Asking about food and drink
Ten minutes of the two questions you need at any counter in Serbia: where a thing is and whether they have it. You meet кафа, хлеб and вода again, hear two real sentences said aloud and say them back, then build the questions yourself word by word before the unit's longer materials ask you to understand them at speed.
The part of the grammar page this lesson drills — read it here, then use it.
Yes/No questions: да ли and ли-inversion
Да ли is the safest way to ask a yes/no question: place it first, then keep the statement's normal word order unchanged. Да ли говориш српски? (Do you speak Serbian?) is literally Да ли + Говориш српски.
The alternative is ли-inversion: move the verb to the front and attach ли directly after it, in second position, like any other enclitic. Говориш ли српски? asks the same thing. With бити, the long form combines with ли: Јеси ли уморан? (Are you tired?) - see the lesson on the verb бити.
In a yes/no question, ли can never stand at the very start of a sentence, and can never attach to a noun or pronoun directly - it leans on the conjugated verb leading the clause.
Question words
The core set: ко (who), шта (what), где (where), кад(а) (when), како (how), зашто (why), колико (how much/how many) - see the table below for examples. Each of them usually starts the clause, and the verb most often follows right after.
Two question words also agree with the noun they modify: који/која/које (which) and чији/чија/чије (whose) change ending to match the noun's gender and number - see the table below for који/која/које in each gender.
Ко takes masculine singular agreement even when asking who came: Ко је дошао? To ask which woman from a known group came, use Која је дошла?
| Word | Example |
|---|---|
| ko | Ko je to? |
| šta | Šta radiš? |
| gde | Gde živiš? |
| kad(a) | Kad dolaziš? |
| kako | Kako si? |
| zašto | Zašto plačeš? |
| koliko | Koliko košta? |