You can absolutely do Montenegro's coast on English alone — Kotor, Budva and Tivat are used to visitors. But the moment you answer a waiter's izvolite? with hvala instead of a blank look, the temperature of the whole exchange changes. Here's the short list of words and habits that punch above their weight, from someone who fumbled through them the hard way.
Published 13 July 2026
My first morning in Kotor I walked into a bakery, pointed at a burek, and said "one, please" in English. The woman behind the counter gave me exactly what I asked for and not one degree of warmth more. Two days later I'd learned to say jedan burek, molim and add hvala at the end, and the same woman started throwing in a "dobar dan!" and correcting my pronunciation with a grin. Nothing about my Montenegrin was good. It just wasn't English, and that turned out to be the whole point.
So this isn't a "become fluent before your holiday" post. Nobody does that. It's the handful of things that actually move the needle on a one- or two-week trip.
Along the Adriatic strip — Kotor, Budva, Tivat, Herceg Novi, and Podgorica's centre — English is common. Hotel staff, most café and restaurant workers, taxi drivers used to tourists: you'll be fine. Younger Montenegrins in particular tend to speak it well. Where it drops off is the moment you go even slightly off-track: a bus station ticket window, a village konoba up in the mountains, an older shopkeeper in Cetinje. That's exactly where a few words save you, and where they're most appreciated.
If you learn nothing else, learn these. I'd put them on your phone's lock screen the night before you fly.
That's it. Ten items, maybe twenty minutes of practice, and you've covered greeting, paying, apologising and asking directions — the spine of any trip.
Montenegrin is phonetic, which is a gift: once you know the sounds, you can read any word off a menu correctly. The letters that trip up English speakers are the little forest of s/c/z variants — š is "sh", č and ć are both roughly "ch", ž is the "s" in "measure", đ is a soft "j" as in "jam", and j on its own is a "y". So Njegoš, the national poet whose mausoleum sits on top of Mount Lovćen, is "NYEH-gosh", not "En-jay-gosh". If you want the full run-down, I wrote a guide to Montenegrin pronunciation that goes letter by letter.
One habit worth stealing: Montenegrins stress the first syllable far more often than English does. Front-load the word and you'll sound closer than your grammar has any right to.
First, coffee is not a transaction, it's the reason for the meeting. If someone invites you na kafu, clear an hour, not ten minutes. Nobody gulps and leaves. Second, greetings are non-negotiable — you say dobar dan walking into a small shop, a pharmacy, a doctor's waiting room, even a lift sometimes. Skipping it reads as rude in a way it wouldn't back home. Get the greeting right and half your "how do I not offend anyone" worries evaporate.
If your trip is coast-and-old-towns, the ten phrases above plus a smile will carry you. If you're renting a car and heading into Durmitor or along the Tara canyon, add numbers (for fuel, prices and directions) and the words for left, right and straight on — lijevo, desno, pravo. Doing the Bay of Kotor properly? My Kotor first-timer's guide and the Budva walk-through both bundle in the phrases specific to each town. And if you want a proper pocket list, the 30 survival phrases post is built for exactly this.
Do I need Montenegrin at all for a holiday?
No — you can survive the coast on English. But "survive" and "have a good time" aren't the same thing, and the gap between them is about ten words wide.
Will Serbian or Croatian phrases work?
Yes. Montenegrin, Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian are close enough that anything you've picked up in one will be understood. Locals will clock the difference and not care in the slightest.
Latin or Cyrillic on the signs?
On the coast, mostly Latin — you'll read menus and shopfronts fine. Cyrillic turns up inland and on some official signs, but you can travel without it.
None of this needs a textbook. Twenty minutes with the right ten phrases beats a phrasebook you never open — and if you'd rather practise them out loud before you go, that's exactly what Gora is for: Montenegrin taught in real sentences, with a patient (if slightly ridiculous) AI fox who'll let you rehearse ordering that burek until it lands. Learn the ten words on the plane; use them the same afternoon.