Advice, bans and hearsay

Lesson opening

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

Advice, bans and hearsay: bolje da, da nisi…!, navodno

The lesson “Epistemic modality” ended with a promise: one neighbouring area was still to come, where the question is not “how sure am I?” but “how gently am I advising?” and “how do I know this?”. There are really two areas here, and they sit on either side of the familiar scale of certainty, so the lesson comes in two passes.

The first is advice, duty and prohibition in their finer shades. You can already express obligation: moraš, treba da, trebalo bi da, ima da. But between “you have to” and “you might want to” there are a dozen more steps, as in English from you must down to you needn’t: bolje da “better”, ne bi bilo loše da “it wouldn’t be a bad idea to”, nije zgoreg da “it does no harm to”, and at the far end Da nisi to uradio! “Don’t you dare!”, which makes the listener flinch. The second is other people’s words and rumours. navodno, tobože, kao, kažu da and a bare da with no verb of saying are all ways of saying “I didn’t make this up” and, along the way, “don’t hold me responsible for it”.

bolje da: pointed advice, and gentler steps

The most common Serbian formula for advice is built not on a verb of obligation but on a comparative: bolje “better” plus da with the present tense. Literally “better that…”, in plain English “better…”, “you’d better…”, “let’s…”.

The dative in the fourth example (bolje ti je da, bolje mu je da) points the advice straight at the listener: not “that would be better in general” but “better for you”, with a hint that otherwise things will go worse. English you’d better carries the same edge, the unspoken “or else”.

The “would” form (the lesson “Conditional I”) softens the advice, and it comes out cautious, almost apologetic:

Red je da appeals to the proper order of things (red means “order”), so it is used for the decencies: thanking, congratulating, visiting someone who is ill. English says it’s only right to… And bolje da with the perfect (the ordinary past tense) inside is no longer advice but regret about the past: Bolje da nisam ni dolazio. I wish I hadn’t come at all. Tell them apart by the tense after da: the present gives advice for the future, the past regret or reproach.

English lays a trap here: you had better uses a past form for advice about the future, so a past tense feels natural. In Serbian it is not: advice takes the present, Bolje da ostaneš kod kuće, while the past turns the same sentence into a reproach about what has already happened: Bolje da si ostao kod kuće. You should have stayed at home.

Advice not to do something comes in strengths too. The gentlest is ne bi trebalo da “you shouldn’t, you’d better not”: Ne bi trebalo da voziš ovako umoran. You shouldn’t drive when you’re this tired. A mistake already made is named by the past nije trebalo da, the negative of trebalo je da from the lesson “treba & valja”: Nije trebalo da mu to kažeš. You shouldn’t have told him that. English says shouldn’t for both and adds have for the past; Serbian switches the whole form: ne bi trebalo da for what lies ahead, nije trebalo da for what is done (in speech you will also hear the personal nisi trebao da, but the standard is the impersonal form). The same words give the polite Nije trebalo! “You shouldn’t have!” when you are handed a present.

Da si došao! and Da nisi…!: orders and prohibitions with da

The lessons “Softened & negative commands” and “Optative & neka” gave you da with the present tense as an instruction to someone close (Da mi doneseš hleb.) and as a wish (Da si mi zdrav!). The same da with a perfect inside changes the tone beyond recognition. This is one of the sharpest ways to give an order in Serbian.

The form is deceptive: a perfect, a past tense, for a future action. That shift, as it is usually explained, is what creates the pressure: the speaker presents the job as if it should already be done. English knows the trick in a milder form: It’s time you went to bed, I’d rather you left, and you had better itself use a past form for something still to come.

With the negative (nisi) the same construction becomes a categorical prohibition, “don’t you dare, just you try”:

The tiny mi in the second and fourth examples is the ethical dative from the lesson “Possessive dative”: it does not mean “to me”, it simply draws the speaker into the situation, adding personal involvement and, in an order, a threat. English has a colloquial echo in Don’t you go dying on me!, and German uses its mir exactly like this. You can drop mi and the sentence stays correct, only a few degrees colder.

Cheat sheet

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

Advice, bans and hearsay

Two families of shades: a judgement on an action (duty, advice, ban) and where the information comes from (seen / inferred / heard).

The ladder: from a shout to “no need”

bolje da and “you shouldn’t”

• with a dative, “for you”: Bolje ti je da ćutiš. You’d better keep quiet.
• + present = advice; + past = regret: Bolje da nisam ni dolazio. I wish I hadn’t come. Bolje da si ostao kod kuće. You should have stayed at home.
• “you shouldn’t”: Ne bi trebalo da voziš ovako umoran. “you shouldn’t have”: Nije trebalo da mu to kažeš.

da + perfect: orders and bans

• Da si mi to vratio do sutra! I want it back by tomorrow!
• Da nisi otišao! Don’t you dare leave! · Da mi nisi ni pomislio! Don’t even think about it!
• mi: ethical dative; draws the speaker in, adds a threat.
• Punctuation decides: Da nije bolestan? a guess, “he isn’t ill, is he?”; Da nisi zaboravio! a ban, “don’t you dare forget”.

How do I know?

Scale of disbelief

A bare da

A da-clause as the second sentence = “he says, apparently”; the verb of saying is dropped, the original tense stays, the person changes.

Zvao je Marko. Da ne može večeras da dođe. Marko called. He says he can’t come tonight.