Verb-forming suffixes

Lesson opening

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

Verb-forming suffixes: how Serbian makes new verbs

The lessons “Noun-forming suffixes” and “Adjective-forming suffixes” showed how a root grows into a noun or an adjective, and “Verbal prefixation” looked at the verb from its prefix. Now for the verb-forming suffix: the part of the word just before the infinitive ending -ti. It turns whatever it touches into a verb: a thing, a quality, a foreign word, even a knock at the door.

English often makes verbs with no suffix at all (to salt, to lunch, to google). Serbian cannot: a verb must conjugate, and the suffix tells it how. The prefix tells you direction and completion; the suffix answers “what is this verb made from?” and “how will it conjugate?” The second is pure profit: for the verbs in this lesson, the tail of the infinitive tells you the present tense. See -ovati and expect -ujem; see -isati and expect -išem. The first is a key to meaning: know the word a verb is made from, and you will understand it the first time you meet it.

The suffix map: what the tail of the infinitive tells you

Here are the main suffixes Serbian makes verbs with. The first column gives each suffix with its present tense (the “I” form).

The present-tense endings themselves were covered in “Conjugation classes”; here what matters is the reverse route, from the suffix to the meaning. Look closely at -iti and -eti: in the present they sound the same (-im), yet they mean different things, “make so” versus “become so”. That fork is the most useful thing in this lesson.

Verbs from nouns: from a thing to an action

This is the suffix at its most visible: take a noun and make an activity out of it. Three suffixes share the job, and which one a noun takes is fixed word by word.

Three meals in a row, and two different suffixes: ručati and večerati, but doručkovati. There is no logic here, only tradition, and that is the honest conclusion about the whole group: learn the suffix together with the word. The reverse route, though, is reliable: if there is zaključati “to lock”, there is also ključ “key” and otključati “to unlock”. One pattern does hold: after the soft consonants j, lj, nj, č, ć, dž, đ, š, ž and c the suffix becomes -evati, as in kralj → kraljevati and bič “whip” → bičevati “to flog”.

Doručkujemo u sedam, a ručamo oko dva. We have breakfast at seven and lunch at about two.

Nemoj da soliš, već sam posolila. Don’t salt it, I’ve already salted it.

A branch of its own: verbs from sounds, in -ati: kucati “to knock”, lupati “to bang”, šaptati “to whisper”, brujati “to hum, to drone”. Many have a partner in -nuti that means “once”: kucati → kucnuti “to give a knock”, šaptati → šapnuti “to whisper (a word)” (see “Interjections & onomatopoeia”).

Verbs from adjectives: “become so” and “make so”

Verbs made from adjectives split in two over one question: does someone make a thing so, or does the thing become so by itself? English often blurs the two (the days shorten, we shorten the talk); Serbian keeps them apart with different suffixes.

The first half is “make something so”; such a verb takes an object (povećati cene “to raise prices”). It is built with a prefix plus -iti or -ati. A pattern hides here: the verb is often built not on the plain adjective but on its comparative (see “Comparative”), shown in the middle of the table. English does it too: to better, to worsen, to lessen.

Cheat sheet

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

Verb-forming suffixes: cheat sheet

Three bases

From adjectives: “make” and “become”

• “Make so”, often on the comparative: velik → veći → povećati increase, mali → manji → smanjiti reduce, dobar → bolji → poboljšati improve, loš → gori → pogoršati worsen, lak → lakši → olakšati ease, težak → teži → otežati make harder, jak → jači → pojačati strengthen, dug → duži → produžiti extend, širok → širi → proširiti widen. Plain stem: ohladiti, osušiti, skratiti, obogatiti.
• “Become so”: -eti with o-/po-: ogladneti, ožedneti, ostareti, požuteti, poludeti, pocrveneti, poskupeti; unprefixed, imperfective: crveneti, stareti. In -iti: pojeftiniti “get cheaper”, ozdraviti “get well”, oslabiti “grow weak”.
• Or “make so” + se: Cene su se povećale. “Prices went up.”

The suffix -nuti: two jobs

• Once (perfective): mahati → mahnuti, vikati → viknuti, gurati → gurnuti, kucati → kucnuti, šaptati → šapnuti, treptati → trepnuti; sudden start: krenuti, skrenuti.
• Process (imperfective): tonuti, venuti, sahnuti, mrznuti, ginuti, brinuti, čeznuti → with a prefix: potonuti, uvenuti, presahnuti, smrznuti se, poginuti, zabrinuti se.

Easy to forget

• -ovati after a soft consonant becomes -evati: kraljevati, bičevati.
• -isati turns s into š in the present: informišem, kontrolišem; -irati goes like čitati: parkiram.
• English doesn’t predict the suffix: registrovati, informisati, kopirati; informirati is Croatian.
• Imperfective partner: smanjiti → smanjivati (smanjujem), povećati → povećavati (povećavam), krenuti → kretati.
• New words go through -ovati: lajkovati, skrolovati, restartovati; guglati with plain -ati.