How to read in Serbian

Letters you know from Latin

а (a), е, к, м, о (o), т need no learning: they read the way they look. The lowercase к, м, т look like small capitals K, M, T, and that is exactly what they are.

One rule holds for the whole script: one letter, one sound, and no silent letters.

Six letters that pretend to be Latin

They look like the Latin B, H, P, C, Y, X, but read differently. The eye recognizes the familiar shape and supplies the Latin sound.

That is how the sign РЕСТОРАН (restoran) turns into the nonsense PECTOPAH. It actually says restoran.

Familiar sounds, new shapes

The letters б, г, д, з, и (i), л, п look unfamiliar, but their sounds are ordinary: in Latin they are b, g, d, z, i, l, p.

Familiar signs help you remember the shapes. И (i) is an N in a mirror, and П is the π of math class. The lowercase б is the digit 6, and з is the digit 3. One trap: the lowercase п looks like n but reads p.

How to read ж, ч, ш, ц and ф

ж, ч, ш and ц read zh, ch, sh and ts. Serbian Latin writes them ž, č, š and c, while Cyrillic manages with one plain letter each.

The lowercase ш looks like a Latin w, but reads sh. And ф is a plain f.

Ј, Љ, Њ: the y and the soft l and n

Ј is the Serbian Latin j in shape and in sound: the y of "yes", as in ја (ja) and ју.

Љ and Њ are a soft l and a soft n, each a single sound: the lli of "million" and the ny of "canyon". They look like л and н with a tail grown on. Latin writes them with two signs: lj and nj.

Soft and hard: ћ and ч, ђ and џ

Serbian has two kinds of ch: the hard ч, as in "church", and the soft ћ. For ћ the tongue tip stays down behind the lower teeth and the middle of the tongue rises. The sound comes out thinner. For ч the tip is raised. The pair ђ and џ works the same way, only with the voice on: soft ђ, hard џ as in "jam".

The difference changes words, so learn the letter together with the word: кућа (kuća) has the soft one, чај (čaj) the hard one.

Two scripts, one word

Serbian uses both scripts, Cyrillic and Latin, and they convert into each other letter for letter. The same word may be written both ways on two neighboring shop signs. These are not two versions of the language, just two ways to write the same sounds.

The Latin spelling you see under each word is the real Serbian Latin alphabet, the gajica. It is worth learning side by side with the Cyrillic: in Belgrade you will see both.

Three Cyrillic letters are written in Latin with two signs: љ → lj, њ → nj, џ → dž. They still count as one letter.

What order to take the characters in

The writing course is split into 6 steps: one step is one lesson, a few characters at a time. Nobody takes the whole script at once out of mercy: 30 signs in an evening stay in memory for exactly that, an evening.

• Studying a little every day gets more into your head than spending the same total time in one sitting.checked many times
  Donovan & Radosevich, 1999, Journal of Applied Psychology 84(5) · 63 studies compared, difference d = 0.46 — a sizeable figure for a learning effect.
• 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 times
  Adesope, 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.

Next

• Serbian alphabetA reference of all the characters
• TransliterationThe table, both ways
• PronunciationWhat you hear and what is hard
• How to break down an unfamiliar scripta note