Full & clitic pronoun forms

Lesson opening

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

Full and short pronouns: mene and me

You already have the subject pronouns ja, ti, on, ona: who is doing something. But once a pronoun becomes an object (“I see whom?”, “I give it to whom?”), it changes form, as English I becomes me. And here Serbian shows its character: in the accusative, the genitive and the dative each pronoun has two versions, a full one and a short one. (The instrumental has only full forms, mnom, tobom, as in “Instrumental forms”.)

English has a faint echo of this in speech: in “I saw him, not her” the pronoun is loud and clear, in a quick “tell ’im” or “tell ’em” it shrinks to almost nothing. The full form is stressed and weighty; the short form is an unstressed little word that leans on its neighbour. Serbian keeps this pair alive and compulsory: mene and me, tebe and te, njega and ga. Learning to choose between them is what this lesson is about.

The short forms are the clitics you met in “Basic word order”: small unstressed words that cannot come first in a sentence and take second place, right after the first word or group of words (Vidim ga, Ja ga vidim). Here we meet them one by one; what counts as the first place, and the order inside a chain of clitics, get their own lessons, “The second-place rule” and “Internal clitic order”.

Accusative and genitive: one set of clitics for two cases

Start with the accusative, the case of the direct object (“I see whom?”), and the genitive (“there is no…”, “at someone’s place”). Handily, they share their short forms, and their full forms differ only for “her”: nju and nje.

Three things stand out. First, for “us” and plural “you” the two forms are identical (nas, vas): the pair splits only in the singular and in “them” (njih / ih). Second, the famous reflexive se is just the short accusative of sebe (“oneself”): you know it from zovem se, literally “I call myself”, and the next lesson, “Reflexive sebe/se”, is all about it. Third, ga and je are the workhorses of the language:

Note that ga is both “him” (a person) and “it” (any masculine or neuter noun): Gde je ključ? — Ne vidim ga. (“Where’s the key? I can’t see it.”) English chooses him or it by asking “person or thing?”; Serbian asks only about the noun’s gender, and ključ is masculine.

Dative: its own pair too

The dative (“to whom?”) is the case of the recipient: whom you give or tell something, whom something pleases. You saw its full and short pronoun forms in the lesson “Dative forms”; here they are again, next to the reflexive.

Cheat sheet

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Full and short pronouns: mene and me

In the accusative, genitive and dative, personal pronouns have two forms. Full (stressed): mene, tebe, njega, meni. Short (clitic): me, te, ga, mu, joj; unstressed, never first, in second place, the default. The instrumental has full forms only (mnom).

Accusative and genitive: shared short forms

“Us” and plural “you”: full = short. Reflexive se: short accusative of sebe (zovem se). ga = “him” or “it” for a masculine or neuter thing: Gde je ključ? — Ne vidim ga. Also Vidim je (I see her), Poznajem ih (I know them), Nema ga kod kuće (he isn’t at home, Gen.).

Dative: its own pair

The plural splits too: nama/nam, vama/vam. Trap: short mi = “to me”, not “we”; ti = “to you”, not subject “you”. “Give me” is dative: Daj mi vode (give me some water). Also Kako ti se zove brat? (what’s your brother’s name?), Reci mu istinu (tell him the truth).

When to use the full form

After a preposition, today always the full form: Ovo je za tebe (this is for you), Idem kod njega (I’m going to his place), Mislim na vas (I’m thinking of you).

The je trap: “her” and “is”

One syllable, two words: je “her” and je “is” (from biti). Meaning and position tell them apart: Ana je studentkinja (“is”), Vidim je (“her”), Ona je vidi = “she sees her”: vidi alone says “she sees”. Before the je of biti (as in the past tense), “her” is ju: Ana ju je videla (Ana saw her).

Doubling: Mene me boli glava

Colloquial emphasis: the full form, then the short one in second place. Mene me boli glava (“me, I’ve got a headache”), Tebe te niko ne pita (“and you, nobody’s asking you”). Compare English “Me, I…”.