The Plural Oblique Endings (-ima/-ama)

If the singular declension is the mountain you have been climbing, this page is the view from the top — the moment you discover the descent is half the work. In the plural, three whole cases — the dative, the locative, and the instrumental — collapse into a single shared ending. There is one form to learn for all three, per declension type, and the preposition or verb tells you which of the three meanings is intended. After the relentless variety of the singular, this is the system handing you a refund.

The collapse, stated plainly

In the plural, every Croatian noun marks its three "oblique" cases — dativ, lokativ, instrumental — with one ending:

• -ima for masculine, neuter, and feminine i-declension nouns: stolovima, selima, prijateljima, noćima, stvarima.
• -ama for feminine -a nouns: ženama, knjigama, sestrama.

That is the entire rule. Once you know a noun's nominative, genitive, and accusative plural, you do not learn three more plural forms — you learn one, and it covers dative, locative, and instrumental together.

One noun, three cases, one form

The clearest way to feel the collapse is to take a single masculine noun — prijatelj ("friend") — and push it through all three oblique cases in the plural. The ending -ima never changes; only the trigger word in front of it changes:

Three meanings — with friends, to friends, about friends — and one word, prijateljima. The case is no longer carried by the ending; it is carried entirely by the preposition (or, for the dative, by the verb and the absence of a preposition). This is the practical payoff: in the plural you can stop choosing between three endings and just attach -ima.

The same trick works for a feminine -a noun with -ama:

The contrast that makes the gift visible

To appreciate the collapse, look at what the singular demands of these same three cases. In the singular, dativ, lokativ, and instrumental are genuinely distinct — the instrumental in particular stands apart with its own ending. Compare prijatelj singular against plural:

In the singular you must still distinguish the instrumental prijateljem from the dative/locative prijatelju. In the plural, all three are prijateljima — the distinction simply evaporates. The feminine -a noun shows the same story even more dramatically, because its singular keeps three different vowels:

Singular ženi (dat/lok) versus ženom (instr) — two forms to keep apart. Plural ženama — one form does the work of three.

The full collapse across all four declension types

Here is the entire plural oblique system on one screen. Notice there are only two endings in the whole table — -ima and -ama — and only the feminine -a class takes -ama:

Three of the four columns are -ima; only the feminine -a column is -ama. Even the feminine i-declension — the class that is awkward elsewhere — falls neatly into -ima here (noćima, stvarima, kostima). So the decision is binary: is this a feminine -a noun? If yes, -ama; if no, -ima.

Adjectives ride along — and they collapse too

The good news compounds. Adjectives and determiners that agree with these plural nouns also share one ending across the three oblique cases: -im (or -ima) for the whole oblique plural, regardless of gender. So stari prijatelji ("old friends") becomes starim prijateljima whether the meaning is dative, locative, or instrumental:

This means the entire noun phrase — determiner, adjective, noun — settles into one shape across all three oblique cases in the plural. The agreement chain that can feel laborious in the singular is, in the plural, a single decision repeated.

How this differs from English

English has no case endings on nouns at all, so it has nothing that "collapses." What English does instead is exactly what the Croatian plural now lets you lean on: it marks these relationships with prepositions alone — to the friends, with the friends, about the friends. The noun friends never changes. In the plural oblique, Croatian temporarily behaves almost like English: the noun reaches one stable plural form (prijateljima) and the preposition carries the meaning — prijateljima (to), s prijateljima (with), o prijateljima (about). The only extra step over English is attaching -ima/-ama in the first place. Once attached, the disambiguation logic is the familiar English one.

A small caution: the genitive plural does NOT collapse

Do not over-generalise. The collapse covers only the three oblique cases (dat/lok/instr). The genitive plural stands apart and remains the one unpredictable plural form (stolova, sela, knjiga, stvari, often with a fleeting vowel like sestara). And the nominative/accusative plural keep their own endings too. So the plural simplifies three cases into one — it does not flatten the whole plural. Keep the genitive plural on its own study list.

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• In the plural, the dative, locative, and instrumental share one ending: -ima (masculine, neuter, feminine -i) or -ama (feminine -a).
• Once you know the nom/gen/acc plural, the three oblique plurals are one form to learn, not three.
• The decision is binary: feminine -a noun → -ama, everything else → -ima.
• The preposition or verb disambiguates which of the three cases is meant — the ending no longer does.
• Agreeing adjectives also collapse to a shared oblique form (-im), so the whole noun phrase settles into one shape.
• The genitive plural is the exception — it does not collapse and stays unpredictable.