Deklinacija prideva
Overview
basic-adjectives-a1 established that an adjective must agree with its noun in gender, number and case, and showed the nominative and accusative for a regular adjective like нов. This lesson gives the rest of the singular paradigm - genitive, dative, instrumental, locative - for masculine, neuter and feminine alike.
An adjective's oblique-case endings track the case-a2 lessons' noun endings closely enough that nothing here is a new concept - only a new set of endings to attach to a familiar shape.
Masculine and neuter - oblique cases, animacy, hard vs. soft stems
Masculine and neuter singular adjectives share every oblique case ending: genitive -ог(а), dative-locative -ом(е), instrumental -им - новог, новом, новим regardless of whether the noun is masculine or neuter, mirroring dative-case-a2's observation that dative and locative singular are (almost) identical.
Masculine accusative still splits by animacy exactly as accusative-case-a2 taught for nouns: an inanimate masculine noun keeps its adjective nominative-shaped („Купујем нов сто.“), while an animate one takes the genitive-shaped ending instead („Видим новог студента.“). Neuter accusative is always identical to the nominative - animacy never applies to neuter.
The genitive/dative-locative vowel is о after a hard stem consonant (нов-ог, нов-ом) but е after a soft one - ж, ч, ш, џ, ћ, ђ, љ, њ, ј, ц - as in свеж (fresh): свеж-ег, свеж-ем. The instrumental -им never alternates this way.
Feminine - full paradigm and one genuine ambiguity
Feminine singular declines нова → нове (gen.) → новој (dat./loc.) → нову (acc.) → новом (instr.), with no hard/soft о/е alternation at all - the endings already start with a vowel that needs no helper. Свежа follows the identical pattern: свежа, свеже, свежој, свежу, свежом.
Watch the instrumental feminine новом next to the masculine/neuter short dative-locative новом - they are spelled identically, and only the noun each one agrees with tells them apart: „Причам о новом стану.“ (locative masc.) versus „Разговарам са новом комшиницом.“ (instrumental fem.).
Longer and shorter endings - free variants
Masculine/neuter genitive and dative-locative each have a shorter, everyday ending (-ог, -ом) and a longer one (-ога, -оме) that sounds more formal - новог and новога, новом and новоме mean exactly the same thing. This is a stylistic choice, not a grammar rule to get right or wrong.
Tables
| Case | Masculine | Neuter | Feminine |
|---|---|---|---|
| nominativ | nov | novo | nova |
| genitiv | novog(a) | novog(a) | nove |
| dativ | novom(e) | novom(e) | novoj |
| akuzativ (neživo / srednji) | nov | novo | novu |
| akuzativ (živo, m.r.) | novog(a) | - | - |
| instrumental | novim | novim | novom |
| lokativ | novom(e) | novom(e) | novoj |
Examples
Compared with…
As basic-adjectives-a1 already noted, English adjectives never change form at all - no case, no gender, no number. This full oblique-case paradigm has zero direct English counterpart; the only route in is mechanical: know the noun's own case ending (already required by the case-a2 lessons) and match the adjective's ending to it every time.
Common mistakes
Tips & exceptions
- Genitive and animate accusative share one ending (-ог(а)) for masculine singular adjectives, exactly mirroring the noun's own animacy rule from accusative-case-a2 - learn the noun's rule once, the adjective just copies it.
- Check the stem's last consonant before choosing -ог/-ом vs. -ег/-ем: ж, ч, ш, џ, ћ, ђ, љ, њ, ј, ц trigger the soft е; everything else defaults to о.
- The longer (-ога, -оме) and shorter (-ог, -ом) endings mean exactly the same thing - pick whichever sounds more natural in context; there is no grammar rule choosing between them.
- The plural follows a related but distinct set of endings, partly overlapping with the case-a2 lessons' noun plural tables - not spelled out fully here, to keep this lesson focused on the singular, where most learner errors concentrate.
- Adjective definiteness (нов vs. нови - indefinite vs. definite forms) is a separate, deeper layer built on top of this case paradigm, covered fully in adjective-definiteness-b2; this lesson treats the everyday, unmarked forms shown above as the default.
- Adjectives have no distinct vocative form of their own - an attributive adjective before a vocative noun stays in its nominative shape: „Драги пријатељу!“ keeps драги unchanged even though пријатељу is vocative.
Summary
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