Nominative, accusative - and calling someone by name
Ten minutes on the topic's practical pair and its one direct-address cousin: feminine -а nouns swap -а for -у as a direct object, masculine and neuter things stay unchanged, and calling someone by name uses a third form, the vocative, with no rule yet beyond memorizing it word by word. Build sentences writing and buying things before choosing and translating your way through the rest.
The part of the grammar page this lesson drills — read it here, then use it.
Nominative vs. accusative - the pair you need now
The nominative is the subject form and the dictionary form used in the noun-gender lessons.
The accusative marks the direct object - what the verb's action lands on. Feminine nouns ending in -а take the ending -у: кућа → кућу, жена → жену, књига → књигу.
Inanimate masculine and neuter nouns are the same in the singular - nominative and accusative share the same ending. Animate masculine nouns follow a different rule, covered later.
Special cases
The vocative is for direct address only. Many masculine names stay the same (Марко!), while most feminine nouns change: мама → Мамо!
Кога/шта имаш? takes the accusative, since имати always needs a direct object (see verb-imati-present-a1).
| Nominative | Accusative |
|---|---|
| kuća | kuću |
| žena | ženu |
| knjiga | knjigu |
| škola | školu |