ljudi

Ljudi is a common noun in Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian that refers to human beings in general or to a group of people. It is used as the plural form meaning “people” or “humankind” and appears in contexts ranging from everyday speech to formal discourse. For an individual, speakers typically use čovjek (man) or osoba (person). In phrases such as ljudi iz grada (“people from the city”) or tko su ti ljudi? (“who are these people?”), ljudi denotes people as a collective.

The word derives from Proto-Slavic *ljudъ and has cognates across the Slavic languages, such as Russian lyudi, Polish ludzie, Czech lidé, and Slovene ljudje. Its pronunciation in Serbo-Croatian is typically [ˈʎudi], with the initial lj digraph representing a palatal approximant.

In grammar, ljudi is the plural nominative of the noun ljud, used as the subject or object of a clause. The related adjective ljudski means “human, civil, or related to people,” as in ljudska prava (human rights) or ljudska solidarnost. The term should be distinguished from narod, which more specifically refers to a nation or people as a distinct community, and from other terms that emphasize other social or collective meanings.

Overall, ljudi is a fundamental, widely used term for referring to people in everyday language across the South Slavic languages, with clear cross-linguistic cognates in the broader Slavic family.