There is a slow, velvet Serbian song about an old horse-drawn carriage - a fijaker - drifting through winter streets. It is gentle and a little melancholy, and it turns out to be a perfect vehicle (quite literally) for practising present-tense verb forms and infinitives. The verbs appear one by one, softly, and because the melody is unhurried you have time to hear each ending before the next line arrives.
What follows is a gap-fill exercise built around the song's verses. Read the skeleton, try to supply the missing present-tense forms, then check yourself against the answers below. After that, watch the video and listen for the exact forms in the singer's voice - there is nothing quite like hearing a live example lock a verb ending into place.
Can I use the fijaker song as a gap-fill exercise?
Absolutely - and here is the skeleton. The bracketed English hints tell you the meaning; your job is to supply the correct Serbian present-tense form. The lines follow the song closely, so once you have filled the gaps you can sing (or hum) along with the video.
Fijaker stari ulicama _______ (wanders / drives slowly)
i sobom _______ (carries) zaljubljeni par;
cele noći sneg polako _______ (falls)
a dvoje mladih _______ (warms) srca zar.
Kocijas polako _______ (drives / steers)
i pesmu staru _______ (hums / sings quietly);
fijaker stari, vozi nas, _______ (take / drive us)
dok noc ne _______ (ends / passes).
Suggested answers: klizi / vozi (wanders/drives), nosi (carries), pada (falls), greje (warms), vozi (drives), peva (hums/sings), vozi (take us - imperative, but the same stem), prodje (ends/passes). Do not worry if you chose a near-synonym - Serbian has rich choices here, and hearing the actual recording is the best confirmation.
Where can I watch the fijaker video?
The original lesson embedded this song as a YouTube clip. Here it is, carried forward in a standard iframe so it should play on any modern browser.
Watch it at least twice: once while reading the gap-fill skeleton, and once just to enjoy it. The second listen is always more rewarding.
How do verb stems and present endings work in Serbian?
The shortcut that makes gap-fills like this one manageable is simple: take the infinitive, remove the final -ti or -iti, and you have the stem. From the stem, attach the present-tense ending that matches the person - -im / -is / -i for one group, -em / -es / -e or -am / -as / -a for others. So nositi (to carry) loses -iti to give the stem nos-, and then nosi is simply stem plus the third-person singular ending.
Recognising that pattern in a song lyric - where the verb is already there in front of you - is the gentlest possible way to make it feel real rather than abstract. The fijaker song is slow enough that you can catch each ending before the next verse sweeps it away.
FAQ - the fijaker gap-fill lesson
Is a poetic song too hard for a beginner?
Not as a gap-fill. The bracketed English hints mean you always know the meaning; your task is only to choose the right form, not to understand the whole lyric from scratch. Poetry can actually be gentler than prose because the sentences are short, the vocabulary is vivid, and the rhythm gives your brain a beat to lean on.
Do I need to fill every blank perfectly?
Not at all. If you get the ending right but choose a slightly different verb root, that is already a success - it means you have internalised the conjugation pattern. The blanks are an invitation to try, not a test with a single correct answer.
What does "fijaker" mean exactly?
A fijaker is a horse-drawn carriage for hire - the kind that once clattered through the cobblestone streets of Belgrade and other Austro-Hungarian-influenced cities in the Balkans. The word came into Serbian from the German Fiaker (itself from the French fiacre). A few fijakers still operate in Belgrade today, mostly for tourists, but in the early twentieth century they were everyday urban transport. The song treats the carriage as a symbol of old-fashioned romance.
Which verb group do most of the song's verbs belong to?
The majority follow the -iti infinitive / -i third-person pattern (nositi - nosi, voziti - vozi). One or two use the -ati / -a pattern (padati - pada, pevati - peva). Seeing both groups in one short song is actually very efficient learning.
"A language learned through a song is a language remembered through a song."
Keep the melody humming in the back of your mind as you move through your next lesson - you will be surprised how often the verb endings from this song surface, uninvited and perfectly correct.
With warmth,
Marina Petrovic
To go deeper into how Serbian present-tense endings work across all verb groups, the Serbian verb conjugations hub lays everything out clearly, with plenty of examples you can practise at your own pace.