Serbian 601 — a song with its endings taken out, and one verb that runs backwards from English.
Song lyrics are the cruelest possible case exercise, and the best one. Nothing is in the dictionary form, the word order is bent for the rhyme, and yet a native ear fills every gap without thinking. That is exactly the reflex this drills.
The title itself is the lesson. Nedostaje mi naša ljubav is not I miss our love in the English shape — the love is the subject, and I am in the dative: our love is-missing to me. That is why the verb changes with the thing missed, not with the person:
| Serbian | Literally | English |
|---|---|---|
| Nedostaje mi naša ljubav. | our love is-missing to me | I miss our love |
| Nedostaješ mi ti. | you are-missing to me | I miss you |
| Nedostajem mi ja. | I am-missing to myself | I miss myself |
You have met this shape before with sviđa mi se. Same machinery: the dative for the person feeling it, the nominative for the thing causing it. Serbian keeps a whole family of verbs in this pattern — nedostajati, sviđati se, prijati, smetati — and once you hear one of them properly, you hear all four.
The last line of the refrain hides the third one: Nedostajem mi ja, I miss myself. Grammatically ordinary, and quietly the saddest sentence in the song.
Dopuni nastavke
Every gap is an ending. Read the whole line before you fill it — the rhythm will usually tell you.
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