Fixed prepositional government of verbs

In English you depend on something, think about it, believe in it. Nobody can explain why it is on and not of — you simply learned the verb and its little word together. Serbian works the same way, but its pairs are different: you depend od something (zavisiti od), you think na or o something, you believe u something. The preposition here has lost its everyday meaning of place or direction. od in zavisi od rezultata does not mean 'from', and na in mislim na ispit does not mean 'onto'.

So the preposition, and the case it brings with it, belongs to the verb. This is called prepositional government: the verb governs a fixed preposition, and the preposition fixes the case. You cannot work the preposition out from English, and you cannot reason it out from what the preposition means elsewhere. Learn verb + preposition + case as one chunk: zavisiti od + genitive, verovati u + accusative.

The pairs, grouped by preposition

Do not translate the English preposition. 'Depend on' is zavisiti od, never na. 'Agree with' happens to be složiti se s, but 'believe in' is verovati u + accusative, not the locative you would use for 'in the room'. When you learn a new verb of this kind, learn it with its preposition and its case.

misliti na and misliti o

misliti takes two prepositions, and they are not interchangeable. misliti na + accusative means that something or someone is on your mind — you keep coming back to it, you miss someone: Mislim na tebe. (I'm thinking of you.) misliti o + locative means having an opinion or thinking a topic over: Šta misliš o mom planu? (What do you think of my plan?) razmišljati o works like misliti o.

One preposition, two cases: u

With u, the verb decides the case. verovati u and sumnjati u take the accusative (Sumnjam u njegovu priču.), while uživati u and učestvovati u take the locative (Učestvovaćemo u projektu.). Notice that the choice no longer has anything to do with motion or location — it is simply what each verb demands.

Watch brinuti: brinuti se za + accusative is to worry about someone, while brinuti o + locative (usually without se) is to look after them. Brinem se za decu — I'm worried about the children; Brinem o deci — I take care of the children.

Many of these verbs are reflexive and keep their se: koncentrisati se na, sastojati se od, pripremati se za, suočiti se s. Pronouns after the preposition are always the stressed forms you already know: na mene, od nje, za tebe, s tobom, o njemu.