How to Say Dates in Bosnian: A Quick and Easy Guide with Ordinal Numbers & Cases

My Bosnian students often struggle with being able to say the dates in Bosnian correctly. It seems like a whole bunch of grammar that you need to think of all at once. But there’s a simple formula that I will explain in this post. The formula looks like this:

Day endings: -i if subject; -og otherwise
Month endings: januar, februar etc. if subject; -a otherwise
Year endings: -a if subject; -e otherwise

Read this post all the way through to understand the formula I’ve presented.

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Why Is There a Dot? (The Secret to Spotting Ordinal Numbers)

One important thing to note here, is that the dates in Bosnian are ordinal numbers. Meaning, similarly to English, you don’t pronounce them as, for example, May one. You pronounce them as May first, January fifth, etc. The main difference is that, in Bosnian, even the year is ordinal. So even the year would be read as 2025th, and not just 2025.

You may have noticed that in Bosnian writing, ordinal numbers (including dates) often have a dot after them:

18.12.2019.

In Bosnian (and most other Slavic languages), when you write an ordinal number as a digit, you always add a dot after it. It tells the reader: This is an ordinal number (first, second, third), not a cardinal number (one, two, three).

So when you see 5. mart in a Bosnian text, you know it means the fifth of March, not five March. The dot is your clue that an ordinal is being used.

In your own writing: Always use the dot when writing dates with digits.
Rođena sam 5. marta. (correct)
Rođena sam 5 marta.

This small dot makes your Bosnian look polished and correct.

Ordinal Numbers: The Foundation of Dates in Bosnian

Dates in Bosnian use ordinal numbers (first, second, third…), not cardinal numbers (one, two, three…).

Gender Matters

Ordinal numbers change depending on the gender of the noun they describe.

Most ordinal numbers, especially those after 10, will just add -i to the regular, cardinal number (petnaest -> petnaesti). So your ordinal numbers in masculine will look like this: prvi, drugi, treći, četvrti, peti, šesti, sedmi, osmi, deveti, deseti, jedanaesti, dvanaesti, petnaesti, dvadeseti, etc.

For feminine, you add -a instead (dvadeset -> dvadeseta): prva, druga, treća, četvrta, peta, šesta, sedma, osma, deveta, deseta, jedanaesta, dvanaesta, petnaesta, dvadeseta etc.

For multi digit numbers above 20, only the last digit will be read as ordinal: 20. = dvadeseti; 105 = sto peti; 283 = dvjesto osamdeset treći.

For dates, here’s everything about the endings you need to remember:

Day of the month: -i as nominative, -og as genitive

Month if read as number (eg. 8th instead of August): -i as nominative, -og as genitive

Months by names (eg. August): januar, februar… in nominative, -a in genitive (januara, februara)

Years: -a in nominative, -e in genitive

How to Say “Today Is [Date]” – Nominative Case

When you’re stating what date it is today, you use the nominative case. This is the simplest form.

Structure:
Danas je + ordinal number (masculine) + month name (nominative).

Examples:

Year will always be in genitive, unless it’s on its own:

How to Say “It Happened On [Date]” – Genitive Case

This is where Bosnian differs from English.
In English, we say “on April 5th.”
In Bosnian, you don’t use a preposition, line “on” or “in”. Instead, you put the entire date expression into the genitive case.

Structure:
Događaj se desio (the event happened) + ordinal number (masculine genitive) + month name (genitive) + year/godine (genitive)

Notice:

• The ordinal number is in the genitive case.
• The month name is also in the genitive case (maja, septembra, oktobra).
• No preposition (on, in) is needed. The genitive case alone expresses “on.”

The same rule applies to years. To say “in 2024,” you put the year into the genitive case.

Examples:

Even when the year is expressed as a number, it follows the same genitive pattern.

Time Expressions That Also Use Genitive

Once you know that “on a date” uses genitive without a preposition, you can apply the same logic to other time expressions. Words like since, after, until, and from…to are all followed by the genitive case.

In all these cases, the date (day, month, year) is in the genitive case.

Important Holidays in Bosnia

Now that you know how to say dates in Bosnian, let’s practice with some important holidays and commemorations in Bosnia and Herzegovina. These are dates every Bosnian knows.

Try saying each date in Bosnian using the rules you’ve learned:

• For “Today is” use nominative (Danas je…)
• For “It happened on” use genitive (…se slavi / obilježava)

Practice Exercise: Say These Dates in Bosnian

Using what you’ve learned, how would you say:

1. Today is November 25th.
2. Statehood Day is celebrated on November 25th.
3. I was born on July 11th.
4. After May 1st, the weather gets warmer.
5. From March 1st to June 1st.

Answers:

1. Danas je dvadeset peti novembar.
2. Dan državnosti se slavi dvadeset petog novembra.
3. Rođena sam jedanaestog jula.
4. Poslije prvog maja, vrijeme postaje toplije.
5. Od prvog marta do prvog juna.

If you’d like help practicing dates in conversation, we can work on them together in a lesson. Book your free trial and we’ll put these rules into real use.

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