Osnovni pridevi
Overview
Serbian adjectives describe a noun's quality and agree with it in gender and number - like један in numbers-a1, the ending changes to match whatever noun it stands next to.
This lesson covers the three gender endings for singular and plural, the fleeting-a pattern that drops a vowel when an ending is added, and where the adjective sits in the sentence.
Gender and number endings
A regular adjective like нов (new) takes no ending for masculine, -а for feminine and -о for neuter, with -и/-е/-а in the plural in that same order - see the table below.
The adjective normally comes directly before the noun it describes: добра сестра (a good sister), never сестра добра.
The fleeting a pattern
A large group of adjectives end in a consonant cluster that needs a helper vowel in the masculine, but lose it as soon as any other ending is added: добар (good) → добра, добро, добри, добре, добра - the masculine is the odd one out, and every other form is built from the shorter stem добр-.
This is reliable enough to expect by default in adjectives ending in -ан in the masculine: гладан (hungry) → гладна, гладно; жедан (thirsty) → жедна, жедно. Adjectives ending in -ак or -ар are less predictable - many keep the vowel as part of the root instead: јак (strong) → јака, not јка; стар (old) → стара, not стра.
Agreement with case
An adjective agrees not only in gender and number but also in case: when a feminine noun takes the accusative -у ending from cases-introduction-a1, its adjective takes -у too - добра сестра (nominative) → добру сестру (accusative, direct object).
Masculine inanimate nouns keep their nominative-shaped accusative; neuter nouns always do, regardless of animacy - and so does the adjective in front of either: нов сто stays нов сто whether it is subject or object.
Tables
| Gender | Singular | Plural |
|---|---|---|
| muški | nov | novi |
| ženski | nova | nove |
| srednji | novo | nova |
Examples
Compared with…
English adjectives never change form at all - good stays good whether the noun is a good book or good books - and word order is the same in both languages, the adjective right before its noun. What's new is the ending: every Serbian adjective must be learned together with its three gender forms, not as one fixed word.
Common mistakes
Tips & exceptions
- An adjective almost always stands directly before its noun and copies that noun's gender, number and case ending.
- Learn irregular adjectives as a three-form chunk from the start - добар/добра/добро - the same way you already memorize a noun's different case forms.
- If the noun's ending changed (e.g. feminine -а → -у in the accusative), check that its adjective's ending changed the same way.
- The fleeting а affects only the masculine singular form; feminine, neuter and every plural form use the shorter stem without it.
- Feminine singular -а and neuter plural -а look identical (e.g. нова) - exactly the same overlap noun-gender-a1 already flagged for nouns like село → села; context tells them apart.
- A handful of common adjectives, like мали (small), are normally only used in this longer form in everyday speech - the parallel short form barely occurs.
Summary
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