~7 min · 12 exercises

Part of the unit “The house and things around us: gender”

Род именица

noun-gender

Overview

Every Serbian noun has one of three grammatical genders - masculine (мушки род), feminine (женски род) or neuter (средњи род) - for every noun, not only people or animals: сто (table) is masculine, кућа (house) is feminine, село (village) is neuter, unrelated to the object itself.

Gender decides the pronoun that replaces the noun (он / она / оно) and the ending an agreeing adjective takes - later lessons add case endings and past-tense agreement, which also depend on it, so it pays off to learn it correctly from the start.

Guessing gender from the ending

For most nouns, the nominative-singular ending predicts the gender: a noun ending in a consonant is normally masculine (сто, брат, град); a noun ending in -а is normally feminine (жена, кућа, школа); a noun ending in -о or -е is normally neuter (село, поље, име).

This ending-based rule is a strong first guess for any new noun - trust it while learning the smaller set of exceptions below.

Gender drives agreement

Adjectives change ending to match the noun's gender - велик (big) for masculine, велика for feminine, велико for neuter - the same pattern reappears with past-tense verbs in a later lesson.

Serbian also uses он/она/оно for inanimate objects, not just people - a table is он, a house is она, a village is оно.

The two exception classes

A closed set of nouns for male people ends in -a but stays grammatically masculine: тата (dad), деда (grandpa), судија (judge) - they decline like feminine -a nouns but take masculine agreement: мој тата, not моја тата.

A second set of feminine nouns ends in a consonant instead of -а - most productively, virtually every abstract noun in -ост (младост, радост, могућност), plus a handful of concrete nouns like ноћ, реч, крв. Worth memorising as a class, since the consonant ending alone would otherwise suggest masculine.

Tables

Gender by ending in the nominative singular
Ending	Gender	Example
сугласник	мушки	сто
-а	женски	жена
-о	средњи	село
-е	средњи	поље
сугласник (изузетак)	женски	ноћ
-а (изузетак, мушка особа)	мушки	тата

Examples

Сто је велик.

The table is big.

сто is masculine, so the adjective takes the masculine ending: велик.

Кућа је велика.

The house is big.

кућа is feminine, so the adjective takes -а: велика.

Село је мало.

The village is small.

село is neuter, so the adjective takes -о: мало.

Он је велик, она је велика, оно је мало.

It (masc.) is big, it (fem.) is big, it (neut.) is small.

Serbian uses он/она/оно for objects too, not only for people, unlike English it.

Ноћ је дуга.

The night is long.

ноћ ends in a consonant but is feminine - one of the consonant-feminine exceptions.

Мој тата је висок.

My dad is tall.

тата ends in -а but is masculine, because it refers to a man; the adjective agrees as masculine: висок.

Реч „младост“ је женског рода.

The word „младост“ (youth) is feminine.

Nearly every abstract noun ending in -ост is feminine.

Compared with…

English nouns have no grammatical gender - every inanimate object is it. Serbian assigns a gender to every noun, driving the pronoun and every later adjective and verb ending that agrees with it - gender can never be skipped or defaulted to a neutral it.

Serbian

Он је велик, она је велика, оно је мало.

Three different pronouns where English would use it three times.

English

It (masc.) is big, it (fem.) is big, it (neut.) is small.

Common mistakes

Wrong

Кућа је велик.

Right

Кућа је велика.

кућа is feminine; the adjective must agree and take -а: велика, not the masculine велик.

Wrong

Сто је велика.

Right

Сто је велик.

сто is masculine; use велик, not the feminine велика.

Wrong

Тата је висока.

Right

Тата је висок.

тата ends in -а like a feminine noun but is grammatically masculine (it refers to a man); agreement stays masculine: висок.

Wrong

Село је мала.

Right

Село је мало.

село is neuter; the adjective takes -о: мало, not the feminine мала.

Tips & exceptions

Tips

Learn a noun's gender together with the word itself - think кућа (ж), not just кућа.
Trust the ending-based rule as your default guess for a new noun's gender, but watch for the consonant-feminine nouns (especially the whole -ост class) and the masculine -a nouns for male people - the two exception classes worth memorising on their own.
Gender decides the pronoun (он/она/оно) and every later adjective and verb ending that agrees with the noun, so it is worth confirming for every new noun you learn.

Exceptions

A small set of masculine nouns for male people ends in -a and declines like a feminine noun while keeping masculine agreement: тата (dad), деда (grandpa), судија (judge).
A closed set of feminine nouns ends in a consonant instead of -а - most productively, virtually all abstract nouns in -ост (младост, радост, могућност), plus a handful of concrete nouns like ноћ, реч, крв.
Дете (child) is neuter, but its plural деца is grammatically a feminine singular collective noun - it takes plural agreement despite its singular-looking declension: Деца су лепа, not Деца је лепа. This is covered in more depth in a later lesson.

Summary

Every Serbian noun has one of three genders - masculine, feminine, neuter - mostly predictable from its nominative-singular ending (consonant → masculine, -а → feminine, -о/-е → neuter), plus a small, learnable set of exceptions (masculine -а nouns like тата, consonant-feminine nouns like ноћ). Gender drives the он/она/оно pronoun and all later adjective and verb agreement, and the ending-based rule above predicts it correctly the overwhelming majority of the time.