Serbian Alphabet at a Glance
- 30 letters: 5 vowels and 25 consonants
- Serbian uses both Latin (Gajica) and Cyrillic scripts [1]
- Official language of Serbia and co-official in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Republika Srpska), Montenegro, and Kosovo [2]
- Spoken by approximately 6 million native speakers and 8.6 million total [3]
- South Slavic language closely related to Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin
- Features 8 distinctive letters: Č, Ć, Dž, Đ, Lj, Nj, Š, Ž unique to the South Slavic alphabet tradition
- Phonemic orthography — one letter corresponds to exactly one sound, making pronunciation predictable
Serbian Vowel Letters
The Serbian alphabet includes 5 pure vowels (A, E, I, O, U) that form the foundation of Serbian pronunciation. Each vowel represents a single, consistent sound — making Serbian vowels easier to learn than vowels in many other European languages.
Serbian Vowels (Uppercase)
Serbian Vowels (Lowercase)
Serbian Consonant Letters
The Serbian alphabet contains 25 consonants, including several letters with diacritical marks that create sounds not found in English.
For example:
In the word "džungla" (jungle), the vowels u and a combine with consonants Dž, ng, and l to show how Serbian digraphs represent single sounds.
Serbian Consonants (Uppercase)
Serbian Consonants (Lowercase)
Serbian-Specific Letters (Lowercase)
These 8 distinctive letters are the heart of the Serbian alphabet. Č, Ć, Đ, Š, Ž carry diacritical marks (haček and stroke), while Lj, Nj, Dž are digraphs counted as single letters — each representing a unique Slavic sound.
Serbian-Specific Letters (Lowercase)
Serbian-Specific Letters (Uppercase)
Uppercase forms of the 8 distinctive Serbian letters. In proper nouns and sentence-initial positions, these letters appear in their capitalized forms.
Serbian-Specific Letters (Uppercase)
All Serbian Alphabet
The complete Serbian Latin alphabet with all 30 letters in both uppercase and lowercase forms, from A to Ž.
Serbian Digits
Serbian uses standard Arabic numerals (0–9), identical to those used across Europe. The Serbian words for each number follow a consistent phonetic pattern rooted in the Slavic numeral tradition.
Digits:
Special Characters
Punctuation marks and special symbols used in Serbian writing. Serbian uses guillemets (« ») as quotation marks alongside standard European punctuation conventions.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
References:
- [1] Unicode Consortium. "Unicode CLDR - Locale Data Summary for Serbian [sr]". Retrieved from Unicode CLDR: Serbian
- [2] Glottolog 5.2. "Serbian-Croatian-Bosnian". Retrieved from Glottolog: Serbian
- [3] Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia. "Census of Population, Households and Dwellings 2022". Retrieved from Statistics Serbia: Census 2022
Sambhu Raj Singh ·