Nouns: Gender

01

How to Tell the Gender

For most nouns the last letter of the dictionary (nominative singular) form gives the gender away.

• Masculine: ends in a consonant - grad (city), pas (dog), prijatelj (friend)
• Feminine: ends in -a - žena (woman), knjiga (book), voda (water)
• Neuter: ends in -o or -e - selo (village), more (sea), pismo (letter)

02

Useful Exceptions

A handful of common patterns break the rule and are worth knowing early.

• Many abstract nouns in -ost are feminine even though they end in a consonant: neugodnost (discomfort).
• Some feminine nouns end in another consonant: noć (night), stvar (thing).
• A few nouns for men end in -a: tata (dad), kolega (colleague). These take the feminine endings as they change through the cases - the object form of tata is tatu, exactly as voda becomes vodu - but everything that agrees with them is masculine.

• Volim svog tatu.

  I love my dad.

• svog is the masculine form of svoj, while tat-u is a feminine ending. Both are right: the endings follow the spelling, the agreement follows the person.

03

Why Gender Matters

Gender controls agreement: the adjective, the demonstrative and the verb's past participle all change to match the noun.

• Auto je nov.

  The car is new. (masculine)

• Ova voda je hladna.

  This water is cold. (feminine)

• Vrijeme je hladno.

  The weather is cold. (neuter)

• Bio sam u prodavnici.

  I was in the store. (masculine speaker)

• Bila sam u prodavnici.

  I was in the store. (feminine speaker)

04

Gender in the Plural

In the plural the three genders keep distinct nominative endings: masculine nouns usually take -i, feminine -e, and neuter -a.

• gradovi

  cities

• žene

  women

• sela

  villages

05

Gender Chooses the Pronoun

The pronoun that stands for a noun follows its grammatical gender, not English logic. A masculine thing is on (he / it), a feminine one ona (she / it), a neuter one ono (it).

• Ovo je stari radio. On je pokvaren.

  This is an old radio. It is broken.

• Gdje je voda? Ona je hladna.

  Where is the water? It is cold.

06

Agreement Runs Through the Sentence

Once you know a noun's gender, the adjective, the demonstrative and the participle all fall into line with it. Getting the gender right is therefore the first step to a correct sentence.

• Moj stari računar je pokvaren.

  My old computer is broken. (masculine)

• Moja nova kuća je velika.

  My new house is big. (feminine)

• Moje staro selo je malo.

  My old village is small. (neuter)

07

Natural Gender

For people, grammatical gender lines up with sex, and Bosnian usually has a matching pair: učitelj (male teacher) and učiteljica (female teacher), prijatelj and prijateljica, student and studentica, konobar and konobarica.

• On je učitelj.

  He is a teacher.

• Ona je studentica.

  She is a student.

• Ona radi kao konobarica.

  She works as a waitress.