Serbian's two alphabets: Cyrillic, Latin and how to read both

Serbian is written in two alphabets, and a learner needs both. The good news is that they match almost perfectly: 30 letters on each side, one for one, so anything in one alphabet can be converted to the other without knowing a word of it. This guide gives you every pair, the letters that mislead English readers, and a short plan. To see your level afterwards, try our free Serbian level test.

Updated November 10, 2026 · 6 min read

Why there are two

The legal position is short. Article 10 of the Constitution of Serbia says: "Serbian language and Cyrillic script shall be in official use in the Republic of Serbia." It adds that official use of other languages and scripts is regulated by law, based on the Constitution. So Cyrillic is the script of official use.

Latin letters are nonetheless part of how the language is written. The Unicode Standard describes the Serbian, Bosnian and Montenegrin orthographies as biscriptal, with paired Latin and Cyrillic alphabets. That pairing is what makes the task manageable: you are learning one spelling system in two sets of shapes.

All 30 letters, side by side

Here is the full correspondence, in Cyrillic alphabetical order, taken from Wiktionary's Serbo-Croatian transliteration table. The notes on sounds are our rough guide for English speakers.

The letters in bold deserve extra time, because they are the ones least like anything in English. Three of them, Lj, Nj and Dž, are written with two Latin characters but count as a single letter. Each is one Cyrillic letter on the other side: Љ, Њ and Џ.

False friends: letters that lie

If you already read Latin letters, the danger is not the strange shapes. It is the familiar shapes with different sounds.

The opposite trap exists in the Latin alphabet: C is always ts, as in cena (price), never k or s, and J is always the y of yes, as in jezik (language). Letters that really do match, such as А, Е, К, М, О and Т, are a free gift. Start there.

One word, two spellings

Every word below was checked on Wiktionary, in its Serbo-Croatian entry. Try converting the left column yourself before reading the middle one.

Typing and spelling

Do not drop the marks on Latin letters when you are learning. Č, Ć, Š, Ž and Đ are different letters from C, S, Z and D. Č and Ć are also two different letters from each other, and the table shows they correspond to two different Cyrillic letters, Ч and Ћ. If you add a Serbian keyboard to your phone or computer, practise with both layouts.

Cyrillic is also shared with other languages, but the letter sets differ. Ђ, Ј, Љ, Њ, Ћ and Џ are the ones to learn specifically for Serbian if you already read Russian or Ukrainian. Compare them with the alphabets you know from the Russian or Ukrainian level tests.

A one-week plan for both alphabets

1. Day 1: the Latin alphabet. Most of it is familiar, so concentrate on Č, Ć, Đ, Dž, Š, Ž, Lj and Nj.
2. Day 2: the Cyrillic letters that match in shape and sound: А, Е, Ј, К, М, О, Т.
3. Day 3: the false friends: В, Н, Р, С, Х, У.
4. Day 4: the shapes with no Latin look-alike: Б, Г, Д, Ж, З, И, Л, П, Ф, Ц, Ч, Ш.
5. Day 5: Ђ, Љ, Њ, Ћ, Џ.
6. Day 6: convert the eleven words above in both directions from memory.
7. Day 7: read a short text in each alphabet, aloud, and then begin vocabulary.

This plan is our suggestion, not an official course. Serbian is one of the newest languages on 16Word and is marked New: our word lists are machine-authored and are waiting for native review, so treat them as practice and check anything important with a native speaker. Serbian word stress and pitch are not shown by either alphabet, so listen to real speech from the start.

Keep learning

• Free Serbian level test, or all 36 level tests
• Other Slavic languages: Czech and Polish level tests
• The Czech A2 exam for permanent residence and the Polish B1 certificate
• Other scripts: the Georgian alphabet and Devanagari for Hindi
• Cyrillic for Russian: the Russian alphabet, all 33 letters
• All our guides and plans and prices