At a glance
What will be easy
Every letter is always read the same way. Learn the few special ones (č, ć, š, ž, đ, dž, lj, nj) and you can read any word aloud: kuća “house”, čaša “glass”, ljubav “love”.
There is no “a” or “the”: kuća means a house or the house, and context does the rest. Subject pronouns are usually dropped too: Govorim engleski “I speak English”.
Everyday Serbian gets by with three main tenses: present (radim “I work”), past (radio sam “I worked”) and future (radiću “I will work”). That is far fewer than in English.
What will be hard
Nouns change their endings with their role in the sentence: Beograd, iz Beograda “from Belgrade”, u Beogradu “in Belgrade”, sa prijateljem “with a friend”. Adjectives and pronouns change with them.
Most verbs come in pairs: pisati “to write, be writing” and napisati “to write and finish”. English has no direct equivalent, so you choose between them in almost every sentence.
R can work as a vowel (prst “finger”, trg “square”, crn “black”), č and ć are two different sounds, and h is the ch in Scottish loch. Stress also has tone: it rises or falls, and almost never lands on the last syllable.
Your first 10 phrases
| Phrase | How to say it | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Zdravo! | ZDRAH-voh | Hi! / Bye! |
| Dobar dan | DOH-bahr dahn | Good day / Hello (polite) |
| Hvala lepo | HVAH-lah LEH-poh | Thank you very much |
| Molim | MOH-leem | Please / You’re welcome / Pardon? |
| Izvinite | eez-VEE-nee-teh | Excuse me / Sorry (polite) |
| Koliko košta? | KOH-lee-koh KOHSH-tah | How much is it? |
| Gde je toalet? | gdeh yeh toh-AH-let | Where is the toilet? |
| Ne razumem | neh rah-ZOO-mem | I don’t understand |
| Da li govorite engleski? | dah lee GOH-voh-ree-teh EN-gleh-skee | Do you speak English? |
| Jednu kafu, molim | YED-noo KAH-foo, MOH-leem | One coffee, please |
From A1 to B2: what to learn at each level
- A1
Both alphabets, the present tense of the three verb types (čitam, govorim, pišem), biti “to be” (sam, si, je), nominative and accusative, numbers, about 1,000 of the most frequent words.
- A2
The past tense (radio sam, radila sam), the future (radiću), genitive and locative (iz grada, u gradu), the first aspect pairs.
- B1
All seven cases, the order of short words (Video sam ga “I saw him”), the conditional (bih), constructions with da (hoću da idem “I want to go”), about 3,000 words.
- B2
Passive forms and participles, verbal adverbs (radeći “while working”), the aorist in storytelling (rekoh “I said”), ekavian and ijekavian forms (mleko and mlijeko, “milk”), 3,500 words and more.
How long it takes to learn Serbian
According to the US Foreign Service Institute (FSI), a native English speaker needs about 44 weeks of intensive study to reach professional working proficiency in Serbian. The closer a language is to your own, the faster the road.
More on timing: How long does it take to learn a language to B1 and B2?.
Your first month, 15–20 minutes a day
The Latin alphabet with č, ć, š, ž, đ, dž, lj and nj, plus the 100 most frequent words. Every day: 10 minutes of flashcards and 5 minutes of reading aloud.
Biti “to be” and the present tense, simple sentences about yourself: Zovem se…, Ja sam iz… Start listening to short dialogues.
Accusative and locative in set phrases (pijem kafu, živim u gradu), questions with da li. Write three sentences a day about your day.
The past tense (radio sam), your first A1 stories and 300 words in review. Start on Cyrillic and try a five-minute conversation with a native speaker or in a chat.
Typical mistakes and how to avoid them
Little words like sam, ću, ga, mu and se go second in the sentence: Video sam ga juče “I saw him yesterday”, never Ja video sam ga.
U with the accusative means direction, with the locative it means location: Idem u Beograd “I’m going to Belgrade”, but Živim u Beogradu “I live in Belgrade”.
Use Vi with strangers and older people: Kako ste? “How are you?”, Izvinite. Ti (Kako si?, Izvini) is for friends, family and children.
Jesi li napisao pismo? asks whether the letter is finished; Jesi li pisao pismo? only whether you were writing it. Use the perfective verb when the result matters.
Did you know?
- In the 19th century Vuk Karadžić reformed the alphabet on the principle “write as you speak”, giving every sound exactly one letter.
- The word vampire spread to Western European languages from Serbian vampir in the 18th century, through German reports of vampire cases in Serbian villages.
- Some Serbian words have no vowel letters at all, because r works as a vowel: prst “finger”, trg “square”, smrt “death”.
How NewLexi helps you learn Serbian
- Words on your topics. Serbian cards are generated on request or added from the translator, text, a photo or a file.
- Spaced repetition for every word and four mastery levels.
- Stories and dialogues in Serbian at your level, written with your words; tap any word for a translation.
- Serbian grammar from A1 to C2, a writing trainer with AI correction and a chat.
- Lock Screen cards and iPhone widgets to review words on the go.
FAQ
Is Serbian hard for English speakers?
It is one of the harder European languages for you: the US Foreign Service Institute estimates about 44 weeks of full-time study. Reading is easy from the first week; cases, aspect and word order take the most time.
How long does it take to reach B1?
Plan on roughly 600 hours of study, about a year and a half at an hour a day. Plenty of listening helps the endings stick better than tables do.
Which certificate should I take?
Serbian has no big international exam like DELF or DELE. The best-known option is the certificate from the Centre for Serbian as a Foreign Language at the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade, with levels from A1 to C2.
Is Serbian the same as Croatian?
Speakers understand each other easily. The differences are small: Croatian uses only the Latin alphabet, ijekavian forms (mlijeko, “milk”) and some different words (kruh instead of hleb, “bread”). Learn Serbian and you will understand Croatians, Bosnians and Montenegrins too.
