Serbian for Beginners: Asking Questions
Zdravo! Welcome to the new episode of Serbian for Beginners. I am your online Serbian tutor, Nikola. Before we start, make sure to follow my Instagram page: @learn__serbian (Serbian Language Network) where you can book your free trial lesson and find even more learning materials! If you have any question, you can also write me at email in the description of each episode (nikola.pujic@gmail.com)
Today, we are learning how to ask questions in Serbian. This is one of the most useful skills you can master within minutes and use it in everyday situations when traveling, getting around or talking with friends and family. After we cover the theory, we are going to apply what we learned in three texts, in three different levels. Ready, ok! Let’s start!
Simple, one word questions:
These are very frequent questions you can use to get answer to absolutely anything! Let’s see the list:
Ko? – Who?
Šta? – What?
Kako? – How?
Gde? – Where?
Zašto? – Why?
Koliko? – How much?
That’s it! That is all words you will need for getting around. Be careful not to mix „zašto“ with „zato što“. The second word means because, and it’s a common mistake to mix these two. With this list, all of your sentences can be consisted just of one word. Of course, it would be better if we could expand those sentences. Let’s take a look at some basic interrogative sentences:
Kako se zoveš / zovete? – What is your name?
Koliko imaš /imate godina? – How old are you?
Gde živiš /živite? – Where do you live?
Kako si /ste? – How are you?
Ko je to? - Who is that?
Šta je to? – What is that?
Koliko košta? – How much is it?
Gde je .....? – Where is .....?
You’ve probably heard some of these before, right? That’s because these sentences are quite frequent, and you can use them a lot! Try mixing them with the stuff you already learn to say in Serbian. Now, let’s take a look at the syntax of interrogative sentences: how to make a full sentence when asking questions.
Using „Da li“
This is the most common, the most standard and polite way to ask a question in Serbian. There will be other ways, some maybe even more frequent in use, but to someone who is a beginner in learning Serbian, this is the syntax I would advise you to use.
Da li on its own doesn’t mean anything. It is simply a marker that says: „I am starting a question“. Similarly to French Est-ce Que, you would use this at the start of the question. Let’s look at the example:
Ti sviraš klavir. > Da li ti sviraš klavir?
You play piano. > Do you play piano?
Ti si učenik. > Da li si ti učenik?
You are a student. > Are you a student?
We have a starting sentence and a question we made out of that sentence. In the first sentence, there is an action involved: the person you are talking to plays a piano. Therefore, when you make a question it will be pretty easy: you just put Da li at the start and copy the whole starting sentence.
But, if we take a look at the second sentence, we can see that in it, there is no action involved. Therefore, we need to do an inversion. We switch the places of first two words (subject and the verb to be): ti si becomes si ti . English language does this as well: You are a student : Are you a student. However, unlike in English, in Serbian this will only happen if there is no action involved in the starting sentence or interrogative sentence.
There you go, those are some basic skills for making questions in Serbian. If you would like to practice and do exercises, you can message me on my Instagram page and apply for the full course! Now, let’s take a look at some texts in three different levels, from most simple to more complex. Pay attention to syntax of making questions that we covered so far.
Level 1
Dete: Mama, šta radiš?
Mama: Odmaram.
Dete: Zašto?
Mama: Zato što sam umorna.
Dete: Tata, šta ti radiš?
Tata: Ja pričam sa dedom na telefonu.
Dete: Gde je on?
Tata: On je u bašti.
Dete: Zašto?
Level 2
A: Dobar dan, kako se zovete?
B: Dobar dan, ja se zovem Petar Petrović.
A: Koliko imate godina i odakle ste?
B: Imam trideset četiri godine i iz Beograda sam, ali živim u Novom Sadu.
A: Koliko dugo radite u IT sektoru?
B: Radim već pet ili šest godina.
A: U redu, hvala. Pođite ovamo.
Level 3
A: Šta imamo za ručak danas?
B: Molim?
A: Kažem, šta imamo da jedemo danas?
B: Imamo picu. Da li si gladna?
A: Da! Baš sam gladna. Da li si ti ti jela danas?
B: Jela sam doručak samo. Kako je bilo na poslu?
A: Bilo je dobro, ali sam umorna. Šta si ti radila danas? Da li si išla u banku?
Those are all three texts in all different levels. When making sentences using Da li syntax, you can exclude subjects (personal pronouns or names) from the sentence. Also, you can use word molim to politely ask someone to repeat what they said.
That’s it! We went over some basic vocabulary, did some grammar and syntax and went through the texts with practical examples. There is a lot more to learn here. There are two more ways you can ask a question, and one of those two is the most frequent, but mostly used in spoken Serbian. Try combining these skill with all previous grammar and vocabulary that we covered in these episodes.
There is a lot more to come, so if you’re interested please follow our Instagram page: @learn__serbian (Serbian Language Network) where you can find more materials and book a trial lesson. You can also sent me an email to my email address which is in the description of every episode (nikola.pujic@gmail.com). And finally, you can support the show by donating at Buy me a Coffee website. Hvala and vidimo se uskoro! Ćao!