Danish to Serbian Latin: med can introduce a companion or a means
A Danish preposition does not decide whether Serbian needs sa
A Danish phrase with med can describe an accompanying person or the means used to do something. For example, the meanings “travel with a colleague” and “travel by bus” can both be expressed using med in Danish. Those relations must be distinguished before choosing Serbian words. The same source preposition is not a guarantee that the target will use the same preposition in both phrases.
The Serbian instrumental lesson treats company and means as different uses of the instrumental case. It illustrates company with sa plus an instrumental noun, while its means-of-travel example Idem autobusom uses the instrumental without a preposition. A target bus phrase without an equivalent of med has not necessarily lost information. The ending can express the relation that Danish leaves to a separate word.
The tool is not another participant accompanying the writer
The lesson similarly gives Pišem olovkom for writing with a pencil. The pencil is the instrument, not a fellow writer. A Danish instruction about completing a form med blyant therefore should not automatically acquire the same Serbian company construction as a message about completing it with a colleague. Both Danish phrases include a noun after med, but the nouns have different jobs in the event.
This is a useful distinction when an instruction mentions both a person and a tool. A source meaning “Fill this in with your colleague, using a pencil” asks for cooperation and specifies a writing instrument. Translating the two relations as though they were interchangeable can either make the colleague sound like an instrument or leave unclear which material should be used. The Serbian case and preposition belong to the relation being expressed, rather than matching the visual repetition of Danish med.
Object-form pronouns do not tell you which relation was intended
The Danish Language Council explains that pronouns following prepositions use object forms. Thus Danish mig or hende after a relation word differs from subject jeg or hun. That source case distinction is useful for separating a companion from the subject of the sentence, but it cannot select the Serbian instrumental ending by itself. The particular relation still has to be interpreted through the verb and the rest of the phrase.
Nor does an instrumental form always mean “with a person.” The Serbian lesson also records instrumental constructions for location, including uses with prepositions such as pod. The correct reading therefore comes from the full construction, not from expanding every instrumental ending into Danish med. In a Latin-script result, sa and an inflected noun may form the company phrase, while an unaccompanied noun form can express a means. Preserve the Danish distinction between who participates, what is used, and where something is located. Those distinctions explain why a natural Serbian translation can require fewer separate prepositions in one clause and an explicit preposition in another.
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