The three declensions

Lesson opening

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The three declensions: a map of the noun system

You already know that a Serbian noun has seven cases and one of three genders, and in “Nominative forms” you saw the three declensions in the nominative. Now it is time to put the pieces into one picture. Thousands of Serbian nouns fit into just three declension patterns: three sets of endings that a word runs through as it moves from case to case. Master these three and you hold the key to the whole noun system: the genitive, the dative, the instrumental and everything still ahead.

English has kept only scraps of case (he, him, his), but if you did Latin at school, you have met whole families of nouns sharing one set of endings. Latin needed five such families; Serbian manages with three. Here is what they are, how to tell which one a word belongs to, and why cases let Serbian shuffle the words of a sentence so freely.

The three patterns face to face

The easiest way to keep them in your head is one “representative” for each declension. Take grad (city, town) for the first, žena (woman) for the second and stvar (thing) for the third, and look at the label itself, the genitive:

Notice that the label is the genitive, not the nominative, the dictionary form. The nominative does not always show the pattern: grad and stvar both end in a consonant, yet they decline differently (grada, but stvari). The genitive sorts all three patterns without fail: -a, -e or -i. That is why dictionaries and grammars give the genitive ending right after the headword, followed by the gender: grad, -a, m. (m. for masculine), noć, -i, ž. (ž. for feminine).

The full paradigm: seven cases, two numbers

Here is each declension in full. Don’t learn the table by heart: just look at where the endings sit and, above all, where the forms repeat. One form often fills several cells: for stvar, the single form stvari fills five singular cells, and for grad the dative and locative coincide (gradu).

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The three declensions: a map of the noun system

All nouns fit three patterns. The label is the ending of the genitive singular, not the nominative: the nominative does not show it (grad and stvar both end in a consonant). Hence the dictionary line: grad, -a, m., noć, -i, ž.

The three patterns

Full paradigm: 7 cases, singular / plural

• Neuter: inside the 1st, but Nom. = Acc. = Voc. (selo, selo, selo), plural in -a: sela, mesta, imena; Dat./Instr./Loc. plural selima. The rest as grad: selu, selom.
• Dat. = Instr. = Loc. plural in all three: -ima in the 1st and 3rd (feminine noćima too), -ama in the 2nd. sa prijateljima “with friends”, o prijateljima “about friends”.
• One form, many cells: stvari fills five singular cells and four plural ones; in the 1st, Dat. = Loc. (gradu).

How to tell the declension

Ends in -a → 2nd, whatever the gender (tata, deda, sudija). Consonant + feminine → 3rd (reč, kost). The rest, masculine in a consonant (konj, prozor) or in -o (Marko → Marka) and neuter in -o/-e → 1st.

Why cases: free word order