Order of Short Words

Level 3

Short words go in second position, in a fixed order.

How It Works

Bosnian has a set of small words that never carry the stress. They lean on a word before them, and together they stand in second position.

StepGroupWords
1questionli
2helping verbsam, si, smo, ste, su, ću, ćeš, bih, bi
3dativemi, ti, mu, joj, nam, vam, im
4accusativeme, te, ga, je, nas, vas, ih
5reflexivese
6third person helperje

Put together: Amir mi ga je dao. (Amir gave it to me.) The order is mi, ga, je.

The group must come after the first word or phrase, not first in the sentence: Dat ću ti ga sutra works because dat comes first.

With the question word li, the verb comes first: Jesi li mu ga dala?

The one exception is je as a helping verb: it comes last, after the others (mi ga je), but the other helpers (sam, ću, bih) come before the pronouns.

Examples (4)

  1. Jesi li mu ga dala?

    Did you give it to him?

    Jesi comes first, then li, mu and ga in order.

  2. Amir mi ga je dao.

    Amir gave it to me.

    The order is dative mi, accusative ga, then je.

  3. Dat ću ti ga sutra.

    I will give it to you tomorrow.

    Ću comes before ti, and ti before ga.

  4. Vidio sam je jučer.

    I saw her yesterday.

    Sam comes before the accusative je.

Common Mistakes

  • Swapping the accusative and the dative.

    Ja ću ga mu dati.
    Ja ću mu ga dati.

    The dative short word (mu) comes before the accusative short word (ga).

How It Connects

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Order of Short WordsLevel 3

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Short words stand in second position.

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Words in This Pattern

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