The genitive at work: no what, how much what, whose, and after a preposition
The genitive (rodilnik) is the busiest case of Slovenian, and in the money unit it shows up in every second phrase. English marks none of this — 'I have no money', 'a lot of people' and 'the contract clause' all look identical — so the endings have to be learned by hand. For example: “Nimam dovolj denarja za polovico zneska” — I don’t have enough money for half the amount. A rule from the Slovenian course: worked…
How it works
The genitive (rodilnik) is the busiest case of Slovenian, and in the money unit it shows up in every second phrase. English marks none of this — 'I have no money', 'a lot of people' and 'the contract clause' all look identical — so the endings have to be learned by hand.
First: negation. Nimam denarja matches English 'I have no money'. But Slovenian goes further: any direct object slips into the genitive under negation. Imam pogodbo → Nimam pogodbe. Vidim avto → Ne vidim avta. English 'I don't see the car' changes nothing; Slovenian always does.
Second: quantity. After veliko, malo, dovolj, večina, polovica, nekaj and after any number from five up — the genitive plural: veliko ljudi, večina prebivalcev, pet evrov, dvajset let. And the predicate with such a subject goes to the neuter singular: Večina ljudi je odšla, but Pet ljudi je odšlo.
Third: belonging. Where English glues two nouns together ('the contract clause'), Slovenian uses the genitive: člen pogodbe, stroški dostave, rok dostave, temperatura zraka. It is the most frequent way to chain two nouns, and it does not cancel the possessive adjective (očetov, mamin) — that one lives only with people.
Fourth: prepositions. brez, do, iz, od, zaradi, poleg, blizu, namesto, vzdolž — all of them genitive: brez pooblastila, zaradi inflacije, do konca meseca.
What it looks like: masculine -a (znesek → zneska), feminine -e (plača → plače), neuter -a (mesto → mesta). In the plural all three take the zero ending: evrov is the masculine exception with -ov, while žensk, mest, let, ljudi end in nothing. A bare word with no ending in Slovenian is almost certainly a genitive plural.
Table
| the job | example | literally | the English |
|---|---|---|---|
| negation | Nimam pogodbe | I have no contract | I don’t have a contract |
| a negated object | Ne vidim avta | I see no car | I don’t see the car |
| quantity | veliko ljudi | much of people | a lot of people |
| quantity | pet evrov | five of euros | five euros |
| a share | polovica zneska | half of the amount | half the amount |
| belonging | člen pogodbe | clause of the contract | the contract clause |
| a preposition | brez izvirnika | without the original | without the original |
| a preposition | zaradi krize | because of the crisis | because of the crisis |
By example
- Nimam dovolj denarja za polovico zneskaI don’t have enough money for half the amount
- Brez pooblastila in izvirnika pogodbe ne greWithout a power of attorney and the original of the contract it won’t work
- Večina zaposlenih je dobila izplačilo do petnajstegaMost employees got their pay by the fifteenth
How the rule settles in your head
A rule is not memorized from an explanation. It is memorized from an attempt to use it and a mistake — that is why the app delivers it mixed in with words, not as a separate lesson: it resurfaces exactly where you forgot it.
Frequently asked
The genitive at work: how does it work in Slovenian?
The genitive (rodilnik) is the busiest case of Slovenian, and in the money unit it shows up in every second phrase. English marks none of this — 'I have no money', 'a lot of people' and 'the contract clause' all look identical — so the endings have to be learned by hand.
What does it look like in an example sentence Slovenian?
“Nimam dovolj denarja za polovico zneska” — I don’t have enough money for half the amount. A rule is easier to test on sentences like this than to memorize as a wording: what surfaces in conversation is the sentence.