Digraphia in practice

Lesson opening

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

Two scripts in practice: reading, switching, typing

In the lesson “Domains of use” we sorted out where each script lives: official documents in Cyrillic, the café menu in Latin. This lesson is about the skill. Knowing that both scripts exist is not enough; you need to read either one without stumbling, switch between them in the middle of a street, carry a word from one alphabet into the other, and type both on your phone. For an English speaker the traps run in both directions: some Cyrillic letters pretend to be Latin, and some Latin letters you have known all your life are read the Serbian way.

Look-alike letters: one shape, two sounds

A handful of Cyrillic capitals look exactly like Latin ones but are read quite differently. These are the “false friends” you met in the lesson “Cyrillic print”, and for anyone raised on the Latin alphabet they are the first thing that goes wrong:

A Latin-trained eye sees РЕСТОРАН and reads “PECTOPAH”, which is nonsense; read as Cyrillic, the same shapes give restoran, “restaurant”. САТ is not “CAT” but sat, “hour; clock”. Take one idea from the table: the same letter shape carries a different sound depending on which alphabet you are in at the moment. And it cuts the other way too, as the next section shows.

One word in two outfits

The core skill of digraphia is recognising the same word in either alphabet instantly. Because the letters match one to one, this is pure training for the eye: letter for letter. Run through these familiar words in pairs, left to right and back again:

Cheat sheet

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

Two scripts in practice

Digraphia: one language in two writing systems. Serbian Cyrillic and Latin match one to one, letter for letter: Београд = Beograd, ноћ = noć “night”. The one trap: the same letter shape is read differently in different alphabets. Keep a mode switched on: “I am reading Cyrillic now” or “Latin now”.

Look-alikes: one shape, two sounds

РЕСТОРАН is not “PECTOPAH” but restoran; САТ is not “CAT” but sat “hour; clock”. The reverse trap: reading Serbian Latin the English way. Most letters behave (park, bar), but c = [ts], j = the y of yes, h = [x] (halo “hello?” on the phone).

One word in two outfits

One Cyrillic ћ = one Latin ć. The other special letters pair up the same way: ђ = đ, џ = dž, љ = lj, њ = nj (each Latin digraph counts as one letter). A rare exception: injekcija = инјекција (н + ј).

The mixed street

In town the scripts come mixed: a shop window in Latin, a plate in Cyrillic. A native reads straight through; practise these lines aloud:

Typing and handwriting

• Add both Serbian keyboards to your phone, Cyrillic and Latin (in a Serbian menu something like Srpski (ćirilica) and Srpski (latinica)); switch with the globe key. tastatura = keyboard.
• Most people keep Latin on all the time; Cyrillic is added separately, for official messages and documents.
• Handwritten Cyrillic is a separate skill: by hand и looks like a Latin u, the Serbian п is that u with a bar on top, and т a ш with a bar on top. See the lesson “Cyrillic handwriting”.