Learn Serbian

Learning Serbian with exercises, video lessons and online courses

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Showing posts with label Learn Serbian online. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Learn Serbian online. Show all posts

Monday, July 15, 2019

Ordinal Numbers in Serbian - Part 1

Ordinal numbers in Serbian behave as adjectives, so they change according to the noun's:

  • number (singular or plural - prva kolona vs. prve kolone)
  • gender (masc. fem or neuter - prvi red vs. prvA kolona vs. prvO mesto)
  • case (after the basic form of Nominative, there will be all six cases - prvi čovek - prvog čoveka - prvom čoveku - prvog čoveka / prvi hamburger - prvi čoveče - sa prvim čovekom - o prvom čoveku)
That's why we are starting just with a very simple list of 12 ordinal numbers in masc. sg. Nominative to learn the form, hear it, pronounce it and practice it. 


In our next lessons we'll be practicing more complex structures with the ordinal numbers in Serbian :)
I know it looks complicated, but it can be fun, and it is certainly good for your brain!

The list of exercises both in the Latin and Cyrillic script can be found on my Patreon page.

Tuesday, September 19, 2017

Free Serbian Language Course

If you have followed my blog posts this summer, you have noticed fun photos with short dialogues. These mini lessons grew into the first course, which can help you learn Serbian greetings. It is at the beginner level, so that is why I named it Super Easy Serbian - Greetings A1!

It took me quite a while to create it, as I flicked through thousands of photos, downloaded them and then put everything together. I have had problems with my low quality headset, because of which I had to heavily edit the videos. I hope to get a new cam in October and continue making such courses much faster. My plan is always to offer you three versions of the course:

In order to access the course, you can simply click here to see it online, or download it:



It is visible online, fully accessible from any device and you can play the videos while flicking through it. If you prefer a PDF file, you can download it here, but when you want to watch the video, when you click play, the video will open in the new window, so you will have to restart the PDF file again.

Although there is the list to the additional exercises, which are made for this course, I'll list them below:

Greetings Practice
  1. Flashcards - link
  2. Learn- link
  3. MicroMatch- link
  4. Gravity- link
  5. Test- link




Thursday, June 19, 2014

Jesam or Sam in Serbian?

After uploading a hundred of videos both from Serbian 101 and Serbian 102 course, and revising each of them, Ivan decided to help me with his 3D effects vidos. So far he's made 30 short videos with the verbs used in the course, in the present and past tense so far, but he plans to make 5 more each day.

I'll post some of them here on the blog, but for the complete version, refer to the Serbian101-102 course. Here comes its short description:

Serbian 101 &102 is perfect for absolute and false beginners in Serbian. It is organized in such a way that you can either follow it chronologically, or choose only the topics you are interested in. Each topic consists of an explanatory video lesson and then video exercises with links to follow-up quizzes with instant feedback. 
There are more than 100 lessons making well over 10 hours of video lessons and exercises which take you from the very start to the pre-intermediate level, covering:
  • Tenses: Present Simple and Past Simple Tense
  • Cases: Nominative, Accusative, Instrumental and Locative
  • Modals: Can, Must
  • Pronouns: Personal and Possessive Pronouns
  • Adjectives: Possessive Adjectives and Noun-adjective Agreement
  • Numbers: Cardinal and Ordinal
as well as basic:
  • functions such as:
    • Greetings
    • Introductions
    • Asking for Clarification/Explanation
    • Asking about Directions
    • Giving Directions
    • Requesting 
    • Offering
    • Expressing Likes and Dislikes
    • Asking about Likes and Dislikes
  • situations such as:
      • Meeting People
      • Small Talk
      • In a Restaurant
      • Shopping
      • Arranging a Meeting
      • Talking about Family
      • Talking about Routines
      • Talking about your Life
  • vocabulary topics such as:
    • Family members
    • Numbers
    • Food
    • Souvenirs
    • Places in a city
    • Countries and Cities
    • Means of transport
    • Colours
    • Jobs and occupations

Friday, August 16, 2013

Funny Grammatical Categories in Serbian

One of the funny grammatical categories you might come across in Serbian are "animate" vs. "inanimate"  nouns, which is for instance reflected in the Accusative declensions, only for Sg. Masculine. This means that just because you've seen (to see = videti)  or taken a photo ((u)slikati) of a person, not a thing, a noun like "dečak" will take the Genitive declension markers (suffix -a)  instead of Accusative (zero suffix), although it's still an Accusative case. (I'm talking only about the form here).

For example: Ovo je dečak. Videla sam dečaka. Slikala sam dečaka. (there's also a stress change from the first to the second syllable).



While the linguists dwell on these topics and enjoy discussing whys and ifs of such irregularities, I always enjoy helping you in the most practical way. That's why Ivan and I created these two videos, carefully choosing nouns both in singular and then in plural and grouping them. With both videos you can practice saying simple sentences, with the verbs:
  • videti (to see )
  • fotografisati  = slikati = uslikati (to take a photo of )
  • snimati (to record)
The first video covers the grammatical category of "inanimate" objects:

The second one is obviously all about "animate" category - this time the topic is "people " (so switch to the Genitive endings for masc. please).


Saturday, August 03, 2013

How to Use the Serbian Conjugator ?

If you've practised the Accusative form of the nouns and pronouns with the video in the previous post, it's time to expand your confidence onto the verbs which require a noun/pronoun in this case. With all the listed nouns (TV, pegla, mobilni telefon, mašina za veš ...), the following verbs, properly conjugated, will make sense:
  • videti (to see) Present Tense conjugations: Sg: vidIM, vidIŠ, vidI Pl: vidIMO, vidITE, vidE           Past Tense : Sg: videO, videLA, videLO Pl: videLI, videLE, videLA
  • gledati (to watch) gledAM, gledAŠ, gledA - gledAMO, gledATE, gledAJU ( for the following verbs you'll see only: PRESENT Sg: -m/-š/- Pl: -mo / -te / -ju and for the PAST Sg. -o/-la/-lo Pl. -li/-le/-la )
  • imati (to have)  Sg: -m/-š/- Pl: -mo / -te / -ju (imaJU) Past: Sg. -o/-la/-lo Pl. -li/-le/-la
  • koristiti (to use) Sg: -m/-š/- Pl: -mo / -te / -e (koristE) Past: Sg. -o/-la/-lo Pl. -li/-le/-la
  • raditi (to work) Sg: -m/-š/- Pl: -mo / -te / -e (rade) Past: Sg. -o/-la/-lo Pl. -li/-le/-la
  • popravljati (to fix) Sg: -m/-š/- Pl: -mo / -te / -ju (popravljaju) Past: Sg. -o/-la/-lo Pl. -li/-le/-la
  • uključiti (to turn on) Sg: -m/-š/- Pl: -mo / -te / -e (uključe) Past: Sg. -o/-la/-lo Pl. -li/-le/-la
  • isključiti (to turn off) Sg: -m/-š/- Pl: -mo / -te / -e (isključe) Past: Sg. -o/-la/-lo Pl. -li/-le/-la
  • kupiti (to buy) Sg: -m/-š/- Pl: -mo / -te / -e (kupe) Past: Sg. -o/-la/-lo Pl. -li/-le/-la
  • prodati (to sell) Sg: -m/-š/- Pl: -mo / -te / -e (prodate) Past: Sg. -o/-la/-lo Pl. -li/-le/-la
  • vratiti (to return) Sg: -m/-š/- Pl: -mo / -te / -e (vrate) Past: Sg. -o/-la/-lo Pl. -li/-le/-la
  • (po)kvariti se (to break down) Sg: -m/-š/- Pl: -mo / -te / -e (pokvare) Past: Sg. -o/-la/-lo Pl. -li/-le/-la
  • baciti (to throw away) Sg: -m/-š/- Pl: -mo / -te / -e (bace) Past: Sg. -o/-la/-lo Pl. -li/-le/-la
If you are a beginner in Serbian, let's focus on the present simple tense and practise conjugating out loud with the:

Present tense examples:
  • Imam telefon, ali GA ne gledam.
  • Moj brat ima mašinu za sudove i često JE koristi.
If you are at an intermediate level, I guess that dealing with the past simple won't be much of the problem. The idea of this blog post is to encourage you to become more fluent and confident. That's why you can simply learn/revise past simple in Serbian and make a few similar sentences like in the example:

Past tense examples:
  • Kupili smo mobilni telefon i čim smo GA uključili, odmah se pokvario.
  • Moj sin je popravio peglu i kada sam videla kako dobro radi bacila sam JE. 

Advanced Serbian - Srpski kao drugi jezik

Gde je ključ? Где је кључ? - Učimo srpski sa Marinom
Gde je ključ? ...
Where is the Key?-...
By Marina Petrović
Photo book