This is the first part of the lesson. The rest, the exercises and the reviews are in the app.
Dative impersonals: hladno mi je, sviđa mi se, treba mi
Hladno mi je, “I’m cold”. Sviđa mi se, “I like it”. Treba mi odmor, “I need a rest”. In each of these everyday phrases English puts I in front, while Serbian puts the person in the dative, the case of the receiver (“to me”): Meni je hladno is, word for word, “to me it is cold”. You met this pattern in “Dative forms” and “Indirect object”; here we gather the whole family, because this is one of the most frequent patterns in Serbian speech. For an English speaker it means one new reflex: the person who feels is not the subject.
A useful picture: cold, boredom, a need or a wish are not something a person does but something that comes to them, so the person is the receiver, and the receiver’s case is the dative. It is a picture, not a rule. Most often the person is one of the short forms mi, ti, mu, joj, nam, vam, im. These are clitics: little unstressed words that can never come first in a sentence (see “Full & clitic pronoun forms”). It can also be a noun, in the dative too: Bratu je dosadno (my brother is bored), Detetu se spava (the child is sleepy). And there is often no subject at all: in Hladno mi je nobody is “cold” in the grammar. Grammarians call such a sentence impersonal.
States: meni je hladno and all its relatives
The simplest family is how you feel, in body or in mood. The recipe: a state word + the dative + je. The state word usually ends in -o (hladno, toplo, dosadno), but not always: muka, žao. The short mi comes second; for emphasis the full pronoun goes to the front: Meni je hladno (well, I’m cold).
Without the dative the same words describe the weather: Hladno je, “it’s cold” (see “Weather & nature”). With it, they say how you feel: Napolju je hladno, a meni je toplo (it’s cold outside, but I’m warm). For the past and the future you change only biti; the person stays in the dative: Bilo mi je hladno (I was cold), Biće ti dosadno (you’ll be bored). The verb is neuter (bilo, not masculine bio or feminine bila) because there is no subject for it to agree with. Man or woman, the speaker says bilo mi je hladno. English has the same default in its dummy it: “it was cold”, never “he was cold” about the weather. The same goes for joj je bilo loše (she felt unwell) from “Possessive dative”.
Needs: treba mi and what agrees with what
The second family is “I need”. A Serb says Treba mi odmor, literally “a rest is needed to me”. The thing needed (odmor, rest) is the subject, in the nominative, and the person who needs it is in the dative (as in “Indirect object”).
Cheat sheet
The cheat sheet — everything essential from the lesson on one page. In the app it opens at any time.
Dative impersonals
The person who feels, needs or wants is in the dative: the clitics mi, ti, mu, joj, nam, vam, im (never first), the full meni, tebi, or a noun (Bratu je dosadno). Often there is no subject in the nominative.