Partitive & quantity

Lesson opening

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

The genitive of quantity: how much, how many, some

One of the genitive's everyday jobs is to talk about amounts and portions: a glass of water, a little bread, five books, a lot of people. English handles this sometimes with of (a glass of water, a lot of people) and sometimes with nothing at all (five books, much bread). Serbian is more consistent: the noun goes into the genitive every time. čaša vode, malo hleba, pet knjiga, mnogo ljudi. Anything that measures out a part of a whole, or counts things, pulls the genitive after it.

This lesson builds on “Genitive plural”: to say “five books” and “a lot of people” you need the forms knjiga and ljudi that you have already worked through. Here you learn to choose: when the genitive singular is right (a portion of a substance, malo vode), when the genitive plural is right (counting things, pet gradova), and where the numbers you counted in “Cardinals 1–10” fit into the picture.

A part instead of the whole

Compare two requests: one for a thing as a whole, one for a portion of it.

English marks this difference with little words: the bread is the whole loaf you both know about, some bread is an unspecified amount of it. Serbian has no articles and needs no word for some here: the case does the job. The accusative takes the object whole; the genitive takes a share of it. This genitive of “some” is called the partitive, a word you will meet again in later lessons. You hear it most in requests for food and drink: Hleba, molim from “Food & drink” is this same genitive, and Sipaj mi vina is “pour me some wine”. Measures and quantity words speak of a part by their very meaning, so they too take the genitive: čaša vode is not all the water, but “a glass out of it”.

Quantity words: malo, mnogo, nekoliko, koliko

The words for an indefinite amount all take the genitive: malo (a little, few), mnogo (much, many, a lot of), nekoliko (several, a few), dosta (enough, quite a lot), previše (too much, too many), puno (lots of, plenty of). So does the question word koliko (how much, how many).

Notice how the table splits into two columns. With a substance (uncountable: water, bread, salt) you use the genitive singular: malo vode. With countable things you use the genitive plural: mnogo knjiga, nekoliko đaka. English draws the same line, only in a different place. English changes the quantity word: much water but many books, a little water but a few people. Serbian keeps one quantity word (malo covers both “a little” and “few”, koliko both “how much” and “how many”) and changes the noun instead. The word nekoliko (several) counts pieces by its very meaning, so it only goes with the plural.

Cheat sheet

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

The genitive of quantity: how much, how many, some

Anything that measures out a part or counts things puts the noun in the genitive. Singular or plural by meaning: a substance (uncountable) → Gen. singular (malo hleba); things (countable) → Gen. plural (mnogo knjiga). No word for “of”: not “čaša od vode”.

A part instead of the whole (the partitive)

Quantity words

All take the genitive: malo (a little, few), mnogo (much, many), nekoliko (several), dosta (enough, quite a lot), previše (too much/many), puno (lots of) and the question koliko (how much/many).

Measures

Numbers: three patterns

Compound numbers: by the last digit

The verb after a quantity

After quantity words and 5+, the standard verb is neuter singular. With 2–4 it is usually plural: dva studenta su došla.