могу ли да вас питам?
“могу ли да вас питам?” (mogu li da vas pitam?) — may I ask you? in Serbian. Phrase, level A2. The question through li after the verb, shorter than da li mogu. The impersonal English may is rendered by the personal mogu li. In a live sentence: “Могу ли да вас питам нешто у вези са станом?” — May I ask you something about the apartment? You can hear how it sounds right here. A word from the everyday Serbian course, level A2.
In short
| Written in Serbian | могу ли да вас питам? |
| Read in Latin letters | mogu li da vas pitam? |
| Translation | may I ask you? |
| Part of speech | phrase |
| Level | A2 |
- могу ли да вас питам?mogu li da vas pitam?may I ask you?
Why it looks that way
The question through li after the verb, shorter than da li mogu. The impersonal English may is rendered by the personal mogu li.
A word with a story stays in memory longer than one learned as a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.
In a live sentence
A single word almost never appears alone in conversation. A sentence shows where it fits and what stands next to it.
- Могу ли да вас питам нешто у вези са станом?Mogu li da vas pitam nešto u vezi sa stanom?May I ask you something about the apartment?
How not to forget this word
Reading a word and remembering it are different jobs. A day later, little survives of a single reading — and that is not bad memory, that is how memory works.
- This has been tested on foreign words too. The difference shows up most when you test yourself a few days later rather than straight away.checked many timesKim & Webb, 2022, Language Learning 72(2) · 48 experiments, 3,411 participants, 98 comparisons.
- Recalling beats re-reading. Covering the translation and trying to remember it does more than reading it ten more times.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · 188 experiments, 272 comparisons. g = 0.61; against plain re-reading 0.51, against passive review 0.93.
- An answer you worked out yourself sticks better than one handed to you.checked many timesBertsch et al., 2007, Memory & Cognition 35(2) · 86 studies, 445 comparisons, d = 0.40.
Frequently asked
How do you say “may I ask you?” in Serbian?
«могу ли да вас питам?», read “mogu li da vas pitam?”. In a live sentence: “Могу ли да вас питам нешто у вези са станом?” — May I ask you something about the apartment? You can hear how it sounds right on this page. Phrase, level A2; written with the characters м, о, г, у, л, и, д, а, в, а, с, п.
How is “могу ли да вас питам?” written in Latin letters?
mogu li da vas pitam?. This is a practical spelling — you need it to read aloud and be understood, not to meet an academic standard.
Why does this word look the way it does?
The question through li after the verb, shorter than da li mogu. The impersonal English may is rendered by the personal mogu li. A word with a story stays in memory longer than a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.
Can I hear how it sounds?
Yes, right on this page: click the word and it will play. The sound works on any phone, and nothing needs to be installed.