Practising Colors in Serbian

Matching colour to noun gender

Colour adjectives agree with the noun they describe: crveni auto, crvena knjiga, crveno vino. In the plural the endings change again: crveni automobili, crvene knjige, crvena vina. Some colour words, such as roze and braon in common usage, are often indeclinable. Say the colour together with a noun so that the agreement pattern becomes automatic.

Every colour in Serbian has three basic endings, one for each gender, and they follow the noun. Crveni automobil, plavu knjigu, zeleno povrće — the colour is bending to fit. If you know the gender of the noun, the colour form follows automatically, so gender is the thing worth checking first.

Colour vocabulary in both scripts

Take care with ljubičasta and žute: the diacritics are not decoration. ž and z are separate letters with separate sounds, and dropping the mark makes a different word. In Cyrillic they are distinct letters altogether, which is one reason reading the second column trains your spelling.

Colour drills

Take one colour and run it through three nouns of different genders, then move to the next colour. After the third colour the pattern begins to feel automatic. Then put the colours into a sentence about clothing — what you are wearing right now — so they arrive with a context attached.

Colour agreement exercise

Translate these sentences into Serbian in Latin and Cyrillic, and note the gender of each noun beside your answer.

1. This is a red car.
2. I have a blue book.
3. We are buying green vegetables.
4. There are yellow pencils on the table.
5. Her dress is purple.

Answers