Pasiv i Kongruencija

The Serbian passive is built the same way as the English one: biti plus a past passive participle. Nova prodavnica je izgrađena — a new shop has been built. What English does not make you do is make everything agree.

In each sentence below, three separate words carry the same gender and number:

The neuter plural is the one that catches everyone: mala sela su opustošena. The -a ending looks feminine singular and is not. If you can hold on to sela — mala — opustošena, the rest of the neuter plural follows.

And the auxiliary changes too: je for one thing, su for several. Negated, it fuses: nije, nisu — written as one word, always.

Now the case choice, which is the real lesson hiding in this set. Two sentences put a place after the participle, and they do not use the same case:

Same preposition u, two cases, two meanings. Serbian marks the difference between being somewhere and going somewhere in the noun ending, and this pair is the cleanest illustration of it you will find.

One more: od stakla. After od, genitive — staklo becomes stakla. Material is always expressed this way: od drveta, od betona, od zlata.