Hi guys! (Ćao svima!)
Today I'm going to be talking in English
just because this particular video is for
English Speakers learning Serbian
For those of you who are new to my channel
my name is Liz. I'm an Australian learning Serbian
I make a lot of fun videos
about my language learning journey
If you're new to this channel consider subscribing
So if you're learning Serbian
you should already know that Serbian has
two... I guess... maybe even three different ways
to write their language
There's the Latin alphabet
and then the Cyrillic script
I would also say that cursive
is like a language of its own
Let's take the word šišmiš
in English it means bat
This is how it looks in the Latin script
and then in the Cyrillic script
And then in cursive...
*crickets chirping*
So without further ado
let me show you how I memorised
the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet
It's not that hard at all!
In Serbian there are 30 letters
7 of them are just like how you would write
them in the latin script
A E J O K M T
The only difference is
K M and T have different "little letters"
I'm sure there's a better way to say "little letters"
lower case letters!
So the lower case letters just look like
the capital letters but...
... smaller
For us English speakers
two letters that we get confused quite often
B and V
They both look very similar and
B the one that looks more like a B
is actually V
So the way that I remember it is
B looks like it has a belly
OR alternatively, I think that it also looks like a berry
or a bell! And the all start with B
Whereas the V
and I learnt this from a different video
which I'll link over here ^
V looks like a B but with a veil
another way that I like to think about it is that
it looks like it has a visor
G looks like a gallow's pole
and then you have...
D and L
and I'm going to group P as well
L kind of looks like an upside down L with a little leg
or a long tail
or you can say it looks like a pair of legs
that's walking away...
This letter on the right is P
and it looks like a stagnant pair
of pillars
Now... D, looks like a D that's backwards that's running away
So let's recap
D looks like a D
that's been flipped around and is running away
L
Which looks like a pair of legs
or one upside L with a long tail
and P which looks like
a pair of pants
or pillars
or poles
or a portal?
Our next pair are Đ and Ć
Let's pretend that Đ is a jew
It's wearing a hat and it has a little beard
see the similarity?
and then Ć looks like a Jew
that chewed off his beard
or he chopped his beard off
Ž looks like a plus sign with two Cs
and those two Cs kind of look like
the upside down hat on top of Ž
Š it looks like you're blowing air through your front teeth
Š
Č looks like a chalice
and it's a hard Č because you put hard liquor in a chalice
Z, I guess it's the closest looking letter to Z
for me Z isn't too hard to remember
but if you have other suggestions on how to remember
Z let me know down below
Same goes for any other letter
I, now this one's an interesting one
It's actually three Is together
and the middle I fell over
and it's two friends trying to help it stay straight
N
the letter N
this letter looks similar to the letter H but it's Not
It's totally Not!
If you know L and N you'll see that
Lj and Nj are quite similar just with a belly on the right
and that's a remnant of the 'j'
R is another false friend
and it looks like the letter P
Although it really is a R
that's been robbed
of it's tail
C looks like a sad face
or I guess, also a snake?
Whatever works better!
U looks like the letter Y
But Y doesn't exist in Serbian so
it's quite easy to remember it as U
as in YoU and I for example
F
looks like the Greek symbol for phi
H or the letter H looks like an X
it also looks like a target that you're supposed to hit
you could also imagine it as an exhalation of breathe
where you're throwing something to hit
the target you go HuH!
for example
And lastly you have the letters...
C and DŽ
which look quite similar
but the little tail or the little whisker
is in two different places
DŽ is quite judgemental of C
because he believes that the whisker should be in the middle
and not to the side
So what I recommend from here is taking the entire
Cyrillic alphabet... here...
and seeing if you remember the latin equivalent
(or at least the sound)
this whole story making idea is also how I learn Serbian words
for example...
the word for Eiffel Tower in Serbian is
"Ajfelova Kula"
How I remember this word is that I imagine myself
standing in front of the Eiffel Tower
and I imagine that there is a cooler in front of me
and then I walk over to it
and I fall over the cooler in front of the Eiffel Tower
it becomes...
"I fell over a cooler"
"Aifelova Kula"
Another one of my favourites which I used very early on
was the word for cauliflower
"Karfiol"
What I imagine is filling my car
up with car fuel made out of cauliflowers
"Karfiol"
I hope that that was helpful to remember and associate
the Latin script with the Cyrillic alphabet
If you have a better way to remember any of these letters
feel free to comment them down below
it will help me and also other foreigners
who are learning Serbian as well
Thank you again and see you soon... Bye!