This is the first part of the lesson. The rest, the exercises and the reviews are in the app.
The direct object: the accusative at work
You have the forms of the accusative in hand: -u for nouns in -a, -a for masculine nouns that name living beings, no change for masculine things, neuters and feminine nouns in a consonant. Now we give them work. The accusative has one central job, the one that defines the case: it marks the direct object, the person or thing an action goes straight to. When you drink coffee, read a book or see the waiter, the coffee, the book and the waiter are direct objects, and in Serbian all three stand in the accusative.
The idea is nothing new to you. English has direct objects too, and marks them in the simplest way there is: by position. In The waiter brings the bill, the bill is the object because it comes after the verb. Serbian marks the object with its ending instead. That one difference runs through this lesson: which verbs take an object, why no preposition is needed, how to ask about the object, what happens to it after a negative verb, and why a Serbian object can stand almost anywhere and still be the object.
Transitive verbs: the ones that take an object
Not every verb can have a direct object. The ones that can are called transitive: the action “goes across” from the doer to something else, and you can ask “whom?” or “what?” after the verb. English draws the same line (you can drink something, but you cannot sleep something), and most Serbian verbs fall where you would expect: spavati (“to sleep”) and ići (“to go”) take no object either. Some frequent transitive verbs, each with a typical object in the accusative:
More of the same kind: voleti ("to love, to like": volim kafu), kupovati ("to buy": kupujem hleb), hteti ("to want": hoću vodu), znati ("to know") and razumeti ("to understand": razumem pitanje, "I understand the question"). Every verb form here means "I …"; the ending says who, so no word for "I" is needed. The conjugation itself is the lesson "Present tense". What matters here is that each of these verbs pulls an object in the accusative along with it.
No preposition needed
A direct object attaches to its verb directly, with no preposition. No "on", "in" or "about" stands between them: the noun simply goes into the accusative.
The accusative can also follow a preposition, but then it does other work: direction and time, as in u grad, "into town", and u sredu, "on Wednesday". Those come in "Accusative prepositions (direction)" and "Accusative of time". A direct object is the accusative without a preposition: the bare object of the action.
Cheat sheet
The cheat sheet — everything essential from the lesson on one page. In the app it opens at any time.
The direct object: the accusative at work
A direct object (pravi objekat) is a noun in the accusative, with no preposition: what the action of a transitive verb goes straight to. Questions: koga? ("whom?", people), šta? ("what?", things). English marks the object by position; Serbian marks it by the ending.
Transitive verbs: the ones that take an object
No preposition
Čitam knjigu.I'm reading a book.
Prepositions with the accusative do other jobs, direction and time: u grad (into town), u sredu (on Wednesday).
Asking about the object
šta = its nominative (the accusative hides); koga is the special form of ko, like English whom.