Learn the alphabet in one evening, and learn it in the first week rather than the sixth month. It takes about twenty minutes to get the thirty letters roughly right and another couple of hours of reading signs to make it automatic, and the return is immediate: Cyrillic stops being a wall and becomes a slightly slow version of reading. There is no stage in which you partly know it and it partly helps. You either read it or you do not, and the gap between those two states is one evening wide.
The reason this is urgent rather than optional is where the two alphabets are used. Serbia uses both, and the split is not random — it is almost exactly the split between the parts of life you can skip and the parts you cannot.
Where each alphabet actually turns up
Latin is used widely in commerce, on the internet, in advertising, on most menus and in a great deal of everyday writing. Cyrillic is the official script, which means it is what the state uses.
| Where | Which script |
|---|---|
| Government buildings, signage, official forms | Cyrillic, overwhelmingly |
| Official documents, decisions, certificates | Cyrillic |
| Street name plates | Cyrillic, often with Latin underneath, often not |
| Public transport stop names and route boards | Mixed, leaning Cyrillic |
| Menus, shop fronts, advertising | Mostly Latin |
| Newspapers | Both, depending on the paper |
| Websites, including many official ones | Both, usually switchable |
| Anything typed by a person under thirty | Usually Latin |
Read that table as one sentence: the alphabet you can avoid is the one used for things you want, and the alphabet you cannot avoid is the one used for things that are required of you. That is why this is a first-week job.
The thirty letters, grouped by how much trouble they give you
Serbian Cyrillic is a genuinely well-behaved alphabet — one letter, one sound, no exceptions worth the name, which is more than English manages. Learn it in three groups.
The eleven that look like Latin and sound like it. А Е Ј К М О Т (and in lower case а е ј к м о т). Free. Ј is the one to note: it is the y sound in “yes”, so ЈА is ja, “I”.
The ones that look like Latin and sound like something else. These are the ones that cause actual mistakes, so learn these properly:
| Letter | Sounds like | Not |
|---|---|---|
| В в | v | b |
| Н н | n | h |
| Р р | r | p |
| С с | s | c |
| У у | u | y |
| Х х | h, as in “loch” | x |
So ВЕНАЦ is venac, not “benac”. РЕСТОРАН is restoran. УЛИЦА is ulica, street — and that is the first word to know, because it is on every street plate in the country.
The thirteen that look like nothing you know. Б Г Д Ж З Л Љ П Ф Ц Ч Ш Њ, plus Ђ Ћ Џ. These look harder and are easier, precisely because there is nothing to unlearn. The four to prioritise: Б is b, Г is g, Д is d, П is p. Those four plus the six in the table above will get you through most signage.
The forty words that are actually on the signs
Knowing the letters gets you to sounding out. What makes it fast is recognising the whole word without sounding it out, and there are not many words you need. These are the ones on the signs that matter.
In and around an official building:
| Cyrillic | Reads as | Means |
|---|---|---|
| ШАЛТЕР | šalter | Counter, window. The most important noun |
| ИНФОРМАЦИЈЕ | informacije | Information. Genuinely the right first stop |
| УЛАЗ | ulaz | Entrance |
| ИЗЛАЗ | izlaz | Exit |
| ПРИЈЕМ | prijem | Reception, intake |
| РАДНО ВРЕМЕ | radno vreme | Opening hours. Read this before you queue |
| НЕ РАДИ | ne radi | Not working, out of service, closed |
| ЗАТВОРЕНО | zatvoreno | Closed |
| ОТВОРЕНО | otvoreno | Open |
| ПАУЗА | pauza | Break. A window on pauza is a window that will reopen |
| ЗАБРАЊЕНО | zabranjeno | Forbidden |
| СПРАТ | sprat | Floor, as in storey |
| КАНЦЕЛАРИЈА | kancelarija | Office |
| ОВЕРА | overa | Certification, authentication — the stamp |
| ПОТВРДА | potvrda | Certificate, confirmation |
| ЗАХТЕВ | zahtev | Application, request |
| ТАКСА | taksa | Fee |
| УПЛАТНИЦА | uplatnica | Payment slip |
| ЛИЧНИ ПОДАЦИ | lični podaci | Personal details |
| ПРЕБИВАЛИШТЕ | prebivalište | Place of residence. On the address forms |
That last one matters more than it looks: the address-registration vocabulary is where the white card process lives, and who registers you, and what if nobody did is the procedure those words sit on.
On the street and in transport:
| Cyrillic | Reads as | Means |
|---|---|---|
| УЛИЦА | ulica | Street |
| ТРГ | trg | Square |
| БУЛЕВАР | bulevar | Boulevard |
| СТАНИЦА | stanica | Station, stop |
| АУТОБУС | autobus | Bus |
| ПОЛАЗАК | polazak | Departure |
| ДОЛАЗАК | dolazak | Arrival |
| ПЕШАЧКИ ПРЕЛАЗ | pešački prelaz | Pedestrian crossing |
On a building and a bill:
| Cyrillic | Reads as | Means |
|---|---|---|
| АПОТЕКА | apoteka | Pharmacy |
| БОЛНИЦА | bolnica | Hospital |
| ПОШТА | pošta | Post office. Where a great many fees get paid |
| БАНКА | banka | Bank |
| ПИЈАЦА | pijaca | Market |
| ЗГРАДА | zgrada | Building |
| СТАН | stan | Flat, apartment |
| ВЛАСНИК | vlasnik | Owner |
| ЗАКУПАЦ | zakupac | Tenant |
| РАЧУН | račun | Bill, invoice, account |
| ГРЕЈАЊЕ | grejanje | Heating. On the Infostan bill |
| СТРУЈА | struja | Electricity |
| ВОДА | voda | Water |
| ХИТНО | hitno | Urgent |
The last five turn up on paperwork rather than signage, and they are the ones that make a bill legible rather than alarming — Infostan, struja, and the bills that arrive later is where those actually get itemised.
How to make it automatic in a week
Three things, and none of them is an app.
Read every street plate you walk past, out loud, badly. This is the whole method. Street plates are short, they are everywhere, and you usually already know the name, so you get instant feedback on whether you read it right. A week of this and the letters stop being a translation step.
Switch one thing you read daily into Cyrillic. A news site that offers both scripts is the easy candidate. The point is not comprehension, it is volume of letters.
Type your own address in Cyrillic once. By hand, on paper, the way it appears on official documents. You will be asked to recognise it on forms for years and writing it once fixes it.
The thing to get right, and the thing not to worry about
Get right: the six lookalike letters. Confusing Р for p and С for c produces confident misreadings rather than obvious failures, and a confident misreading is how you end up at the wrong window on the wrong floor.
Do not worry about: handwriting, cursive, or the italic forms, which differ enough from the printed letters to look like a fourth alphabet. You will almost never need to read a handwritten Serbian note, and if you do, that is what Можете ли да ми напишете? — could you write it down — is for, in block letters. The twenty sentences includes it, and it is the single most useful request anywhere in this alphabet problem.
Twenty minutes tonight. It is the cheapest thing on this site.