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How Serbian works, where it came from, and what is worth knowing about it before the first lesson.

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Seven cases, not eight: where Serbian's locative went, and why it barely matters

Russian speakers count eight cases in their own language and brace for the same number in Serbian. Serbian has seven - and the missing one did not disappear so much as merge into a case that already looked almost identical to it. Here is what that means for how much you actually need to memorise.

4 min read
Comparisons

The case Russian lost and Serbian still uses every morning

Russian technically still has a vocative case - it survives in Боже and a handful of other fossils. Serbian never let it fossilize: every name, every mama, every friend called across a room still takes a special ending, and a Russian speaker's safest instinct - reach for the plain nominative - is, for once, exactly the wrong one.

4 min read

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