Ep.1: Cases in a Nutshell

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Hello everyone! Hello everyone!

Here's Ivana and...

Here's Maki. How are you?

Good. We did it.

Yes, we did it.

You?

I'm comfortable. That means...

How comfortable? Like hardworking.

Hardworking. Ah, okay.

Alright.

That's why I wanted to say like, you know, you're tired because you're hardworking.

oh that's kind of true so but we are brave enough to dive into

cases today with you

i wanted to say you're gonna work some more sorry you're tired we're gonna

work some more

but i'm prepared a little bit so cases padiji padiji

oh by the way did you know that there's a town called Padezh here

South Serbia. No.

in the

Is it near? Yes, near Khrushchev.

I don't know how close, but

I just saw it on map.

Padezh! They have a town called Kays.

We have to hear how many

Kays they use.

Maybe they just use

one. Because

Padezh, it's singular, right?

Padezh is plural.

So maybe it's like

over here we use

one Kays. Yeah, makes sense.

I need to visit and ask them.

Everyone needs to visit.

Okay, yeah, cases.

And I think it's maybe the most, I don't want to say hated aspect.

Challenging, I would say.

But challenging. I think it's like you just need time.

You just need time and practice and, you know, because there's so many rules.

I don't blame cases.

It's themselves. I blame the gender more because cases are understandable.

They exist in almost every language.

But when you add the gender case together, that makes it challenging for me.

Yeah, three genders and then seven cases.

And then plurals.

Because if you think about it, for example, in Germany, or like in German,

you have three genders.

But in plural, you only use one gender.

so there's a massive massive like deduction of what i need to learn perfect

deduction i love it

yeah so that's true quite quite challenging so that's why i'm saying it's gonna

take a while but

honestly i feel like even with english like i've been learning it for such

a long time and

i still make mistakes you know still like forget and relearn so it's uh

it's okay it's okay be compassionate start from somewhere that's it yeah so i

haven't really like i learned

about cases in my school and it was literally what we would learn would

just be like the question

words right so it would be who what and so on and because it

was so intuitive for us um we didn't need to understand exactly when you

use it like all the yeah the uses all the meanings so yeah That's

funny though, like as a foreigner,

those questions do not make the same sense to you.

they are not helpful actually i just wrote them there because i know you

so

guys learn because whenever

i ask which part is it they are like they're going over the questions

and like to me those

questions are even also they make no sense because for you how can they

make any sense because if you

ask the question you don't have the grammar necessary to answer it so how

does it make sense for you so they were tailored for us and um

also i never learned the endings of of cases

right so because i knew what the endings were yeah yeah you were not

asked multiple choice

questions on which adding which ending would come there no the only thing is

that we would learn some

uses like um you know nominative is usually like the subject of sentences and

stuff like that but really wasn't in a lot of depth and uh so

these are the kind of two things uses and uh question

words but everything else like i'm actually curious to see what you're gonna say

about cases

so when i was trying to get some information online about them i realized

yeah they're like

when you call them seven cases they are very scary right but i learned

that actually those dative and locative ones are not that different and um the

vocative one is is only used when you

call out someone so that's why i just took them out i mean not

to fill out but i i lowered the

number for me yeah i think i put the vocative back in but just

to mention it but not to

like one sentence about it sorry i was like why isn't vocative there but

uh there was it was quite funny, you asked me one question, like you

wrote it in the notes, which was, does it matter what the

order is of the cases and actually it really does matter because this is

the only order like we learn it by heart you know and uh so

it's always nominative genitive bativ accusative vocative instrumental locative

so why is the order important i don't really know but it's i think

just the you just pick like the what the rule is going to be

in grammar obviously

it doesn't really matter for you when you use it but for example in

german they have an obsolete

order and a new or a way of of like teaching that or like

ordering them so you just pick what the

standard is going to be but as far as i know in serbian this

is the only one that i've heard the only order i see so nominative

is the first one makes sense you first need to learn the nouns

right yeah you need to learn the basic form so and when you think

of english accusative should

come the second because it's the object like direct object that's why i was

like for me i

wanted to learn accusative first but then i realized genitive is used differently in

serbian so let's go for genitive in the second place yeah i think genitive

is really useful you know um

anyway did you want to mention these things before um in the intro before

uh we start

naming them or do you want to give some tips as a learner like

before we start talking about yeah actually my tip was like i said first

of all try to put them in and uh try to lower the number

like try to put them in similar, find the similarities in between

and then work on them that way.

So instead of diving it

one by one so try to categorize them was useful kind of useful for

me at least i wasn't scared

after doing that and in the one interesting thing what you said is like

a dative and locative were have the same form i never thought about that

ever and only when i checked the forms like

later i was like oh wow it is the same form um right dative

and locative if i'm not mistaken yeah okay so um the first one that

we're going to talk about because nominative we're not going

to talk about nominative right so yeah uh genitive you wrote the case for

prepositions yes this was the important aspect of it for me because i never

thought of genitive

for prepositions like in turkish or in english but now when i learned it

i was wow enlightened

and if you're interested in more information we're going to put all of the

positions in the transcript on patreon so you can check that out uh but

we don't want to overwhelm

you right now with all of this so we use genitive i wrote down

like two uses obviously has way more

we're not going to focus on everything so i wrote possessions or belonging and

or possession belonging or a part of something you remember like kafa cafe and

uh origin so these are some of

the most important uses for me more frequent ones yeah so what do we

mean by possession

for belonging is like this is my mom's house when you say that you

need the genitive form in Serbian.

Ovo je kuća moje mame.

Moje mame, yes.

Mama od koga čega?

Od mame. Sorry.

Oh, we didn't mention the questions,

but we can mention them separately.

Yeah, koga čega.

What does it mean?

What do they mean?

So I can try to translate it literally,

but honestly, in the context,

it only makes sense.

Od koga čega or od koga čega

means from whom, from what.

From whom, from what.

Or of whom, of what, maybe.

or of whom yeah because odd for me would always be like more used

as from but in this context it

will probably be of but the tricky thing is those prepositions sometimes can appear

in locative as

well right yeah that's the thing i think then the verb has

the role yeah no i want to say because it's possession and belonging uh

you wrote down the word verb imati right to have it actually

makes sense doesn't it yeah yeah i mean when you have something it's part

of you so it belongs to

you that's why it's in genital form but when i look at the structure

it look it should be accusative in my mind so that's why i worked

hard to change it so and i think this is the part where it

will be it's like a part of something or like you remember when i

talked to you about coffee like

just a bit uh a lot if you want to don't want to specify

like one or two or anything like that or like some give me some

coffee then it will be um genitive that's the part of something bigger or

smaller part okay so so i don't have any coffee then it would be

genitive again Nemam kafe.

can say nemam kafe, nemam kafu.

It's fine.

Both are fine.

Yeah. Okay. And then we actually have...

So this is the genitive.

is like part of something origin possessions belonging. So this

Can we move to dative?

Yeah, we can.

Okay. Dative again also is used with some prepositions and it's usually

used as like an indirect object um another one that i know is quite

frequent is uh for directions so uh if

whenever you think i'm going towards something or someone it is dative so that

action that you are

moving and um so if you want to say i'm going in your direction

or actually it would be i'm going

to you. That's how it will be translated.

Idem ka tebi.

Hmm, ka tebi.

Tebi is the data form there.

Yeah.

The question word is kome cemu.

To where, to whom.

Exactly, exactly. And then the indirect object,

which is a typical example.

Yeah, but I have a question.

Which one is the indirect?

Her or gift?

Like I gave her a gift.

Her is the indirect one.

And a gift is a direct object.

So her or in this case, it is actually, again, to her.

Because that's how we say it in...

You can say I gave a gift to her.

Dala samyo poklon.

So that yo is...

It's actually a funny word.

Yeah, yo, yo, yo.

Because you can use it like, oh, yo, you know, like, oh, man.

Like, yo. So, for example, you said direction.

So, what is nasuprot?

Nasuprot. Oh, my God.

In this case, it would be like the opposite, if I remember.

Okay. But I think, yeah, but here it would be like, oh, you can Yeah.

also use, instead of ka, you can

use prema. Prema.

And then prema tebi.

So it's like towards.

Yeah. These are more frequent than...

You're not going to hear nasuprot quite often, actually, but it is still used.

I see. Okay, good.

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and my favorite i love this

case more than the others because it's because it makes more sense yeah so

accusative

which is uh for the direct object right yes and yes that is

important because the when you start

learning like what a sentence is you start learning like okay verb subject and

then object You know, like that's what you learn.

so um the questions are koga shita koga shita we didn't mention for

nominative it's

and for accusative it's koga shita so it doesn't change the what

doesn't change the the form but um so i still i said

an object of the sentence with transitive verbs but I also wanted to add

for wishes because I think this is such a never even thought about it

this is such a beginning beginners like like lesson you know like

you it's like one of the

first things you learn how to say and that's why you use accusative and

then also I wanted to

mention the adverb of time because uh again that's used a lot yeah quite

a lot so a very simple thing I wrote a novel

novel right is the direct object

and you would say napisala sam roman for women napisao sam

roman for men exactly so roman

if you say it in nominative

it is roman and if you say

accusative koga šta

roman again so that's šta as an example roman

also didn't change as the question did not because yeah okay but with people

that can change right uh yeah i texted you for example

how do you know how would you say uh ivana in accusative

i need to see the table here but i don't have

so actually that was one of the first Ivanu?

Yeah, exactly.

Good. Vitella sam.

Ivanu. Yes. Good.

This is one of the first rules my boyfriend learned.

And he's not even like learning Serbia.

But because it was kind of like, as you said, like object is just

like one of the first things that you learn.

Yeah. And then wishes.

and the reason why i use that is because i did not like out

of this because i was not aware of

that at all because uh if you say dobar dan that's actually accusative because

you're saying

i'm wishing you a good day yeah in short yeah no but then so

uh for example i wrote down something like i wish all the best to

you like for a birthday or anything or whatever it is um is

the best and then sve is all what

is the nominative version of nai bolje that's actually a good question but

it's adjective it's the same but I think because this is again

the what, shta, right which doesn't really change

so it should be the naipoli yes that's true želim ti, or like želim

ti lako noć

divandan

and stuff like that

so like all of these things that you hear they're just that's good and

this one uh the adverb of time like on monday on saturday so whenever

you talk about

what you have done or what you're planning to do on some days yeah

you say

yeah this is

like a very specific also to

the days of the week so uh and the nominative

version is subota

yeah so actually it's quite funny because here if you think about what it

does change right

it's kind of like treating it as who in a way yes yes subota

u subotu see you on saturday Do all the days have U suffix?

Like u nedalju, u petaku.

No, it's...

Petak.

It doesn't change.

Well, let me see.

U ponedeljak, u utorak, u sredu, u četvrtak.

Because it's sreda, right?

The ones who are ending with ak are not changing.

So, if it ends with a consonant, then no.

So, if it is...

Only if it's a, then it changes to u.

I see. A u četvrtak, u petak, u subotu, u?

Medalju. Yay! Exactly.

So it's usually for feminine nouns, like ending in A.

That's good.

Okay. And then vocative, of course, it's just say hi, like greet or call

someone.

So you can say...

Čao, Ivane.

Actually, for me, it wouldn't work Ivan.

Ivane is for guy.

Yeah. Ivan and then ciao Ivan

yeah exactly

we usually use the it's not a question word kind of but

we say hey hey like hey

hey you know like hey you

hey you so

that would basically be it so also you can

if you want to say oh Gdesi Gdesi Maki you know Maki doesn't change

as well

no it doesn't a lot of like the names

don't change actually i think a

lot of the uh let me think i guess when you call mom dad

them then they need to change right no

because um it's i think it's the words that end in now i forgot

the rules but i think it's the

words that end in a that don't really change so uh ciao or desi

ivana jovana marina whatever they don't change a lot of the guys

names right change because they end in a consonant that's true

but there are some certain exceptions for the words that end in a and

these are like

there's a specific accent which we're not going to discuss today um but it's

um maya and sarah hey or that's is sarah hey mayo it's

this like accent yeah i know it's a bit prolonged Yeah.

Majo. Okay. So, how would you say, hey, mom?

Zdravo, mama. Mama.

So, you know, okay.

Mama says mama.

But it is interesting because I have a friend, Ljubica, and her, and in

A, I would say, ciao, Ljubice.

Only you or everyone?