Od Glagola do Imenice

This is the sentence-shape of official Serbian — reports, laws, news bulletins. Instead of saying what someone does, you name the doing. And two things change at once, which is what makes it hard.

The verb takes -nje, and its direct object drops into the genitive. That second half is the one people forget: ciljeve → ciljeva, rashode → rashoda, and the adjective follows — javnih rashoda.

But if the verb had a preposition, nothing moves. Fokusirati se na mere becomes fokusiranje na mere — the accusative stays, because the preposition is still governing it. Same with ostajanje u kontaktu.

That last row is the exception you simply have to know. Not every verb makes a -nje noun; oporaviti gives oporavak, recovery. When a shorter noun already exists, Serbian uses it and leaves the long form alone.

And two genitives worth memorising on sight: vreme → vremena, and iskustva → iskustava, where an extra a appears between the last two consonants to make the word pronounceable.