Serbian Language for Beginners: E3
Reading
Zdravo! Welcome to the new episode! Today, we are going to focus on pronouncing the letters of Serbian alphabet and reading words and sentences. Please follow the Instagram page: @learn__serbian (Serbian Language Network) for more interesting materials. Also, transcript is included with each episode, you can find it on Buzzsprout website. Let’s start reading!
Many of my beginner students often have troubles when learning to read Serbian. Don’t be confused: Serbian language (or alphabet) is very easy to read! It has a phonetic orthography and reading system, which means that every letter is read or pronounced the way it is written, and vice versa: you will write the letters the way you hear them. Serbian is not alone in this, many languages have phonetic system as well. But, for many native English or French speaking students, this can be a problem, since reading in these languages is opposite – it has a morphological reading system. So, I’m here to help! Let’s learn how to read in Serbian!
First of all, Serbian language has two official alphabets: Cyrillic (ćirilica) and Latin (latinica). Both are used in everyday communication. Ćirilica can be considered as more “traditional“ alphabet, since it has a longer history in relation to Serbian language and literacy. It is used in all documents and texts related to some official, birocratic papers that you will come across if you live or want to live in Serbia. It is also used on national television, or any text that came out of any state institution in Serbia. Latinica, on the other side, is used more on the internet, when communicating online. Most of private Serbian websites will be in Latin alphabet, but of course, there is always an options to change it to Cyrillic. In addition to this, most of the shop signs that you can see in the streets of Serbia are in latinic alphabet. Most of newspapers, books and other literary works are in latinic alphabet. For this reason, I usually offer students to start learning Serbian using latinica. It is the more frequent alphabet and many of my students are native in languages that use latinic alphabet already, so this comes as a logical and simple solution. Here are the two alphabets, compared:
А A З Z Њ NJ Ф F
Б B И I О O Х H
В V Ј J П P Ц C
Г G К K Р R Ч Č
Д D Л L С S Џ DŽ
Ђ Đ Љ LJ Т T Ш Š
Е E М M Ћ Ć
Ж Ž Н N У U
Two alphabets are given in parallel. Cyrillic letters and latinic letters next to it are pronounced in the same way. There is no difference in pronunciation between cyrillic and latinic alphabets. The letter order in these two alphabets are slightly different in general, but because I wanted to give you parallel comparison, in this table latinic alphabet follows cyrillic letter order. I will pronounce each letter and give you the example with a word which has given letter as a starting sound.
Word list:
avion (airplane), Beograd (Belgrade), voda (water), grad (city), drvo (tree), đak (student), ekser (nail), žaba (frog), irvas (reindeer), jabuka (apple), kola (car), limun (lemon), ljuljaška (swing), mama (mom), naočare (glasses), njiva (field), olovka (pencil), pismo (letter), riba (fish), sunce (sun), torba (bag), ćurka (turkey), ulica (street), fotelja (armchair), hleb (bread), cipela (shoe), čekić (hammer), džemper (sweater), šator (tent)
Here is the table of some consonants compared to english sounds:
| đ | schedule | h | loch
| ž | pleasure | č | chair
| nj | canyon | dž | edge
| r | Fritz | š | shower
| ć | ciao | lj | million
Well, that’s it for this short episode for beginners! You should definitely replay the letters that are hardest for you to pronounce. Reading is learned through repetition and practicing with new words! I hope this guide can help you overcome your obstacles and help you with future learning process. If you like this kind of material, make sure to follow the Instagram page: @learn__serbian. See you next time! Ćao!