Genitiv
Overview
The genitive answers кога?/чега? (of whom?/of what?) and is the case of possession, quantity, and a large family of common prepositions. You have already used it without naming it: numbers-a1's rule that counts of 5 and above take a special plural form is exactly the genitive plural, and basic-prepositions-a1's из, од and до all govern the genitive.
This lesson gives you the full singular and plural endings by gender, so you can build genitive forms for any noun, not just the fixed phrases you already know.
Genitive singular
Masculine nouns take -а in the genitive singular - the identical ending you just met as the animate accusative singular in accusative-case-a2: студент → студента either way; only the sentence tells you which case it is. Feminine -а nouns take -е: жена → жене. Neuter nouns take -а: село → села.
Чија је ово књига? Оца. (Whose book is this? Father's.) shows the genitive marking possession on its own, without a preposition.
Genitive plural - the ending behind the numbers rule
The genitive plural is where the endings genuinely diverge from every other case you have learned. Feminine -а nouns drop the ending entirely: жена (genitive plural) looks identical to жена (nominative singular) - context alone tells them apart. Neuter nouns keep -a, so села serves as nominative plural, genitive singular, and genitive plural all at once.
Masculine nouns of more than one syllable insert a linking -а- before the ending: студент → студената. Monosyllabic masculine nouns usually insert -ов-/-ев- first (already met in the noun's plural: град → градови) and then take the same genitive-plural ending on top: градова. This is the ending numbers-a1 uses for counts of 5+: пет градова, шест студената.
Prepositions with the genitive
A large group of common prepositions always take the genitive: из (out of, from inside), од (from, since - already familiar from basic-prepositions-a1), до (until, up to), без (without), and после (after).
Поред (next to) and испред (in front of) are two more everyday genitive prepositions worth learning early.
Tables
| Gender | Noun | Genitive |
|---|---|---|
| muški rod | student | studenta |
| ženski na „-a“ | žena | žene |
| srednji rod | selo | sela |
Examples
Compared with…
English marks possession with 's or of and has no case ending to choose - father's book or the book of the father both map onto the single Serbian construction књига оца. The genitive-plural quirk (numbers 5+, no visible ending on some nouns) has no direct English parallel at all; English simply doesn't change the noun for counting.
Common mistakes
Tips & exceptions
- The genitive singular of a masculine noun is always identical to its animate accusative singular - learning one gives you the other for free.
- For feminine -а and neuter nouns, the genitive plural typically has no visible ending - it just looks like the nominative singular (жена) or the nominative plural (села).
- Every preposition on the genitive table is worth memorizing as a fixed pair with its case - из + genitive, без + genitive - rather than the meaning alone.
- A few very common feminine nouns are irregular in the genitive plural, taking an inserted vowel instead of a zero ending (e.g. сестра → сестара) - treat these as vocabulary to pick up individually.
- Monosyllabic masculine nouns that insert -ов-/-ев- in the plural (град → градови) carry that infix into every plural case, including the genitive (градова), not only the nominative.
- Деце (of children) is not a genitive plural at all - it is the genitive singular of деца, a separate word from дете that is grammatically feminine (declining деца/деце/деци/децу/децом exactly like жена/жене), even though it supplies дете's plural meaning. Дете's own genitive singular, детета, belongs to a different, irregular -ет- noun class covered in a later lesson.
Summary
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