Da li večera počinje u sedam sati?

Da li is a very common way to mark a yes/no question in Serbian. It does not translate word-for-word very neatly into English; it functions more like a question marker.

So:

Da li večera počinje u sedam sati?
= Does dinner start at seven o’clock? / Is dinner starting at seven?

Because Serbian does not need the same kind of inversion that English does.

In English, you say:

Dinner starts at seven.
but
Does dinner start at seven?

In Serbian, one very common pattern is:

Večera počinje u sedam sati.
Da li večera počinje u sedam sati?

So after da li, the sentence can keep a fairly normal statement-like order.

Here večera means dinner or supper, the evening meal.

A useful thing to know is that večera can also look like a verb form from večerati (to eat dinner), but in this sentence it is clearly a noun, because the main verb is počinje.

So here:

večera = dinner
počinje = starts / begins

Počinje is 3rd person singular present tense, meaning starts, begins, or sometimes is starting.

It agrees with večera, which is singular:

• večera počinje = dinner starts
• not plural, so not počinju

Počinje is the normal choice here when talking about a scheduled or expected starting time.

Serbian often uses this kind of present-tense form for things like timetables, planned events, or regular arrangements:

• Film počinje u osam.
• Čas počinje u devet.
• Večera počinje u sedam.

A form like počne belongs to a different verbal pattern and would not be the most neutral wording in this question.

It means at seven o’clock.

Literally:

• u = a preposition that here corresponds to English at
• sedam = seven
• sati = hours / o’clock in this time expression

So u sedam sati is the full way to say at seven o’clock.

Yes, you can very often just say u sedam.

Both are natural:

• Da li večera počinje u sedam?
• Da li večera počinje u sedam sati?

The version with sati is a little fuller and sometimes a little clearer, but in everyday speech u sedam is extremely common.

Because Serbian does not have articles like English a and the.

So večera can mean:

• a dinner
• the dinner
• sometimes just dinner

The exact meaning depends on context. In this sentence, English usually needs the or a more natural phrasing like Does dinner start at seven?, but Serbian simply uses večera.

Yes. A more formal or more bookish alternative is:

Počinje li večera u sedam sati?

This also means Does dinner start at seven o’clock?

So both are correct:

• Da li večera počinje u sedam sati? — very common, neutral
• Počinje li večera u sedam sati? — also correct, often a bit more formal

Because there are two common question patterns:

1. Da li + sentence

   • Da li večera počinje u sedam sati?

2. Verb + li

   • Počinje li večera u sedam sati?

So li can appear in different question structures. In your sentence, it is part of the fixed and very common pattern da li.

A rough pronunciation guide is:

Da li večera počinje u sedam sati?
≈ da lee VE-che-ra po-CHEE-nye oo SE-dam SA-ti?

A few helpful sounds:

• č sounds like ch in church
• j sounds like y in yes
• nj sounds like ny in canyon

So počinje sounds roughly like po-CHEE-nye.

A few natural answers are:

• Da, počinje u sedam sati. = Yes, it starts at seven o’clock.
• Da, u sedam. = Yes, at seven.
• Ne, počinje u osam sati. = No, it starts at eight o’clock.
• Ne, večera počinje kasnije. = No, dinner starts later.