The Serbian Language in the Eyes of Foreigners: Analysis of the Most Common Doubts of Learners on The Social Platform Reddit

Abstract

The subject of this paper is the analysis of posts on Reddit about foreigners’ confusions related to learning Serbian as a foreign language. The aim of the research is to clarify the most common questions of foreigners who are interested in learning the Serbian language. A descriptive method and a method of theoretical analysis with the technique of content analysis have been used in the paper. The analysis of research results has shown that there has been a lot of interest among foreigners for learning Serbian as a foreign language. The most common questions related to mastering the Serbian language include: 1. issues of integration into the social community (solving administrative problems, studying and working, finding friends, finding information about the character and mentality of the Serbian people, getting to know the culture and history of the Serbian people, life in Serbia without knowing the Serbian language, etc.), 2. issues of finding language learning modalities (accredited study centers, private schools, online platforms, private lessons), 3. issues of learning Serbian as a foreign language (difficulty in learning, time needed to master the language, differences between the eastern and western variants of the language), 4. issues of finding and using appropriate teaching tools (textbooks, language learning apps, podcasts, adapted folk and art texts, music, films and TV shows with foreign language translation, flash cards, illustrations and tables) and 5. the issue of mastering certain grammatical and lexical contents (Cyrillic, cases, difference between perfective and imperfective verbs, getting to know colloquial expressions).