Serbian for Beginners: Grammatical Cases (Padeži)

I'm your Serbian language tutor, Nikola.

As you can tell, we recently changed the name of our podcast from Serbian

Language podcast to learn Serbian podcast.

Also, we have two new logos for our website and for the podcast.

I hope you like them.

In today's episode, we're going to learn everything about grammatical cases or padeži in

Serbian language and why they are so hard to understand.

Before we start the lesson, make sure to check out our new updated website

www.serbianlanguagelessons.com where you can now access free learning materials in form of tables

with grammar, vocabulary lists and quizzes.

This section will be updated and more material will be added each month.

Now, if you're ready, let's start the episode.

Idemo!

Grammatical cases or padeži are one of the most irritating things about learning Serbian,

aren't they? Why do we say idemo Srbiju, but it's also incorrect to say

ja sam u Srbiju?

There are so many different forms that are used that it makes your head

spin. You can say Srbija, Srbije, Srbiju, Srbijom, Obre.

So how do we know which of these forms to use?

Let's start from the top.

Grammatical cases are different forms of a word, noun, adjective or a pronoun, which

are used in different contexts.

Comparing that to English, we can say that it is similar to different forms

or pronouns in English.

For example, we say I'm a student, but give me the book, not give

I the book.

Or he's happy, but we're talking about him, not we're talking about he.

We use different forms of pronouns depending on the context.

In English, we have only two forms for each of these pronouns, for example,

I and me.

But in Serbian we have 7 different forms, so 7 different grammatical cases.

These grammatical cases have extensions, which will mostly be different for each grammatical case.

But to make things even more complicated, there are different extensions for different genders

of nouns, and also different sets of extensions for singular and plural.

So the extension for grammatical case will depend on the gender and grammatical number

of the word, singular or plural.

Because of all of this, there are over 35 different extensions to be learned

for grammatical cases.

The good news is that some of them repeat.

This is the reason why I don't force my students to memorize by heart

all of these extensions or inflections.

That would be a very exhausting and boring process.

Instead, I always advise them to copy the extensions to their notes or visit

the website and take a look at the grammatical cases table to find a

proper inflection. If you want, you can access these tables on the website in

the free material section.

The names of grammatical cases are as follows.

Nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, instrumental, and locative.

Nominative is a basic grammatical case.

That means that all words that you learn and see in vocabulary list, for

example, are in this case.

It is the standard basic form of nouns, adjectives and pronouns.

It is the starting point for other grammatical cases.

Nominative can be used outside the sentence independently, but if it's used in a

sentence, it has a function of a subject.

Subject is a person or a thing that performs an action or is in

some kind of state.

For example, učenik čita knjigu.

Učenik is the subject of the sentence.

Genitive grammatical case has several different uses and functions, but mainly you will use

it with a lot of different prepositions.

Prepositions are words like in, on, before, after, and so on.

Prepositions are very important for grammatical cases because they will demand a specific grammatical

case to be used after them.

For example, preposition pre demands only a grammatical case of genitive to be used

after it, while preposition u and a are used both with acquisitive and locative

cases. The list of prepositions that go with genitive is very long, so it's

easier to memorize the ones that usually don't go with them.

U, na, sa, kroz, ka, prema, for example.

Those prepositions do not go with genitive.

Genitive is also used in possessive or partitive meanings.

For example, if we want to say glass of water, we say čaša vode,

not čaša od vode.

Therefore, genitive can be used with or without prepositions, and it usually takes at

least two or three lessons to cover it.

Another advice to remember is that whenever there is a preposition of in a

sentence in English language, that is when you need to use genitive in Serbian,

without prepositions.

Dativ is a grammatical case used to mark an indirect object without prepositions.

Indirect object is an object that is indirectly affected by the action.

Dative is also used to mark intention or recipient either of an object or

of an action.

Here are some examples.

In a sentence Jovan čita knjigu, word knjiga is a direct object of the

sentence because it is a first thing which is affected by the action to

read. But in a sentence Jova čita knjigu Milanu, Milan is affected indirectly by

the action because Jovan does not read Milan, he reads a book to him.

There is also an intention involved where Jovan wants Milan to receive the action

of him reading a book.

Yep, it can get really messy when it comes to grammatical cases.

In addition to this, dativ is used with prepositions ka and prema, which mean

towards. Acquisitive is a grammatical case that marks a direct object in a sentence.

For example, in one of the previous sentences, Jovan čita knjigu.

The word knjiga is a direct object which is affected first by the action

to read. Another very important use of acquisitive is for general movement.

Whenever you are going to a place, that place or a destination will be

in acquisitive case, unless you are using prepositions that specify different kind of movement.

Prepositions that are used with akuzeti for general movement are u and na.

Preposition u is used for destinations like school, shop or buildings, city or country.

If a destination is an elevated surface like hill or balcony, exposed surface like

town square and beach, or an event like a party, concert or wedding, we

use preposition na.

So we say idem u prodavnicu, but idem na koncert.

Accusative is also used with preposition kroz, which means through.

Vocative is a grammatical case that is used when addressing someone or something.

Masculine names ending on E and O mostly stay the same and don't change

in vocative. Marko and Pavle, for example.

Names and nouns in masculine gender ending on consonants will end on E and

U. Milan, Milane.

Kralj, Kralju. Female names that end on A will usually end on O in

vocative. Maja, Majo.

Nada, Nado. Still, some female names won't change.

Ana, Jana, Sanja will be exactly the same invocative.

It is best to listen to native speakers address and call someone in order

to learn how to address that person.

Instrumental grammatical case is mostly used with the preposition sa, which means with.

You should be careful, though.

This preposition is used when you want to express an action that is performed

with someone in company or when combining several different objects, for example.

Pijem kafu sa jovanom or pijem kafu sa mlekom.

The preposition sa should not be used when using an object to perform an

action. For example, in English we say I am washing hands with a soap,

while in Serbian we will say perem ruke sa punom.

We use the word soap, sapun, in instrumental, and we do not use the

preposition sa. It would be the same if we say I'm traveling by car

in Serbian and that would be putujem kolima not putujem sa kolima.

Instrumental can also be used with other prepositions like nad, pod, među and similar.

It is also used to describe long and repeating actions.

And finally, locative.

This grammatical case is used to mark the location where an action or state

is happening. It is very important to note the difference between locative and acquisitive,

since both are used to mark a location and both use prepositions u and

na. Locative is not used for movement.

It is only used to mark a location where something is already happening, while

acquisitive is used to mark a location where someone or something is going, a

destination. That's why we say idem u Srbiju, but ja sam u Srbiji.

In the first sentence, word Srbija is in akuzative and in the second one

it is in locative.

Locative is also used with preposition o, which means about.

At the end, let's write a short text using all of these grammatical cases.

The answers to which word is in which grammatical case you can find at

the transcript on our website.

Try to spot them all.

Ja danas idem u školu.

Za doručak jedem parče pice.

Jedan parč je pice.

Od kuće do škole putujem petnešt minuta. I'm going to school.

Poslao sam poruku prijatelju.

Napisao sam, Marko, sačekaj me ispred škole.

Kada sam došao u školu, pričao sam sa drugarima o testu iz matematike.

There are a couple of things to remember when you're using grammatical cases in

sentences. First, never rely on an extension or inflections.

Different grammatical cases can have same index.

Second, first take a look at which preposition is used before the word that

you want to put in a grammatical case.

As I said, there are strict rules which prepositions go with which grammatical cases.

Third thing to remember, sometimes there will be prepositions that go with two cases,

or maybe there will be no preposition at all.

If that is the case, we check the context of the sentence.

Is there a movement or is it just a state?

Is there a meaning of possession or partitive meaning and so on and so

on. The most important thing above all is not to stress over grammar and

all of these rules.

The language learning journey should be relaxed and enjoyable.

If you try to force grammar into your learning method, you might get stuck

and not make much progress.

Ask your teacher to help you with learning and to adjust the learning plan

according to your needs, language level and interests.

I hope this episode was at least a little bit useful to you.

I tried to include all the basic functions of each grammatical case.

Remember to visit our website www.serbianlanguagelessons.com and take a look at the table of

grammatical cases and their inflections.

Nouns and adjectives will sometimes have different endings.

Also, visit our Instagram page LearnSerbian or Serbian Language Network.

Thank you for listening and see you next time.

Vidimo se. Ćao!

Bye.