New Lesson to Practice Accusative in Serbian

Spotting when the accusative is needed

The accusative often answers koga? or šta? after a transitive verb, and kuda? after movement towards a destination. Feminine singular nouns in -a usually change to -u, while many inanimate masculine and neuter nouns keep the nominative form. In the plural, masculine nouns commonly end in -e, feminine nouns in -e, and neuter nouns in -a. Always learn the verb and its typical object together.

The accusative marks the thing that the action lands on. Ask yourself koga or šta after the verb: Vidim… šta? — novu crkvu. The trap for learners is that the adjective changes too, not just the noun. Nova crkva becomes novu crkvu, both words shifting together.

Accusative sentences in Latin and Cyrillic

Watch the endings closely as you read. Feminine nouns take -u, masculine inanimate nouns look unchanged, and masculine animate nouns take the genitive form instead. The Cyrillic column shows the same endings in the other script, and reading them there forces you to look at the word ending rather than recognising the whole word by shape.

Changing the object

Take each sentence and swap the object for a different noun of the same gender, then for one of another gender, adjusting the adjective each time. Vidim novu crkvu → Vidim nov muzej → Vidim novo pozorište. Doing this five or six times teaches the pattern far better than reading a table of endings.

Accusative exercise

Translate these sentences into Serbian in both alphabets, then underline every ending that changed because of the accusative.

1. I see a new church.
2. We are buying fresh bananas.
3. She is reading an interesting novel.
4. I am taking the child to school.
5. We are visiting old cities.

Answers