Some verbs and its conjugations

I learned some new Serbian verbs today. To list a few, I learned

• živeti / живети : to live
• govoriti / говорити : to speak
• ići / ићи : to go
• pisati / писати : to write
• čitati / читати : to read
• brojati / бројати : to count
• izgovoriti / иеговорити :to pronounce
• spelovati / спеловати : to spell
• konjugirati / конјугирати : to conjugate
• jesti / јести : to eat

etc…

I am quite certain that I will forget most of the verbs I learned today in few days as I am quite forgetful. However some verbs like videti / видети resemble the Latin words of the same meaning, making my life a bit easier. I wonder if there’s a reason why some words are quite like their Latin counter-parts.

Anyhow, according to the teacher I am following on Udemy, the verb conjugation’s rather easy in Serbian. First, one needs to find the stem of the verb. This can be found from the conjugation form of the first person plural. For instance, for the verb ићи, its first person plural is идемо. The ending -мо indicates that the verb is conjugated to a second person plural subject, making the rest, иде, its verb stem. The following tables are some examples of verb conjugations in Serbian.

1. ићи : to go

Singular pronoun	Verb form	Plural pronoun	Verb form
Ја	идем	Ми	идемо
Ти	идеш	Ви	идете
Он / Она	иде	Они / Оне	иду

So apparently the third person plural conjugations don’t exactly follow an easy conjugation rule. Some verbs have -u/-у as its ending and some has -e/-е instead. This rule, as far as I know, must be memorized.

1. живети : to live

Singular pronoun	Verb form	Plural pronoun	Verb form
Ја	живим	Ми	живимо
Ти	живиш	Ви	живите
Он / Она	живи	Они / Оне	живе

Note that the last -i/-и is dropped for the third person plural. This is simply dropped for the ease of pronunciation, and nothing more.

some prepositions

• i / и : and
• ali / али : but
• u / у : in
• iz / из : from

Some examples: Ја живим у Кореји и одлично говорим корејски. Ми смо из Србије али живимо у Луксембургу.