Zdravo! Welcome to the new episode of the Learn Serbian Podcast! I am 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 are 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 and updated website: www.serbianlanguagelessons.com, where you can now access free learning materials in the 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 are 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 “Idem u 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, Srbiji, Srbiju, Srbijom”, au bre! 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 pronoun), which are used in different contexts. Comparing that to English, we can say that it is similar to different forms of pronouns in English. For example, we say: “I am a student”, but “Give me the book”, not “Give I the book.”. Or “He is happy,”, but: “We are talking about him”, not “We are 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 seven different forms, so seven 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 the grammatical case will depend on the gender and grammatical number of the word (singuar or plural). Because of all 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; 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 the proper inflection. If you want, you can access these tables on the website in the “Free Materials” section.
The names of grammatical cases are as follows: Nominativ, Genitiv, Dativ, Akuzativ, Vokativ, Instrumental and Lokativ. Nominativ is a “basic” grammatical case. That means that all words that you learn and see in a 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. Nominativ can be used outside the sentence, independently, but if it’s used in the 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.
Genitiv 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 the prepositions “u” and “na” are used both with akuzativ and lokativ cases. The list of prepositions that go with genitiv is very long, so it’s easier to memorise the ones that usualy don’t go with them: u, na, sa, za, kroz, ka, prema. Genitiv 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, genitiv can be used with or without prepositions, and it usually takes at least 2–3 lessons to cover it. Another advice to remember is that whenever there is the preposition “of” in a sentence in a English language, that is when you need to use genitiv 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. Dativ is also used to mark an intention or a 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: “Jovan 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 the prepositions “ka” and “prema” which mean: “towards”.
Akuzativ is a grammatical case that marks a direct object in a sentence. For example, in one of our 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 Akuzativ is for general movement. Whenever you are going to a place, that place or destination will be in the akuzativ case, unless you are using prepositions that specify a different kind of movement. Prepositions that are used with akuzativ for general movement are “u” and “na”. The preposition “u” is used for destinations like school, shop or building, 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 party, concert, or wedding, we use preposition “na”. So we say: “Idem u prodavnicu”, but “ Idem na koncert.” Akuzativ is also used with preposition “kroz”, which means “through”.
Vokativ 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 vokativ: Marko, Pavle. 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 vokativ: Maja-Majo, Nada-Nado. Still, some female names won’t change: Ana, Jana, Sanja, etc. 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 soap.”, while in Serbian we will say: “Perem ruke sapunom.” We used the word “soap” - “sapun” in instrumental, and we did not use the preposition “sa”. It will be the same if we say: “I am traveling by car”, in Serbian, it will 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, Lokativ. 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 lokativ and akuzativ, since both are used to mark a location and both use the prepositions “u” and “na”. Lokativ is not used for movement. It is only used to mark a location where something is already happening, while akuzativ is used to mark a location where someone or something is going, a destination. That is why we say: “Idem u Srbiju”, but “Ja sam u Srbiji.”. In the first sentence, the word “Srbija” is in akuzativ, and in the second one it is in lokativ. Lokativ is also used with preposition “o”, which means “about”.
At the end, let’s write a short text using all of these grammatical cases. Try to spot them all!
Ja danas idem u školu. Za doručak jedem parče pice. Od kuće do škole putujem 15 minuta. Poslao sam poruku prijatelju. Napisao sam: “Marko, sačekaj me ispred škole!”. Kada sam došao u školu, pričao sam sa drugarima o testu iz matematike.
Translation:
Today I am going to school. For breakfast I am eating a piece of pizza. From home to school I travel 15 minutes. I sent a message to a friend. I wrote: “Marko, wait for me in front of the school!”. When I arrived at school, I talked with friends about the math test.
Grammatical cases used: Nominativ, Genitiv, Dativ, Akuzativ, Vokativ, Instrumental, Lokativ
There you go! All seven grammatical cases and their basic functions and uses. There is so much more that this to learn. Again, if you want to learn at different grammatical extensions, head over to our website and take a look at the “Free Materials” section. There are a couple of things to remember when you use grammatical cases in sentences. First, never rely on extension or inflections. Different grammatical cases can have the same endings. 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 can 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.
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: learn___serbian (Serbian Language Network). Thank you for listening, and see you next time! Vidimo se! Ćao!
