I want to improve my mothers tongue
Hi everyone,
my native/heritage language is Serbian. I can speak it fairly well, but I was born and raised in Germany and I’m basically a fully integrated German. Over the years I also learned other languages like English and French, but I’ve noticed that I’m slowly losing my Serbian.
My family and I go back home at least once or twice a year, and I really love my culture. Still, people have started joking a bit about my pronunciation. I don’t take it too personally, but it motivated me to actually improve.
So my question is: how should I learn Serbian properly from my current level? Which books would you recommend? Just to make it clear: I don’t need to learn the language from zero. I can speak it, I understand it, and basic conversations are not a problem. I just sometimes form awkward sentences, use the wrong words, or can’t find the exact word I’m looking for. I also can’t read Cyrillic yet, so that’s something I probably need to work on too.
I’d also appreciate recommendations for Serbian movies, TV shows, YouTubers, TikTokers, podcasts, or anything else that could help me improve naturally. I’m 23, a student near Munich, and I’m interested in combat sports, so maybe if anyone knows Serbian/Balkan content related to MMA, boxing, kickboxing, BJJ, or sports in general, that would be great too.
One more thing: my family is from Sandžak, so I grew up with that dialect. From what I understand, some features of the dialect are different from standard Serbian, and one issue for me is this typical “lj” sound/usage in speech. Sometimes it seems to be used, sometimes not, and it honestly confuses me. I’m not sure what is dialect, what is “wrong,” and what is standard Serbian.
Has anyone here been in a similar situation as a heritage speaker? How would you recommend improving without starting completely from beginner level?
Thanks in advance!