Vegetable Names In Serbian

Knowing vegetable names in Serbian can be helpful when shopping in a grocery store, green market, or even restaurant. So, let’s learn more about Serbian delicious vegetables and fruits and how to name them in the Serbian language.

Where To Buy Vegetables In Serbia?

In Ancient Rome, everyday life revolved around the Forums. In Serbia, as it was and still is — around the green market, or as we call it “Pijaca”. The word itself is not actually Slavic but its most commonly used by Serbians. However, in some parts of Serbia, the Slavic term “Tržnica” is still used, but most people call it Pijaca. It’s different from the Italian “Piazza”, which means “square”, or “forum”, which makes it basically the same thing.

In the villages and smaller towns in Serbia, there is something called a “Pijačni dan” or a “Greenmarket day”, when all the vegetable and fruit growers sell their products. It’s usually once a week.

Globalization has brought convenience stores, shopping malls, mega-markets, but they haven’t been able to replace the significance that Pijaca has to Serbs. “Pijace” (Plural of Pijaca) are usually places where you can buy fresh “povrće” (vegetables) and “voće” (fruit), sir (cheese), and other dairy products. Nowadays, the offer is so colorful that you can virtually find whatever you like on Serbian pijaca.

Vegetable Names In Serbian

Fun Facts About How Serbians Eat Vegetables

Serbian elders say that when you eat five colors a day, it means you will have a healthy meal. So, in that spirit, we are now going to buy vegetables to make a salad (salata). The base is, of course, green (zelen-i/-a/-o). First, we chop the lettuce (Zelena Salata). A funny name, you will agree, since it translates directly into English as “Green Salad”, not lettuce, but those are the little tricks that you come to realize when you start learning Serbian. After we have chopped the lettuce, we can put some fresh cucumbers (krastavac), and we are done with the greens.

Serbs love onion, leek, and garlic, and they sometimes combine all three of them in one dish. Even though they don’t sound the same in English, in Serbian, they have a similar name: Onion — Crni Luk (black onion), Garlic — Beli luk (white onion), and Leek — Praziluk. So it’s all onions, no matter what you eat.

Peppers are next, we can find them in all shapes and sizes, but mostly they are red, green, and yellow. Tomato is next. Brought from America, it quickly became one of Europe’s, and Serbia’s in particular, most favorite vegetables. In Serbian, the tomato has a very peculiar name; it’s called Paradajz, which in Serbian doesn’t mean anything besides a transliteration of the English word “Paradise”. A fun fact is that in Croatian, which is a similar language to Serbian, tomato is “Rajčica”, where “Raj” (as in Serbian) stands for “Paradise”. So, as you can see, there are close connections between the two languages.

Cut slices of fresh white (bel/-i/a/-o)* cheese, add salt (so), black (crn-i/-a/-o) pepper (biber), and oil (ulje), and you are done. Bon Appetite or Prijatno! Enjoy your healthy colorful meal!

Fruits In Serbian

Of course, when in a Pijaca, you will immerse yourself in its colorful world. Let’s go fruit shopping! There are two types of the fruit of which Serbs are most proud of: the first one is purple (ljubičast-i/-a/-o), which is, of course, a plum (šljiva) — the national Serbian drink of Šljivovica (anglicized as Slivovitz) is made of them. The second one is red (crven-i/-a/-o) — a raspberry (malina), the pride of Western Serbia.

Here is the table with the most common names for fruits in Serbian:

If you want to learn why Serbian cuisine tastes so great, food vocabulary in Serbian, or just want to know what to buy in grocery stores in Serbia, the Ling app can help you with that.

Original blog post: https://ling-app.com/sr/vegetable-names-in-serbian/