Serbian words you already know: loanwords, cognates and the ones that trick you

More free words than you expect

Serbian looks foreign on the page, but a surprising share of its everyday vocabulary is yours before you start. Some of it is the international stock every European language shares, some came from German and Turkish and looks familiar for other reasons, and some is old enough to be related to English through the Indo-European family. The spelling is phonetic, so once you know the alphabet, these words read as what they are.

The international words

Serbian borrows freely and spells the loan the way it sounds. That makes the word look strange and sound normal.

Serbian	English	Read it aloud
hotel	hotel	same
restoran	restaurant	restoran
taksi	taxi	taksi
telefon	telephone	telefon
muzej	museum	muzey
banka	bank	banka
univerzitet	university	universitet
student	student	same
profesor	professor	same
problem	problem	same
sport	sport	same
fudbal	football	fudbal
film	film	same
muzika	music	muzika
kompjuter	computer	kompyuter
internet	internet	same
menadžer	manager	menadzher
vikend	weekend	veekend
sendvič	sandwich	sendvich

Whole categories follow: the sciences, technology, politics, sport, music and most of the words that entered European languages through French, Latin or English in the last two centuries. Add the Serbian ending and decline them like any other noun.

The old relatives

Serbian and English are distant cousins, and a layer of the most basic vocabulary still shows it. The resemblance is not always obvious, but once pointed out it sticks.

• brat is brother, sestra is sister, sin is son, mati is mother in older usage.
• nos is nose, oko is eye (think ocular), srce is heart (think cardiac).
• dva, tri are two and three; sedam is seven; deset is ten (think decimal).
• voda is water, mleko is milk, sneg is snow, sunce is sun, noć is night.
• nov is new, stati is to stand, sedeti is to sit, jesti is to eat.
• mesec is month and moon at once, as in moon and month.

None of these are borrowings. They are what English and Serbian both inherited, and they cluster in exactly the vocabulary a beginner meets first: family, body, numbers, weather, basic verbs.

The German layer

Serbia spent a long time in the orbit of Vienna, and a few hundred German words came with the trades, the kitchen and the administration. An English speaker who knows a little German gets these for free; one who does not gets them anyway, because they are the everyday words for everyday things.

Serbian	Meaning	From German
šalter	counter, ticket window	Schalter
kofer	suitcase	Koffer
majstor	tradesman, repair man	Meister
paradajz	tomato	Paradeiser (Austrian)
krompir	potato	Grundbirne (dialect)
šrafciger	screwdriver	Schraubenzieher
šnicla	schnitzel	Schnitzel
farba	paint	Farbe
špajz	pantry	Speise
cimer	flatmate	Zimmer

The Turkish layer

Five centuries of Ottoman rule left the words for coffee, comfort and the home: kafa (coffee), šećer (sugar), čarapa (sock), jastuk (pillow), džep (pocket), boja (colour), sat (hour, clock), pamuk (cotton), dugme (button), kašika (spoon), and the whole food vocabulary of burek, ćevapi, sarma and rakija. English speakers know a few of these from Turkish food and none from anywhere else, so this is the layer to learn rather than guess. The tell is often a dž or a ć in the middle of a short, homely word.

The ones that trick you

Some Serbian words look like English and mean something else. Most came through French or German with a meaning English later abandoned.

Serbian	Looks like	Actually means
eventualno	eventually	possibly, perhaps
aktuelan	actual	current, topical
simpatičan	sympathetic	likeable, nice
fabrika	fabric	factory
gimnazija	gymnasium	academic secondary school
magacin	magazine	warehouse
recept	receipt	recipe, or a prescription
kontrola	control	inspection, check
konkurs	concourse	competition, job posting
šef	chef	boss
ambulanta	ambulance	outpatient clinic
pasti	pasta	to fall

Eventualno is the one that causes real misunderstandings. A Serb who says something will eventualno happen is saying it might; an English speaker hears a promise.

How to use this

Do not learn the free words. Notice them and move on; your effort belongs to the words that are not free, which are most of the verbs and nearly all of the adjectives. The international words also come with a warning: they decline like everything else. Hotel is easy, u hotelu (in the hotel) and iz hotela (from the hotel) are the actual work, and the ending is where a familiar word stops being familiar.