Body & health

Lesson opening

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

Body and health: “boli me…”, at the doctor's and at the pharmacy

Sooner or later anyone living in Serbia has to say what hurts, at the doctor's or across a pharmacy counter. This lesson gathers the body and health: the parts of the body (including the tricky words for “eyes” and “ears”), the key Serbian way of complaining, boli me “it hurts me”, a visit to the doctor and the pharmacy, and the emergency numbers.

The heart of the lesson is the phrase boli me glava “I have a headache”. It is not built like the English “my head hurts”, and that is exactly where learners slip, reaching for the wrong pronoun form. The lesson “Indirect object” warned that boleti takes the accusative; here the phrase is taken apart in full. On the way you will meet oči and uši, traces of a very old grammar.

Parts of the body

The basic set. Watch the singular and plural pairs: most are regular, but oko “eye” and uvo “ear” give the unexpected oči and uši. These are relics of the old dual, a special form “for two” that survived with paired parts of the body. In Serbia “ear” is usually uvo; uho is correct too, but less common. Some are distant cousins of English words: nos of nose, srce of heart, oko of Latin oculus (ocular).

Note that ruka is the whole arm, hand included, and noga the whole leg, foot included; to be exact, the hand below the wrist is šaka and the foot stopalo.

Two words stand apart grammatically: usta “mouth” and leđa “back” exist only in the plural, like English scissors or trousers, and the verb with them is plural too: Leđa me bole. “My back hurts” (literally “the backs hurt me”). The whole class of these plural-only words is covered in the lesson “Pluralia tantum & collectives”.

The key construction: boli me

To say that something hurts, Serbian builds the sentence differently from English. The subject is the part of the body (in the nominative), and the person who is in pain stands in the accusative, the case of the direct object, as a short unstressed pronoun (a clitic, a little word that never starts a sentence): me, te, ga, je, nas, vas, ih. There is no “my” at all. The verb boleti “to hurt” agrees with the body part: one part, boli; several, bole.

Cheat sheet

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

Body and health: at the doctor's and at the pharmacy

Body: telo; health: zdravlje; doctor: lekar; pharmacy: apoteka; medicine: lek; prescription: recept; ambulance: hitna pomoć.

Parts of the body

usta and leđa are plural only, so the verb is plural too: Leđa me bole. My back hurts.

The key construction: boli me

The body part is the subject (nominative); the person is an accusative clitic: me, te, ga, je, nas, vas, ih. No “my”. The verb agrees with the body part: one, boli; several, bole.

Your general state takes the dative: Loše mi je. I feel unwell. Muka mi je. I feel sick. A runny nose too: curi mi nos “my nose is running”.

Symptoms

Words: temperatura “temperature, fever”, kašalj “cough”, prehlada “cold”, grip “flu”, mučnina “nausea”. A woman says Prehladila sam se. Adjectives: prehlađen / prehlađena “down with a cold”, bolestan / bolesna “ill”.

At the doctor's and at the pharmacy

Words: pregled “appointment, check-up”, recept “prescription”, lek / lekovi “medicine / medicines”, tablete “tablets”, sirup “syrup”. Something “for” a symptom is protiv “against” + genitive: nešto protiv kašlja “something for a cough”; also za: sirup za kašalj.

Idem kod lekara “I’m going to the doctor’s” (also doktor; Doktore!). Local health centre: dom zdravlja; your doctor there: izabrani lekar. Insurance: zdravstvena kartica (once a knjižica).

Emergency numbers

• 194: ambulance, hitna pomoć
• 192: police, policija
• 193: fire brigade, vatrogasci