Accusative prepositions (direction)

Lesson opening

This is the first part of the lesson. The rest, the exercises and the reviews are in the app.

“Where to?”: the accusative with prepositions of motion

You already know the accusative as the case of the direct object, the thing the action is done to: Vidim grad (I see the city), Pijem kafu (I’m drinking coffee). It has a second job. Put a preposition of motion in front of the noun, and the accusative starts answering the question kuda? (where to?): Idem u grad, “I’m going to town”; Žurim na posao, “I’m hurrying to work”. The noun is no longer an object: it is the destination of a movement.

The place where you already are takes another case, the locative, which answers gde? (where?): u gradu (in town) is rest, but u grad (to town, into town) is movement. English shows the difference with its prepositions (in town, to town; in the box, into the box) and never touches the noun. Serbian keeps the same little word and changes the ending, every time. The lesson “Locative forms” teaches the locative endings, and “Location vs direction” takes the pair apart in full; here you will meet u gradu, u školi (at school) and na poslu (at work) as ready-made phrases. This lesson gathers all the prepositions of direction, the ones that take the accusative for movement.

u and na: into and onto

The main pair of direction is u (into, inside) and na (onto a surface, or to an event or activity). With the accusative they mark going into a place or onto it. English usually says just to; Serbian has to choose between the two:

Look at the forms, which you know from “Accusative forms”. Masculine nouns for things keep their dictionary form in the accusative (grad → u grad, posao → na posao), while nouns in -a change the ending to -u (škola → u školu, ulica → na ulicu).

Which of the two prepositions? Roughly, u for places you go into: a town, a country, a shop, a room (u sobu). na goes with surfaces, open spaces and activities or events: work, a concert, na čas (to class), na pijacu (to the market). Notice that English says to university, while Serbian goes “onto” it: na fakultet. The same preposition stays for location, and only the ending changes: Idem u školu, but Ja sam u školi (I’m at school); Idem na posao, but Ja sam na poslu (I’m at work). The lesson “Locative prepositions” goes through which places take u and which take na.

Two everyday cases do without u and na. “Home” as a direction is one word with no preposition: Idem kući (I’m going home), while “at home” is kod kuće; you met both in “Adverbs of place & time”. And you go to a person with kod: Idem kod lekara, “I’m going to the doctor’s”. After kod the noun is in the genitive (lekara); the lesson “Spatial genitive prepositions” covers it.

kroz, niz, uz: the path

These three prepositions draw the path of the movement itself, and they live only with the accusative. kroz means “through” (in one side and out the other), niz means “down” (down a slope, downstream), uz means “up” (up a slope, upstream):

Cheat sheet

The cheat sheet — everything essential from the lesson on one page. In the app it opens at any time.

“Where to?”: the accusative with prepositions of motion

The accusative has two jobs: the direct object (Vidim grad) and the goal of a movement after a preposition of motion. Then it answers kuda? (where to?), not gde? (where?): u gradu (in town, rest → locative) but u grad (to town, movement → accusative).

Nine prepositions of direction

Five meanings of za

The form after the preposition

The verb decides the case, not the preposition