Dativne Fraze

English needs a preposition: say to me, explain to her. Serbian doesn't. The dative pronoun already contains the "to", and it's never more than three letters long.

Watch out for one collision: mi is both "we" (subject) and "to me" (dative), and ti is both "you" and "to you". Position sorts it out — a subject opens the sentence, a dative clitic leans on the word before it.

Two constructions here have no subject at all. Teško mi je is literally "it is difficult to me", and čini mi se is "it seems to me" — the person doing the feeling sits in the dative, not in the nominative. That's why you can't translate them word for word.

And nedostajati turns the English sentence inside out. Nedostajete mi means I miss you — but the grammar says "you are lacking to me". The people you miss are the subject; you are in the dative. So nedostaješ mi, nedostaje mi, nedostajete mi all change according to them, not you.