Serbian Word Explorer

A comprehensive web application for exploring Serbian words with detailed morphological information, accent patterns, and frequency data.

🌐 Live at: https://saptac.online/recnik/

Features

• ✅ Full morphological paradigms - All case forms for nouns, conjugations for verbs with precise accent marking
• ✅ Accent information - Precise pitch accent marking from jezik database (~3,000 lemmas)
• ✅ Etymology - Word origins from Serbian Wiktionary
• ✅ Definitions - Word meanings from Serbian Wiktionary
• ✅ Word validation - Check if a word exists (2.8M word database)
• ✅ Frequency data - See how common a word is (2.8M word forms)
• ✅ Multi-source data - Combines jezik, spisak-srpskih-reci, inflection-sr, and Wiktionary
• ✅ Clean, responsive interface - Works on desktop and mobile devices

Data Sources

1. jezik - Morphology with detailed accent information (~3K lemmas)
2. spisak-srpskih-reci - Serbian word list (2.8M words)
3. inflection-sr - Word frequency data
4. Serbian Wiktionary - Etymology and definitions

Usage

Visit https://saptac.online/recnik/ and:

1. Type a Serbian word in Cyrillic (e.g., школа, човек, добар)
2. Press Enter or click "Претражи"
3. View comprehensive information:
   • Part of speech and grammatical gender
   • Full declension/conjugation table with accent marks
   • Word frequency ranking
   • Existence validation

Local Development

Prerequisites

• Python 3.9+
• Web browser

Installation

1. Backend setup:

cd backend

# Create virtual environment
python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate  # On Windows: venv\Scripts\activate

# Install dependencies
pip install -r requirements.txt

2. Ensure data repositories are in place:

The project expects these repositories to be in the parent directory:

• ../jezik
• ../spisak-srpskih-reci
• ../inflection-sr

If they're not already cloned, they should be there from earlier steps.

Running Locally

Quick Start

./run.sh

This starts both backend (port 8000) and frontend (port 3000).

Manual Start

Backend:

cd backend
source venv/bin/activate
python main.py

Frontend:

cd frontend
python3 -m http.server 3000

Then open http://localhost:3000

API Endpoints

Production: https://saptac.online/api/
Local: http://localhost:8000/api/

GET /api/word/{word}

Get complete information about a word.

Example:

curl https://saptac.online/api/word/школа

Response:

{
  "word": "школа",
  "exists": true,
  "lemma": "школа",
  "pos": "noun",
  "pos_sr": "именица",
  "gender": "f",
  "morphology": {
    "sg nom": ["шко̑ла"],
    "sg gen": ["шко̑ле̄"],
    "sg dat": ["шко̑ли"],
    ...
  },
  "frequency": {
    "rank": 1247,
    "count": 8532
  },
  "has_jezik_entry": true
}

GET /api/random

Get a random word from the jezik database.

GET /health

Health check endpoint.

Project Structure

serbian-word-explorer/
├── backend/
│   ├── main.py              # FastAPI application
│   ├── requirements.txt     # Python dependencies
│   └── services/
│       ├── jezik_service.py      # Jezik integration
│       ├── frequency_service.py  # Frequency data
│       └── wordlist_service.py   # Word validation
├── frontend/
│   ├── index.html          # Main UI
│   └── app.js              # Frontend logic
└── README.md

Deployment

The application is deployed on a VPS server at saptac.online.

Architecture

• Frontend: Static HTML/JS served via Nginx
• Backend: FastAPI service running as systemd service
• Data: ~12K lemmas (jezik) + 2.8M words (spisak-srpskih-reci + inflection-sr)

See DEPLOYMENT.md for detailed deployment documentation.

Future Enhancements

• IPA pronunciation generation
• Definitions from Wiktionary
• Etymology information
• Example sentences
• Synonyms/antonyms (partially available via definitions)
• Latin/Cyrillic toggle
• Ekavian/Ijekavian variants
• Audio pronunciation
• Redis caching for performance
• User contributions
• Search history
• Expand Wiktionary coverage (currently ~3K lemmas)

License

This project combines data from multiple sources, each with their own licenses. Please refer to the individual repositories for licensing information.

Credits

• jezik by @Zabolekar - Morphology and accent data
• spisak-srpskih-reci by @turanjanin - Word list
• inflection-sr by @nciric - Frequency data