Lingoflyспоља
- спољаspoljafrom outside
“споља” (spolja) — from outside in Serbian. Adverb, level B1. The lj is one soft sound: spo-lja. In a live sentence: “Споља кућа изгледа боље него изнутра” (Spolja kuća izgleda bolje nego iznutra) — From outside the house looks better than from inside. You can hear how it sounds right here. Written with the characters с (s), п, о (o), љ, а (a). A word from the everyday Serbian course, level B1.
In short
| Written in Serbian | споља (spolja) |
| Read in Latin letters | spolja |
| Translation | from outside |
| Part of speech | adverb |
| Level | B1 |
How to pronounce it
The lj is one soft sound: spo-lja.
Why it looks that way
It answers from where: from outside, from the outer side. Being outdoors is napolju, going out napolje. Three different words where English manages with two.
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.
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 “from outside” in Serbian?
«споља» (spolja), read “spolja”. The lj is one soft sound: spo-lja. In a live sentence: “Споља кућа изгледа боље него изнутра” (Spolja kuća izgleda bolje nego iznutra) — From outside the house looks better than from inside. You can hear how it sounds right on this page. Adverb, level B1; written with the characters с (s), п, о (o), љ, а (a).
How is “споља” (spolja) written in Latin letters?
spolja. 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?
It answers from where: from outside, from the outer side. Being outdoors is napolju, going out napolje. Three different words where English manages with two. 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 this 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.