Possessive dative clitic

You already say Boli me glava — "my head hurts" — without any word for "my". Serbian does the same thing all over the body and the family: instead of moja ruka ("my arm") a native speaker usually says ruka mi je... — literally "the arm, to me, is...". The short dative pronoun (mi, ti, mu, joj, nam, vam, im) points at the person the thing belongs to.

Compare: Moj brat je bolestan and Brat mi je bolestan. Both mean "My brother is ill". The first is correct but sounds careful and a little heavy; the second is how people actually talk about their body, their relatives and the everyday things that are theirs (a phone, a car, a flat). This is called the possessive dative.

The forms: the dative clitics you know

Body parts and family members

• Body: Oči su mi crvene. (My eyes are red.) Nos mi curi. (My nose is running.)
• Family: Brat mi je bolestan. (My brother is ill.) Juče sam mu video sestru. (Yesterday I saw his sister.)
• It also works when someone else is the subject and does something to your body: Lekar mi je pregledao grlo. (The doctor examined my throat.)

Where the clitic goes

mi, mu, nam... are clitics, so they obey the rule you learnt in A1: they stand in second position, right after the first stressed word or phrase, and never open the sentence. The possessed noun usually comes first and the clitic hangs on it: Glava mi je..., not Mi glava je.

When the clitic meets a form of biti, the order inside the clitic cluster matters. sam, si, smo, ste, su come before the dative clitic, but je always comes last, after it.

Negation

Negation changes nothing about the clitic. With biti the negative forms nije, nisu simply sit after the clitic: Noga mu nije slomljena. (His leg isn't broken.) With another verb, ne stands right before it: Telefon mi ne radi. If ne + verb opens the sentence, that whole unit counts as the first stressed word and the clitic follows it: Ne radi mi telefon.

Several owners

For "our", "your" (plural) and "their" use nam, vam, im: Deca su nam bolesna. (Our children are ill.) Roditelji su im stari. (Their parents are old.) Remember that su comes before the clitic.

The possessive adjective is not wrong, only heavier. Keep it when you stress or contrast whose it is: Bolestan je moj brat, ne tvoj. (It's MY brother who is ill, not yours.) A clitic can never carry stress, so it cannot do this job.

Trap: when the owner is the subject of the sentence, the possessive dative is not used. Use svoj, or for your own body nothing at all: Volim svoju sestru (I love my sister), Perem ruke (I'm washing my hands) — never Volim mi sestru.