The 5,000 most common Serbian words
Ranked by how often they actually turn up in spoken dialogue, not by how useful somebody guessed they would be.
Every number below is counted from a corpus, and the corpus is named at the bottom.
What each step buys you
Learn the first 100 words of Serbian and you follow 46.3% of everyday speech. The first 1000 take you to 71.4%. After that every thousand words buys less than the thousand before it, which is exactly why the order matters.
| Words known | Speech followed | |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | 20.9% | |
| 50 | 38.1% | |
| 100 | 46.3% | |
| 250 | 57.0% | |
| 500 | 64.5% | |
| 1,000 | 71.4% | |
| 2,000 | 77.7% | |
| 3,000 | 81.1% | |
| 5,000 | 85.2% | |
| 8,000 | 88.8% | |
| 10,000 | 90.5% | |
| 15,000 | 93.3% | |
| 20,000 | 95.1% |
Comfortable reading starts around 98%. Everything before that is still worth doing, but the first hundred words buy you a foothold, not comprehension.
The first 100 words of Serbian
In order. The percentage is the share of ordinary speech you cover once you know that word and every word above it.
- 1da4.6%
- 2je8.64%
- 3ne10.62%
- 4se12.59%
- 5i14.4%
- 6u16.14%
- 7to17.6%
- 8sam19.01%
- 9na20.0%
- 10ti20.93%
- 11mi21.75%
- 12za22.57%
- 13si23.38%
- 14li24.12%
- 15Å¡ta24.82%
- 16Å¡to25.49%
- 17ja26.14%
- 18ali26.72%
- 19sa27.3%
- 20su27.87%
- 21nije28.4%
- 22ovo28.85%
- 23samo29.29%
- 24me29.73%
- 25te30.17%
- 26od30.61%
- 27a31.04%
- 28ga31.46%
- 29bi31.88%
- 30kako32.27%
- 31o32.65%
- 32dobro33.01%
- 33ako33.36%
- 34sve33.71%
- 35smo34.06%
- 36kao34.4%
- 37će34.72%
- 38tako35.02%
- 39znam35.31%
- 40nisam35.59%
- 41mogu35.86%
- 42ste36.13%
- 43ovde36.39%
- 44pa36.65%
- 45bio36.9%
- 46zašto37.15%
- 47s37.39%
- 48on37.63%
- 49još37.87%
- 50nešto38.1%
- 51bilo38.33%
- 52redu38.56%
- 53biti38.77%
- 54koji38.99%
- 55kad39.2%
- 56vas39.4%
- 57ću39.6%
- 58hvala39.8%
- 59iz39.99%
- 60mislim40.19%
- 61ima40.38%
- 62ili40.56%
- 63znaš40.74%
- 64možda40.92%
- 65ih41.09%
- 66više41.27%
- 67onda41.44%
- 68sada41.61%
- 69vam41.78%
- 70zar41.94%
- 71gde42.11%
- 72да42.27%
- 73do42.44%
- 74bih42.6%
- 75treba42.76%
- 76moj42.92%
- 77mu43.08%
- 78rekao43.24%
- 79bila43.39%
- 80malo43.55%
- 81kada43.7%
- 82nema43.85%
- 83ništa44.01%
- 84nas44.16%
- 85mene44.3%
- 86ko44.45%
- 87ona44.6%
- 88је44.74%
- 89tebe44.87%
- 90molim45.01%
- 91sad45.14%
- 92ni45.28%
- 93hajde45.41%
- 94tamo45.54%
- 95može45.67%
- 96možeš45.8%
- 97imam45.93%
- 98zbog46.05%
- 99vi46.18%
- 100nam46.3%
Open all 5,000 words in the codex →
In the codex you tap the ones you already know and the number moves. It stays in your browser, no account.
Where Serbian comes from
Proto-Indo-European › Balto-Slavic › Slavic › South Slavic › Serbian
Cut off from the rest by Hungarian and Romanian arriving in between.
Where the numbers come from
Frequencies counted over the OpenSubtitles 2018 dialogue corpus, 265,729,630 tokens of Serbian in total. Lists compiled by Hermit Dave, released under CC BY-SA 3.0. Subtitles skew towards conversation, which is the point: this is the language people speak, not the language people publish.