Serbian Cyrillic to Latin Converter
Paste Serbian Cyrillic and get Gaj's Latin alphabet back, or paste Latin and get Cyrillic. The two alphabets match letter for letter, with one catch that the tool handles for you: the Latin pairs lj, nj and dž are single Cyrillic letters. Macedonian is covered too, in the Academy spelling and the digraph spelling used on passports. Free, no sign-up, and nothing leaves your browser.
Serbian or Macedonian. Letters of other Cyrillic alphabets (such as ы or щ) are left as they are.
Latin
Gaj's Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet of Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian; the same letters as the UN and Library of Congress systems.
Đorđe Đurđević je otišao u Ljubljanu, a Njegoš u Cetinje.
Letter by letter
| Cyrillic | Serbian Latin | Macedonian (Academy) | Macedonian (digraphs) |
|---|---|---|---|
| А а | a | a | a |
| Б б | b | b | b |
| В в | v | v | v |
| Г г | g | g | g |
| Д д | d | d | d |
| Ђ ђ | đ | ||
| Ѓ ѓ | ǵ | gj | |
| Е е | e | e | e |
| Ж ж | ž | ž | zh |
| З з | z | z | z |
| Ѕ ѕ | dz | dz | |
| И и | i | i | i |
| Ј ј | j | j | j |
| К к | k | k | k |
| Л л | l | l | l |
| Љ љ | lj | lj | lj |
| М м | m | m | m |
| Н н | n | n | n |
| Њ њ | nj | nj | nj |
| О о | o | o | o |
| П п | p | p | p |
| Р р | r | r | r |
| С с | s | s | s |
| Т т | t | t | t |
| Ћ ћ | ć | ||
| Ќ ќ | ḱ | kj | |
| У у | u | u | u |
| Ф ф | f | f | f |
| Х х | h | h | h |
| Ц ц | c | c | c |
| Ч ч | č | č | ch |
| Џ џ | dž | dž | dj |
| Ш ш | š | š | sh |
A blank cell means the language does not use the letter. Serbian ђ and ћ have no Macedonian equivalent; Macedonian ѓ, ќ and ѕ have no Serbian one.
How to Use the Serbian Cyrillic to Latin Converter
- 1. Pick the direction and language. Cyrillic → Latin needs no judgement from you. Latin → Cyrillic has a catch, explained below. Macedonian has its own Latin spellings.
- 2. Paste your text. Whole paragraphs work. Capitals are kept: Њемачка becomes Njemačka, and ЊЕМАЧКА becomes NJEMAČKA.
- 3. Check the notices. The tool lists any character it has no value for, such as a Russian ы in a Serbian text, and leaves it untouched.
- 4. Copy the result, or look up a letter in the table below it.
One Letter for One Letter, Almost
Serbian Cyrillic and Gaj's Latin alphabet were reformed in parallel in the nineteenth century, so each Cyrillic letter has exactly one Latin counterpart. Gaj's alphabet has 30 letters, three of them digraphs: lj for љ, nj for њ and dž for џ. The same values are used by the United Nations romanization of Serbian and the Library of Congress ALA-LC table, so a text converted here matches both.
| Cyrillic | Gaj's Latin | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Ђорђе | Đorđe | ђ is đ; dj is only a fallback |
| Љубљана | Ljubljana | љ is the digraph lj |
| Његош | Njegoš | њ is the digraph nj |
| џеп | džep | џ is the digraph dž |
| ћирилица | ćirilica | ћ is ć |
The Catch Going from Latin to Cyrillic
A Latin nj can be one letter (њ) or two (н + ј). Serbian tells them apart by meaning, not by spelling: njegov (његов, "his") uses the digraph, while injekcija (инјекција) has an n and a j that belong to different parts of the word. The same is true of lj and dž: nadživeti (надживети, "to outlive") is the prefix nad- plus živeti, so its dž is d + ž, whereas nadžak uses the digraph. The tool reads the digraph by default and handles the problem two ways:
- A short built-in list. It knows the stems injekc-, injekt-, konjunkc-, nadživ- and dablju, which are words usually cited as exceptions. It is not a dictionary.
- A plus sign. Type n+j, l+j or d+ž to keep two letters apart. The plus is removed in the output, so pod+že becomes подже and not поџе.
- Dj. Strict Gaj writes đ. Many English texts write dj (Djoković); turn on the option and the tool reads and writes it as ђ. It is off by default because dj is two letters in words such as adjektiv.
Macedonian
Macedonian Cyrillic has three letters Serbian does not (ѓ, ќ and ѕ) and lacks ђ and ћ. Its Latin forms vary. The Macedonian Academy's orthography of 1970 adapts Gaj's alphabet: ǵ and ḱ replace đ and ć, and dz is added. Official documents, including passports since 2008, use a diacritic-free digraph system based on ICAO Doc 9303, with gj, kj, zh, ch, sh and dz. The converter offers both, and both read back into Cyrillic, with the same ambiguities (zh could be ж or з followed by х, so a plus sign separates them).
Serbian Names in Citations
Because Serbian is written in both alphabets, a reference may give a title in either. Keep the script of the source in your list, and give a transliteration only if your style guide asks for one. How to Cite a Source in Another Language shows how APA, MLA and Chicago handle a title in a non-Latin script, and the Book Citation Generator formats the finished entry.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How do I convert Serbian Cyrillic to Latin?
- Paste the text, choose Cyrillic → Latin and read the result. Every Cyrillic letter has one Latin equivalent, so the conversion is exact: љ becomes lj, њ becomes nj, џ becomes dž, and the rest map letter for letter.
- Why can't Latin to Cyrillic be done perfectly by a program?
- Because lj, nj and dž are usually single letters but sometimes two. A converter needs a dictionary to know that injekcija has an n and a j, and Serbian has too many such words for a short list. This tool reads the digraph, covers a handful of common words, and lets you add a plus sign where it guesses wrong.
- Which alphabet does Serbia use?
- Both. The Constitution of 2006 makes Cyrillic the official script and gives Latin the status of a script in official use. Newspapers, websites and everyday writing use either, so conversion between them is routine.
- Is the Serbian Latin alphabet the same as the Croatian one?
- Yes, they are the same alphabet — Gaj's Latin alphabet, with 30 letters — and it is also used for Bosnian and Montenegrin. The tool converts the Cyrillic of Serbian; Croatian is not written in Cyrillic.
- What is the difference between dž and the single character dž?
- Unicode has single characters for the digraphs (dž, lj, nj) for old systems that kept a one-to-one match with Cyrillic. Modern texts use two ordinary letters, which is what the tool writes. It reads the single characters too.
- Does this convert Russian or Bulgarian?
- No. Their alphabets have letters Serbian lacks (ы, э, щ, ъ) and different Latin values. The Cyrillic to Latin Transliterator covers Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian and Bulgarian, with several standards.
- How is Macedonian ѓ written in Latin?
- As ǵ in the Academy spelling and as gj in the digraph spelling used on passports. Some sources write it đ, following Serbian, but the Academy itself does not.