Serbian is written in two alphabets, Latin (latinica) and Cyrillic (ćirilica). They match each other letter for letter, and this course uses the Latin one. The main rule of Serbian spelling fits into one line, the motto of Vuk Karadžić, who reformed the Serbian alphabet in the 19th century:
Piši kao što govoriš, čitaj kako je napisano.Write as you speak, read as it is written.
One letter, one sound. No letter is silent, and a letter sounds the same wherever it stands in a word. Both alphabets are built on this rule.
That removes most of what we fear in an unfamiliar writing system. There is no guessing where a letter suddenly goes quiet, as the w does in write, where one symbol hides two sounds, as the x does in box, or where the spelling says one thing and the mouth does another. Learn the thirty letters and you can read any sign, ticket, receipt or text message out loud, even before you know what the words mean. The meaning will come with vocabulary; the reading itself is yours today.
A quick check. How many letters are there in Beograd (“Belgrade”)? Seven: b-e-o-g-r-a-d, and you say every one of them. And konj (“horse”): four letters or three? Three sounds and three letters of the alphabet: k-o-nj, because nj is one letter. Once you count a digraph as one letter, you are halfway there.
All 30 letters
Here is the whole alphabet: the Latin letter, its Cyrillic twin, the nearest English sound and an example word. Read the examples out loud; many are international words you will recognise at once.
You can probably read and guess several of these before learning any vocabulary: banka, lampa, torta, fudbal, evro. Serbian has taken in many of the same international words as English, and spells them the way it says them. You don’t need to memorise them now: this lesson is about turning letters into sounds.
Cheat sheet
The cheat sheet — everything essential from the lesson on one page. In the app it opens at any time.
Two alphabets, latinica and ćirilica, match letter for letter; this course writes in Latin. The rule: Piši kao što govoriš, čitaj kako je napisano (“write as you speak, read as it is written”): one letter = one sound, no silent letters. In total 30 letters: 5 vowels (a e i o u) + 25 consonants.
All 30 letters: Latin · Cyrillic · sound · example
Capital letters
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