B2 — upper-intermediateVariation: dialect, standard and substandard

Slang, jargon & internet speech

Lesson opening

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

Slang, jargon and internet speech: the language textbooks leave out

There is a layer of Serbian that textbooks hardly cover, yet it reaches you from day one. A colleague texts vrv kasnim (“prob running late”), the schoolboy next door complains that dobio je keca (“he got a one”, the lowest mark), and in a chat, instead of the Šta ima? you expected, you get Sta ima? without a single diacritic. This is not the language going to ruin: it is ordinary Serbian carrying a label that tells you the speaker’s age, their trade, or that they are typing in a chat.

Three circles and a forbidden one

The layers differ not in how “rude” they are, but in who will understand you and what they will think of you. This table answers “can I say this?” faster than any dictionary.

Examples

Layer	Who talks like this	Examples	Your job
urban slang	the city, all ages, the young above all	frajer, lova, klopa, blejati, zezati se	understand all of it, use a little, with friends only
professional jargon	colleagues within one trade	bag, komitovati, kec, špic, tezga	learn the words of your own field
internet speech	messages, social media, comments	nzm, vrv, bzvz, pozz	read it freely, write it only to friends
the taboo layer	everyone, but not in front of everyone	swear words and their abbreviations	recognise only

The circles overlap: tezga, a side job, is both a street word and a work word; bzvz is the online spelling of the street word bezveze. What they all share is that they are marked: they say something about your relationship with the listener, and said to the wrong person they land like a slap on the back from a stranger.

How a slang word is made

Lists of trendy words go stale within five years; the mechanisms do not. There are only five, and they let you take apart words you have never heard.

Examples

Mechanism	How it works	Examples
shift of meaning	an ordinary word takes on a second, street meaning	gajba crate → pad, flat; riba fish → girl (crude); pauk spider → tow truck
borrowing	a word goes straight into slang, bypassing the standard	ziher German; ortak Turkish; lova Romani; faca Italian; kul English
clipping	the end of a word is chopped off	faks, komp, mob, profa; the mechanics are in “Abbreviations & acronyms”
suffix	a suffix for a person or an action is added to a root	ziheraš a play-it-safe type; kafedžija a coffee lover; cimerka a (female) flatmate; lajkovati to like a post
šatrovački	syllables swap places	tebra, vozdra: familiar from “How people really talk”; it adds hardly any new words

The fourth is the most productive today. Serbian stitches its own suffix onto any root, and a foreign word at once gets a full set of endings: lajk gives lajkovati, lajkujem, lajkovao (to like, I like, liked), and hejt gives hejter, hejtovati, hejterski (a hater, to hate on, hater's). How to choose between -ovati, -isati and -irati was covered in “International and English words”; what matters here is that after this the word obeys every rule of Serbian grammar.

Deeper sources

Who described Serbian slang

Serbian slang is studied seriously and has its classic author, the Belgrade linguist Ranko Bugarski. In Žargon: lingvistička studija (“Slang: a linguistic study”; Belgrade: Biblioteka XX vek, 2003; second edition 2006), he made the key point: slang is not “broken language” but a style, built by the same word-forming mechanisms as the standard, only running faster. A separate strand of his work is slivenice, blends of two clipped words (like English brunch), which fill headlines and the internet; he collected them in a book with a dictionary, Srpske slivenice (“Serbian blends”; Novi Sad: Akademska knjiga, 2019). An older work, Dragoslav Andrić’s Dvosmerni rečnik srpskog žargona (“Two-way dictionary of Serbian slang”), is a chronicle of earlier generations of the street. For the newest words, try Vukajlija, an urban dictionary written by its own users: livelier than any book, and about as reliable as you would expect.

The core: people, money, doings

These few dozen words do not age: you hear them daily all over Serbia, every generation understands them, and this is where your recognition vocabulary should start. Say them to your own people, friends and people your age; at work, with strangers and with older people, use the neutral word: novac, hrana, stan.

Examples

People	Meaning	Tone
frajer, frajerski	a cool guy, a star; stylish	usually approving
faca	a big shot, someone who counts	On je faca u firmi. “He's a big shot at the firm.”
mangup	a rascal, a scamp	almost affectionate, often about a child
ortak	a mate, a buddy	warm, only about your own people
klinac, klinka	a kid, a boy; a girl	about people younger than you
ekipa	the gang, your crowd	fine with anyone

Examples

Things	Meaning	In use
lova, keš, pare	money, cash, dosh (pare is just colloquial)	Nemam love do prvog. “I'm broke till the first.”
gajba	a pad, your place (literally “crate”)	Idemo kod mene u gajbu. “Let's go back to my place.”
klopa, klopati	grub; to tuck in	Ima li klope? “Is there any grub?”
tezga	a side job, a gig (literally “market stall”)	Radim tezge vikendom. “I do side gigs at weekends.”
krntija	a wreck, a banger	about an old car

Examples

Doings	Meaning	In use
zezati se, zezanje	to joke around, to kid; kidding around	Zezaš me? “Are you kidding me?”
smarati, smor, smoren	to bore, to nag; a drag; worn out	Ne smaraj. “Don't be a drag.”
blejati, bleja	to hang around doing nothing; loafing	Idemo na bleju. “Let's go and hang out.”
provaliti, skontati, kapirati	to suss out, to figure out, to get it	Kapiraš? “Get it?”
švercovati se	to ride without a ticket, to dodge the fare	Švercovao sam se do centra. “I dodged the fare into town.”

Cheat sheet

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

Slang, jargon, internet speech: cheat sheet

Principle: understand almost all, say the core to friends only, write only the standard officially.

1. Four layers

Layer	Examples	Task
slang	frajer, lova, klopa, blejati, zezati se	understand, use a little
jargon	bag, komitovati, kec, špic, tezga	your own field
online	nzm, vrv, bzvz, pozz	read; write to friends
taboo	swear words, root jeb-, jbg	recognise only

2. Five mechanisms

Meaning shift: gajba crate → pad, riba fish → girl (crude), pauk spider → tow truck, kec ace → lowest mark
Borrowing: ziher Ger., ortak Turk., lova Romani, faca Ital., kul Eng.
Clipping: faks, komp, mob, profa
Suffix: ziheraš, kafedžija, cimerka, lajkovati; then fully inflected
Šatrovački: tebra, vozdra; few new words

3. The core

Group	Words	Meaning
people	frajer, faca, mangup, ortak, klinac, klinka, ekipa, brate	cool guy, big shot, rascal, mate, kid, girl, the gang, bro
things	lova, keš, pare, gajba, klopa, tezga, krntija	money ×3, pad, grub, side job, wreck
doings	zezati se, smarati, smor, smoren, blejati, bleja	kid around, bore, a drag, worn out, hang around, loafing
doings	provaliti, skontati, kapirati, švercovati se, frka	suss out, figure out, get it, dodge the fare, hassle
phrases	Zezaš me? Ne smaraj. Kapiraš? Nema frke! Svaka čast!	Kidding me? Don’t be a drag. Get it? No problem! Respect! (to all)

4. The youth layer, from English

No endings: kul cool (kul mesto), ful really (ful mi se sviđa), random, krindž cringe
Inflected: hejt, hejter, hejtovati; lajkovati, šerovati, skrolovati, tagovati
Pairs: pratilac — folover, priča — storija, objava post, mim meme

5. Professional jargon

Field	Words
IT	bag, debagovati, komitovati, mergovati, deploj, task, produkcija
office	dedlajn, kol, fidbek, apdejtovati, sastanak, izveštaj
school, uni	brucoš, apsolvent, ispitni rok, pao je ispit, kec, bubati, overiti semestar
medicine	hitna, intenzivna, dežurstvo, smena, otpusna lista
sport	derbi, zicer, penal, produžeci, crveni karton
street	špic, pauk, bus traka, šank, tezga

6. Chats

Rule	How
no diacritics	š, ž, č, ć → s, z, c; đ → dj: sta, moze, rodjendan, cao
ambiguity	kuca = house / knocks; sto = hundred, table, što; sav = all / šav seam
skeletons	nzm don't know, nmg can't, vrv probably, nmvz never mind, bzvz pointless, pozz cheers
intonation	doubling stretches (pozzz), caps shout, full stop = cold
alphabet	Latin in chats, Cyrillic officially

7. A word's age

core, ageless: frajer, lova, klopa, tezga, zezati se, ekipa
1990s “awesome”, dated: strava, mrak, ludilo, žestoko
today: kul, ful, random, hejt, krindž

Instead of swearing: Kvragu! Dođavola! Ma pusti! Kakav haos! Asking: Je l' to žargon?, Mogu li ja to da kažem?