Dative experiencer with sviđati se

In English I like this film has a clear shape: I am the one doing the liking, and the film is what I like. Serbian builds the most common liking sentence the other way round. The film is the one doing something — it appeals to me — and I am simply the person it appeals to: Sviđa mi se ovaj film, word for word appeals to-me self this film. Once you accept that reversal, everything else in this lesson follows from rules you already have.

Who is the subject?

With sviđati se the thing that is liked is the grammatical subject: it stands in the nominative, and the verb agrees with it. The person who likes it is not the subject at all — that person stands in the dative, almost always as one of the unstressed dative clitics you know (mi, ti, mu, joj, nam, vam, im). The reflexive se is always there and never changes.

So the form of the verb tells you nothing about who likes: sviđa mi se, sviđa ti se, sviđa mu se all have the same verb, because the same one thing is liked each time. What changes the verb is how many things are liked. One film: sviđa. Two films: sviđaju. This is the part English speakers get wrong, because in English I like stays the same whether I like one film or ten.

The liker: dative clitic, stressed pronoun or noun

The clitic is the normal, unstressed choice. The stressed form is for contrast, or when the liker opens the sentence: Meni se sviđaju planine, a njemu more. A noun works exactly the same way, in the dative singular or plural you already know: Marku se sviđa košarka, mojoj sestri se sviđaju horor filmovi, deci se sviđaju crtani filmovi.

Word order

The two clitics obey the second-position rule, and inside the cluster the dative comes before se: always mi se, never se mi. Whatever stands first in the clause — the verb, the thing liked, a question word, a stressed pronoun — the clitics follow it immediately.

• Sviđa mi se ovaj film. — the verb opens, the clitics follow
• Ovaj film mi se sviđa. — the thing liked opens, the clitics follow
• Meni se sviđa ovaj film. — the stressed liker opens, and se follows on its own
• Kako ti se sviđa Beograd? — a question word opens; this is the standard way to ask how do you like...
• Da li ti se sviđa? / Sviđa li ti se? — yes/no questions, both ways you know

Negation puts ne directly before the verb, and the clitics then follow the negated verb: Ne sviđa mi se ova muzika. Ne sviđaju mu se kompjuterske igre. Notice that the plural rule still holds under negation.

The same shape without a verb of liking

A whole family of everyday expressions uses the same pattern: an adverb, the dative of the person who feels it, and je. There is no subject at all, so the verb stays in its singular form whoever is feeling it and however many of them there are.

Swap the clitic and the feeling moves to someone else: hladno nam je we are cold, dosadno im je they are bored, žao joj je she is sorry. The adverb never changes and je never changes; only the dative does. What follows can be a reason introduced by što: Drago mi je što ti se poklon sviđa — I am glad that you like the present.

Never make the liker the subject. Ja sviđam film does not exist. Say the thing first in your head — the film pleases me — put the person in the dative, and let the verb count the things: one thing sviđa, more than one sviđaju. If you catch yourself saying sviđa mi se knjige, the verb has forgotten to look at the subject.