Serbian builds abstract nouns out of adjectives with a small set of suffixes, and once you can hear which suffix a word takes, you double your vocabulary without learning a single new root.
| Suffix | Example | Note |
|---|---|---|
| -ost | strog → strogost, pouzdan → pouzdanost | by far the most common |
| -ina | brz → brzina | often physical qualities: dubina, visina, širina |
| -izam | ciničan → cinizam | international words keep their international suffix |
| -je | pošten → poštenje | a smaller group, but a frequent one |
Two things to watch. First, the fugitive A: efikasan loses its a as soon as anything is added — efikasnost, not "efikasanost". The same happens with odlučan, zahvalan, agresivan, identičan. Second, radoznao hides an L: the masculine ends in -o, but the rest of the word keeps it — radoznala žena, radoznalost.
And one pair runs backwards. Pažljiv is built from pažnja, not the other way round — the noun is the older word here. Same with dosadan from dosada and proveren from provera.
Adjective on the left — write the noun built from it.
1. komunikativan →
2. efikasan →
3. pažljiv →
4. ciničan →
5. agresivan →
6. strog →
7. brz →
8. identičan →
9. radoznao →
10. odlučan →
11. zahvalan →
Now the other direction — noun on the left, adjective in the box.
1. tvrdoglavost →
2. opuštenost →
3. skromnost →
4. poštenje →
5. pouzdanost →
6. dosada →
7. provera →
8. privatnost →
SR (lat): Upisuje se samo tražena reč. Može latinicom ili ćirilicom; dijakritici su opcioni.
СР (ћир): Уписује се само тражена реч. Може латиницом или ћирилицом; дијакритици су опциони.
EN: Type only the derived word. Latin or Cyrillic, diacritics optional.
Same level, different problem — the two prepositions that decide where you are going.
NA ili U →