Plural versions of Croatian nouns

General rules for forming plural nouns

Forming plural nouns in the feminine (ženski rod) and neuter (srednji rod) genders is very straightforward.

Feminine
The –a at the end of the word changes into –e:

kuća – house → kuće
žena – woman → žene
stolica – chair → stolice

Neuter
The final –o or –e in the word is always change into –a:

pivo – beer → piva
vino – wine → vina
sunce – sun → sunca
more – sea → mora

The rule for masculine (muški rod) is also generally simple, but with a few exceptions:

Masculine
In most cases the plural is formed by adding an –i at the end:

televizor – TV → televizori
prijatelj – friend → prijatelji
susjed – neighbor → susjedi

For masculine nouns with only one syllable, we add the ending –ovi:
most – bridge → mostovi
stol – table → stolovi
trg – square → trgovi
For the words which end in –k, the plural ending changes to –ci:
dječak – boy → dječaci
liječnik – doctor → liječnici
poznanik – acquaintance → poznanici
A few common words don’t follow any of these rules, which it's best just to learn by heart. For example:
čovjek – man → ljudi – people
brat – brother → braća
kći – daughter → kćeri
dijete – child → djeca

Masculine nouns of one syllable which end with a palatal consonant (i.e. č, ć, đ, dž, š, ž, lj, nj, j) receive the ending –evi:
nož – knife → noževi
miš – mouse → miševi
muž – husband → muževi
Words which end in –ac, lose the final
–a and receive the ending –ci:
Amerikanac – American → Amerikanci
policajac – policeman → policajci
vatrogasac – firefighter → vatrogasci

A couple more exceptions which we'll deal with later ...

A handful of feminine nouns end in consonants.
These nouns receive the ending –i in the plural such as:
bolest – sickness → bolesti
smrt – death → smrti
Things get a bit more complicated one combines nouns with numbers (e.g. two tables or seven ducks)

That's enough for now ... for more exercises visit our blog post Croatian Grammar: Plural exercises! :-)