Dative pronoun clitics

In the last lesson the person who receives something was a noun in the dative: Pišem sestri. — "I'm writing to my sister." When that person is a pronoun — to me, to you, to him — Serbian almost never uses a whole heavy word. It uses a tiny unstressed one instead: Piše mi. — "He's writing to me."

You already know this trick. In lesson 20 the direct object him shrank to ga, me to me. The dative has its own set of eight little words, and they behave exactly the same way.

The eight short dative forms

The short form is what you say almost all the time. The long form appears only when you put weight on the person — a contrast, or a one-word answer: Meni javlja, a tebi ne. — "He gets in touch with ME, but not with you."

Neuter it uses the same mu as him, because a neuter noun like dete ("child") takes the same pronoun as a masculine one. So Dete plače — pevam mu pesmu. is "The child is crying — I'm singing it a song."

Where the short form stands

A clitic is unstressed, so it cannot start a sentence — there would be nothing in front of it to lean on. It stands right after the first stressed word of the clause.

• Subject dropped, so it leans on the verb: Javlja mi se svako veče. — "He gets in touch with me every evening."
• Subject said out loud, so it leans on the subject: Ana mi javlja svako veče.
• Any other opening word works the same: Sutra ti šaljem poruku. — "I'll send you a message tomorrow."
• In a question it follows the question word or da li: Zašto mu ne pišeš? — "Why don't you write to him?"

Never Mi javlja. or Ti šaljem poruku sutra with ti at the front. Put any stressed word first — the verb, the subject, a time word — and the clitic straight after it.

Two clitics together: dative first

Often both the receiver and the thing are pronouns: "I'm sending it to you." Both shrink, and they line up in a fixed order — dative before accusative, the person before the thing.

Šaljem ti ga. — "I'm sending it to you." (ti = to you, ga = it) Never the other way round.

Don't mix the two sets

The third person is where beginners slip. mu means to him, ga means him; joj means to her, je means her. Zovem ga is "I'm calling him"; Pišem mu is "I'm writing to him". Check what the verb wants: if you can say "to" in English, use the dative one.