LingoflyЋ ћ — će
«će» is a consonant of the Serbian script, read as “a thinner ch than in "church"”. Like the ch of "church", but with the tongue tip down behind the lower teeth, so it comes out thinner. In the Latin script: ć. For example, in the word “кућа” (kuća) — a house. The Serbian alphabet has 30 letters in total, and this character can be played right here. Do not fold it into plain ch: Serbian hears ć and ch as different sounds, and some words differ by that alone.
In short
| Character | Ћ ћ |
| Name | će |
| Sound | a thinner ch than in "church" |
| What it is | a consonant |
In our course the character comes 23rd of 30, its neighbours in the course are т and у (u), appears in 211 words of this site.
How to type Ћ ћ
- On a phone: add the Serbian keyboard in the keyboard settings (Gboard on Android; Keyboards in the iPhone settings).
- In Word on Windows: type U+045B and press Alt+X right after it — the code turns into the character.
- On a Mac: switch to the Unicode Hex Input source, hold Option and type 045B.
- Unicode code points: ћ — U+045B, Ћ — U+040B. With them, the characters can be found in the character map of any system.
How it sounds
Like the ch of "church", but with the tongue tip down behind the lower teeth, so it comes out thinner. In the Latin script: ć
Other written forms
The same character is written differently on a shop sign and in a book. Here are all the forms you may meet.
| Form | Character | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Latin | ć | — |
The character in a word
A lone character is hard to remember: memory holds on to meaning, and a letter has none. The word it stands in provides that anchor.
The character in the “six letters of serbian's own” group
They are ј, љ, њ, ћ, ђ, џ. Three of them, ћ, ђ and џ, form soft-and-hard pairs where English hears a single sound: soft ћ against hard ч, soft ђ against hard џ. Telling them apart by ear is the hardest listening task in the language.
Words with this character
How to remember this character
A single letter is the hardest thing to remember: memory has nothing to hold on to — a character has no meaning. A three-step loop works: see the character, try to recall the sound (for «će» it is “a thinner ch than in "church"”, as in the word “кућа” (kuća)), see the right answer.
And come back to it the next day, not in an hour: a check a day or two later beats a check the same day. Nobody holds the whole alphabet — 30 letters — at once.
- It is better to test yourself the next day than at the end of the same session. That is why a word comes back to you tomorrow.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · g = 0.82 when tested a day or two later, against 0.56 on the same day.
- Studying a little every day gets more into your head than spending the same total time in one sitting.checked many timesDonovan & Radosevich, 1999, Journal of Applied Psychology 84(5) · 63 studies compared, difference d = 0.46 — a sizeable figure for a learning effect.
Frequently asked
How does the Serbian character ћ read?
As “a thinner ch than in "church"” — it is a consonant of the Serbian script. Like the ch of "church", but with the tongue tip down behind the lower teeth, so it comes out thinner. In the Latin script: ć. For example, in the word “кућа” (kuća) — a house.
What is the letter ћ called?
Će. A character's name and its sound are different things in the Serbian script: it is called “će” and reads as “a thinner ch than in "church"”. Learn the second one: the name only helps when the alphabet is recited aloud.
What can ћ be confused with?
Do not fold it into plain ch: Serbian hears ć and ch as different sounds, and some words differ by that alone. Similar characters are best studied side by side and deliberately compared: learned on different days, they stay separate and get mixed up at their first meeting inside a word.