Family & people

Lesson opening

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

Family and people

In Serbia people ask about your family early and gladly: do you have brothers and sisters, are you married, how are your parents doing. It is the warm, almost obligatory topic at any shared table. This lesson gives you the words for relatives and people, and ready-made phrases to talk about your family and follow when others talk about theirs.

One treat up front: Serbian kinship terms are very detailed. Where English makes do with one “uncle”, Serbian has three words. The grammar we take as ready-made phrases: “my” you know from “Possessive pronouns”, brata after imam from “Accusative forms”, and later lessons take apart the genitive after nemam and words like braća. For now the words, and how people use them, matter more.

Parents, children, spouses

The word for family is porodica, the usual, neutral one. Many family words come in a warm, homely form and a neutral one: mother is majka, fondly mama; father is otac, fondly tata.

Some you half-know: brat, sestra, sin and even kći are distant relatives of English brother, sister, son and daughter. The everyday word for “daughter” is ćerka; kći is the same daughter in a more bookish key (both are standard). “Children” is one collective word, deca, for all of them at once; a single child is dete. muž and žena are everyday, suprug and supruga more official (documents, polite speech). And žena means both “wife” and “woman”: the sentence tells you which.

Moja majka, but moj brat

As in “Possessive pronouns”, the Serbian “my” agrees in gender with the person you name, not with the speaker. For family words the gender usually follows sex: moj brat, moj otac, moj sin (masculine), but moja majka, moja sestra, moja ćerka (feminine). French works the same way: mon frère, ma sœur. So do tvoj/tvoja (“your”) and naš/naša (“our”). The surprises are the children: dete is neuter, whatever the child, so moje dete; and deca and braća take the feminine form, so moja deca (“my children”), moja braća (“my brothers”).

With the closest relatives Serbs often drop "my" altogether: not Kako je tvoja mama? but simply Kako je mama?, and it's clear whose. English does the same: "How's Mum?". Warm, everyday usage, not a mistake. Both parents at once get the same short question:

Kako su roditelji? How are your parents?

A big family: uncles and aunts

This is where Serbian opens up. English "uncle" splits into three words, depending on the side of the family and whether he is kin by blood:

Cheat sheet

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

Family and people

Family: porodica (colloquially also familija). Kinship is finer than in English: one “uncle” = three words.

The core family

Uncles, aunts, in-laws

moj or moja: the noun's gender decides

“My” takes the gender of the person named: moj brat, moj otac, moj sin, but moja majka, moja sestra, moje dete, moja deca, moja braća. Likewise tvoj/tvoja, naš/naša. With the closest family “my” is often dropped: Kako je mama? How’s Mum?

Talking about your family

Have or not: imati ("to have"), negative nemati (one word). No "a"; "I" usually left out.

People and marital status

Person, man: čovek, but “people”: ljudi; neutral “person”: osoba (feminine). Young man momak, young woman devojka (also “boyfriend”, “girlfriend”). Neighbour komšija (masculine, declines like tata), female neighbour komšinica.

Married: a man is oženjen, a woman udata; unmarried: neoženjen, neudata; single, in speech: slobodan / slobodna; a couple: u braku, venčani.