Akuzativ
Overview
cases-introduction-a1 already showed you the core accusative rule: feminine -а nouns swap -а for -у as a direct object (кућа → кућу), while inanimate masculine and neuter nouns stay unchanged. This lesson completes the picture - the accusative singular of animate masculine nouns (people and animals), the accusative plural for every gender, and the accusative forms of the personal pronouns, which you will use constantly.
The accusative is the case of the direct object - what the verb's action lands on - and, with a small set of prepositions (у, на, кроз, за…), the case of motion into or onto something, contrasted later with the locative for pure location (see locative-case-a2).
Singular - the animate/inanimate split
The one genuinely new rule at A2: a masculine noun referring to a person or animal takes a distinct accusative singular ending in -а, identical in form to its genitive singular (see genitive-case-a2) - Видим студента. (I see the student.). An inanimate masculine noun keeps the unchanged form you already know: Видим сто.
Feminine -а nouns keep the -у ending regardless of animacy: Видим жену. (I see the woman.) and Видим књигу. (I see the book.) The small class of consonant-final feminine nouns (see the -ост exceptions in noun-gender-a1) does not change at all in the accusative singular: ствар (thing) stays ствар. Neuter nouns never change in the singular, animate or not: Видим дете. (I see the child.) uses the same form as the nominative дете.
Plural - one rule for (almost) every gender
Unlike the singular, Serbian does not distinguish animate from inanimate in the accusative plural - a masculine plural direct object always ends in -е: Видим студенте. (I see the students.) and Видим столове. (I see the tables.) take the identical ending.
Feminine -а nouns take -е in the plural too, the same form as their nominative plural: Видим жене. Neuter nouns keep the unchanged -а plural in both nominative and accusative: Видим села. (I see the villages.)
Personal pronouns - long and short forms
Personal pronouns have a full (stressed) accusative form and a short (enclitic) form, exactly like бити's short/long split in verb-biti-present-a1. The short form is the everyday choice and follows the same second-position rule: Видим га. (I see him.)
The full form is used after a preposition, for emphasis, or to avoid ambiguity: За њега купујем поклон. (I'm buying a gift for him.) The 3rd-person feminine singular has two competing short forms, је and ју (see exceptions below for when each applies): Видим је. is the everyday choice, but a compound tense needs ју instead, right before the auxiliary је - Он ју је видео. (He saw her.), never Он је је видео.
Tables
| Gender | Noun | Accusative | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| muški, neživa | sto | sto | nepromenjeno |
| muški, živa | student | studenta | kao genitiv jednine |
| ženski na „-a“ | žena | ženu | „-a“ → „-u“ |
| ženski, suglasnik | stvar | stvar | nepromenjeno |
| srednji rod | selo | selo | nepromenjeno |
Examples
Compared with…
English keeps case marking only on its pronouns (I/me, he/him, she/her, they/them) - exactly the personal-pronoun table above, which is why it should feel the most familiar part of this lesson. Everything else in English relies on word order, with no noun ending to track at all.
Common mistakes
Tips & exceptions
- For animate masculine nouns, the accusative singular always matches the genitive singular - learn the two together and you get both for free.
- The accusative plural never marks animacy: default to -е for masculine nouns regardless of what they refer to.
- Prefer the short (clitic) pronoun forms in everyday speech, and remember they need a stressed word before them, just like сам/си/је….
- Personal names ending in -а (e.g. Никола, Лука) are the real exception here - they decline like feminine -а nouns despite being masculine, so their accusative singular takes -у, not a genitive-shaped ending: „Видим Николу.“ Names ending in -о/-е (e.g. Марко) are not an exception at all - despite the unusual nominative, they follow the ordinary masculine pattern above: „Видим Марка.“
- Је and ју both translate her in the accusative, but је is the everyday default; ју is reserved for the one context where the accusative clitic would otherwise collide with the 3rd-person singular auxiliary је in a compound tense - „Он ју је видео.“, never „Он је је видео.“
- A small class of neuter nouns (e.g. дете) insert -ет- before every singular case ending except the nominative/accusative - детета, детету - rather than following the plain -о/-е pattern shown here. Дете's plural, деца, is a separate word entirely: it is grammatically feminine, not neuter, and is covered later.
Summary
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