Accusative experiencer with boleti

The head hurts me

In English the person owns the pain: my head hurts, I have a headache. Serbian turns this round. The body part does the hurting, and it hurts you: Boli me glava — word for word "hurts me head". The verb is boleti (to hurt, to ache), and you will almost only ever meet it in the third person, because it is the head, the back or the teeth that are doing something, not the person.

Two things follow from that, and they are the whole rule. First, the body part is the subject: it stands in the nominative, and the verb agrees with it — boli when one thing hurts, bole when several do. Second, the person in pain is the direct object, so it stands in the accusative — normally the short clitic you already know from Vidim ga and Zovem te: me, te, ga, je, nas, vas, ih.

Who is in pain: the accusative clitics

A named sufferer goes into the accusative in exactly the same way: Marka boli glava (Marko has a headache), Anu boli stomak, Dete boli uvo. The body part stays in the nominative whoever is suffering.

Where the clitic goes

The clitic obeys the second-position rule you know: it comes right after the first stressed word, whatever that word is. Boli me glava. / Glava me boli. / Jako me boli glava. / Da li te boli stomak? / Šta te boli? (What hurts? — the doctor's first question.) When you want to stress or contrast the sufferer, use the full form instead: Mene boli glava, a tebe?

Body parts that come in pairs

Most of what hurts comes in twos or more, so bole is as common as boli. Several of these plurals are irregular, and leđa (back) is plural only — it has no singular at all.

Yesterday it hurt, tomorrow it will

In the past the participle agrees with the body part, because the body part is the subject: Bolela me je glava (glava is feminine), Bolelo me je koleno (neuter), Bolele su me noge (feminine plural), Boleli su me zubi (masculine plural). Notice the clitic cluster: me je, but su me — the little je of biti always stands last among the clitics. The future works the same way: Boleće te zub (your tooth will hurt).

Three verbs, three cases

You now have three verbs that put the thing in the subject slot and the person somewhere else. Keep them apart by the case of the person.

The trap is the dative. After two lessons of sviđa mi se and treba mi, the hand wants to write boli mi glava — and that is wrong. With pain the person is the direct object: boli me, boli te, boli ga. And never ja bolim: you do not hurt, your head does.