Genitive for Beginners in Slovenian
Slovenian ⋙
Slovenian A1
Welcome to our Slovenian grammar course for beginners! Today we're going to talk about Genitive.
Before reading the article, we strongly recommend that you read the lesson about the
nominative case for Slovenian nouns and adjectives.
Genitive
Genitive (Rodilnik) stands in contrast to the accusative case. In Slovenian, there's a rule that negative forms are mostly expressed through the genitive case.
For example:
Imam čas (I have time, accusative case);
Nimam časa (I don't have time, genitive case).
Nouns and adjectives in this case answer the questions
koga? (whom),
česa? (what). This case is primarily used for negation without prepositions:
Ne jem (česa) špagetov (I don't eat spaghetti);
Ne vidim (koga) Boruta (I don't see Borut).
A distinct characteristic is that nouns in this case are used in conjunction with negative forms of the verb "to be." For example:
Mame ni doma (Mom is not at home).
Additionally, the genitive case can be used in the following situations:
- When using two nouns in sequence:
Tečaj (česa) slovenskega jezika (Slovenian language course);
Šef (česa) kuhinje (Kitchen chef).
- To express quantity:
Pet (koga) gostov (Five guests);
En kozarec (česa) vina (One glass of wine).
- Alongside verbs bati se (to be afraid of someone),
spominjati se (to remember someone), and
veseliti se (to be happy about something).
- For indicating dates:
Petega oktobra (Fifth of October)
- With prepositions "
iz," "
z," and "
s," which answer the question
od kod? (from where):
iz Ljubljane (from Ljubljana);
z letališča (from the airport).
- With prepositions "
od" ... "
do,"
which answer the questions od kod? (from where)
and do kod? (to where):
Od letališča do centra mesta (From the airport to the city center).
- With words zraven (next to),
poleg (besides),
blizu (near),
nasproti (opposite), and
mimo (by),
which answer the question kje? (where):
Zraven okna (Next to the window);
Blizu šole (Near the school);
Mimo pošte (Past the post office).
- With the word brez (without something):
Brez sladkorja (without sugar).
Singular form
Now, let's examine the endings that nouns and adjectives have in this case.
Velikega psa - A big dog (masculine);
Dobrega filma - A good movie (masculine);
Moje prijateljice - My friend (feminine);
Zanimive stvari - An interesting thing (feminine);
Nedeljskega kosila - Sunday lunch (neuter);
Športnega igrišča - Sports field (neuter).
In the singular form, nouns and adjectives of the masculine and neuter genders share the same ending (
-ega for adjectives and
-a for nouns). Adjectives and nouns of feminine gender have endings
-e and, in certain cases,
-i (for nouns without endings in the nominative case).
Dual and Plural form
Regarding the dual and plural numbers, their forms are the same. Therefore, we'll present them below without distinction:
Velikih psov - Big dogs (masculine);
Dobrih filmov - Good movies (masculine);
Mojih prijateljic - My friends (feminine);
Zanimivih stvari - Interesting things (feminine);
Nedeljskih kosil - Sunday lunches (neuter);
Športnih igrišč - Sports fields (neuter).
It's worth noting that the genitive case gives all adjectives the ending
-ih in the dual and plural forms. Nouns of masculine gender have endings -ov or -ev, while nouns of feminine and neuter genders do not have distinct endings. Nouns of feminine gender without endings in the nominative case have the same forms in both the singular and plural numbers.
Summary
We hope that everything is clear about Genitive after reading the article. We are waiting for you in the next lesson, where we will talk about
the dative case. Good luck!
