Read Your First Serbian Story Today

Quick facts about Serbian

Speakers

About 8.2 million people speak Serbian as a first language (2022–23 figure, Ethnologue).¹

Did you know?

Serbian is one of the rare languages with active digraphia: literate speakers use both Cyrillic and Latin, which match letter for letter. The 2006 Constitution makes Cyrillic the official script, and Stichos writes Serbian in Cyrillic.²

The main challenge

Seven noun cases. Learners also meet two pronunciations of the standard language: Ekavian, dominant in Serbia and used by Stichos, and Ijekavian, dominant in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro.¹

Sources

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbian_language
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbian_Cyrillic_alphabet

About the Serbian language

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbian_language
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Serbo-Croatian_standard_varieties
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbian_Cyrillic_alphabet
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbo-Croatian_grammar

Serbian reading proficiency benchmarks (CEFR)

The framework column uses CEFR levels only. Serbian exams, such as those of the Centre for Serbian as a Foreign Language at the University of Belgrade, are held at levels A1 to C2, but Stichos levels describe reading difficulty and are not exam preparation.

Reference corpora

Two large corpora underpin frequency work on contemporary Serbian.¹

• SrpKor: The Corpus of Contemporary Serbian (SrpKor2013), built by the natural-language-processing group at the University of Belgrade’s Faculty of Mathematics, holds more than 122 million words of literary, scientific, administrative and general texts, automatically tagged for part of speech and lemma.¹
• srWaC: A web corpus crawled from the .rs domain in 2014, with about 555 million tokens.¹
• Standard: Stichos writes standard, dialect-neutral Shtokavian Serbian at every level and avoids strongly regional vocabulary.

1. https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.05468

Readability design principles

Stichos grades Serbian with its own level rules rather than a single readability score.

• Sentence length: A0 sentences have at most five words and a single main clause, with no conjunctions and no short clitic pronouns. The word limit rises at each level.
• Connectives: Conjunctions open in a fixed order: и at A1; а, али and или at A2; the full set, including ако and иако, from B1.
• Clause types: B1 adds relative clauses with који, која and које, real conditionals with ако and object clauses with да; concessive, purpose and result clauses and indirect speech follow at B2.
• Pitch accent: The standard pronunciation has a pitch accent: a stressed syllable is rising or falling, and long or short, giving four accents. Ordinary spelling marks neither the accent nor vowel length; dictionaries do. Most speakers from Serbia do not distinguish the short rising from the short falling accent.¹

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbo-Croatian_phonology

Script & grammar scaffolding

• Script: Every word, title and name is written in Cyrillic (ћирилица), and the engine sends Latin-script lines back for repair. The reader’s Romanized toggle shows the same text in Latin letters (latinica) using the official one-to-one mapping.
• Tenses: A0 uses only the present (презент). A1 adds the perfect (перфекат) and Future I (футур I); A2 the imperative and modal verbs (морати, моћи, хтети); B1 Future II, the present conditional and the се passive. The aorist opens at B2 and the verbal adverbs at C1; the imperfect (имперфекат) is otherwise kept for C2.
• Clitics: Clitics such as је, му, се and ли always take the second position in the clause. A0 leaves out short clitic pronouns altogether; A1 allows short direct-object pronouns in that slot.
• Forms of address: ти is used with family and friends, and Ви, with plural verb agreement, with strangers and in professional settings.

Related academic & framework resources

• Centre for Serbian as a Foreign Language (University of Belgrade): The Faculty of Philology’s centre for teaching Serbian to non-native speakers, with exams, level descriptions and sample papers for A1 to C2.
• Azbukum Test Centre: The Novi Sad centre’s own certificate test from A1 to C2, a test accredited by Serbia’s Qualifications Agency for its course participants, and a free online diagnostic test.
• A Survey of Resources and Methods for Natural Language Processing of Serbian Language: Marovac, Avdić and Milošević’s 2023 survey of Serbian corpora, including SrpKor and srWaC, and language tools.
• Serbo-Croatian phonology (Wikipedia): An overview of the sounds shared by Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian, including the four-way pitch accent.

Frequently asked questions

What writing system does Serbian use?

Two alphabets in everyday use, Serbian Cyrillic (ћирилица) and Latin (latinica), which match letter for letter. The 2006 Constitution makes Cyrillic the official script; Stichos writes Serbian in Cyrillic.

Is Stichos suitable for complete beginners with zero prior knowledge (A0)?

Yes. A0 is a primary focus, designed for readers with no prior knowledge. A1 then adds basic everyday vocabulary and simple connected clauses as your foundation grows.

Are Stichos levels the same as CEFR levels?

Not exactly. Stichos levels use the familiar CEFR names, from A0 to B2, and are modelled on the CEFR (the Common European Framework of Reference), so a Stichos B1 is meant to feel close to a B1 in your course book. They aren't an official CEFR rating, and different books and exams draw the lines in slightly different places. A0 is Stichos's own addition, just below the framework's first level.

Are the stories written by AI, and how accurate are they?

Yes. Stories are generated by AI and then checked by further automated steps against the grammar and vocabulary rules for your level. That catches most problems, but it isn't a human editor, so an occasional unnatural phrase or slip can get through. Treat Stichos as practice material, and check anything you're unsure of with a teacher or a reference.

Can I read stories with explanations in my native language?

Yes. Stichos allows you to pair any target language with any native support language. You can read a Croatian story with French glosses, or a German story with Spanish explanations.

How does word lookup work while reading?

Tap or click any word for its meaning in that sentence, explained in your own language. In the full version, you can save any word to your Vocab Bank for later review.

Is the preview free, and what happens to my email?

Yes. The preview is free and needs no account. If you join the Reading List, we use your email to send your 3 free sample stories (PDF, after you confirm your address) and to let you know when we fully open. Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle it.

Do stories include audio or narration?

Story narration isn't part of the preview. At launch, the Premium Audio add-on reads every story aloud in a natural-sounding AI voice, in 39 of our 40 languages (Esperanto doesn't have audio support yet).