Noun-forming suffixes

Lesson opening

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

Noun suffixes: how one root grows a family of words

So far we have learned words one at a time. But many Serbian nouns are built from parts: a root plus a suffix, a piece at the end with its own meaning. Know the root pek- “bake” and the suffix -ar “someone whose trade it is”, and you do not have to memorise pekar “baker”: you work it out. Add the place suffix -ara and you have pekara “bakery”. One root, a family of words. English does the same with bake, baker, bakery.

That is the point of this lesson: not a list to learn but a master key. Once you have a dozen suffixes that Serbian still uses to make new words, you will often understand an unfamiliar word from its “tail”: whether it names a person, a place, a quality or an action. Take a shop sign such as kladionica: kladiti se “to bet” plus the place suffix gives “the place where people place bets”, a betting shop.

Agent suffixes: who does it

The richest group names “a person who does something”. Here are the six main suffixes:

Notice that -ar on a noun names a trade built around a thing (zlato “gold” → zlatar “goldsmith, jeweller”). Foreign jobs arrive with their own suffixes, which you will recognise at once: -ista (pijanista “pianist”) and -er (fudbaler “footballer”, the very -er of the English word).

In the case forms some suffixes change. In -ac the a drops out: pisac → pisca “of the writer”, glumac → glumca (lesson “Fleeting a”). In -lac the l also turns into o: čitalac, but čitaoca “of the reader” (lesson “L-vocalisation”). In the plural of -nik the k becomes c: radnik → radnici (lesson “Second palatalisation”). The others take their endings unchanged: vozača, učitelja.

The feminine counterpart: -ica, -ka, -kinja, -inja

Where English says “teacher” of a man and of a woman alike, Serbian nearly always forms a separate feminine noun. Which of the four suffixes a word takes cannot be predicted by a rule (lekar → lekarka “doctor”, but konobar → konobarica “waitress”), so learn the pairs. -ica: učitelj → učiteljica, pevač → pevačica, glumac → glumica “actress”, radnik → radnica, učenik → učenica, prodavac → prodavačica “shop assistant” (the c becomes č before -ica, as in otac → oče). -ka: profesor → profesorka, doktor → doktorka, novinar → novinarka “journalist”. -kinja: student → studentkinja, psiholog → psihološkinja. -inja: Grk → Grkinja “Greek woman”.

Where two forms are in use, both are right: a woman doctor is Ona je lekar or Ona je lekarka. Profesorica, doktorica, studentica are the Croatian forms; in Serbia it is profesorka, doktorka, studentkinja.

Cheat sheet

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

Noun suffixes

Noun = root + suffix with its own meaning. The tail shows the group: person, idea or place. pek- + -ar = pekar “baker”; + -ara = pekara “bakery”. A suffix’s meaning is a habit, not a law: punjač “charger” is a thing.

Agent: who does it

Feminine: learn the pairs

Abstract noun: an idea

Place: where it is done