Comparisons
The verb Russian drops that Serbian refuses to
„Ја сам студент.“ carries a verb Russian's equivalent sentence does not: Я студент has none at all. Serbian's present-tense to be has never gone silent; Russian's did, centuries ago. The gap explains why dropping сам is the single most persistent mistake a Russian speaker makes in Serbian - and why the instinct behind it is not a mistake at all in the language it came from.
4 min read