Mediji

Most of this list is vocabulary you can simply learn. One third of it isn't — and that's the part worth slowing down for.

The film genres are adjectives, not nouns. Ljubavni, akcioni, ratni, animirani, crtani — each of them is waiting for a noun and will change its ending to match it.

And they take the definite form — ljubavni, not ljubavan. That's the form Serbian uses when the adjective classifies rather than describes: it isn't saying the film is loving, it's saying which kind of film it is. Same reason you say sportski program and policijske serije.

Two words are quietly literal, and they stick better once you see it. Crtani film is a drawn film — from crtati, to draw. And sapunica comes straight from sapun, soap: the Serbian word was built the same way the English one was, out of the adverts that paid for it.

One last pair to keep apart: novine is a newspaper and exists only in the plural, while vesti is the news — also plural, and also never singular. Serbian counts both as many things at once.