Learn Serbian

Learning Serbian with exercises, video lessons and online courses

Google Tag Head

Friday, April 17, 2009

Uskrs - Easter

Srećan uskrs ,
Uskrs - Easter
Srećan Uskrs!
http://www.spc.rs/eng/happy_easter

the most common phrase spoken is:

Христос васкрсе (Hristos vaskrse) - Christ resurrected.
to which you will get the answer:
Ваистину васкрсе (Vaistina vaskrse) - truly resurrected.

A clip from a TV news programme on the subject of Easter:

Read more »
By at
Labels:

Saturday, April 04, 2009

Past tense in Serbian

serbian conjugations , Serbian tennis players
Past tense in Serbian
Prošlo vreme, or Perfekt, as we call it in Serbian, is the past tense which covers all the English past tenses (the Past Simple, Past Continuous, Present and Past perfect). It is most commonly used tense for expressing past time events. The Aorist tense is also used, though not that often.

Formation of PERFECT in Serbian

Here is the formula for the Past Tense in Serbian:

LONG FORM:
Subject + present of TO BE + Past Participle (or literally: ' past participle adjective ' = glagolski pridev radni) For a very thorough explanation check this link.

Ti si plesala. (You were dancing.)

SHORT FORM:

Past Participle + present of TO BE

Plesala si.


It is formed by replacing the 'i/e/ati' or 'ći' infinitive ending of the verb with the past participle endings as follows:

Masc. Sg -o
Fem. Sg - la
N. Sg -lo
Masc. Pl -li
Fem. Pl - le
N. Pl -la

I will use the opportunity of this excellent video to introduce past tense verbs:

Novak je pobedio Federera.

Novakova devojka je skakala od sreće, a njegovi prijatelji su se radovali.

Federer je polomio reket, a posle je bacao flaše, što možete videti na snimku.



* With reflexive form of the word, the auxilliary "to be" is dropped in the third person singular, so :
"She woke up" = Ona se probudila. or Probudila se.  (instead of ona je se probudila, or probudila je se)

For more Serbian video lessons check this page.
Read more »
By at 2 comments:
Labels: , ,

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Les mots serbes d'origine française

Foreign words basic Serbian ,
Les mots serbes d'origine française


Following on the English (international + loan words) presentation , here is another presentation of Serbian words, which look or sound similar to their French counterparts.
For the non-French speaking lot out there:
Lavabo - Washbasin
Formulari - Forms
Biblioteka - Library
the rest - you should be able to guess!

Bien sur! Il y a beaucoup de mots français qu'on peut trouver dans la langue serbe. Voici quelques exemples…


Read more »
By at 2 comments:
Labels:

International & Loan Words - 'reči stranog porekla'

Foreign words basic Serbian ,
International & Loan Words - 'reči stranog porekla'
If you find learning a new language daunting... lost for words.... then don't despair... There are many international & loan words in most languages and Serbian is no exception either.

For the complete Serbian language novices such as myself, it is really nice to encounter "friendly words". To give you a flavour I have included a link to a presentation. Guess what they are!!

There are many more out there!

Nat
Read more »
By at 1 comment:
Labels:

Friday, March 27, 2009

Adjectives and nouns in Serbian

Serbian adjectives ,
Adjectives and nouns in Serbian
In order to make a correct sentence in Serbian, it is wise to learn nouns according to their grammatical gender. There is a thorough explanation of the nouns and adjectives in Serbian on Unilang site in Lesson 2 and Lesson 3 . Since it is useless to learn adjective suffixes in sets which are different depending whether the noun is:
a. in Singular or Plural
b. Masculine/Feminine/Neuter
c. in different cases

I advise you to learn them in the context and practise one group at a time.

Therefore, I will start with a series of simple formulas with exercises. Feel free to ask questions or post the answers in the comment or to my email under the profile.

Here is a kind of formula for Singurlar + Nominative combination of an ADJECTIVE + NOUN:

Singular & Nominative
1. Adjective + Masculine Noun = zanimljiv tekst (interesting text)
2. AdectiveA + Feminine Noun = zanimljivA knjiga (interesting book)
3. AdjectiveO + Neuter Noun = zanimljivO selo (interesting village)

Exercise: add an adjective with the appropriate ending in front of the following nouns:

adjectives: LEP / JAK / VISOK / VELIK / SKUP

  1. ___________ knjiga.
  2. ___________ momak.
  3. ___________ auto.
  4. ___________ kosa.
  5. ___________ zgrada.
  6. ___________ kuća.
  7. ___________ sto.
  8. ___________ torba.
  9. ___________ dete.
  10. ___________ zrno.
Read more »
By at 1 comment:
Labels:

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