| Gender | English | Serbo-Croatian |
| Masculine | 'he' | on |
| Feminine | 'she' | ona |
| Neuter | 'it' | ono |
There are, however, two fundamental differences between Serbo-Croatian and English gender.
First, Serbo-Croatian gender is associated with the ending of the word rather than with sex as it is the case in English. Thus, for example, the English word 'man' is he, i.e., masculine, because it refers to a male being, 'woman' is she, i.e., feminine, because it refers to a female being, and the words 'chair' and 'wall' are it, i.e., neuter, because they refer to sexless entities. In contrast to that, the Serbo-Croatian noun stolica 'chair' is she, i.e., feminine because it ends in an -a and the noun zid is he, i.e., masculine, because it ends in a consonant.
Serbo-Croatian nouns have gender which is closely related to the ending of the word. The gender can be determined using the following heuristics:
In addition to these rules of thumb, one should remember the following exceptions:
Second, the Serbo-Croatian gender paradigm spreads across a wide systemic range, while in English it is not present. For example:
| Gender | Serbo-Croatian | English |
| Masculine | visok muškarac | 'tall male' |
| Feminine | visoka žena | 'tall female' |
| Neuter | visoko dete | 'tall child' |
Serbo-Croatian nouns have gender as their feature, but they do not change according to the gender paradigm. A noun is thus either masculine, feminine or neuter in all its forms unlike adjectives, for example, which are masculine in some of their forms and feminine or neuter in others.
The wider presence of the Serbo-Croatian gender is visible even in the plural of the personal pronouns. The English 'they' corresponds to either oni (group of masculine items or mixed group), one (group of female items), or ona (group of neuter items), as it can be seen in the Pronouns section of this lesson.