Word order

Verbs and Tenses

Nouns
   - Noun Declensions
   - Gender of nouns
   - Nominative case
   - Genitive case
   - Dative case
   - Accusative case
   - Locative case
   - Instrumental case
   - Vocative case
   - Irregular nouns

Pronouns

Adjectives

Prepositions

Adverbs

Question words

The Serbian Dative Case: Endings and Usage
(PDF version)

The dative case endings for the three possible classes of Serbian nouns are given in Table 1 below.

In the plural, all noun classes,except Class II, have the same ending: -ima. The Class II plural nouns have the ending –ama. It’s getting easy!

Also, in both singular and plural, the dative case endings are the same as the instrumental case endings. So, you can memorize the endings for one case and you’ll automatically know the ending for another case. Two for the price of one!

When to use the dative case in sentences?

• Most frequently, dative case is used when a noun is an indirect object of a ditransitive verb (examples 1-3 in Table 2), or as an object of a ‘reflexive’ verb, i.e. a verb that takes the reflexive pronoun se (examples 6-9).
  
  In all the examples below, a noun in dative case is a recipient or benefactor of an action denoted by a verb. That’s the basic meaning of the dative case, as expressed by the name itself: dati ‘give’.
  
  Table 2: Some examples of dative nouns as indirect objects of verbs

  	Serbian	English
  1.	Ja dajem olovku Mariji.	I’m giving a pencil to Marija.
  2.	Ja sam poslao poklon Jovanu.	I sent a present to Jovan.
  3.	Ja sam poklonio Nataši cveće.	I gave flowers to Nataša.
  4.	Marija se nada Jovanu.	Marija is expecting Jovan.
  5.	Nedostaješ mi.	You are missed by me (equivalent of ‘I miss you’.)
  6.	On se približava Beogradu.	We’re approaching Belgrade.
  7.	Divimo se Mariji.	We admire Maria.
  8.	Radujemo se tvom dolasku.	We look forward to your arrival.
  9.	Ona se zahvalila profesoru.	She thanked the professor.

  
  Table 3: A list of verbs that take the indirect object in the dative case

  Ditransitive verbs (dative, accusative)		Transitive verbs	‘se’ verbs
  dati ‘give’	odbiti ‘refuse’	laskati ‘flatter’	diviti se ‘admire’
  deliti ‘share’	ostaviti ‘leave’	narediti ‘order’	dopadati se ‘please, like’
  doneti ‘bring’	pisati ‘write’	nazdraviti ‘toast’	nadati se ‘hope, expect’
  dozvoliti ‘allow’	pokloniti ‘donate’	nedostajati ‘miss’	približiti se ‘approach
  dugovati ‘owe’	poslati ‘send’	savetovati ‘advise’	radovati se ‘look forward’
  govoriti ‘talk’	ponuditi ‘offer’	pomoći ‘help’	udvarati se ‘court, romance’
  isplatiti ‘pay’	prodati ‘sell’	pretiti ‘threathen’	ukloniti se ‘dodge’
  javiti ‘announce’	pozajmiti ‘lend, borrow’	prkositi ‘defy’	zahvaliti se ‘thank’
  kazati ‘tell’	reći ‘tell’	pripadati ‘belong’	zameriti se ‘antagonize’
  obećati ‘promise’	verovati ‘believe’	ugoditi ‘please, accommodate’
  odneti ‘take away’

  For your convenience, I split the transitive verbs into ditransitive verbs (verbs taking two objects, one in the accusative and the other in the dative case) and monotransitive verbs (verbs taking just one indirect object in the dative case), and transitive ‘se’ verbs, i.e. verbs that always occur with the reflexive pronoun se ‘self’.

• In addition to being used with verbs that take indirect objects, the dative case may be used with motion verbs (verbs of going). The meaning of the dative case here is to express the idea of seeing or visiting a place or person, as seen in examples in Table 4.
  
  Table 4: Some examples of dative nouns with motion verbs

  Serbian	English
  Ja idem kući.	I’m going home.
  Oni su otišli svojim kućama.	They went to their (respective) homes.

The dative case is also used as an object of some prepositions:

• prepositions: k, ka, and prema ‘towards, to’, indicating a direction or course of movement or action.
   
• prepositions: saglasno ‘according, pursuant’, shodno ‘in accordance with, in comformity with’, slično ‘like’, suprotno ‘counter, against’, nasuprot ‘counter, against’, uinat ‘in spite, in defiance’.
  
  Table 5: Some examples of the dative case as the object of a preposition

  Serbian	English
  Idem prema školi.	I’m going to the school.
  Autobus ide ka školi.	The bus is going to the school.
  Dete trči k majci.	A child runs to its mother.
  Saglasno tome, mi smo doneli odluku.	In accordance with this, we have made the decision.
  On je to uradio uinat Mariji.	He did this in defiance of Maria.

To ask questions about the dative case (indirect object), such as ‘To whom did he give a book?’ we use the following interrogative pronouns in the dative case:
Kome ‘to whom’          Čemu ‘(about) what’

Exercise 1 – Fill out the dative case forms in sentences below

Using the nouns below (given in nominative, or dictionary form), please insert the appropriate dative forms in the following sentences. For convenience, I have indicated which noun goes with which sentence.

Exercise 2 – Translate the following sentences 

For this exercise you need to know both the present tense and past tense. The boldface nouns require the dative case. The words in parentheses (e.g., ‘her’, ‘our’) mean that you don’t need to translate them since they are optional.

If you don’t have a bi-directional Serbian-English-Serbian dictionary, you may go to the website: http://www.krstarica.com/dictionary/ to get the words you need for this exercise.  Note that for nouns, a dictionary will only give you the nominative case forms.