Yes-No Questions in Serbian

These are questions that require either a yes or no for an answer, as in:

Da li radite ovde? (Do you work here ?)

There are two most common ways to ask such questions in Serbian:

1. Inserting “da li” at the beginning of the sentence:

Da li učiš srpski? (Do you study Serbian?)

Da li Luka radi? (Does Luka work?)

The word order in da li questions is: da li + (subject) + verb + anything else

As you can see, the subject is optional (hence, parentheses).

2. Inserting “li” immediately after the main verb or after the non-clitic,
auxiliary verb.

Učiš li srpski? (Do you study?)

Jesi li radio? (Did you work?)

Hoće li Luka učiti srpski? (Will Luka study Serbian?)

The word order in “li questions” is: verb + li + anything else

Negative Yes-No Questions

Sometimes, a speaker may ask a question negatively, by negating the verb

or the auxiliary:
Ne učiš srpski? (You don't study Serbian?)

Nisi radio danas? (You didn’t work today?)

An alternative is to put the negative phrase: ‘zar ne’ (didn’t you/ don’t you)
at the beginning of the sentence, as in these examples.

Zar ne učiš srpski? (Don’t you study Serbian?)

Zar nisi radio danas? (Didn’t you work today?)

Sentences like this express surprise.

Tag Yes-No Questions

These are questions that turn a positive declarative statement into the
question, by inserting the tag negative phrase ‘zar ne’ (didn’t you/ don’t
you), at the very end of the sentence. Just like in English:

Učiš srpski, zar ne? (You study Serbian, don’t you?)

Nisi radio danas, zar ne? (You worked today, didn’t you?)

So, we first have a regular declarative sentence, followed by ‘zar ne’.