This is the first part of the lesson. The rest, the exercises and the reviews are in the app.
Neko and niko: somebody, nobody, and the law of double negation
Every question word you already know, ko (“who”), šta (“what”), gde (“where”), kad (“when”), can turn into an indefinite or a negative pronoun. The method is simple and very regular: a prefix goes on the front of the question. ne- gives “some-” (neko, “somebody”; nešto, “something”), ni- gives “no-” (niko, “nobody”; ništa, “nothing”). One question word, a whole family of new words.
English works on a similar grid: some-, no-, every- and any- in front of -body, -thing, -where. But one feature, met in “Basic negation”, goes against what standard English has taught you: a negative pronoun always brings a negated verb along with it. Niko ne zna is word for word “nobody doesn’t know”, and it simply means “nobody knows”. In Serbian this double negation is not a mistake; it is the rule.
Four series from one question
Take a question word, put one of four prefixes in front of it, and you have a ready-made pronoun. Here is the whole grid, with the English series each column matches:
Read a row across and you get the English set: somebody, nobody, everybody, anybody; sometime, never, always, ever. (svakako, literally “every way”, in practice means “certainly, by all means”.) In the “every-” column the pattern slips. “Everything” is sve; the look-alike svašta means something else, “all sorts of things” (more on it below). “Always” is uvek, a word from another root. “Everywhere” is svuda or svugde, both everyday. And from koliko (“how many”) the prefix ne- gives nekoliko, “several, a few”.
In a question the ne- series also covers the everyday any-: Da li je neko zvao? is “Did anyone call?”.
As soon as a negative pronoun in ni- appears in a sentence, the verb must turn negative too. Not “niko zna”, but niko ne zna, “nobody knows”, with two negatives at once. With biti and imati the ne is fused in: Niko nije došao (“nobody came”), Nigde ga nema. Several ni- words still take one ne: Niko ništa ne zna. Without a verb there is nothing to negate: Ko je došao? — Niko. Such short answers and the rest of the system come in the lesson “Negative concord”.
This is where an English speaker has to retrain the ear. Standard English allows one negative per clause: nobody knows, I don’t see anything; nobody doesn’t know sounds like a riddle. Serbian wants both: the ni- word andne on the verb. French is a perfect model: personne ne sait, je ne vois rien. Spanish drops its no when nadie comes first (nadie sabe); Serbian never drops ne. Mind the form: after a negated verb ništa stays as it is (Ništa ne znam, “I don’t know anything”); the genitive ničega usually comes after nema and words that take the genitive anyway: Nema ničega, “there’s nothing” (in speech also nema ništa); Ničega se ne bojim, “I’m not afraid of anything”.
Cheat sheet
The cheat sheet — everything essential from the lesson on one page. In the app it opens at any time.
Question word + prefix. A ni- word needs a negated verb (double negation).
Four series from one question
Irregular: everything sve (svašta = all sorts of things), always uvek; several nekoliko; svakako = certainly. In a question neko, nešto = the ordinary “anyone, anything”.
The negatives add up, never cancel out: Niko nije došao. A short answer has no verb, so no ne: Niko.Ništa ne znam, but Nema ničega (genitive after nema).