Language and alphabet

Serbian is a Slavic language used primarily in Serbia and Montenegro. You can also use it in Bosnia and Croatia, since the difference is quite trifle, and if you stick to basic conversations you can easily get by in Bulgaria and Macedonia.

Serbian is a completely phonetic language, meaning that every letter represents only one sound, and every sound is represented by one letter. The formula concocted by Vuk Karadzic, the great 19th century reformist of Serbian Language, goes "write as you speak, read as it's written" - thanks to this, learning the 30 letters of alphabet is all you'll ever need in order to read Serbian.

One of the rather confusing things about Serbian language is its alphabet - actually, its alphabets, since two of them are used parallelly. Latin and Serbian Cyrillic are completely equivalent and all Serbs are familliar with both. There is no general rule in choosing the alphabet - street names, newspapers as well as train schedules are sometimes written in Cyrillic and sometimes in Latin.

On this page you can find the pronunciation key to Serbian Cyrilic alphabet and some key phrases.

Pronounciation key

	as in "cat"
	as in "bat"
	as in "vampire"
	as in "god"
	as in "dog"
	as in "schedule"
	as in "day"
	as in "conclusion", "vision"
	as in "zero"
	as in "meek"
	as in "yolk"
	as in "key"
	as in "leg"
	as in "volume"
	as in "mat"
	as in "net"
	as in "canyon" or "new"
	as in "oath"
	as in "pad"
	as in "rat"
	as in "sand"
	as in "tip"
	as in "feature"
	as in "book"
	as in "fat"
	as in "hat"
	as in "tzar"
	as in "champion"
	as in "dodge"
	as in "sharp"

Key phrases