Content questions with interrogative words

In the last lesson you learned to ask questions that are answered with da or ne. Now you will ask for the information itself: who, what, where, when, why. Serbian does this the way English does — a question word goes at the front of the sentence.

There is one rule of word order, and it is worth learning once and for all: the question word comes first, and the verb comes immediately after it. Nothing squeezes in between.

• Ko je ovo? — Who is this?
• Gde je hotel? — Where is the hotel?
• Zašto si umoran? — Why are you tired?

This matters most with the short form je, which you already know has to sit in second position. After a question word, second position is exactly where it lands, so the natural order is also the correct one. Ko ovo je? is wrong.

The nine question words

ko asks about people, šta about things. ko always takes a singular verb, even when you expect the answer to be several people: Ko je to?

kada is very often shortened to kad in speech. Both are correct; kada is the safer one to write.

Three words for *where*

English gets by with where plus a preposition — where, where to, where from. Serbian has a separate word for each, and they are not interchangeable. Learn them as a set of three.

In everyday speech many people say Gde ideš? where the precise word is kuda. You will hear it constantly. Learn kuda as the correct form for direction, and simply recognise gde when it turns up in its place.

Answering about yourself

With biti you can already answer most of these questions about yourself: your name, your nationality, your job, where you are. Odakle si? takes a bare country or city as an answer for now — the full answer with iz comes later.

• Ko si ti? — Ja sam Ana.
• Odakle si? — Srbija.
• Šta je tvoj brat? — On je lekar.

Never combine da li with a question word. da li belongs to yes/no questions only. Say Gde si?, not Gde da li si?