Serbian for Beginners: Reading and Pronunciation

Today we're going to focus on pronouncing the letters of Serbian alphabet and reading

words and sentences.

Please follow the Instagram page LearnSerbian or 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 phonetic 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, for example, this can be

a problem. Since reading in these languages is opposite.

It has 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, which we call Čirilica,

and Latinic, Latinica.

Both are used in everyday communication.

Čirilica 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 or bureaucratic

papers that you will come across if you live or want to live in

Serbia. It is also used on national television or any texts 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 Latinic alphabet, but of course, there

is always an option 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 as well.

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 two alphabets compared.

You can see the table in the transcript.

Two alphabets here 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.

You can see the word list below.

A. Avion

B. Beograd V.

Voda

G. Grad D.

Drvo G. G.

Jack E. Exer

Ž, žaba, i, irvas, j,

jabuka, k, kola, l, limun,

lj, ljuljaška, m, mama, n,

naočare, nj, nj, O

P

R

S

T

T

Č

Čurka U Ulica F Fotelja H

Hleb C

Cipela Č

Čekić Dž

Džemper Š

Šator

Below, you can see the table of some consonants compared to English sounds.

For example, J is similar to English pronunciation of the word schedule.

Ž as in pleasure, Nj as in canyon, R in some words which English

does not have, but some other words like German or maybe in Spanish have.

Č like ciao.

H like loch ness Č like chair J like

edge Š like shower and L close to 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

at LearnSerbian. See you next time.

Čau!