Lesson 1. Meet Serbian. Two alphabets
Hi! This is the first lesson. We’re starting to learn Serbian — the language spoken in Serbia, Montenegro, and Bosnia.
Serbian is a relative of Russian
You will recognize many Serbian words right away. Look:
Familiar? Serbian and Russian are relatives. But there are also words that sound very different. We’ll learn those too.
Two alphabets
Serbian uses two alphabets — at the same time:
- the Latin alphabet — like in English:
a, b, c, d… - the Cyrillic alphabet — like in Russian:
а, б, в, г…
The same word can be written two ways:
On the left — Latin. In parentheses — the same word in Cyrillic. It’s one and the same word, just written differently.
Exercises
Exercise 1
Read these Serbian words out loud: mama, tata, brat, sestra. What do they mean?
Show answer
mama — mom, tata — dad, brat — brother, sestra — sister. All these words are read the same way as in Russian.
Exercise 2
The Serbian word kuća is written кућа in Cyrillic. Which Cyrillic letter stands in place of the Latin ć?
Show answer
The letter ћ. We’ll get to know it in detail in the next lessons.
How to say goodbye in Serbian
In the next lesson — the Serbian Latin alphabet.
Lesson vocabulary
- voda (вода)
- — water
- sestra (сестра)
- — sister
- brat (брат)
- — brother
- mama (мама)
- — mom
- tata (тата)
- — dad
- kuća (кућа)
- — house
- Zdravo (Здраво)
- — hi
- Doviđenja (Довиђења)
- — goodbye