Serbian Alphabet with Pronunciation

There are five vowels and 25 consonants.

Stressed vowels tend to be pronounced more clearly and distinctly than their unstressed

counterparts. Stressed vowels are designated with :

Note that r can be both a consonant and a vowel, as in trn (thorn).

Consonants: t, d, s, z, l are dental, which means that the tip of the tongue touches back of the

upper teeth

Consonants: p, t are unaspirated at the beginning of a syllable. So, in this position, p and t

sound like soft English b and d respectively.

Both Latin and Cyrillic scripts are shown in the table below. The letter before ‘/’ is the

Latin variant and the letter in blue ink, after ‘/’ is a corresponding Cyrillic variant.

Pronunciation is given using both an English word (as a reference) and a Serbian word. To

hear either a Serbian or English pronunciation, just click over the word in orange.

A /Aa B / Бб C / Цц Č č / Чч Ć ć / Ћћ

[a:] ‘car’ [b] big [ts] ‘cats’ [ch] ‘chocolate’ No English equivalent; [ty] ‘tune’ in B. English

Ana Beograd cipela čokolada Zlatić, ćošak

D / Дд Dž/ Џџ Đđ / Ђђ E / Ee F/ Фф

[d] 'dog' [g] ‘George’ [j] ‘junk’

[dj] ‘juice’

[e] ‘bed’ [ei] ‘make’

[f] ‘father’

danas džak Ďak Evropa Filip

G/ г H / Xx I / Ии J / Jj K/ Kк

[g] 'god' [h] ‘hot’ [i:] ‘police’ [i] ‘fit’

[j] ‘you’ [j] ‘boy’

[k] ‘king’

guska hvala ima jaje kokoš

L/ Лл Lj/ Љљ M/ Mм N / Hн Nj / Њњ

[l] ‘loop’, ‘cool’

[ly] ‘million’ (as in British English)

[m] ‘mother’ [n] ‘no’ [ny] 'New'' , 'New York'

lopov ljubav mama ne njen

O/ Oo P / п R/ Pp S / Cc Š š/ Шш

[o:] ‘bowl’ [o] ‘caught’

[p] ‘spot’ [r] ‘berry’ [s] ‘sun’ [sh] ‘shop’

ono pismo Srbin, krava sunce ništa

T / Tt U / Yy V / Bв Z / Зз Žž / Жж

[t] ‘tone’ [u:] ‘food’ [u] ‘put’

[v] 'victory' [z] ‘zero’ [zh] ‘pleasure’, ‘Zhivago'

tata uvo, kuda veliki zec život