пиши као што говориш
“пиши као што говориш” (piši kao što govoriš) — Vuk's spelling rule in Serbian. Phrase, level A2. From it comes Beograd rather than Belgrad: what is heard is what is written, names included. In a live sentence: “Пиши као што говориш” — Write as you speak. You can hear how it sounds right here. Written with the characters п, и, ш, и, к, а, о, ш, т, о, г, о. A word from the everyday Serbian course, level A2.
In short
| Written in Serbian | пиши као што говориш |
| Read in Latin letters | piši kao što govoriš |
| Translation | Vuk's spelling rule |
| Part of speech | phrase |
| Level | A2 |
- пиши као што говоришpiši kao što govorišVuk's spelling rule
What it is
The rule of Serbian orthography introduced by Vuk Karadzic in the nineteenth century: one letter, one sound — write it as you say it. This is why Serbian has almost no spelling rules and no dictionaries of exceptions.
This word does not reduce to a translation: the thing it names is not part of everyday life here, so a “translation” would end up a description in brackets. The easiest way to learn it is together with its surroundings — where you meet it and what it is for.
Why it looks that way
From it comes Beograd rather than Belgrad: what is heard is what is written, names included.
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.
- Пиши као што говоришPiši kao što govorišWrite as you speak
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 “Vuk's spelling rule” in Serbian?
«пиши као што говориш», read “piši kao što govoriš”. In a live sentence: “Пиши као што говориш” — Write as you speak. You can hear how it sounds right on this page. Phrase, level A2; written with the characters п, и, ш, и, к, а, о, ш, т, о, г, о.
How is “пиши као што говориш” written in Latin letters?
piši kao što govoriš. 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?
From it comes Beograd rather than Belgrad: what is heard is what is written, names included. 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.