The quickest way to say hello in Serbian is zdravo (ZDRAH-vo) — friendly, correct any time of day, and fine with almost anyone. For something more formal say dobar dan (good day); to say goodbye, doviđenja. Below is the full, practical set — greetings for morning, afternoon and evening, how to ask “how are you?”, and when to switch between the casual and polite forms.
Published 21 June 2026
Greetings are the highest-value phrases you can learn first: you’ll use them in every single interaction, they’re short, and getting them right instantly makes locals warmer toward you. The good news is that Serbian greetings are almost identical to Montenegrin, Croatian and Bosnian ones, so this list travels the whole region.
Here’s where Serbian, like many languages, splits into a casual and a polite/plural form. Use the casual one with friends and people your age; the polite one with strangers, elders and in formal settings.
Tip: that si vs ste switch is the same politeness distinction as French tu/vous or German du/Sie. When in doubt with someone new, use ste — nobody is ever offended by being addressed politely.
Round out your greetings with the courtesies that go with them:
Is zdravo too casual for a shop or restaurant? It’s fine, but dobar dan feels a touch more polite when you walk in somewhere. Both are perfectly acceptable.
Do I need Cyrillic to use these? No. Serbian is written in both Latin and Cyrillic, and everything here works in the Latin script you already read. You can add Cyrillic later.
Will these work in Montenegro and Croatia? Yes — the core greetings are shared across all four standards, with only minor local flavour.
Greetings open the door; the next step is being able to keep going once someone answers. If you found these useful, the 30 survival phrases for your first trip add ordering, directions and restaurants, and the beginner’s roadmap shows the order to learn everything else in. That’s the whole idea behind Gora: start speaking real phrases on day one, then let a patient AI fox help you turn kako si? into an actual conversation. Montenegrin is live today, and every one of these greetings works there too.