Food & drink

Lesson opening

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

Food and drink

In Serbia everything starts at the table: new acquaintances, friendships, business, celebrations. So food and drink are the main social topic here. This lesson gives you the words for everyday foods, dishes and drinks, and ready-made phrases to order a coffee, buy a kilo of apples at the market and keep your head in front of a menu.

The grammar we take as ready-made phrases: quantities (kilo jabuka) are explained in "Partitive & quantity", the polite "I would like" in "Conditional I". For now the words matter more, and how people use them at the bakery and at the table.

Everyday foods

Let's start with what is on every table. A few of these words are old relatives of English ones: mleko sits in the same family as milk, and hleb was borrowed long ago from Gothic, from the same Germanic word that became English loaf.

Note: povrće and voće are collective nouns of neuter gender: one word for the whole basket, the way English says “some fruit” rather than “some fruits”. Keep the pair apart: voće is fruit, povrće vegetables.

Drinks

One word here outranks all the others, kafa (coffee): Hajde na kafu! (“Let’s go for a coffee!”) really means “let’s sit down and talk”. At home and as a guest you will often be offered domaća kafa (“home-made coffee”): strong, made the Turkish way, with the grounds left in the cup.

Cheat sheet

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

Food and drink

Foods, dishes, drinks and ready-made phrases for the counter, the market and the table.

Foods and drinks

“Coffee”: Serbian kafa, Croatian kava, Bosnian kahva; learn kafa. At home: domaća kafa, Turkish-style, with grounds. Red wine is crno vino (literally “black”).

Balkan cooking

The grill is roštilj; its kings are ćevapi and pljeskavica, often with ajvar, kajmak. A filling takes sa + instrumental: burek sa sirom, sa mesom, sa spanaćem. Normal in Serbia, where burek is the general word; in Bosnia it is only the meat one, the cheese one is sirnica.

Meals and tastes

Ordering and buying