Dete ide niz stepenice.

to go

Breakdown of Dete ide niz stepenice.

• dete: child
• stepenice: stairs
• niz: down; along

Questions & Answers about Dete ide niz stepenice.

Why is it dete and not something like a masculine or feminine noun?

Dete means child, and it is a neuter noun in Serbian.

A few useful things to notice:

• It ends in -e, which is a common neuter ending.
• Because it is neuter, it takes neuter agreement in grammar.
• Serbian often treats child as grammatically neuter even though a real child is, of course, a boy or a girl.

So in this sentence, dete is the subject and means the child.

Why is there no word for the in the sentence?

Serbian does not have articles like English the and a/an.

So:

• dete can mean a child or the child
• stepenice can mean stairs or the stairs

You understand which one is meant from context. In your sentence, the natural English translation is usually The child is going down the stairs.

What form is ide?

Ide is the 3rd person singular present tense of the verb ići, meaning to go.

So:

• ja idem = I go / I am going
• ti ideš = you go / you are going
• on/ona/ono ide = he/she/it goes / is going

Because dete is singular, the verb is also singular: ide.