In January and February I'll be adding a "Winter Special Edition" of easy Serbian lessons to all of my online Serbian courses, starting from Serbian101, Serbian 102, Serbian 103 and Serbian 201. Some of these, I'll be posting to this blog, so you can follow them and get an idea of what they are like. Through these "horoscope lessons of Serbian" I'll be trying to help you learn how to speak as a man/woman through different  tenses.

An accompanying presentation with the explanations in English will be posted on each course. It looks like this:

And there's more:




Winter gives every character a different grammatical voice

Serbian often reveals the speaker’s gender in past-tense participles and certain adjectives. A man says Bio sam umoran; a woman says Bila sam umorna. The auxiliary stays sam, while both the participle and adjective reflect gender.

In many present- and future-tense sentences, the verb itself does not distinguish a male from a female speaker: Danas radim and Sutra ću raditi suit both. A horoscope character can therefore help you notice exactly where gender becomes audible instead of adding gender everywhere.

A man and a woman share the event but not every ending

LatinicaЋирилицаEnglish
Jarac je juče dugo planirao zimsko putovanje.Јарац је јуче дуго планирао зимско путовање.Capricorn spent a long time planning a winter trip yesterday.
Ona je rekla da je bila neobično strpljiva.Она је рекла да је била необично стрпљива.She said that she had been unusually patient.
Danas oba prijatelja traže toplu planinsku kuću.Данас оба пријатеља траже топлу планинску кућу.Today, both friends are looking for a warm mountain cottage.
Sutra će Blizanci zajedno praviti sneška.Сутра ће Близанци заједно правити снешка.Tomorrow, Gemini will build a snowman together.
Umorna Vodolija je rano završila večernju šetnju.Уморна Водолија је рано завршила вечерњу шетњу.The tired Aquarius finished the evening walk early.

Read the horoscope clue, then choose the speaker

Choose one male and one female horoscope character. Give each a sentence about yesterday, today and tomorrow; circle only the words whose form changes because of the speaker’s gender.

  1. Female equivalent of bio sam umoran?
  2. Write zimsko putovanje in Cyrillic.
  3. Does radim reveal the speaker’s gender?
  4. Complete: Ona je rano ______. (finish)
  5. Translate praviti sneška.

Snow clears from the tense timeline

  1. bila sam umorna
  2. зимско путовање
  3. no
  4. završila
  5. to build a snowman

Retell one character’s three-day forecast in the first person. If you switch the speaker’s gender, change only the forms that truly require it.
Marina Petrović