Lekar pregleda pacijenta.

doctor

Breakdown of Lekar pregleda pacijenta.

• pacijent: patient
• pregledati: to examine

Questions & Answers about Lekar pregleda pacijenta.

Why is there no word for the or a in this sentence?

Serbian normally does not use articles. So lekar can mean a doctor or the doctor, and pacijenta can mean a patient or the patient.

Context tells you which meaning is intended. That is very common in Serbian.

Why does pacijenta end in -a instead of staying pacijent?

Because it is the direct object of the verb, so it is in the accusative case.

The basic form is pacijent.
In this sentence, the doctor examines the patient, so patient is the thing/person being examined. That makes it a direct object.

For many masculine animate nouns in Serbian, the accusative singular ends in -a:

• pacijent → pacijenta
• student → studenta
• lekar → lekara (if it were the object)

So the ending -a here does not mean the noun is feminine. It is just a case ending.

Why does lekar stay unchanged?

Because lekar is the subject of the sentence, and subjects normally appear in the nominative case.