An Italian cellist’s journey into Serbian Language — Lesson 6

Phonetic transcription (Part 1)

Both Italian and English have vocals and consonants, namely:

• Vocals (vocali): a, e, i, o, u
• Consonants (consonanti), in bold those unique to English: b, c, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, v, w, x, y, z.

Vocals are the same, with English sporting five more consonants (J, K, W, X, Y) than Italian. That’s 5 vocals each, 16 consonants in Italian and 21 in English, total 21 letters in Italian and 26 in English.

Serbian beats them both, with 30 different glyphs and an extra group, the sonant. Vocals (самогласници, sing. самогласник) are the same–but don’t crow over a victory too soon–albeit in Cyrillic they are а, е, и, о, у. From this, you may hint that the letter Y will not be used as in English. The next group, consonants (сугласници, sing. Сугласник), is divided into proper “consonants” (консонанти) and “sonants” (сонанти). Here they are:

• Сонанти: в, р, л, љ, ј, м, н, њ (8)
• Консонанти: б, п, г, к, д, т, ћ, ђ, ж, ш, џ, ч, з, с, ф, х, ц (17)

Five plus eight plus seventeen equals thirty! We have a winner!

The order shown above is not the same of the alphabet, and for a reason, just stay with me!

Самогласници (Vocals – Vocali)

Vocals are divided by the position of articulation of the tongue:

• високе (high — alte): и, у (i and u)
• ниске (low — basse): а
• средње (middle — medie): е, о

I encourage you to be mindful about the position of your tongue while simply pronouncing the five vocals you already know. I found it fascinating! For example, feel how the tongue is floating midair in your mouth when pronouncing ‘e’ and ‘o’.

A further distinction is shown on a rather advanced Serbian grammar website for High School, where vocals can also be classified as front, middle, and rear:

• предње (front — anteriori): и, е
• средре (middle — medie): а
• задње (back — posteriori): у, о

We can summarise all this into a table:

Вокали	Предњи	Средњи	Задњи
Високи	И		У
Средњи	Е		О
Ниски		А

The consonant р [r]¹ can hold the role of vocal in the following cases:

1. It is found in a word lacking other vocals: трг (town square – piazza), тврд (hard/solid – duro), прст (finger – dito)
2. It is found at the end of a syllable: брдо (бр-до) (hill – collina)
3. When, at the beginning of a word, it comes before a consonant: рвати се (fight – lottare)

Сугласници

Let’s move on to consonants, where the game gets much more complex. In Serbian, consonants are grouped according to several parameters: the place of articulation, the way of articulation, then sonants vs consonants, and then palatal vs non-palatal. There is also a macro group over the 17 consonants, divided into voiced (sonore) and voiceless/unvoiced (sorde). Let’s start from this last one:

1. Подела сугласника по звучности (Classification by sonority – Classificazione in base alla sonorità):
   • Звучни (voiced — sonore): б, г, д, з, ж, ђ, џ
   • Безвучни (unvoiced – sorde): п, к, т, с, ш, ћ, ч, ф, х, ц.
2. Сонанти(Sonants – Sonanti): в, р, л, љ, ј, м, н, њ
3. Према месту изговора (Based on the place of articulation — in base al luogo di articolazione, sonants are in Italics):
   • Уснени / Лабијални (bilabial — bilabiali): б, п, м
   • Уснено — зубни / Лабиодентални (labiodental — labiodentali): в, ф
   • Зубни (dental — dentali): д, т, ц, з, с
   • Надзубни / Алвеоларни (alveolar — alveolari): н, л, р
   • Предњонепчани / Палатални (palatal — palatali): ј, љ, њ, ћ, ђ, џ, ч, ж, ш. The first five can be further classified as меки (soft — molli), with the last four being тврди (hard — dure)
   • Задњонепчљни / Веларни (velar – velari): к, г, х.
4. Према начину изговора (Based on the way of articulation – In base al modo di articolazione):
   • Струјни / Фрикативни (fricative, spirant — fricative): з, с, ж, ш, ф, х
   • Праскави / Експлозивни (occlusive — occlusive): б, п, д, т, г, к
   • Сливени / Африкате (affricate – affricate): џ, ч, ђ, ћ, џ.

The book doesn’t mention the division between voiced and unvoiced as a general one, rather a further division between palatals and non-palatals. It mentions that, according to this subdivision, case endings of words’ declension may vary:

• Palatals (soft): џ, ч, ж, ђ, ћ, ш, ј, љ, њ
• Non-palatals (hard): б, д, ф, х, г, к, л, м, н, п, р, с, т, в, з, ц

The two sources do not agree on this, but I mentioned it for the sake of completeness.

Bottom Line

I could continue with the next part, but I believe this lesson to be incredibly hard as it is already. I will get back to this many times myself. Thank you for reading so far, I hope you survived and liked it!

In the next lesson, we will continue with the phonetic transcriptions, this time with more comparisons between the languages.

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See you (hopefully soon) for another lesson.

1. I’m using the same coding of the book where pronunciation is shown between square brackets. Later on, we will use braces { } to show when different glyphs correspond to the same sound. ↩