Take away from Belgrade, part 2

* special letters and cyrllic alphabet *

Serbian alphabet contains of 30 letters.

If you came to Serbia, or just went to any of our websites, you could have noticed that we have some "funny letters" not known in english albhabet...

ć pronounced as tj (ćevapčići - ćevapčići :)
č pronounced as ch (chair - čear, čutura, čvarak)
ž pronounced as zh (giraffe - žiraf, žbun, ždrijelo)
š pronounced as sh (shout - šaut, šešir, šargarepa)
đ pronounced as dj (djevrek - đevrek :)
dž pronounced as d3 (just - džast, dživdžan)

Certainly the most funniest thing that had ever happened to me concerning our language is to explain the difference between ć and č, and đ and dž to non native serbian! :)

They all here it as a same sound! :)

and it certainly is not :) the fist one is "softer" than the second one that is "harder" while pronouncing :)

(same thing happened to me while trying to learn turkish... i and I... Aybars claim that there is a difference! hm..)

After you accept these not really common letters, even in our language (except ć, 'cause most of our surnames ends with ić), you run into another not common thing for foreigners (except of armenians :) ) and that is a Cyrillic alphabet! :)



The founder of the cyrillic alphabet known today is Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, in 19th century.

Some letters are same as in latin alphabet (for example A, E, O, M, T), and some of them are totally another one in cyrillic than in latin alphabet (for example, H in cyrillic stands for N, or P in cyrillic represents R, ...)

Try to learn it before you come or at least as soon as you come to Serbia, otherwise you could face small challanges, 'cause all street names, signs in post offices, bus and railway station, etc. are in cyrillic alphabet! :)

Here you can download ПРАВИ БУКВАР - a programme in which you can learn serbian alphabet and hear the proprer pronounciation. :) (9.2 MB, shorter version - 1.4 MB can be found here)

Good luck! :)