Traps with adjectives
Five slips that turn a correct Serbian adjective into a wrong one: a masculine ending left on a feminine subject, a feminine accusative noun paired with a masculine adjective, a fleeting а kept instead of dropped, a feminine ending forced onto a masculine inanimate accusative noun that needs none, and a neuter ending left on a feminine noun. Ten minutes of building the right version and catching each mistake before it happens - the last of the series, right before the unit's own second words lesson.
The part of the grammar page this lesson drills — read it here, then use it.
Gender and number endings
Adjectives agree with nouns: masculine нов, feminine нова, neuter ново; plural forms are нови, нове, нова. They usually come before the noun: добра сестра.
The fleeting a pattern
In добар, the masculine has a fleeting а: добар → добра, добро, добри. This is common with -ан adjectives too (гладан → гладна); forms in -ак and -ар vary, so learn examples such as јак → јака and стар → стара.
Agreement with case
Adjectives agree in case too: добра сестра becomes добру сестру in the accusative. With inanimate masculine and neuter nouns, nominative and accusative match, so the adjective stays unchanged: нов сто.
| Gender | Singular | Plural |
|---|---|---|
| masculine | nov | novi |
| feminine | nova | nove |
| neuter | novo | nova |