Stanar će platiti depozit danas.

Će is the 3rd person singular future-tense auxiliary in Serbian. It comes from the verb hteti (to want) and is used to build the future tense.

So:

• stanar = subject
• će = will
• platiti = pay

Together, će platiti means will pay.

In this sentence, Serbian forms the future with:

• a form of hteti → će
• plus the infinitive → platiti

So će platiti = will pay.

The infinitive is the basic dictionary form of the verb. That is very normal in Serbian future tense.

This is about verb aspect, which is very important in Serbian.

• platiti is perfective: it means to pay something as a completed action
• plaćati is imperfective: it suggests an ongoing, repeated, or habitual action

In this sentence, the idea is one complete future action: the tenant will make the payment. So platiti is the natural choice.

Compare:

• Stanar će platiti depozit danas. = one completed payment
• Stanar će plaćati... = would suggest repeated or ongoing paying, which does not fit well with depozit

Stanar is in the nominative singular because it is the subject of the sentence, the one doing the action.

Serbian usually uses:

• nominative for the subject
• accusative for the direct object

Here:

• stanar = the one who will pay
• depozit = the thing being paid

Good question. Depozit is the direct object, so it is in the accusative. But for many masculine inanimate nouns, the accusative singular looks exactly like the nominative singular.

So:

• nominative: depozit
• accusative: depozit

That is why you do not see a visible change here.

It can mean either, depending on context. Serbian has no articles like a/an/the, so the sentence itself does not mark that difference.

So stanar can be understood as:

• the tenant
• a tenant

The wider context tells you which one is meant.

Because danas is an adverb, meaning today. Adverbs do not need a preposition here.

So:

• danas = today
• not u danas or anything like that

It works like English today in I’ll do it today.

Yes, Serbian word order is fairly flexible, but će is a clitic, which means it usually goes in the second position of the clause.

That is why Stanar će platiti... sounds very natural:

• first element: Stanar
• second-position clitic: će

Other word orders are possible for emphasis, for example:

• Danas će stanar platiti depozit. = emphasis on today
• Depozit će stanar platiti danas. = emphasis on the deposit

But the neutral, straightforward order is the original sentence.

Yes, Serbian often drops the subject when it is clear from context.

So you could also say:

• Platiće depozit danas.

This means He/She will pay the deposit today or The tenant will pay the deposit today, depending on context.

However, in the original sentence, stanar is included because the speaker wants to state clearly who will pay.

Yes. Serbian has another common future-tense spelling pattern when the auxiliary is attached directly to the infinitive-based form:

• platiće = will pay

So you may see:

• Platiće depozit danas.

That is a normal future form. But in your sentence, because stanar comes first, the standard clitic pattern is:

• Stanar će platiti depozit danas.

So both patterns exist, but they are used in different sentence shapes.

Će is pronounced with a soft ć sound, which is different from English ch.

A rough guide:

• ć sounds like a very soft ty/ch sound
• će is approximately like tye said very softly and quickly

It is softer than č.

Also:

• će is one syllable
• platiti is pronounced roughly PLA-ti-ti

You replace će with neće:

• Stanar neće platiti depozit danas.

That means The tenant will not pay the deposit today.

So:

• će = will
• neće = will not

A common way is:

• Hoće li stanar platiti depozit danas?

This means Will the tenant pay the deposit today?

Here:

• hoće li is a standard way to form a yes/no future question
• stanar remains the subject
• platiti depozit danas stays the same

In speech, intonation can also help show that it is a question.