Causal, conditional & concessive

Lesson opening

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

Cause, condition, concession: three ways of asking “why?”

This lesson is about three relations between the parts of a sentence. Cause answers “why?” (Ostao je jer je bolestan, “he stayed because he’s ill”). Condition makes one thing depend on another (Ako je bolestan, neka ostane, “if he’s ill, let him stay”). Concession is the “although” relation: there was an obstacle, and it did not stop anything (Iako je bolestan, došao je, “although he’s ill, he came”). You have already taken conditions apart in “Conditional sentences”, and you met causal pošto in “Temporal clauses”. Here all three stand side by side: what to say in conversation, what to write in a letter, what may open a sentence, and how to keep “if” apart from “although”, which are sometimes divided by a single space.

English gives you a head start here: because, since, although, even if, despite map onto Serbian words fairly neatly. But there are three traps: slippery pošto, the look-alike pair iako / i ako, and the case after uprkos. Add a fourth, all English: opening a sentence with jer as you would with “Because…”. We will defuse them all.

Cause: jer, zato što, pošto, budući da

The four conjunctions of cause differ less in meaning than in position and register: where they stand and whether you say them or write them. Let’s start with the two workhorses, jer and zato što.

Both mean “because”, and both are neutral, at home in speech and in writing; jer is the commonest of all. The difference is freedom of movement. A jer clause comes only after the main clause: the result first, then the reason. zato što can follow the main clause too, but it can also open the sentence (Zato što nije učila, …). It is also the answer to zašto? “why?”: to Zašto kasniš? you answer Zato što… (or, curtly, Zato.). In conversation a separate answer may begin with Jer… (Zašto ne jedeš? Jer nisam gladan. “Why aren’t you eating?” “Because I’m not hungry.”), but a sentence that runs “reason, then result” never starts with jer.

The short zato “so, that’s why” (from “Basic coordination”) and zbog toga “because of that” stand in the second part and bring in a result: Padala je kiša, zato smo ostali kod kuće, “It was raining, so we stayed at home”; Bio je bolestan i zbog toga nije došao, “He was ill, so he didn’t come.” Do not confuse zato (result) with zato što (cause, “because”): the first looks forward to the outcome, the second back to the reason. The whole difference is the little word što, as in zbog toga što, “because of the fact that”: Nije došao zbog toga što je bio bolestan.

The third conjunction is pošto, the everyday “since, as”, and a handy way to open a sentence with a reason. It also has a time sense, “after” (Pošto pojedem, izaći ću, “after I’ve eaten, I’ll go out”), much as English since is about time in “since Monday” and about cause in “since you ask”. The meaning, not the tense, tells them apart: “first one thing, then the other” is time; “one thing explains the other” is cause. Pošto je bio bolestan, nije došao, “Since he was ill, he didn’t come”, is a cause although its verb is past. The fourth, budući da “given that”, is bookish, for writing and official language; beside it stands s obzirom na to da “considering that” (see “Secondary & compound prepositions”).

Commas follow “Commas in clauses”: a cause in front takes a comma after it; a cause after the main clause usually takes none. Before jer a comma appears when the reason is tacked on after a pause, as an afterthought, and writers differ here: in texts you will often see one.

Cheat sheet

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

Cause, condition, concession

Cause explains (“why?”), condition supposes, concession objects: it names an obstacle that did not stop anything.

Cause: jer, zato što, pošto, budući da

A sentence opens with Jer… only as an answer. The result: zato, zbog toga “so” (but zato što, zbog toga što = cause). Padala je kiša, zato smo ostali kod kuće. It was raining, so we stayed at home.

Concession: iako, mada, premda, makar

The main clause often adds ipak “still”: Iako je bilo kasno, ipak smo ostali. Although it was late, we stayed all the same. Without “although”: Umoran je, ali ipak radi.

Concession with a preposition: cases

All three mean “despite” (bez obzira na also “regardless of”): Uprkos kiši, izašli smo. Despite the rain, we went out.

Condition versus concession

One event through all three: ako je skupo (if it happens to be expensive), iako je skupo (it is, and we know it), makar bilo skupo (be it ever so expensive).

“If I had known”: Da sam znao, došao bih; imagined: kad bih mogao (“Conditional sentences”). kad + a fact = “since”: Kad si već tu, pomozi mi. “Unless” = osim ako ne. Comma after a clause that comes first; usually none after the main clause.