Cluster changes

Lesson opening

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

Cluster changes: what speech simplifies and spelling keeps

Say gradski “city, urban” out loud, the way people say it at a bus stop. The voiced d loses its voice before s, and it comes out roughly as [gratski] (the lesson “Voicing assimilation”). Yet in writing the d sits there as if nothing had happened. Now make radostan “joyful” feminine. Here it is the other way round: the t is gone from the spelling too, and you get radosna. One language, two opposite outcomes.

This lesson closes the block on sound laws. Voicing assimilation, the two palatalisations, iotation and l-vocalisation each change one consonant. Today the subject is a whole cluster of consonants, which the language either rebuilds or shortens. The key question is when the result reaches the spelling and when it stays in the sound only. And one skill for reading: from oca or radosna, find otac and radostan in the dictionary.

1. Assimilation by place: s and z before palatals

The rule in one line: if s or z is followed by one of č, ć, dž, đ, š, ž, lj, nj, then s turns into š and z into ž. These eight are made with the tongue raised towards the roof of the mouth, the palate, so they are called palatals; s and z are made with the tip of the tongue behind the teeth. The direction is the same as in voicing assimilation: the neighbour on the right is in charge. The tongue cannot get from behind the teeth to the palate in one beat, so it moves early. English does the same in fast speech (horseshoe is said “horshoe”), but Serbian writes the result down.

Often the law is a second step after iotation. Take the instrumental of mast “fat, grease”: first t + j gives ć (the lesson “Iotation”), then ć pulls the s along, giving mašću. The same happens in gvozd (an old word for “nail”) + je → gvožđe “iron” (a collective, “nails taken together”, that became the name of the metal) and list + je → lišće “leaves, foliage”.

2. Where the law steps back: a prefix before lj and nj

Now a proviso. Inside a word, before a suffix, s, z obediently turn into š, ž (pažnja, čežnja). But at the seam after a prefix, before lj and nj, the assimilation is not written: the standard protects the prefix so that you can still recognise it.

The second quiet zone is s before j at a prefix seam or inside a root. Serbian treats j as a full consonant of its own (the y of yes), and there is no assimilation. We write sjediniti “to unite” (s + jediniti), sjahati “to dismount”, sjajan “shining; excellent” (from sjaj “shine”). Say s + y, not “sh”. When s merges with the j of a suffix into š, that is another change, iotation (visok → viši).

The third case is the most colloquial: the law works even across a space. The preposition s “with” before njim “him” sounds like [š njim] in real speech; the mouth does not care where one word ends. But the preposition is written separately and unchanged: s njim, or in the full form, sa njim.

3. The other half of the law: n before b and p gives m

The same principle, at a different point in the mouth: n before the lip sounds b, p becomes the lip sound m. English mouths do the same (input is often said “imput”), but English spelling shows it only in Latin words like impossible; Serbian spelling shows it as a rule.

Cheat sheet

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

Cluster changes: cheat sheet

Assimilation by place

Not written

• prefix + lj/nj: izljubiti, razljutiti, sljubiti, izljuštiti, iznjihati; also mlaznjak
• s before j at a seam or in a root: sjediniti, sjahati, sjajan
• compounds: jedanput, vanbračni, stranputica
• across a space: write s njim / sa njim, say [š njim]

Loss of t and d

No simplification: protestni, azbestni, aoristni, studentkinja, pijanistkinja; at a prefix seam: potceniti.

Of two identical, one

The double letter stays: najjači, najjužniji, najjasniji, vannastavni, poddijalekat, preddržavni, naddržavni.

Written in full

Back to the dictionary: radosna → radostan, posna → postan, oca, oče → otac, zadaci → zadatak, preci → predak, pala → pasti.