Latin or Cyrillic: which Serbian script to learn first
Learn Latin first: it is on shop signs, menus, in messaging, on most websites and in apps — it is what you meet on day one. Cyrillic is the official script of Serbia: road signs, government paperwork, part of the press, school. The two scripts correspond letter for letter, so the second takes a couple of hours once you know the first.
Where each script is used
By the Constitution the official script is Cyrillic; Latin is «in official use» and in practice dominates private life. The real picture in 2026: Cyrillic in government offices (police, municipality, courts), on road signs (often doubled in Latin), in some newspapers and in schoolbooks; Latin in retail, advertising, the internet, messaging, and most menus and signs in Belgrade and Novi Sad. The same person reads both in the course of a day without noticing. More in the lesson on where each script is used.
Why Latin first
Frequency: there is more of it in daily life. Courses, dictionaries and messages use it. And it is the script your keyboard already has.
Serbian Latin has 30 letters: five with diacritics (č, ć, š, ž, đ) and three digraphs (lj, nj, dž) that count as single letters. The «č» / «ć» pair is the usual stumbling block — the first is a hard «ch», the second is softer, closer to the «t» in «tune» with a hiss. See Special letters č ć š ž đ dž.
How Serbian Cyrillic differs from Russian
If you know Russian Cyrillic, note six letters Russian lacks — ј, љ, њ, ђ, ћ, џ — and eight Russian letters Serbian does not use: ё, й, щ, ъ, ы, ь, э, ю, я. Softness is a separate letter («љ», «њ»), not a soft sign; «ja», «je», «ju» are written with «ј». There are no reading rules at all: every letter sounds the same in every position. Lesson: Cyrillic print.
Both scripts in a week
Days 1–2: Latin, reading signs and street names aloud. Day 3: the special letters and digraphs. Days 4–5: Cyrillic through the correspondence table. Days 6–7: switching practice — Digraphia in practice. The dictionary shows every word in both scripts, so the switch trains itself.
What to write yourself
Messages and everyday notes: Latin. Applications and official forms: whatever the form requires — both are often accepted. Dropping diacritics («c» for «č») is normal in texting, not in documents.
In short
Can I get by with Latin only?
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