Tag & confirmation questions

Lesson opening

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

Tag questions: zar ne, je l' da?

You can already ask a plain yes/no question (the lesson “Yes–no questions”). But real conversation rarely asks from scratch. More often we already know the answer and only want the other person to confirm it: “Nice, isn’t it?”, “You’re coming, right?”, “Tomorrow at five, OK?”. These little add-ons at the end of a sentence are called tag questions (or confirmation questions), and Serbian has a handy, compact set of words for them.

In this lesson we will collect the Serbian “tags” that ask for agreement, zar ne?, je l' da?, važi? and a few very short ones, and see how the particle zar colours a question with surprise. There is nothing difficult here: it is more a collection of ready-made conversational formulas than grammar.

zar ne? — the all-purpose “isn’t it?”

The most versatile tag is zar ne?. It never changes and fits almost anywhere English would use isn’t it?, aren’t you?, right? or the formal is it not?. It sounds neutral, so it works both in conversation and in writing. Attach it to a statement and you get a gentle request for confirmation:

The huge advantage of zar ne? is that it never changes. An English speaker has to pick the tag to match the verb and the person (you are, aren’t you?; he can, can’t he?; they went, didn’t they?). A Serbian speaker does not: one zar ne? fits every sentence, much like French n’est-ce pas? or German oder?. And in quick speech among friends a bare ne? will do, rather like English “…, no?”: Ideš sutra, ne? “You’re going tomorrow, right?”.

je l' da? — the Serbian “right?”

Another very common tag is je l' da?, pronounced as one quick word, roughly “YEL-da” (Serbian j is the y of yes). It is a contraction of je li da, literally “is it (so)?”, that is, “is it true?”. It is colloquial and friendly, and in everyday speech it sounds like English right? or true?; just like zar ne?, it asks for agreement:

Cheat sheet

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

Tag questions: zar ne, je l' da?

A tag question is a statement plus a short tag inviting the listener to agree. The key difference from English: Serbian tags are invariable. They never copy the verb or the person (no isn’t it / don’t you / can’t he); you just put them at the end of the sentence, after a comma.

The whole set of tags

Confirming a fact: zar ne? and je l' da?

• Both are invariable and interchangeable: one formula fits any sentence, with no matching to verb or person.
• je l' da? is contracted from je li da: linking verb je + particle li + da, literally “is it so?”. Texts often have jel da, jelda; the spelling rules want the apostrophe: je l' da.
• Colloquial je l' (from je li) at the start of a question stands in for the neutral da li: Je l' ideš? Are you going? Je l' može? Is that OK? In writing: Da li ideš? or Ideš li?

Making a plan: važi? može? dobro?

These three ask not for confirmation of a fact but for agreement to do something (“deal?”). Answer with an echo, the same word: Važi!, Može!, Dobro! Deal! Sure! OK!

zar at the start: the particle of surprise

On its own before a sentence, zar colours the question with amazement (“really?”, “surely not?”): the speaker expected the opposite. Plain Ne znaš? just asks “you don’t know?”; Zar ne znaš? adds “what do you mean, you don’t know?!”.