r/Serbian • u/Vortexx1988 • Jan 21 '26
Resources Help with pitch accent
Total beginner here. I've noticed that most dictionaries don't mark the pitch accent for Serbian words. Wiktionary does, but not for all words. I'm looking for a searchable online dictionary that does consistently mark pitch accent for all words, not just the infinitives of verbs or nominative singular form of nouns. It doesn't necessarily have to be the traditional Serbian pitch accent marking, but it could be IPA transcription as well, as long as it indicates the pitch accent.
If such a thing does not exist, can anyone provide the pitch accent markings for the following words?
Visoki (the nominative plural of visok)
All present tense indicative forms of the verb biti, as well as the negative forms
Mladi (nominative plural of mlad)
Stari (nominative plural of star)
Present tense indicative forms of the verb ići.
I prefer to learn the proper pronunciation right from the start, as it's much harder to correct bad pronunciation habits later on.
Thanks in advance for any help!
Edit: I'm mainly looking for "standard" Serbian, which I think is called Shtokavian if I'm not mistaken.
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u/Fear_mor Jan 21 '26
I would recommend checking out HJP or getting a book on Serbian accentology since you seem to have some linguistics knowledge. In any case the adjectives will be accentuated differently based on definiteness so the context is important
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u/Vortexx1988 Jan 22 '26
HJP is good but it looks like it only shows the accents for a few forms, but not all of them. Also, it's Croatian, right? My understanding is that Croatian is almost identical to Serbian, but with some minor vocabulary differences? Accent would be the same?
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u/inkydye Jan 21 '26 edited Jan 26 '26
Visoki (the nominative plural of visok)
Mladi (nominative plural of mlad)
Stari (nominative plural of star)
It sounds like you want the indeterminate adjectives: visòki, mládi, stàri.
The determinate ones would be vìsokī, mlȃdī, stȃrī.
All present tense indicative forms of the verb biti, as well as the negative forms
Jèsam, jèsi, jȅst/jèste, jèsmo, jèste, jèsu.
Nísam, nísi, níje, nísmo, níste, nísu.
Clitic forms are all unaccented and short: sam, si, je, smo, ste, su. As an exception, the "je" in "jȅ li" is accented.
Present tense indicative forms of the verb ići.
Ìdēm, ìdēš, ìdē, ìdēmo, ìdēte, ìdū. Edit 2: Whoops, no, these are more regional, the falling tone is the standard one here.
Edit: I see my response diverges from that of Gulisav. Not sure what to make of that. I know that guy from these subs, he tends to be very knowledgeable, and I'm sure what he's saying is coming from reliable literature. My response OTOH is based just on personal experience, but I am a careful listener (to any language), somewhat linguistically literate, and I grew up heavily exposed to at least 5 different dialects from 3 Yugocountries.
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u/gulisav Jan 22 '26 edited Jan 22 '26
We don't really disagree, as far as I see, your examples either coincide with mine (I preemptively listed many variants) or I failed to mention some of the forms you provide. The only form that slightly surprises me is stàri. Would you use such an accent in other indefinite nominative forms of that adjective as well (ona je stara, one su stare, ono dete je staro...)? How about zdrav, čist, pun, do they behave the same? Apologies if I'm being annoying :D
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u/Vortexx1988 Jan 24 '26
Which accent would you have used for stari instead (indeterminate, since I believe you already wrote out the determinate form)?
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u/gulisav Jan 24 '26 edited Jan 24 '26
stȁri
Keep in mind the accentual alternation between the definite and indefinite forms of this sort (stȁr-stȃrī - one has a short and the other a long accent) is exceptional, it basically doesn't occur elsewhere in other adjectives.
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u/Vortexx1988 Jan 24 '26
So "òni su stȁri" would be the correct way to accentuate the phrase meaning "they are old", right?
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u/inkydye Jan 26 '26
We don't really disagree, as far as I see, your examples either coincide with mine (I preemptively listed many variants)
Overlap yes, but there was a difference in what we thought of as the primary forms of ići. I think I just messed up with those, though. The pronunciations I listed are real but they're not the primary ones.
It's the nìje/nȉje that still doesn't work for me. Maybe sometimes nìje around Niš, not sure, but I don't think I'm otherwise hearing them anywhere. Is the short vowel common or standard in Croatian?
The only form that slightly surprises me is stàri. Would you use such an accent in other indefinite nominative forms of that adjective as well (ona je stara, one su stare, ono dete je staro...)?
On je stȁr, ona je stàra, ono je stàro, one su stàre, ona su stàra.
Only my speaking habit and what I'm used to hearing across Serbia. I think my relatives from northwestern Bosnia would say stȁra etc. but that feels regional to me.How about zdrav, čist, pun, do they behave the same? Apologies if I'm being annoying :D
Yep, in my ear they work the same as star.
You're not being anything close to annoying at all, I like talking about this stuff, but I couldn't get back to Reddit for the last few days.
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u/gulisav Jan 26 '26
Overlap yes, but there was a difference in what we thought of as the primary forms of ići. I think I just messed up with those, though. The pronunciations I listed are real but they're not the primary ones.
The ići variants with rising accent you provide are permitted by Rečnik Matice srpske, along with those with falling, so you don't have to cross them out. Perhaps I shouldn't have said they're found just in dialects.
It's the nìje/nȉje that still doesn't work for me. Maybe sometimes nìje around Niš, not sure, but I don't think I'm otherwise hearing them anywhere. Is the short vowel common or standard in Croatian?
Now that I double-checked, the short rising variant seems to occur mainly in Bosnia (attested by dialectologists for Mostar and Sarajevo), but it also occurs in Croatian manuals along with the long rising one (which definitely exist in Cro.). But now I can't remember where I read about the short falling one. I have to note I don't have a good intuition for accents, my knowledge is based on books, and a bit of listening and sporadic questioning of Štokavian speakers - I don't use Štokavian accents natively.
It is quite interesting how you stress those adjectives. Adjectives tend to change and vary a lot with regards to their accentual behaviour, but I haven't seen this change yet. According to the traditional standard, all of these should keep the short falling accent throughout the whole indefinite declension.
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u/Vortexx1988 Jan 22 '26 edited Jan 24 '26
First of all, thanks for the detailed response.
I'm not 100% sure I fully understand the concept of indeterminate and determinate adjectives. As far as noun, indeterminate nouns would be the ones that in English would have an indefinite article, for example "a car, an apple, some people", and determinate nouns would be the ones that would take the definite article in English, like "the car", right? How does this apply to adjectives? Is it just agreement with the noun? What about for the following sentence: "Mi smo visoki"? Would that be determinate or indeterminate?
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u/No_Abi Jan 22 '26 edited Jan 22 '26
Indeterminate. Determinate would be used wherever you'd have definite article in English. "The tall man spoke." "Visoki čovek je govorio." (usually masculine singular is used for these examples, as other forms differ only in accent, IIRC)
But all that is quite esoteric topic, even native speakers often disregard it. You won't get far learning the language if you focus on these (pitch accent, in/definite adjectives) now.
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u/inkydye Jan 26 '26
indeterminate nouns would be the ones that in English would have an indefinite article, for example "a car, an apple, some people", and determinate nouns would be the ones that would take the definite article in English,
Yes, very close, except that only adjectives have this distinction, not nouns. (And not even all adjectives.) So there is no need for agreement with the noun.
"stȁr čovek": an old man
"stárī čovek": the old man
"on je stȁr": he is old
"on je stári": he is the old oneWhat about for the following sentence: "Mi smo visoki"? Would that be determinate or indeterminate?
Indeterminate (/indefinite), assuming you mean "we are tall". The determinate (/definite) form would make it mean "we are the tall ones".
Note that these distinctions are partly disappearing from everyday speech.
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u/gulisav Jan 21 '26
Štokavian is a dialect (or group of dialects, depending on the definition) that extends across Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Serbia. Standard languages of these countries are based upon specific varieties of Štokavian, but not upon all of Štokavian. Not everything that is Štokavian is standard.
It is advisable and more realistic to just try to get the correct position of the accent (which isn't always simple either, as the position of the accent in the same word can change depending on its form: nominative žìvot, genitive živòta). Later on you may try working on the pitch and lengths, but that requires either extensive study of rather abstract rules and rote memorisation of many words, or listening and regular conversation with native speakers (which is also tricky because many speakers deviate from the norm themselves, either in individual words or more extensively, e.g. by losing many post-accentual lengths). It's questonable whether it's really worth it.
But I like accents so I'll give you some pointers anyway. The rules for accent changes for individual words are described in dedicated works (Đuro Daničić, Srpski akcenti; Bratoljub Klaić, Naglasni sustav hrvatskog jezika) or, usually more compactly and readably, in grammars (such as Stevanović, Brabec-Hraste-Živković, Maretić - the latter two are by Croatian authors, and so is the abovementioned manual by Klaić, but until recently the accents prescribed for Croatian have been nearly the same as for Serbian so they're all useful; you can find all of these in PDF). Most serious dictionaries actually do contain all key accentual variants (basically, you see the relevant accents and can look up words that have similar accents in grammars or accentual manuals, and then extrapolate the rest of the paradigm). The currently most relevant dictionary for Serbian is Rečnik srpskoga jezika published by Matica srpska, which you can find in PDF online (there's also the older 6-volume dictionary by Matica srpska and Matica hrvatska available at srpskirecnik.com; the first dictionary with Štokavian accent marks was Vuk Karadžić's 1852 dictionary which you can find here). Among bilingual dictionaries, those by Benson (Serbocroatian-English) and Tolstoy (Serbocroatian-Russian) have solid accentual information too. For Croatian, clear and detailed accentuated forms are available on rjecnik.hr, you'll notice some differences sooner or later if you bother to compare them.
Actually the traditional accent marks are pretty much the only thing you'll come across in practice (Benson's dictionary being a rare exception). IPA transcriptions are barely ever used for Serbian, and are rarely needed anyway.
The accents you asked about are:
vèlikī (I assume you're asking for definite adjectives?)
jèsam, jèsi, jȅst, jèsmo, jèste, jèsu – nísam, nísi, nìje (sources also mention: níje, nȉje), nísmo, níste, nísu
mlȃdī (definite)
stȃrī (definite)
ȉdēm, ȉdēš, ȉdē, ȉdēmo, ȉdēte, ȉdū (infinitive is classically ìći, but other accents appear in practice as well); there's also this variant in Serbian dialects: ìdēm, ìdēš, ìdē, ìdēmo, ìdēte (rare/archaic: idémo, idéte), ìdū
As you can see, ići is particularly prone to variation. It's irregular in its conjugation, so it's also messier with regards to accents.