Azbuka i pravila čitanja
Overview
Serbian is written in Cyrillic and Latin. Cyrillic is the official script in Serbia; Latin is also widely used.
Serbian spelling is largely phonemic. Vuk Karadžić’s saying, „Пиши као што говориш, читај као што је написано“ - write as you speak, read as it is written - sums up the idea. Cyrillic letters closely match sounds, and there are no silent letters. In Latin, lj, nj and dž each represent one sound.
30 letters, 30 sounds
Serbian Cyrillic has 30 letters, each representing one sound. Љ, Њ and Џ are single letters, though Latin writes them as Lj, Nj and Dž.
Learn the letter-sound pairs in the table to read unfamiliar words. Spelling does not show stress or vowel length; learn those with each word.
Letters and habits worth unlearning
Serbian has no ъ, ь, ы, э, ё, щ, я or ю. Write the j sound with ј before the vowel: ја, је, јо, ју (јеж, never ёж).
Ч and Ћ are different sounds, as are Џ and Ђ. The first in each pair is hard, the second soft. The contrast changes meaning: вече ‘evening’ vs. веће ‘bigger’. Learn the letters with the words.
Write unstressed vowels as they appear in the word: говори, not *говари.
Tables
| Letter | Example |
|---|---|
| A a | avion |
| B b | brat |
| V v | voda |
| G g | glava |
| D d | dan |
| Đ đ | đak |
| E e | evo |
| Ž ž | žena |
| Z z | zec |
| I i | ime |
| J j | jaje |
| K k | kuća |
| L l | lav |
| Lj lj | ljubav |
| M m | mama |
| N n | noć |
| Nj nj | njiva |
| O o | oko |
| P p | pas |
| R r | ruka |
| S s | sunce |
| T t | trava |
| Ć ć | ćilim |
| U u | usta |
| F f | film |
| H h | hleb |
| C c | cvet |
| Č č | čaj |
| Dž dž | džep |
| Š š | šuma |
Examples
Compared with…
English spelling is famously unpredictable - though, through, tough and cough are four different sounds for the same four letters. Serbian is the opposite extreme: very nearly phonetic, with a close letter-to-sound match and no silent letters at all. Where English has one ch sound and one j sound, Serbian has two of each: ч is the ch of church, said with slightly rounded lips, and ћ is softer, close to the t in British tune; џ is the j of jam, and ђ is the softer d of British duke.
Common mistakes
Tips & exceptions
- When a foreign or borrowed word enters Serbian, it is spelled the way it sounds, never the way it looks in the source language - sound it out and spell what you hear.
- Read the alphabet table aloud a few times, then flip the script toggle at the top of the page to Latin and check yourself letter by letter.
- Practise telling ч apart from ћ, and џ apart from ђ, from the start: play the pairs among the examples (вече / веће, чути / ћути, ђак / џак) and repeat them aloud until you hear the difference.
- The Latin digraphs Lj, Nj and Dž take a capital only on their first letter in a capitalised word (Љубав → Ljubav), but on both letters in an all-caps word (ЉУБАВ → LJUBAV).
- Loanwords are adapted to Serbian spelling by sound, not copied letter-for-letter from the source language - English football becomes фудбал, spelled exactly as a Serbian speaker pronounces it.