The first time I introduced a foreign friend to my grandmother, he beamed at her and said kako si? — the ti form, the one you use with your mates. She smiled, because he was sweet and clearly trying. But everyone in the room heard it. In Serbian and Montenegrin there are two words for "you", and picking the wrong one is the fastest way to sound either rude or overfamiliar. Here's how to never get it wrong.
Published 19 July 2026
Quick answer, so you can walk into a shop this afternoon and be fine: vi is your safe default with any stranger, anyone older, and anyone doing a job for you. Ti is for friends, children, family, and anyone who has told you to use it. If you only remember one thing, remember to start with vi — you can always be invited down to ti later, but you can't un-say a too-casual ti to someone's father.
English lost this distinction centuries ago (we quietly dropped "thou" and kept the formal "you" for everybody). So for English speakers it's not a hard grammar point — it's a social muscle you've never had to use. The good news: the rules are simpler than in French or German, and Montenegrins are forgiving of a learner who's obviously making the effort.
Ti is singular, informal you. Vi is two things at once: the polite singular you (respect to one person), and the plural you (more than one person, formal or not). So vi pulls double duty — context tells you which it is. When you're addressing a single older stranger and you say vi, that's the respect version, and it changes the verb too:
Notice the verb ending carries the politeness as much as the pronoun does — and because we drop pronouns constantly, often the -te ending is the only signal. Izvinite (excuse me) is already the vi form; nobody says izvini to a stranger.
Default to vi for the whole outer ring of your life and ti for the inner ring:
Vi — a shopkeeper, a waiter, a taxi driver, a landlord, a doctor, a police officer, your new colleague, anyone visibly older than you, and your partner's parents until they say otherwise. Ti — friends, kids, your own family, pets, God (yes, prayers use ti), and anyone who's offered.
Two grey zones trip people up. Colleagues your own age usually slide into ti fast, but let the first day be vi. And a shop assistant who's twenty-two while you're forty may still get vi from you — age matters less than the fact that it's a stranger in a role. Erring formal is never the wrong call in a first encounter.
You don't promote yourself to ti. The older or more senior person offers it, almost like a small ceremony: "Ma možemo na ti" — "Come on, we can use ti." You say da, maybe hvala, and from that second the wall's down. If you jump to ti first — especially with someone older — it can land as cheeky. So relax and wait for the invitation; it usually comes quickly once someone likes you.
People who look up Balkan politeness are often really asking the flip side: how rude does it get? Very. Serbian and Montenegrin swearing is a baroque art form, frequently aimed at relatives and deities, and it ranges from genuinely offensive to the affectionate cursing old friends throw at each other. I'm not going to hand you a phrasebook of it — the trap is that a foreigner deploying a heavy curse sounds shocking, not chummy, because you haven't earned it and your timing will be off. Understand that jao, bre and a muttered majke mi ("I swear on my mother") are the harmless everyday spice; leave the heavy artillery to natives until your ear is good enough to know exactly who's joking. Politeness, weirdly, is the more useful skill — it opens far more doors than swearing ever will.
Is it really rude to use ti with a stranger? Not offensive-rude, but it marks you instantly as either a foreigner or someone with no manners. With an older person it can genuinely sting. Vi costs you nothing, so use it.
Do young people still bother with vi? Yes — less among themselves, but absolutely with elders, officials and strangers. It's alive and load-bearing, not a museum piece.
What about texting or DMs? Same rules, and a capital Vi in writing is a nice touch of respect. With peers online it's ti almost immediately.
This is the kind of thing a grammar table can't teach you, because it's not really grammar — it's reading the room. Getting greetings and address right is half of sounding like you belong; if you want the words that go with it, my piece on Serbian greetings and the one on the vocative (how names bend when you call out to someone) are the natural next two. In Gora you practise these in real little exchanges with the fox, so ti and vi become reflex instead of a decision you agonise over mid-sentence. Start formal, let people invite you in — that's the whole trick.