Instrumental
Overview
The instrumental answers (с) ким?/чим? ((with) whom?/what?) and covers two uses: the bare instrumental of means or tool (no preposition), and с/са + instrumental for accompaniment with a person. You already used the bare instrumental without naming it - a1-transport's аутобусом and a1-shopping's картицом/готовином are both instrumentals of means.
Instrumental singular and plural
Masculine and neuter nouns split by stem hardness: a hard-consonant stem takes -ом (студент → студентом, село → селом), a soft-consonant stem (њ, љ, ј, ћ, ђ, ч, џ, ш, ж, ц) takes -ем (пријатељ → пријатељем, поље → пољем). Feminine -а nouns always take -ом regardless of stem: жена → женом.
The instrumental plural shares the same -ама/-има ending as the dative and locative plural (see dative-case-a2 and locative-case-a2): студентима, женама, селима - one ending covering three cases.
Bare instrumental - means and tool
No preposition is used when the instrumental expresses the means or tool by which something is done: путујем возом and плаћам картицом repeat the constructions from a1-transport and a1-shopping; пишем оловком applies the same pattern to a tool.
С/са + instrumental - accompaniment
Accompaniment with a person adds the preposition с (or са, the same alternation rule as basic-prepositions-a1: са before words starting with с/з/ш/ж/ц/ч, and always before мном; с otherwise): идем с пријатељем, разговарам са сестром.
The two constructions are never interchangeable: с/са is for people (or things treated as company), never for a tool or means.
Tables
| Gender | Noun | Instrumental |
|---|---|---|
| muški, tvrda osnova | student | studentom |
| muški, meka osnova | prijatelj | prijateljem |
| ženski na „-a“ | žena | ženom |
| ženski, suglasnik | stvar | stvari |
| srednji, tvrda osnova | selo | selom |
| srednji, meka osnova | polje | poljem |
Examples
Compared with…
English uses two different prepositions where Serbian uses one case: by for means (by train, by card) and with for both tools and accompaniment (write with a pencil, go with a friend). Expect to over-translate by as a Serbian preposition where none exists - the bare instrumental already says it.
Common mistakes
Tips & exceptions
- Bare instrumental (no preposition) = means or tool; с/са + instrumental = accompaniment with a person. Keep the two uses mentally separate.
- The с/са alternation rule you already know from basic-prepositions-a1 applies here unchanged.
- The instrumental plural shares its ending with the dative and locative plural - one ending, three cases.
- Consonant-final feminine nouns like ствар usually take the same instrumental form as their genitive/dative/locative (ствари); a more formal -ју ending (стварју) also exists but is rare in everyday speech.
- A handful of masculine monosyllables insert an extra vowel before -ем for pronunciation reasons - treat these as vocabulary, not a productive rule.
- Some verbs pair with a bare instrumental for an activity even though English would expect "with": бавити се спортом (to do sports, literally "to occupy oneself with sport") never takes с/са despite the English "with".
Summary
Opens Focus mode: one exercise at a time, with explanations — either script accepted.
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