po + accusative of purpose

You leave the house and the point of leaving is to bring something back: bread, the medicine, the children from school. English says for or to pick up — I'm going for bread, I came to pick up the parcel. Serbian says po and puts the thing you are fetching in the accusative.

The pattern is always the same three pieces: a verb of motion, then po, then the accusative of whatever you are going to get.

Note what po does NOT mean here. It does not say where you go — Idem po hleb does not tell anyone which shop. It says what the trip is for. The place, if you want it, is added separately: Idem u pekaru po hleb. (I'm going to the bakery for bread.)

The thing fetched

An ordinary object goes into the accusative you already know. Masculine and neuter things look exactly like the dictionary form; a feminine noun in -a changes its ending to -u.

• po hleb, po novčanik, po lek — masculine, unchanged
• po mleko, po pismo — neuter, unchanged
• po vodu, po torbu, po kafu — feminine -a becomes -u
• po lekove, po ključeve — plural things take the accusative plural

The person fetched

You can also go po a person — collect a child from school, pick a friend up at the station. Then the animate accusative shows itself: a masculine person takes the ending -a, the one that looks like the genitive, and not the bare dictionary form.

deca is a collective and behaves as a feminine singular in form: its accusative is decu. Idem po decu. — I'm going to pick up the children.

po + accusative against po + locative

The same little word po also takes the locative, and there it means around, all over, along. The case is what tells the two apart, so read the ending of the noun, not the preposition: po knjigu is the accusative and means for the book, while po knjigama is the locative and means through the books.

The test is simple: if you could say for or to get in English, it is the accusative. If you could say around, all over or through, it is the locative.

In the past and the future

The construction does not change when the verb does. Only the verb moves; po plus the accusative stays put.

• Idem po hleb. — I'm going for bread.
• Išao sam po hleb. — I went for bread. (man speaking)
• Otići ću po hleb. — I'll go for bread.
• Idi po hleb! — Go and get bread!

With vratiti se the reflexive se is a clitic and comes second in the clause, ahead of po: Vratio sam se po ključeve. — I went back for the keys.