ne vidim knjige, Ne čitam novina (the “Slavic genitive”, slovenski genitiv): recognise it, use the accusative yourself; knjige also reads as “the books”.

Where the genitive is usual

English habits and the Serbian norm

Examples

Situation	English	Serbian
verb + object	I don’t see the book	Ne vidim knjigu (Acc.)
“there’s no …”	There’s no bread	Nema hleba (Gen.)
“not a single …”	He didn’t say a word	Nije rekao ni reči (Gen.)