Nouns: Gender — Croatian Grammar

Every Croatian noun has one of three genders: masculine, feminine or neuter. Gender is not about biology - it is a grammatical class that decides the endings of the noun and of every adjective, pronoun and number that goes with it. Learning a noun means learning its gender.

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 - (city), (dog), (friend)
Feminine: ends in -a - (woman), (book), (water)
Neuter: ends in -o or -e - (village), (sea), (letter)

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: (discomfort).
Some feminine nouns end in another consonant: (night), (thing).
A few nouns for men end in -a: (dad), (colleague). These take the feminine endings as they change through the cases - the object form of is , exactly as becomes - but everything that agrees with them is masculine.

Volim svog tatu.
I love my dad.

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

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 trgovini.
I was in the store. (masculine speaker)
Bila sam u trgovini.
I was in the store. (feminine speaker)

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

Gender Chooses the Pronoun

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

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 stolac je pokvaren.
My old chair is broken. (masculine)
Moja nova kuća je velika.
My new house is big. (feminine)
Moje staro računalo je sporo.
My old computer is slow. (neuter)

Natural Gender

For people, grammatical gender lines up with sex, and Croatian usually has a matching pair: (male teacher) and (female teacher), and , and , and .

On je učitelj.
He is a teacher.
Ona je studentica.
She is a student.
Ona radi kao konobarica.
She works as a waitress.

In the course

Sentences from Lingora’s Croatian course

415 of the course's 500 sentences use this, the first in lesson 2. A few of them, with the words “Nouns: Gender” is about in bold:

Ovo je moja prijateljica, Anna. Ona je studentica.
This is my friend, Anna. She is a student.
Lesson 2
Imam dva auta, dva bicikla i tri motocikla.
I have two cars, two bicycles, and three motorbikes.
Lesson 33
Kupujem jednu bananu i šest jaja.
I am buying one banana and six eggs.
Lesson 43

Comments

Loading comments…