Capitalisation

Lesson opening

This is the first part of the lesson. The rest, the exercises and the reviews are in the app.

Capital letters: the Serbian rules

Serbian calls a capital veliko slovo, "the big letter", and uses it far less often than English does. The core is shared: the start of a sentence and proper names. The differences nearly all run one way: Serbian keeps small many words that English capitalises by reflex. This short lesson sorts them out, so that you write ponedeljak and srpski small with confidence, and Novi Sad and Srbin with capitals.

Lowercase where an English hand reaches for a capital

Serbian writes four kinds of words with a small letter, and English capitalises every one of them, so the habit will fight you on every line:

So "On Monday, the third of May, I'm reading a Serbian book" comes out all lowercase in Serbian: u ponedeljak, trećeg maja, čitam srpsku knjigu. One kind of word breaks the calm: the name of a people used as a noun.

A fifth English capital has no Serbian twin at all: the pronoun "I". Serbian ja is an ordinary small word, capitalised only when it opens a sentence: Marko i ja, "Marko and I".

The person takes a capital, the adjective does not

English capitalises the person, the adjective and the language alike: a Serb, a Serbian city, Serbian. Serbian draws a line here. The name of a people as a noun, the word for a person, is a proper name and takes a capital; the adjective made from it is lowercase. Compare:

The logic: On je Srbin, "He is a Serb" (who he is: a member of a people, so a capital), but on govori srpski, "he speaks Serbian" (in what language: lowercase). The language name srpski is that same adjective, short for srpski jezik, "the Serbian language", so it stays small too.

Cheat sheet

The cheat sheet — everything essential from the lesson on one page. In the app it opens at any time.

Capital letters: the Serbian rules

A capital (veliko slovo) goes on the first word of a sentence and on proper names: people (Ana, Marko), cities and countries (Beograd, Srbija), rivers, mountains, holidays, publications. Everything else is lowercase, including much that English capitalises.

Always lowercase (unlike English)

The person: capital; the adjective: small

Multi-word names

Capitalise the first word and any word that is a name in its own right. The generic word (gora, more, reka, ostrvo, ulica, trg) is lowercase inside a name and capitalised only when it comes first: Trg slobode, Bulevar oslobođenja.

Holidays and titles of works

Same principle: first word capitalised (plus names inside), the rest lowercase. No Title Case.