Plural formation

Lesson opening

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

The plural: from one to many

Now that you can tell a noun's gender, the nouns are ready to move, and the first and most natural move is number: turning "one" into "many". English does this with one ending for almost everything: cat, cats; house, houses. Serbian has three plural endings, one for each gender, and in the great majority of cases you simply swap the tail of the dictionary form for the right one. If you know a noun's gender, you already know most of its plural.

But English also shows that the ending is not the whole story: man, men; foot, feet; child, children. Serbian has its own changes inside the word, and they are mostly predictable. The most striking part is the long plural of short masculine words: grad ("city") gives not “gradi” but gradovi, as if an extra syllable had been slipped in between the word and its ending. When that syllable appears is the main question of this lesson. Along the way, the consonant changes from "The consonant inventory" come to life.

Three genders, three endings

The basic rule: drop the singular ending, if there is one, and add the plural ending of the gender:

A masculine noun has nothing to take off, so you just add -i; feminine and neuter nouns swap one vowel for another. Say the endings with full, clear vowels: the -e of žene as in bed, the -a of sela as in father. English speakers tend to reduce a final vowel to a vague "uh", but here that vowel is the whole difference between one and many.

One thing feels odd at first: the neuter plural ends in -a, the sign of a feminine singular, so piva is "beers", not one feminine beer.

One small caveat about the neuter: a handful of words in -e grow a longer stem, inserting -en- before the plural ending. So ime ("name") gives imena, vreme ("time") gives vremena, and prezime ("surname") gives prezimena. The -en- is an old piece of the stem that the dictionary form has lost, much as Latin nomen, a relative of ime and English name, has the plural nomina. The full list of these "growing" nouns comes in "Irregular nouns".

The long plural: an extra syllable for short words

Here is the twist. Many masculine nouns of one syllable form their plural not with a plain -i but with -ovi or -evi, a whole extra syllable. The word seems to grow:

The condition is simple: the long plural belongs mainly to masculine nouns of one syllable. Longer masculine nouns take the ordinary -i: konobari, studenti. The choice between -ovi and -evi depends only on the last consonant of the word. After a “soft” consonant, -evi; after every other consonant, -ovi. The “soft” consonants, as grammars often call them, are a fixed group you can learn as a list: the palatal sounds from the consonant map (č, ć, dž, đ, j, lj, nj, š, ž) plus c. An easy way to hold it: every letter with a mark on it, the j family (j, lj, nj), and c.

So nož gives noževi and kralj gives kraljevi, while grad, sin, dom, ending in "hard" consonants, give gradovi, sinovi, domovi. This o/e switch after soft consonants is not a one-off: you will meet it again in other endings later in the grammar.

Cheat sheet

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The plural: from one to many

The nominative plural ending follows gender: masculine → -i, feminine → -e, neuter → -a. Drop the singular ending, add the plural one. Feminine and neuter are easy; the masculine is where the twists are.

Three genders, three endings

A few neuters in -e grow -en- (like Latin nomen → nomina): ime → imena (names), vreme → vremena (times), prezime → prezimena (surnames).

The long plural: -ovi / -evi

One-syllable masculine nouns add a syllable: -evi after a soft consonant (č, ć, dž, đ, j, lj, nj, š, ž, c), -ovi after any other. Longer masculines take plain -i.

Stubborn exceptions keep the short -i (learn them like feet, men): dan → dani (days), konj → konji (horses), gost → gosti (guests), zub → zubi (teeth), prst → prsti (fingers). Ready-made plurals: dete → deca (children), brat → braća (brothers), čovek → ljudi (people).

Changes in the stem

No change before the long -ov-, as the -i no longer touches k, g: vuk → vukovi (wolves), bog → bogovi (gods).

Agreement

"These" and adjectives take the same -i/-e/-a: ovi dobri gradovi (these good cities), ove dobre žene (these good women), ova dobra vina (these good wines). With a feminine singular, ova means “this”: ova kafa.