There are eight question words worth memorising before almost anything else: ko (who), šta/što (what), gdje (where), kad (when), zašto (why), kako (how), koji (which) and koliko (how much). Learn these and you stop being stuck — you can ask your way out of any situation, even with a tiny vocabulary. A one-word question plus a pointing finger gets you further than three memorised sentences.
Published 2 June 2026
I tell every beginner the same thing in their first week: don't wait until you can build a polite full sentence. Learn to ask. A question puts the work on the other person — they answer, you listen, and you've just had a real exchange for the price of one word. Here's the whole toolkit.
| Montenegrin / Serbian | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| ko | who | Ko je to? — Who is that? |
| šta / što | what | Šta je ovo? — What is this? |
| gdje / gde | where | Gdje je toalet? — Where's the toilet? |
| kad(a) | when | Kada kreće bus? — When does the bus leave? |
| zašto | why | Zašto ne? — Why not? |
| kako | how | Kako se kaže…? — How do you say…? |
| koji | which | Koji autobus? — Which bus? |
| koliko | how much / many | Koliko košta? — How much is it? |
Notice the pattern: the question word comes first, then the verb, then everything else. No "do" to bolt on, no scrambling of the rest of the sentence. Gdje je stanica? is literally "Where is station?" and that's a complete, correct question. English makes questions harder than this language does.
A couple of these earn their place ten times a day. Koliko? on its own — just "how much?" — handles every price, every quantity, every "how far is it?" you'll ever need at a market or a bus window. And Kako se kaže…? ("how do you say…?") is the single most useful sentence a beginner owns: you point, you ask, and the person in front of you hands you the exact word you were missing. I've built half my vocabulary standing in queues doing precisely that.
You'll see both šta and što for "what". Šta is the everyday Serbian and Bosnian form; što is more usual in Montenegrin and Croatian. They're both understood everywhere on the coast and inland — nobody will blink either way. Pick the one your teacher or your target country uses and move on. This is one of those "four languages, mostly one" details, and it's not worth losing sleep over.
Most of these words never change — gdje, kad, zašto, kako and koliko stay put. But ko and koji behave like the nouns they stand in for, so they take case endings:
ko (who) across cases:
Don't try to master that table today. Just know it exists, so that when you meet koga in the wild you recognise it as "who" doing a different job, not a brand-new word. It's the same case system running under the whole language — the question words just play by the same rules. If cases are still fuzzy, the accusative case explained is the gentlest place to start.
The fastest way to make these stick is to actually use them, badly, in public. Point at a pastry and say Šta je ovo? Ask a price with Koliko? and a raised eyebrow. Lost? Gdje je…? plus the name of the thing. You'll be amazed how much a single question word plus gesture can carry a conversation. Pair them with a few greetings and you've got the skeleton of every small interaction a traveller has.
That's the real reason I front-load questions with my students: they're the cheapest fluency you can buy. Eight words, and the whole country becomes something you can interrogate your way through. If you want them drilled into you with real sentences and a fox who'll actually answer back when you ask Kako si?, that's exactly what Gora is for.
PS — the first question to practise on a real person? Kako se kaže…? ("How do you say…?"). It turns every stranger into a teacher.