Traps with the alphabet
Four slips that turn a correctly spelled Serbian word into a wrong one: reaching for a different letter for the /j/ sound out of habit, letting an unstressed о slide toward а, and reaching for two letters - э and ё - that Serbian simply does not have. Ten minutes of building the right version and picking it out from the wrong ones - the last of the series, right before the unit's own first classroom lesson.
The part of the grammar page this lesson drills — read it here, then use it.
Letters and habits worth unlearning
Serbian has no ъ, ь, ы, э, ё, щ, я or ю - letters that exist in some other Cyrillic-using alphabets to show a /j/ glide before a vowel. Serbian simply writes a separate letter ј before the plain vowel instead: ја, је, јо, ју - so јеж (hedgehog) spells the glide with ј before е, and ја (I) does the same before а.
Serbian also has letters with no obvious counterpart in every other Cyrillic-using alphabet: ч and ћ are a hard/soft pair close to English ch in cheap, and џ and ђ are the equivalent hard/soft pair close to English j in jungle and jam - ђ and ћ themselves differ only in voicing, not hardness. It is easy to collapse ч and ћ, or џ and ђ, into one sound out of habit - they are genuinely different letters in Serbian and can change a word's meaning.
Finally, Serbian spelling never reduces unstressed vowels the way some languages do (an unstressed о sounding like а) - always write the vowel that belongs to the word, regardless of stress: говори (speaks), never говари.
| 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 |