Start with Latin, add Cyrillic a month or two in. That's what I tell every student, and I say it as someone with real affection for ćirilica. Latin lets you read Serbian or Montenegrin today, for free; Cyrillic then takes one honest weekend, because you'll already know the words underneath it.
Published 11 June 2026
On my street in Podgorica there's a pharmacy with its sign in Latin, a church noticeboard entirely in Cyrillic, and a bakery that refuses to choose — PEKARA over the door, ћирилица on the price list behind the counter. No local finds this odd. Both alphabets are simply ours, and every schoolchild reads both without thinking about it. The question is what you should do about that.
Here's the reassuring part: this isn't like English spelling, where letters and sounds have a complicated relationship. Vuk Karadžić reformed the Cyrillic alphabet in the 19th century around one rule:
Piši kao što govoriš, čitaj kao što je napisano — write as you speak, read as it's written.
Thirty letters, thirty sounds, in both scripts, mapping one-to-one. Latin š is Cyrillic ш, always. The only wrinkle: Latin writes three sounds as pairs — lj, nj, dž — which Cyrillic handles with single letters (љ, њ, џ). Learn one script and you've learned the sound system of the language; the second script is just a costume change.
In Serbia, Cyrillic is the constitutionally official script — state documents, court papers and school textbooks use it, and road signs usually carry both. But commercial life leans hard the other way: shopfronts, adverts, Instagram, text messages are mostly Latin. In Montenegro both scripts are official and daily life runs almost entirely on Latin; Cyrillic here lives on monuments, in monasteries and in grandparents' handwriting. Croatia uses Latin only, and Bosnia is officially bi-scriptal but practically Latin, except in Republika Srpska.
So a learner who reads only Latin can order dinner, rent a flat and doom-scroll in Serbian without trouble. A learner who reads only Cyrillic, oddly, would struggle more.
You already read Latin script. That means day one of your Serbian or Montenegrin is spent on actual language — greetings, coffee, the words themselves — not on decoding. Nearly all beginner materials, subtitles and apps default to Latin too. Momentum in the first weeks is worth protecting; I've watched students burn their enthusiasm on ж and щ before they could say good morning, and I'd rather you were speaking.
Then, once the words feel familiar, give Cyrillic a weekend. It really is one weekend — our 20-minute-a-day Cyrillic guide breaks it into three short sittings. After that, every street sign in Belgrade becomes free reading practice.
When you do add Cyrillic, the hard letters aren't the strange-looking ones — ж and џ you'll simply learn. The traps are the familiar faces with different jobs: В is V (not B), Н is N (not H), Р is R (not P), С is S, У is U, and Х is H. РЕСТОРАН reads "restoran" — once you've stopped seeing "pectopah", you're most of the way there.
Can I get by in Serbia with only Latin? Mostly yes — but road signs in the south, official paperwork and traditional kafana menus will remind you what you skipped.
Is Montenegrin really written in Cyrillic too? Officially both; in practice you'll go days in Budva or Podgorica without needing it.
What about Croatian and Bosnian? Croatian: Latin only. Bosnian: both on paper, Latin in life.
If you're starting from zero, our beginner's roadmap for Serbian puts the scripts in context of everything else — and the Gora app teaches every word in real sentences from the first lesson, in Latin script, exactly as I'd teach you across a kitchen table.
PS — when you do learn Cyrillic, send a photo of yourself smugly reading a menu. My students always do, and it never stops being lovely.