I am in lesson #4 of my Serbian language book and I have a few observations about the language.
- I was surprised at many foreigners in Belgrade don’t bother to learn the language. I can see there point that many Serbs, especially younger people, speak English. Also, world wide, Serb-Croat speakers probably number 20 million, max (I just looked on wikipedia and they have the figure of 12 million.) There are more people in California than that.
- It is my goal to get through the book and have working vocabulary. I know I’ll never be totally fluent, but it would be nice to be able to follow a conversation. I believe it will be worth the effort to put into to study. As with any language, it offers insight into a different perspective into seeing the world.
- Being a slavic language, it feels like I am getting back in touch with my roots and speaking the language (or similar) of my ancestors.
- The dual alphabet of the Cyrillic / Latin is interesting. I don’t know of how many languages that have alternative alphabets. Of course the Latin is easier for a westerner and that is the one I am focusing on in picking up new vocabulary. But with so many signs in cyrillic, one can’t help but try to learn them. It is like a puzzle, and we are always trying to sound out the signs we see.
- The cyrillic differentiates Serbs from Croats and Serbs take pride in this. It is a remnant of the Byzantine Empire influence over Serbia. Serbia has always been a frontier between east and west, mostly being inside the eastern influence rather than the western side.
- I now understand why people who have learned one language can learn another easier than someone with only one language.
- Serb is similar to Spanish regarding verb conjugation. So far I have only learned the I ending -m, the you (informal “ti”) -š and the you (formal “vi”) -te The infinitive ending of the verbs is iti, for example govoriti means to speak.
- Nouns have three genders (Spanish only has two). Masculine nouns end in consonants, feminine is “a” and neutral in “o”. The is no articles in Serb so no confusion over the “el” or “la” of Spanish. The difficult part, and I am bitter about this, is that the ENDING OF NOUNS CHANGE DEPENDING UPON THEIR USAGE. For example, the word for coffee is kafa. In the nominative or basic form, one can easily see that it is a feminine noun. But when you are ordering a coffee, the ending changes to kafu because it is the direct object of the sentence. For example, Ja bih jednu kafu. (I would like a coffee.) Jednu is the number one, and this also changes depending on the noun it describes.
- Serbs get a big kick out of a foreigner speaking Serb. They have been very patient with me and my accent must sound funny to them. My Serb always illicit a smile and a laugh.
- I am at the point in my learning that I am memorizing and using short phrases for common things. Below is a list of the phrases I have mastered:
Kako se zovete? (What is your name?)
Zovem se Bill. (My name is Bill)
Molim bac (please and welcome)
Hvala (thank you)
Drago mi je. (nice to meet you)
Ya sam (I am) / ti si (you are) / vi ste (you are)
When you ask a question, throw a “Da li” in front of it. For example, Da li govorite Engleski? Do you speak English?
Ne razumen. (I don’t understand.)
New Phrases I want to learn this week
Izvolite – Can I help you?
Živolite! – Cheers
Ja bih (kafu) molim bac? – I would like a coffee please.
Dajte mi (kafu) molim bac? – Give me a coffee please.
U redu – okay / all right
Bill's Blog 
“bac” ? I think you’re mixing Cyrillic with Latin.
Good luck with the Serbian grammar 🙂
You’re right! It should be Molin Bas. With three “c” in the Latin, it gets confusing. Thanks for catching that, I was wondering why I was getting funny looks when saying Molin Bac.
Cheers-Živeli! ,not živolite
It would be easier with Cyrillic (I mean on three “c”)
C=Ц
Č=Ч
Ć=Ћ
Good luck – Srećno!!!!!!!
I know my comment comes a little late but hey, better late than never 🙂
Hi Bill, congratulations on your Blog, it is nice to see Serbia through the eyes of a foreigner. I especially appreciate the degree of respect and honest interest you bring towards the serbian people and your effort in experiencing the country as it is, instead of just looking down on it.
I have two comments regarding your language-lessons:
1. It is “Molim vas”, you probably just mixed it up with the cyrillic spelling where a b looking letter is a V in latin, and the cyrillic C is a S in latin. I occasionally get into trouble with it on reading street signs, menu’s etc. as well, since i learned it out of newspapers myself (started off with 3 cyrillic letters and all the ones that are equal to latin letters, and then just figured out what the words looked like and after some time my memory knew what certain letters meant).
2. Your are right about there not being many serbian/croatian speakers, but if you look at the base of the serbian language, you will see that it is a slavic language and therefor similar to other slavic languages. And, while croatian is still very tradionally slavic (month’s names for example) serbian is more modern (month’s names november, oktober instead of slavic listopad, rujan etc..) and mixed with, at least I feel that way, best and most widespread words from other southern european languages in their respective time period of influence, which will help you figure out and understand a lot of other language with very little effort if you can understand serbian. I know this may sound a bit exaggerated but this is the experience I made, since my parents are serbian but I was born and raised in germany, only one year of french with bad grades made me better in understanding french texts than my german friends who had several years. On top of that, on my visits to Poland, Czezh Republic, Bulgaria (Cyrillic only), the slavic roots of the language came in very handy, i basicly only added some cz’s and Sh’s on my serbian where I felt they were needed and suddenly everyone understood my questions, while before not everyone was eager to engage in an english conversation. Bulgarian Menu’s only written in bulgarian cyrillic (twice as hard as serbian cyrillic) were no problem either, I just read the word out loud in my head and pronounced it as russian sounding as I could and in the same second my head recognized the equivalent serbian word in it. Same in POland etc… Also, if you master the pronounciation you will be able to pronounce even the hardest german words and the smoothest french and spanish words. Watching some movie or tv in serbian may help a lot if you have the basics, you may not understand one single sentence at first, but after some time you’ll get through it. I’ll give you some examples of words that are brought into serbian from another language:
A thousand in Serbian is “Hiljada”, in other slavic languages (croatian, russian) it is tisuca. Hiljada comes from the greek language.
A lot of the technical things that we use today and which were invented in the 19 century carry their international or french/italian/spanish names.
Like a truck is Kamion in serbian, and Camion in french.
A refridgirator/fridge being “Frizider” (the Z like a g in gendarme) and frigidaire in french, refrigerador in spanish.
A sidewalk is trotoar in serbian and trotoar in french.
Pants are pantalone in serbian and pantaloni in italian and pantalones in spanish.
A heater is radiator in serbian and radiateur in french.
A traffic light is semafor in serbian and semaforo in italian and spanish.
An airplane is avion in serbian, french and spanish.
A tv is televizor, but that should explain itself. There are a hundred other words that I can’t remember right know, but you’ll stumble across ’em eventually. Knowing serbian has made learning other languages, understanding languages that I don’t know and speaking and pronouncing words from different languages easier for me, I didn’t know the value it had when I was younger, but when I was in my late teens I eventually found out… 🙂
I hope you enjoy the rest of your stay. Do you know until when you’ll be staying or is it an open end arrangement? I would be happy if I got an answer 🙂
Best regards,
Marko
I have a contract for three years which began in July of 2008. I am able to renew year-by-year beginning in July of 2011 if I want to and the school still likes me. My family is very happy here after our first year so we’ll see how it goes for years 2 & 3.
I am a fluent Spanish speaker and also noticed the cognates! Makes it easier.
I am visiting Serbia in a couple weeks. Your article was very encouraging. I am also pretty fluent in Spanish. I did a google search for cognates and serbian and found your page. I have been studying the language for about 6 months now. It’s starting to get more difficult with all the tenses! I love the two alphabets! I took a lot of diction classes in college and they are REALLY paying off now learning Serbian!
I was trying to learn serbian from a person, Buy I was not so much clear. Then One day one of my friend reffered me a website names lingolearn. It was very easy to learn serbian there. The tutiorals helped me alot. хвала 🙂
Nice Blog, …….
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Thanks