Sunce greje zid.

Yes. Sunce is a neuter noun, and its nominative singular form is sunce. In this sentence, it is the subject, so nominative is exactly the form you expect.

A lot of Serbian neuter nouns end in -e or -o in the nominative singular, so this is completely normal.

• sunce = the sun
• grammatical role: subject
• case: nominative

Good question. Zid is the direct object, so it is in the accusative case. But with masculine inanimate nouns, the accusative singular is usually the same as the nominative singular.

So:

• nominative: zid
• accusative: zid

That is why the form does not change here.

Compare that with a masculine animate noun, where the accusative often looks different from the nominative.

Greje is the 3rd person singular present tense form of the verb grejati.

It matches the subject sunce, which is singular, so:

• ja grejem = I heat / I am heating
• ti greješ = you heat / are heating
• on/ona/ono greje = he/she/it heats / is heating

Here, sunce is grammatically it, so greje is the correct form.

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

So Sunce greje zid has no separate word for the. Serbian relies on context to show whether something is definite or indefinite.

Depending on context, zid could be understood as:

• the wall
• a wall

In many simple example sentences, English uses the in translation even though Serbian has no article.

Yes, you could say Zid greje sunce, and it is still grammatical. Serbian word order is more flexible than English because case endings help show who is doing what.

However, word order affects emphasis:

• Sunce greje zid. = neutral, straightforward statement
• Zid greje sunce. = puts more focus on zid
• Greje zid sunce. = also possible in the right context, often more marked or poetic

Even though the order can change, the most neutral version for a learner is usually subject + verb + object.

You know from a combination of case and meaning.

• sunce is in the nominative, which is the normal case for the subject
• zid is in the accusative, which is the normal case for a direct object

In this specific sentence, zid looks the same in nominative and accusative because it is masculine inanimate, but grammatically it is still the object.

Also, the meaning helps: it is natural for the sun to heat a wall, not the other way around.

A simple English-friendly approximation is:

SOON-tseh GREH-yeh zeed

A few sound notes:

• u in sunce is like oo in food
• c in Serbian is pronounced ts, so sunce sounds like soon-tseh
• j in greje sounds like English y
• zid has a long ee sound, like zeed

So:

• sunce → SOON-tseh
• greje → GREH-yeh
• zid → zeed

Because the subject sunce is singular.

In the present tense, the verb must agree with the subject in person and number. Since sunce is 3rd person singular, the verb is also 3rd person singular:

• singular subject → greje
• plural subject → greju

For example:

• Sunce greje zid. = The sun heats the wall.
• Sunčevi zraci greju zid. = The sun’s rays heat the wall.

Yes, Serbian often allows the subject to be omitted if it is clear from context. So Greje zid can be a natural sentence.

However, without context, it is less clear who or what is heating the wall. It could mean:

• It is heating the wall
• He/She is heating the wall, depending on context

So in an isolated beginner sentence, keeping sunce makes the meaning much clearer.

Grejati is imperfective. That matters because imperfective verbs are used for:

• ongoing actions
• repeated actions
• general statements

So Sunce greje zid naturally means something like:

• the sun is heating the wall
• the sun heats the wall

A perfective verb would suggest a completed result and would not normally be used the same way in a simple present-tense statement like this.

Yes. That is mainly a difference of standard pronunciation/usage:

• greje = common in Ekavian
• grije = common in Ijekavian

Both correspond to the same basic meaning. If your course is teaching standard Serbian in the Ekavian variety, greje is exactly what you should expect.

In this sentence, Sunce is capitalized because it is the first word of the sentence.

If it appeared in the middle of a normal sentence, it would usually be written sunce with a lowercase letter when it means the sun in the ordinary sense.

So here the capital letter does not necessarily tell you anything special about grammar or meaning; it is mostly sentence-initial capitalization.