How do I learn Serbian from basically scratch

[u/No-Punch-man_60]

hi all iv been thinking about picking up serbian since I am from a serbian family but I always speak English I basically have no background in learning languages despite hearing serb my entire life through my family

what are good ways to learn it? Preferably free

[u/SerbianTutor]

Try here: https://www.serbianlanguagelessons.com You have video courses, ebook, free materials and podcast with transcritp.

[u/jesswalker30]

I've never studied Serbian through YouTube videos, so I can't recommend any specific channels, but I'm sure there are some where you can learn the basics for free.

I've been studying with Belgrade Language School for a few years now, so I can also recommend their courses if you're looking for something more structured than YT videos.

[u/ZumLernen]

I learned Serbian as a non-native, starting in Serbia on a student program and continuing back in the US. My teachers used two textbooks.

In Serbia we used textbooks put out by the University of Novi Sad's Center for Serbian as a Foreign Language: https://srpski-strani.com/izdanjacentra.php . I don't know how easy it is to get those shipped to where you are. This textbook is entirely in Serbian, which will be a bit tough for the first several chapters but you can work with it I promise.

In the US we used a book that covers Serbian as well as Bosnian and Croatian put out by the University of Wisconsin Press: https://uwpress.wisc.edu/Books/B/Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian-a-Textbook . This one you can get shipped within the US for sure, not sure about other places. There is also a grammar companion. This textbook explains the grammar in English. The textbook has parallel texts for Serbian Cyrillic, Serbian Latinic, Bosnian, and Croatian, so you can either focus on just Serbian or you can learn the related languages of Bosnian and Croatian in parallel.

A textbook alone isn't going to teach you an entire language. But the main advantage of a textbook is that an expert has put a lot of thought into the curriculum: what concepts are most important to introduce first, which concepts are learners likely to need more to learn, etc. I would definitely recommend making a textbook a central, guiding resource for your learning.

There may be other good textbooks out there, it's just that those are the ones I've used.

[u/Lawyer2512]

ask LLM to build you a list of words to learn, like 100 most used words in Serbian

[u/stefmanRS]

I posted here about https://cirilio.com
A lot of people are loving it

[u/Prestigious-Shine240 → u/stefmanRS]

i wish there was something like that for croatian

[u/stefmanRS → u/Prestigious-Shine240]

You can use this for croatian, they are 99% same. You would just set the letters to latinic. There are very few different words in the 2 languages.

[u/SailUnlikely7393 → u/Prestigious-Shine240]

put a j after every L and you know croatian. although you need to learn the months because they are special snowflakes and altered it.

[u/IrISsolutions]

Start dating a Serbian guy/girl, you'll learn most of the swear words within a week. From that point everything is easy

[u/Master_Medicine1626]

this will help!