If you come from English, you might expect Serbian to be full of passive constructions - the kind where the subject sits back and lets things happen to it. In fact, Serbian prefers the active voice in everyday speech, and the passive is used more selectively. But it does exist, and it has two tidy ways of showing itself.
This post gives you a gentle first look at both. No need to practise them heavily at this stage - recognising them when you hear them is a perfectly good starting point.
Is the passive common in Serbian?
No - and that is genuinely good news. Serbian speakers lean strongly toward the active voice in conversation, using the passive mainly in formal writing, news reports, and official announcements. There is no separate passive verb form to memorise; instead, Serbian builds the passive from two helpers you already know: the verb biti (to be) plus a passive participle, or the reflexive particle se used impersonally. That means your existing knowledge carries you a long way.
Way 1 - auxiliary "biti" plus a passive participle (-n / -t)
This construction works very much like English "to be + past participle." The passive participle is formed with the suffix -n or -t attached to the verb stem, and - crucially - it agrees in gender and number with the subject, just like any adjective in Serbian.
Here is a classic example:
Stolica je polomljena.
(The chair is broken.)
Stolica (chair) is a feminine noun, so the participle takes the feminine ending -a: polomljen-a. If we were talking about a masculine noun - say, sto (table) - we would say Sto je polomljen. And for a neuter noun like staklo (glass): Staklo je polomljeno. The participle simply follows the noun's gender, the same way all Serbian adjectives do.
Way 2 - the impersonal "se"
The second construction uses se with a verb in the third person to create an impersonal or generalised statement - something that happens regularly, or something done by an unspecified subject. It is very common in signs, recipes, and news:
Novine se štampaju svaki dan.
(Newspapers are printed every day.)
Here se makes the action impersonal - we are not told who does the printing, and we do not need to know. The verb štampaju agrees with novine (newspapers, plural) in the third person plural. This construction is arguably more natural in everyday Serbian than the biti plus participle version.
A bit of context
Think of Serbian passive the way you might think of Italian: the language is built for expressive, agent-forward sentences, and the passive is reserved for moments when the agent genuinely does not matter or is deliberately left out. Understanding the passive helps you follow news broadcasts and official announcements with confidence, but in everyday speaking you will almost always reach for the active voice - and that is what native speakers do too.
So do not worry about producing passive sentences in conversation anytime soon. Recognise them, understand them, and let active Serbian do the heavy lifting for now.
A note on audio
The original version of this post included an audio recording of the two example sentences spoken aloud. That file is not currently available here, but the two sentences above - Stolica je polomljena and Novine se štampaju svaki dan - are short enough to practise by reading aloud. Say each one slowly three times, paying attention to where the stress falls, and you will have a solid pronunciation anchor for both passive constructions.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to learn the passive voice early in Serbian?
Not urgently - but it is worth a brief early introduction precisely because the passive appears in the news and in written Serbian that you will encounter as a learner. Knowing it exists and how it looks means you will not be confused when you meet it. Deep active practice, though, is where your energy is best spent at the beginning.
Why is the -n / -t ending described as special?
Because it creates a form that looks like an adjective and behaves like one - changing its ending for gender and number - while doing the grammatical job of a passive participle. It is one of those satisfying moments in Serbian where two systems you already know (adjective agreement and verb stems) combine into something new. Once you see the pattern, it feels elegant rather than complicated.
When is "se" marking the passive versus marking a reflexive verb?
Context is your best guide, and with practice it becomes instinctive. The passive se appears with transitive verbs and a clear third-person plural sense of "someone does this thing" - novine se štampaju (newspapers are being printed - by someone). Reflexive se appears with verbs where the subject acts on itself or the action has no external agent at all - ona se smeji (she is laughing). The more Serbian you read and hear, the more this distinction resolves itself naturally.
I am Marina Petrovic, and I always reassure students that the passive is one of the smaller things to worry about in Serbian - at least in speech. The language rewards students who invest in the active voice, and once you are comfortable there, passive patterns click into place almost on their own. You are doing well just by reading this far.
For a fuller treatment of passive constructions and where they appear in written Serbian, visit the passive voice in Serbian grammar guide - it includes more examples from real texts and a comparison of the two constructions side by side.