Some songs get under your skin in a way that is almost unfair. "Devojka iz grada" - City Girl - by Miroslav Ilić is one of those songs for me. There is something about its gentle folk melody, its images of rivers and meadows and a boy falling helplessly in love, that makes it impossible to forget. And impossible to forget, it turns out, is a very useful quality in a grammar exercise.
Today we are using this beautiful and nostalgic song to practise plural nouns in Serbian. The lyrics are full of them, which makes the song almost suspiciously well-suited to the task. Settle in, listen, and then try the gap-fill - I promise the grammar will feel far less like work than usual.
What does this song practise?
This exercise uses "Devojka iz grada" to practise Serbian plural nouns, along with some adjective-and-noun agreement in the plural. The song's lyrics naturally include a lovely cluster of nouns in their plural forms - flowers, lips, hands, fairy tales, woods, horses, hills - which gives us a rich and varied set of endings to notice and absorb.
Serbian plural nouns are formed in several different ways depending on the noun's gender and its final consonant or vowel, and this song gives you examples from multiple patterns in one sitting. Learning grammar through song is not just a gimmick: the melody acts as an anchor in your memory, and words tied to a tune are recalled far more reliably than words memorised from a list. Ask anyone who learned a language as a child how they remember vocabulary - it is almost always through songs, rhymes, and stories.
Hear it
Listen to the song once through before you look at the gap-fill. Let yourself enjoy it. Miroslav Ilić is one of the great voices of Serbian folk music, and this recording is a joy to listen to. On a second listen, start listening for the nouns - can you hear any of the plurals before you see the lyrics?
The gap-fill
Below are the key lines from the song with the plural nouns replaced by their English translations in square brackets. Your task is to supply the correct Serbian plural for each one. The answers are at the end of this section - but do try first! Even a confident guess that turns out to be wrong teaches you more than reading the answer passively.
Ja sam roden u ___ (flowers) livada
čuvar stada pokraj reke Gruzе
al zavoleh devojku iz grada
sa ___ (lips) ko pupoljak ruže.Bele ___ (hands), a prsti ko dirke
pričaju mi najnežnije ___ (fairy tales)...
Sin sam plavih ___ (woods) i livada
gajih dobre ___ (horses) i volove
zbog lepote devojke iz grada
zaboravih ___ (hills) i dolove.
Ready to check? Here are the plural forms the song uses:
| English hint | Serbian plural in the song | Singular form |
|---|---|---|
| flowers | cvece | cvet |
| lips | usnama (instrumental pl.) | usna |
| hands | ruke | ruka |
| fairy tales | bajke | bajka |
| woods | sume | suma |
| horses | konje | konj |
| hills | bregove | breg |
The plural endings to notice
What makes this gap-fill so valuable is the variety of plural patterns compressed into one short song: you have feminine nouns adding -e (ruka - ruke, suma - sume, bajka - bajke), a masculine noun extending with -ove (breg - bregove), and the irregular but beautiful plural of konj giving konje - all within a few lines of lovely poetry. Notice, too, that cvece is a collective noun in Serbian (used as a singular to mean "flowers" as a general concept), which is why the case ending in the phrase is different from a straightforward nominative plural.
Do not feel you need to memorise all the patterns today: the goal right now is to notice them, hear them in a real linguistic context, and let the song do the memory work for you. Every time the melody comes back to you in the shower or on a walk, the plurals will come back with it - and that is exactly the kind of effortless recall that makes language learning feel like a joy rather than a chore.
Frequently asked questions about Serbian plural nouns
How many ways can Serbian form a plural noun?
There are several patterns, and which one applies depends on the noun's gender (masculine, feminine, or neuter) and its stem. Broadly: masculine nouns typically add -i or -ovi/-evi; feminine nouns add -e; neuter nouns add -a. There are also various consonant changes that occur at the stem boundary. It sounds like a lot, but in practice your ear starts to learn the patterns quite naturally through exposure.
Why does "cvece" not behave like a regular plural?
Cvece is a collective noun in Serbian - it describes flowers as a mass or group concept rather than counting individual flowers one by one. It behaves grammatically as a neuter singular even though it refers to many things. If you want to count individual flowers you would use cvet (one flower) and cvetovi (flowers, countable plural).
Is Miroslav Ilić a good artist to learn Serbian from?
He is excellent. His diction is clear, his Serbian is standard and beautifully pronounced, and his songs are full of rich, natural vocabulary drawn from Serbian landscape and rural life. The folk tradition he comes from is also culturally important, so learning his songs gives you a genuine window into Serbian heritage. Other artists worth exploring for clear pronunciation include Djordje Balasevic and Silvana Armenulić.
What does "Gruz/Gruzа" refer to in the song?
The Gruza is a river in central Serbia, in the Sumadija region. The song's narrator is from rural, pastoral Serbia - meadows, rivers, forests, and herds of cattle - and he has fallen for a girl from the city. The contrast between his rustic world and her urban one is the heart of the song's gentle melancholy.
Can I write my gap-fill answers in the comments?
Please do! Write out the lines with your plural forms filled in, and I will let you know how you have done. Seeing your attempts in writing, even if some are wrong, is enormously useful - and I am always delighted when learners are brave enough to try.
I hope "Devojka iz grada" has lodged itself pleasantly in your mind today. These old folk songs carry so much - language, landscape, feeling, history - and they are one of the great gifts Serbian has to offer a learner. Go back and listen again tonight, and see how much more you hear the second time around.
Srećno sa vezbanjem! Good luck with the practice!
- Marina Petrovic
Ready for more work on Serbian nouns? More singular/plural practice has plenty more exercises waiting for you.