potrebama

Potrebama is a grammatical form found in Serbo-Croatian languages (Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian). It is the instrumental plural form of the feminine noun potreba, meaning “need” or “requirement.” As a form rather than a standalone word, potrebama appears in phrases that require the instrumental case and denotes the needs of a group or entity when combined with a noun in genitive or other governed structures.

Etymology and morphology: Potreba comes from the Proto-Slavic root for “need.” The instrumental plural ending -ama is the standard ending for feminine nouns in the instrumental plural in this language family, yielding potrebama. This form is predictable for learners familiar with other feminine -a nouns in the instrumental plural.

Usage: Potrebama is used to express “the needs” of a group in contexts such as policy, planning, or service delivery. It commonly appears in constructions like potrebama korisnika (“the needs of users”) or potrebama zajednice (“the needs of the community”), where the phrase as a whole occupies an instrumental-plural role within the sentence. Because it is a case form, its exact placement depends on the governing prepositions and the syntactic role of the noun phrase.

Relation to related terms: The base noun potreba is used across various contexts to mean “need” or “requirement.” Potrebama is the corresponding instrumental plural form. Learners may also encounter other case forms of potreba (different singular and plural endings) in broad linguistic or grammatical discussions.

See also: potreba, Serbo-Croatian grammar, Slavic declensions, instrumental case.