Serbian Phonetic System: The Secret Workings You Won't Find In Your Textbooks: Part 1

Many people who start learning Serbian inevitably hit the question, "How the heck do you pronounce that?” at least several times. Many of them have even been misguided by the widespread oversimplification that doesn't help one to distinguish the sounds.

You already know that Serbian has 30 sounds and 30 letters, with each letter corresponding to a sound. That means that every letter is always pronounced the same way. You also know that Serbia is a digraphic country, which is to say that they use two writing systems: the Cyrillic and the Latin alphabets.

Table 1: The Serbian alphabet in its Latin order, with the Cyrillic letters in the second column and the IPA pronunciation in the third column.

Vowel System

Let us start from the simplest concept. There are five vowels in Serbian: a, e, i, o and u.

• a is pronounced as it is in Italian, Spanish and French, or as in the English word car;
• e is pronounced as it is in Italian and Spanish, or as in the English word end;
• i is pronounced as it is in Italian and Spanish, or as the "ee" in the English see;
• o is pronounced as it is in Italian and Spanish, or as in the English word gone;
• u is pronounced as it is in (no wonder), Italian and Spanish, or as the "oo" in the English loop.

You must admit, it is very clear and simple. No umlauts nor any modifiers. A piece of cake.

The Rebellious R

Now there is this one thing: the consonant r, that is pronounced like the Italian or soft Spanish r, can sometimes act as a vowel. That is to say that the consonant r can carry the syllable and even carry the tone in a word. Let us look at several examples:

• брдо / [brdo] - hill
• прст / [prst] - finger
• врх / [vrh] - peak, top
• брзалица / [brzalica] - tongue twister
• тврђава / [tvrđava] - fortress

If you haven't learned how to roll your r's yet, make your tongue trill, maybe with the help of this article.

Then make it rock and roll with these funny tongue twisters that Serbian children use to practice their r's:

• Riba ribi grize rep!
• Tri tigra, tri tigrice i tri tigrića!
• Na vrh brda vrba mrda!
• Crni jarac crnom trnu grize crn vrh. Ne grizi mi, crni jarče, crnom trnu crn vrh!

Listen to the audio of the tongue twisters here.

Simple Consonants

I have some good news! The following consonants are pronounced the same as in virtually any other Indo-European language: b, p, g, k, d, t, f, v, m, n, and l.

Spanish speakers please refer to this article about how to distinguish the v and b sounds:

The h Sound is a Sigh

In Serbian, h is pronounced softer than a Spanish Jorge says it in his name, but a bit harsher than the English words "house" or "here." If you have trouble with this sound (like most Italians and French do), try opening your mouth and exhaling or sighing with a noise. Then repeat that process with the back of your tongue approaching your palate (like when saying g in "go"), but without touching it. And that's it!

Now have a go at these words:

• Hana - a female name
• hodati - to walk
• hladan - cold
• hodnik - corridor
• hleb - bread
• hvala - thank you

And the following sentences:

• Hana je hitro hodala hladnim hodnikom.
• Hajde, hoćeš da kupimo hleba i hladnih pihtija?

You can listen to the audio here.

Palatalizing and Palatalized Sounds

The letter j is used in Serbian to write a sound that is pronounced in the English words “yes” and “you.” Think of it as a half-vowel /i/ (gee!); if you say /i/ with your teeth clenched together, you'll get it.

Now, this j is a palatalizing sound. If we add it to the consonant n to form the letter nj, we get the Spanish ñ or Italian/French gn sound. English speakers pronounce it when they say "canyon" or "New York." In fact, in Serbian the Big Apple is called Njujork / Њујорк.

After you've analyzed the process that gets us from n to nj, we can move on to the distinction between l and lj. Try saying l with your tongue skintight to your palate in the same manner like when you're pronouncing nj, and you'll have the lj sound as well. It is the Italian gli sound. In the English word “million” you hear a similar sound.

• nos - njuška
• lula - ljuljaška
• Ljuljala se Ljilja na ljuljašci, njihala se pa ljoljnula i razbila nos.
• Zaljubila se lepa Ljubica u lepog Ljubu.

You can listen to the audio here.

Take some time to analyze the sounds that you found difficult to pronounce. Think through them, listen to the audio files, and practice pronouncing them. Practice the tongue twisters and write to me about how you managed to conquer them. Which of those sounds are the most difficult for you? Which tongue twister made you chuckle? Maybe you need an additional explanation? If so, give me some feedback; I'd love to hear from you.

Get ready for the second part of the article about the trickiest Serbian sounds where we will deconstruct and explain them in detail, making them easier for you.

Magdalena Petrovic is a teacher at italki whom many students have described as “excellent” and “fun.” Did you like her article? Keep reading her blog, or access further interesting materials for Serbian learning here.

Image Sources

Hero image by Robert Couse-Baker (CC BY 2.0)