Reflexive verbs with the clitic se

In the last lesson you learned the little object words me, te, ga, je, nas, vas, ih. They change depending on who you are talking about. This lesson gives you one more little word — se — and its whole story is that it never changes. One form, all six persons.

The verb changes, se stays

Serbian has a group of verbs that are always used together with se. The best one to start with is zvati se, which is how you say what your name is — literally to call oneself. The verb takes its normal e-class endings; se just sits there, identical every time.

Compare that with the object words from the last lesson. There you had to pick: vidim te but vidim ga. Here there is nothing to pick. Ja se zovem Marko and oni se zovu Marko i Ana use exactly the same se.

Where se stands

se is a clitic, so it follows the same placement rule as me, te, ga and the short forms of biti: it can never be the first word of a sentence, and it comes right after the first stressed word.

• Zovem se Ana. — the verb is first, so se comes after it.
• Ja se zovem Ana. — the pronoun is first, so se slips in before the verb.
• Kako se zoveš? — the question word is first, so se comes after it.
• Ne osećam se dobro. — with ne, the negated verb counts as one word and se follows it.

Verbs that simply come with se

With some verbs se really means myself: perem se is I wash myself. But most se-verbs are not reflexive in meaning at all. Se is just part of the verb, the way up is part of English to give up. You do not translate it — you learn it together with the verb.

Never swap se for an object word. Osećam me dobro is not Serbian. If a verb takes se, it takes se for every person: osećam se, osećaš se, oseća se, osećamo se, osećate se, osećaju se.

Serbian dictionaries print these verbs as zvati se, osećati se, radovati se — with the se attached. When you see that, it is telling you the verb cannot be used without it.