Yes–no questions
Lesson opening
This is the first part of the lesson. The rest, the exercises and the reviews are in the app.
Yes–no questions: how to ask "yes or no?"
You can make statements and you can negate them; now it is time to ask. We start with the simplest questions, the ones you answer with "yes" or "no": "Are you a student?", "Do you work?", "Have you got time?". Grammarians call them yes–no questions, as opposed to the questions with "who? what? where?", which get a lesson of their own.
Serbian has three equally good ways to build a yes–no question, and you will need all three. The first is the all-purpose opener da li at the start of the sentence. The second is the question particle li straight after the verb. The third is intonation alone, with no extra word at all. English has nothing like li: think of it as a question mark you can say out loud (it sounds like English lee). We will go through all three and see when each one fits best.
And some good news first. English builds a question with a helper verb or by swapping the words around: “You work” becomes “Do you work?”, “You are tired” becomes “Are you tired?”. Serbian needs no do, and the statement stays almost as it is: with da li nothing in it moves, with li the verb comes to the front so that li can follow it, and with intonation only the voice changes. So once you can say “you work”, you can very nearly ask “do you work?”.
Way one: da li
The simplest and safest way: put da li at the front, then say an ordinary statement without changing anything in it. It always works, it sounds neutral, and there is nothing to get wrong.
You can see the pattern: da li + [ordinary sentence]. The word order after it does not change; it is the statement, with a question "flag" planted in front. Compare English, where "Ana drinks coffee" has to be rebuilt as "Does Ana drink coffee?"; Serbian just adds the flag: Ana pije kafu → Da li Ana pije kafu?. You ask about a quality, about whether something exists and about where someone is in exactly the same way:
It is this simplicity that makes da li so common in Serbia, in speech and in writing alike. If you are unsure which way to choose, choose da li: you cannot go wrong with it.
A bonus you will meet again later: the same da li also introduces a reported question, the kind English opens with whether or if. There it does exactly the job of English whether:
Reported questions get their own lesson, "Indirect questions"; for now it is enough to recognise da li there as "whether".
Way two: verb + li
The second way is shorter: drop the da, put the verb first, and let the particle li follow it immediately. Say it as one word, stressing the verb: Radiš li? sounds like “RA-deesh-lee”.
The two columns mean the same thing, and both are neutral: fine in conversation and in writing. The one thing to remember about li: it stands in second place, after the first stressed word, and it can never start the sentence itself. That is why the verb moves to the front: li needs a word to lean on.
Cheat sheet
The cheat sheet — everything essential from the lesson on one page. In the app it opens at any time.
Yes–no questions
Three equally good ways. No helper verb like English do: with da li nothing moves, with li the verb comes first.
Three ways
Da li govoriš srpski? Da li imaš vremena? Da li je kafa dobra? Da li ima mesta? Da li su oni kod kuće? Da li Ana pije kafu? Do you speak Serbian? Have you got time? Is the coffee good? Is there any room? Are they at home? Does Ana drink coffee?
Intonation: Ti si Ana? Radiš danas? Ideš sa mnom? Sve je u redu? You're Ana? Working today? Coming with me? Everything all right?
Reported question: da li = "whether": Ne znam da li je kod kuće. I don't know whether she's at home.
The particle li
li is an unstressed clitic: it leans on the first word and never opens the sentence. Put another word first and the question zooms in on it: Radiš li danas? Ti li radiš? Danas li radiš? Are you working today? Is it YOU who's working? Is it TODAY you're working?
Questions with biti ("to be")
The short sam, si, je are clitics and cannot come first. Two ways out; “is he / is she?” is Je li…?:
Answers
Short: da / ne; more often: echo the verb, which also settles a negative question: Ne radiš danas? — Radim. Aren’t you working today? I am. Very casual: aha (“uh-huh”), jok (“nope”).
zar and ili
- zar ("surely…? really?") goes first and adds surprise, often with a negative: Zar ne znaš? Zar već? Zar je tako kasno? Don't you know? Already? Is it really that late? A plain negative question needs no zar: Ne radiš danas? zar ne? at the end = "isn't it? / right?".
- ili ("or") offers a choice; answer with an option, not yes/no: Kafa ili čaj? Hoćeš li kafu ili čaj? Da li ideš danas ili sutra? Coffee or tea? Would you like coffee or tea? Are you going today or tomorrow? Answer: Kafu, molim. Coffee, please.