Dativ
Overview
The dative answers коме?/чему? (to whom?/to what?) and is the case of the indirect object - the recipient of giving, showing, telling - plus one very common construction, свиђати се (to please/appeal to), used to say what you like.
The good news, already flagged in locative-case-a2: for nouns and adjectives, the dative singular is always identical in writing to the locative singular you already know. What is genuinely new here is the personal-pronoun dative forms, a small set of dative-only prepositions, and the свиђа ми се construction.
Dative singular and plural
Masculine and neuter nouns take -у in the dative singular, exactly like the locative: студент → студенту, село → селу. Feminine -а nouns take -и: жена → жени. No preposition is needed for the indirect object: Дајем књигу студенту. (I'm giving the book to the student.)
The dative plural shares the same -ама/-има ending as the locative and instrumental plural (see locative-case-a2 and instrumental-case-a2) - one ending, three cases: студентима, женама, селима.
Personal pronouns - long and short forms
Personal pronouns have a full (stressed) dative form and a short (enclitic) form, exactly like the accusative pronouns in accusative-case-a2. The short form follows the same second-position rule: Показујем ти нешто. (I'm showing you something.), never at the start of the clause.
The full form is used after a preposition, for emphasis, or to avoid ambiguity: Мени се жури, а теби не. (I'm in a hurry, but you're not.)
Свиђати се and dative prepositions
Serbian expresses liking with the thing liked as the grammatical subject and the person as a dative experiencer: Свиђа ми се овај град. (literally This city pleases to me, i.e. I like this city.)
A small set of prepositions govern the dative: према (towards, according to) is the everyday one - Идем према кући. (I'm heading towards home.) Упркос (despite) also takes the dative: Упркос киши, идемо на пијацу. (Despite the rain, we're going to the market.)
Tables
| Gender | Noun | Dative |
|---|---|---|
| muški rod | student | studentu |
| ženski na „-a“ | žena | ženi |
| srednji rod | selo | selu |
Examples
Compared with…
English marks the indirect object with to or word order ("give the book to the student" / "give the student the book") but never changes the noun itself. Свиђа ми се has no English shape at all - English keeps the person liking as the subject ("I like"), so this is a genuine flip to internalize, not just a new ending.
Common mistakes
Tips & exceptions
- For nouns and adjectives, the dative singular is always identical in writing to the locative singular - learn one and you already know the other.
- With свиђати се, mentally swap subject and object - the thing liked becomes the subject, and the person who likes it goes in the dative.
- Short dative pronouns (ми, ти, му, јој, нам, вам, им) follow the same second-position clitic rule as the short accusative pronouns.
- This identity is exact in writing for every noun and adjective - the dative and locative singular endings merged completely in standard Serbian spelling. A few monosyllabic masculine nouns do shift pitch accent (not spelling) between the two cases in speech, e.g. граду - but since Serbian isn't normally written with accent marks, this has no effect on the written forms taught here.
- К(а) survives mainly in fixed expressions and greetings in everyday speech; према is the everyday choice for "towards".
- The short dative ти (to you) is spelled identically to the nominative pronoun ти (you) - only word order and context disambiguate them.
Summary
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