Serbo-Croatian

South Slavic language

This article is about the language. For other uses, see Serbo-Croatian (disambiguation).

Serbo-Croatian

Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian
srpskohrvatski / српскохрватски
Pronunciation| [sr̩pskoxř̩ʋaːtskiː]
Native to|

* Serbia
* Croatia
* Bosnia and Herzegovina
* Montenegro
* Kosovo

Ethnicity|

* Serbs
* Croats
* Bosniaks
* Montenegrins

Native speakers

| 18 million (2011–2021)[1]

Language family

Indo-European

* Balto-Slavic
* Slavic
* South Slavic
* Western South Slavic
* Serbo-Croatian

Standard forms

* Bosnian
* Croatian
* Montenegrin
* Serbian

Writing system

* Latin (Gaj's[a])
* Cyrillic (Serbian[a])
* Yugoslav Braille
* Formerly:
* Glagolitic
* Arabic (Arebica)

Official status

Official language in

* Serbia (as Serbian)
* Croatia (as Croatian)
* Bosnia and Herzegovina (as Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian)
* Montenegro (as Montenegrin)
* Kosovo (as Serbian)[2]
* European Union (as Croatian)

Recognised minority
language in

* North Macedonia[3]
* Hungary[4][1]
* Italy[5]
* Romania[6][1]
* Czech Republic[7]
* Slovakia[8]

Regulated by|

* Board for Standardization of the Serbian Language (Serbian)
* Institute of Croatian Language (Croatian)
* Language Institute of the University of Sarajevo (Bosnian)
* Faculty of Montenegrin Language and Literature (Montenegrin)

Language codes
ISO 639-1| `sh` (deprecated)
ISO 639-3| `hbs` – inclusive code
Individual codes:
`bos` – Bosnian
`cnr` – Montenegrin
`hrv` – Croatian
`srp` – Serbian
Glottolog| `sout1528`
Linguasphere| `53-AAA-g`
IETF| `sh`

Areas where Serbo-Croatian is spoken by a plurality of inhabitants (as of 2005)[needs update]

This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.
South Slavic languages and dialects

Western South Slavic

* Serbo-Croatian

* Standard languages
* Bosnian
* Croatian
* Montenegrin
* Serbian
(Slavonic-Serbian)

* Dialects
* Shtokavian

* (Younger Ikavian

* Bunjevac

* Slavonian

* Šokac

* Dubrovnik
* Eastern Herzegovinian

* Užice

* Zeta–Raška
* Kosovo–Resava (Smederevo–Vršac)
* Šumadija–Vojvodina
* Prizren–Timok (Prizren–South Morava

* Gorani
* Janjevo–Letnica

* Svrljig–Zaplanje
* Timok–Lužnica))

* Chakavian

* (Burgenland
* Molise)

* Kajkavian
* Torlakian

* (Prizren–South Morava

* Gorani
* Janjevo–Letnica

* Svrljig–Zaplanje
* Timok–Lužnica)

* Accents
*     * Ekavian
* Ijekavian
* Ikavian

* Comparison of standard Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian

* Slovene
* Dialects

* (Prekmurje Slovene
* Resian)

Eastern South Slavic

* Church Slavonic (Old)

* Bulgarian
* Dialects
* Banat
*     * Torlakian
* Meshterski

* Macedonian
* Dialects

* (Western
* Southeastern

* Northern
* Torlakian)

* Spoken Macedonian
* Standard Macedonian

Transitional dialects

* Serbian–Bulgarian–Macedonian
* Transitional Bulgarian dialects
*     * Torlakian
* Gorani

* Croatian–Slovenian
* Kajkavian

* Bulgarian–Macedonian
* Slavic dialects of Greece

Alphabets

* Modern
*     * Gaj's Latina
* Serbian Cyrillic

* Bulgarian Cyrillic
* Macedonian Cyrillic
* Montenegrin
* Slovene

* Historical
*     * Bohoričica
* Dajnčica
* Metelčica

*     * Arebica
* Bosnian Cyrillic

*     * Glagolitic
* Early Cyrillic

a Includes Banat Bulgarian alphabet.

* v
* t
* e

Serbo-Croatian[b] (srpskohrvatski / српскохрватски),[c] also known as Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS),[11][d] is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro.[14] It is a pluricentric language with four[15] mutually intelligible standard varieties, namely Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin.[16][14]

South Slavic languages historically formed a dialect continuum. The region's turbulent history, particularly due to the expansion of the Ottoman Empire, led to a complex dialectal and religious mosaic. Due to population migrations, Shtokavian became the most widespread supradialect in the western Balkans, encroaching westward into the area previously dominated by Chakavian and Kajkavian.[17] Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs differ in religion and were historically often part of different cultural spheres, although large portions of these populations lived side by side under foreign rule. During that period, the language was referred to by various names, such as "Slavic" in general, or "Serbian", "Croatian" or "Bosnian" in particular. In a classicizing manner, it was also referred to as "Illyrian".

The standardization of Serbo-Croatian was initiated in the mid-19th-century Vienna Literary Agreement by Croatian and Serbian writers and philologists, decades before a Yugoslav state was established.[18] From the outset, literary Serbian and Croatian exhibited slight differences, although both were based on the same Shtokavian dialect—Eastern Herzegovinian. In the 20th century, Serbo-Croatian served as the lingua franca of the country of Yugoslavia, being the sole official language in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (when it was called "Serbo-Croato-Slovenian"),[19] and afterwards the official language of four out of six republics of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The breakup of Yugoslavia influenced language attitudes, leading to the ethnic and political division of linguistic identity. Since then, Bosnian has likewise been established as an official standard in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and efforts to codify a separate Montenegrin standard continue.

Like other South Slavic languages, Serbo-Croatian has a relatively simple phonology, with the common five-vowel system and twenty-five consonants. Its grammar evolved from Common Slavic, with complex inflection, preserving seven grammatical cases in nouns, pronouns, and adjectives. Verbs exhibit imperfective or perfective aspect, with a moderately complex tense system. Serbo-Croatian is a pro-drop language with flexible word order, subject–verb–object being the default. It can be written in either the Latin (Gaj's Latin alphabet) or Cyrillic script (Serbian Cyrillic alphabet),[a] and the orthography is highly phonemic in all standards. Despite the many linguistic similarities among the standard varieties, each possesses distinctive traits,[20] although these differences remain minimal.[21]

## Name

[edit]

Throughout the history of the South Slavs, the vernacular, literary, and written languages (e.g., Chakavian, Kajkavian, Shtokavian) of various regions and ethnic groups developed and diverged independently. Before the 19th century, these languages were collectively called "Illyrian", "Slavic", "Slavonian", "Bosnian", "Dalmatian", "Serbian", or "Croatian".[22] Since the 19th century, the term Illyrian or Illyric was frequently used, sometimes leading to confusion with the ancient Illyrian language. Although the word Illyrian was used occasionally before, its widespread usage began after Ljudevit Gaj and several other prominent linguists met at Ljudevit Vukotinović's house to discuss the issue in 1832.[23] The term Serbo-Croatian was first used by Jacob Grimm in 1824,[24][25] later popularized by the Viennese philologist Jernej Kopitar, and adopted by Croatian grammarians in Zagreb in 1854 and 1859.[26] At that time, Serb and Croat lands were still part of the Ottoman and Austrian Empires.

Serbo-Croatian is typically referred to by the names of its standardized varieties—Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin.[27][28] It is rarely referred to by the names of its sub-dialects, such as Bunjevac or Šokac.[29] In the language itself, it is formally known as srpskohrvatski, српскохрватски ("Serbo-Croatian") and hrvatskosrpski, хрватскoсрпски ("Croato-Serbian").[14] Historically, linguists and philologists, including Đuro Daničić and Tomislav Maretić, have referred to the language as "Serbian or Croatian" and "Croatian or Serbian". Serbo-Croatian is often colloquially called naš jezik ("our language") or naški (sic. "ourish" or "ourian") by native speakers. This term is frequently used by those who wish to avoid linguistic discussions.[30][31] Native speakers traditionally describe their language as jedan ali ne jedinstven ("one but not uniform").[32]

In 1988, Croatian linguist Dalibor Brozović advocated the term Serbo-Croatian, stating that, by analogy with Indo-European, it not only denotes the two components of the same language but also delineates the geographical region in which it is spoken, encompassing all language varieties within these boundaries, including Bosnian and Montenegrin.[33] Croatian linguist Mate Kapović suggested Standard Shtokavian as the ethnically neutral and linguistically most precise term.[34] Nowadays, the use of the term "Serbo-Croatian" is controversial due to the widespread perception that national identity and language should correspond.[35][36][37] However, it is still used in academic and linguistic contexts due to the lack of a succinct alternative.[38] Following the breakup of Yugoslavia, alternative designations have emerged, such as Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (BCS),[39] which is frequently used in political contexts, including by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

## History

[edit]

### Early history

[edit]

See also: Shtokavian § Early history of Shtokavian

This section needs expansion. You can help by making an edit requestadding to it . (March 2025)

|

### Standardization

[edit]

Đuro Daničić, Rječnik hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika (Croatian or Serbian Dictionary), 1882 Gramatika bosanskoga jezika (Grammar of the Bosnian Language), 1890

In the mid-19th century, Serbian (led by self-taught writer and folklorist Vuk Stefanović Karadžić) and most Croatian writers and linguists (represented by the Illyrian movement and led by Ljudevit Gaj and Đuro Daničić), proposed the use of the most widespread dialect, Shtokavian, as the base for their common standard language. Karadžić standardised the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet, and Gaj and Daničić standardized the Croatian Latin alphabet, on the basis of vernacular speech phonemes and the principle of phonological spelling. In 1850 Serbian and Croatian writers and linguists signed the Vienna Literary Agreement, declaring their intention to create a unified standard.[40] Thus a complex bi-variant language appeared, which the Serbs officially called "Serbo-Croatian" or "Serbian or Croatian" and the Croats "Croato-Serbian", or "Croatian or Serbian". Yet, in practice, the variants of the conceived common literary language served as different literary variants, chiefly differing in lexical inventory and stylistic devices. The common phrase describing this situation was that Serbo-Croatian or "Croatian or Serbian" was a single language. In 1861, after a long debate, the Croatian Sabor put up several proposed names to a vote of the members of the parliament; "Yugoslavian" was opted for by the majority and legislated as the official language of the Triune Kingdom. The Austrian Empire, suppressing Pan-Slavism at the time, did not confirm this decision and legally rejected the legislation, but in 1867 finally settled on "Croatian or Serbian" instead.[41] During the Austro-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the language of all three nations in this territory was declared "Bosnian" until the death of administrator von Kállay in 1907, at which point the name was changed to "Serbo-Croatian".[42][43][44]

With unification of the first the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes – the approach of Karadžić and the Illyrians became dominant. The official language was called "Serbo-Croato-Slovenian" (srpsko-hrvatsko-slovenački) in the 1921 constitution.[19] In 1929, the constitution was suspended,[45] and the country was renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, while the official language of Serbo-Croato-Slovene was reinstated in the 1931 constitution.[19]

In June 1941, the Nazi puppet Independent State of Croatia began to rid the language of "Eastern" (Serbian) words, and shut down Serbian schools.[46] The totalitarian dictatorship introduced a language law that promulgated Croatian linguistic purism as a policy that tried to implement a complete elimination of Serbisms and internationalisms.[47]

On January 15, 1944, the Anti-Fascist Council of the People's Liberation of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ) declared Croatian, Serbian, Slovene, and Macedonian to be equal in the entire territory of Yugoslavia.[48] In 1945 the decision to recognize Croatian and Serbian as separate languages was reversed in favor of a single Serbo-Croatian or Croato-Serbian language.[48] In the Communist-dominated second Yugoslavia, ethnic issues eased to an extent, but the matter of language remained blurred and unresolved.

In 1954, major Serbian and Croatian writers, linguists and literary critics, backed by Matica srpska and Matica hrvatska signed the Novi Sad Agreement, which in its first conclusion stated: "Serbs, Croats and Montenegrins share a single language with two equal variants that have developed around Zagreb (western) and Belgrade (eastern)". The agreement insisted on the equal status of Cyrillic and Latin scripts, and of Ekavian and Ijekavian pronunciations.[49] It also specified that Serbo-Croatian should be the name of the language in official contexts, while in unofficial use the traditional Serbian and Croatian were to be retained.[49] Matica hrvatska and Matica srpska were to work together on a dictionary, and a committee of Serbian and Croatian linguists was asked to prepare a pravopis. During the sixties both books were published simultaneously in Ijekavian Latin in Zagreb and Ekavian Cyrillic in Novi Sad.[50] Yet Croatian linguists claim that it was an act of unitarianism. The evidence supporting this claim is patchy: Croatian linguist Stjepan Babić complained that the television transmission from Belgrade always used the Latin alphabet[51]— which was true, but was not proof of unequal rights, but of frequency of use and prestige. Babić further complained that the Novi Sad Dictionary (1967) listed side by side words from both the Croatian and Serbian variants wherever they differed,[51] which one can view as proof of careful respect for both variants, and not of unitarism. Moreover, Croatian linguists criticized those parts of the Dictionary for being unitaristic that were written by Croatian linguists.[52] And finally, Croatian linguists ignored the fact that the material for the Pravopisni rječnik came from the Croatian Philological Society.[53][54] Regardless of these facts, Croatian intellectuals brought the Declaration on the Status and Name of the Croatian Literary Language in 1967. On occasion of the publication's 45th anniversary, the Croatian weekly journal Forum published the Declaration again in 2012, accompanied by a critical analysis.[55]

West European scientists judge the Yugoslav language policy as an exemplary one:[56][57] although three-quarters of the population spoke one language, no single language was official on a federal level.[58] Official languages were declared only at the level of constituent republics and provinces,[59][60][61] and very generously: Vojvodina had five (among them Slovak and Romanian, spoken by 0.5 per cent of the population), and Kosovo four (Albanian, Turkish, Romany and Serbo-Croatian).[59][62] Newspapers, radio and television studios used sixteen languages,[63] fourteen were used as languages of tuition in schools, and nine at universities.[59][64] Only the Yugoslav People's Army used Serbo-Croatian as the sole language of command, with all other languages represented in the army's other activities—however, this is not different from other armies of multilingual states,[65] or in other specific institutions, such as international air traffic control where English is used worldwide. All variants of Serbo-Croatian were used in state administration and republican and federal institutions.[59] Both Serbian and Croatian variants were represented in respectively different grammar books, dictionaries, school textbooks and in books known as pravopis (which detail spelling rules).[66] Serbo-Croatian was a kind of soft standardisation.[67] However, legal equality could not dampen the prestige Serbo-Croatian had: since it was the language of three quarters of the population, it functioned as an unofficial lingua franca.[68] And within Serbo-Croatian, the Serbian variant, with twice as many speakers as the Croatian,[69] enjoyed greater prestige, reinforced by the fact that Slovene and Macedonian speakers preferred it to the Croatian variant because their languages are also Ekavian.[70] This is a common situation in other pluricentric languages, e.g. the variants of German differ according to their prestige, the variants of Portuguese too.[71] Moreover, all languages differ in terms of prestige: "the fact is that languages (in terms of prestige, learnability etc.) are not equal, and the law cannot make them equal".[72]

#### Legal status

[edit]

* 1921 constitution of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, Article 3: "The official language of the Kingdom is Serbo-Croato-Slovene." (Latin script: Službeni jezik Kraljevine je srpsko-hrvatski-slovenački.; Cyrillic script: Службени језик Краљевине је српско-хрватски-словеначки.).[73][19]
* 1931 constitution of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Article 3: "The official language of the Kingdom is Serbo-Croato-Slovene".[19]
* 1963 constitution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia:
* Article 42: "The languages of the peoples of Yugoslavia and their scripts shall be equal. Members of the peoples of Yugoslavia on the territories of republics other than their own shall have the right to school instruction in their own languages, in conformity with republican law. As an exception, in the Yugoslav People's Army, commands, military drill and administration shall be in the Serbo-Croatian language."[74]
* Article 131: "The federal laws and other general acts of the federal organs shall be made public in the official gazette of the Federation, in the authentic texts in the languages of the peoples of Yugoslavia: in Serbo-Croatian and Croato-Serbian, Slovene and Macedonian. In official communication the organs of the Federation shall abide by the principle of equality of languages of the peoples of Yugoslavia."[74]
* 1974 constitution of the Socialist Autonomous Province of Kosovo, Article 5: "In the Socialist Autonomous Province of Kosovo, the equality of the Albanian, Serbo-Croatian and Turkish languages and their scripts is guaranteed."[75]
* 1990 constitution of the (Socialist) Republic of Serbia, Article 8: "In the Republic of Serbia, the Serbo-Croatian language and the Cyrillic alphabet are in official use, while the Latin alphabet is in official use in the manner established by law."[76]
* 1993 constitution of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Article 4: "In the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbo-Croatian or Croatian-Serbian language with the Ijekavian pronunciation is in official use. Both scripts — Latin and Cyrillic, are equal."[77]

The 1946, 1953, and 1974 constitutions of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia did not name specific official languages at the federal level. The 1992 constitution of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, in 2003 renamed Serbia and Montenegro, stated in Article 15: "In the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the Serbian language in its ekavian and ijekavian dialects and the Cyrillic script shall be official, while the Latin script shall be in official use as provided for by the Constitution and law."[78]

The term "Serbo-Croatian" (or synonyms) is not officially used in any of the successor countries of former Yugoslavia. The current Serbian constitution of 2006 refers to the official language as Serbian,[79] while the current Montenegrin constitution of 2007 proclaims Montenegrin as the official language but also grants other Serbo-Croatian varieties the right to official use.[80] Croatian is the official language of Croatia, while Serbian is also official in municipalities with significant Serb population. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, all three standard varieties are recorded as official.

In Serbia, the Serbian standard has an official status countrywide, while both Serbian and Croatian are official in the province of Vojvodina. A large Bosniak minority is present in the southwest region of Sandžak, but the "official recognition" of Bosnian is moot.[81] Bosnian is an optional course in first and second grade of the elementary school, while it is also in official use in the municipality of Novi Pazar.[82] However, its nomenclature is controversial, as there is incentive that it is referred to as "Bosniak" (bošnjački) rather than "Bosnian" (bosanski) (see also: Bosnian language#Controversy and recognition).

### Modern developments

[edit]

In 2017, numerous prominent writers, scientists, journalists, activists, and other public figures from Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Serbia signed the Declaration on the Common Language, which states that all standard varieties are equal and belong to a common polycentric language,[83][84] just like German, English, and Spanish.[85][86][87][88]

## Sociolinguistic debate

[edit]

A trilingual health warning printed in both Latin and Cyrillic scripts on a pack of Drina cigarettes, with identical text across all three inscriptions

The nature and classification of Serbo-Croatian has been the subject of long-standing sociolinguistic debate.[89] The question is whether Serbo-Croatian should be called a single language or a cluster of closely related languages.[90][12][91][92]

### Views of international linguists and organizations

[edit]

Linguist Enisa Kafadar argues that there is only one Serbo-Croatian language with several varieties.[93] This has made it possible to include all four varieties in new grammars of the language.[11][94] Daniel Bunčić concludes that it is a pluricentric language, with four standard variants spoken in Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, and Bosnia-Herzegovina.[95] The mutual intelligibility between their speakers "exceeds that between the standard variants of English, French, German, or Spanish".[96] "There is no doubt of the near 100% mutual intelligibility of (standard) Croatian and (standard) Serbian, as is obvious from the ability of all groups to enjoy each others' films, TV and sports broadcasts, newspapers, rock lyrics etc."[97] Other linguists have argued that the differences between the variants of Serbo-Croatian are less significant than those between the variants of English,[98] German,[99] Dutch,[100] and Hindustani.[101]

Among pluricentric languages,[102][103] Serbo-Croatian was the only one with a pluricentric standardisation within one state.[104][105] The dissolution of Yugoslavia has made Serbo-Croatian even more of a typical pluricentric language, since the variants of other pluricentric languages are also spoken in different states.[106][107]

As in other pluricentric languages, all Serbo-Croatian standard varieties are based on the same dialect (the Eastern Herzegovinian subdialect of the Shtokavian dialect) and consequently, according to the sociolinguistic definitions, constitute a single pluricentric language (and not, for example, several Ausbau languages[108]).[109] According to linguist John Bailyn, "An examination of all the major 'levels' of language shows that BCS is clearly a single language with a single grammatical system."[97]

The use of Serbo-Croatian as a linguistic label has been the subject of long-standing controversy. Linguist Wayles Browne calls it a "term of convenience" and notes the difference of opinion as to whether it comprises a single language or a cluster of languages.[92] Ronelle Alexander refers to the national standards as three separate languages, but also notes that the reasons for this are complex and generally non-linguistic. She calls BCS (her term for Serbo-Croatian) a single language for communicative linguistic purposes, but three separate languages for symbolic non-linguistic purposes.[110][91]

While it operated, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia translated court proceedings and documents into what it referred to as "Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian", usually abbreviated as BCS. Translators were employed from all regions of the former Yugoslavia and all national and regional variations were accepted, regardless of the nationality of the person on trial (sometimes against a defendant's objections), on the grounds of mutual intelligibility.[111]

### Views of linguists in the former Yugoslavia

[edit]

#### Croatian linguists

[edit]

A common opinion of the Croatian linguists is that there has never been a Serbo-Croatian language, but two different standard languages that overlapped sometime in the course of history. However, Croatian linguist Snježana Kordić has been leading an academic discussion on this issue in the Croatian journal Književna republika[112] from 2001 to 2010.[113][114] In the discussion, she shows that linguistic criteria such as mutual intelligibility, the huge overlap in the linguistic system, and the same dialect basis of the standard language are evidence that Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian and Montenegrin are four national variants of the pluricentric Serbo-Croatian language.[115][116] In 2010, Igor Mandić stated: "During the last ten years, it has been the longest, the most serious and most acrid discussion (…) in 21st-century Croatian culture".[117] Inspired by that discussion, a monograph on language and nationalism has been published.[118]

The view of the majority of Croatian linguists that there is no single Serbo-Croatian language but several different standard languages has been sharply criticized by German linguist Bernhard Gröschel in his monograph[119] Serbo-Croatian Between Linguistics and Politics.[120]

A more detailed overview, incorporating arguments from Croatian philology and contemporary linguistics, would be as follows:

Serbo-Croatian is a language
One still finds many references to Serbo-Croatian, and proponents of Serbo-Croatian who deny that Croats, Serbs, Bosniaks and Montenegrins speak different languages. The usual argument generally goes along the following lines:

* Standard Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin are completely mutually intelligible.[121][122] In addition, they use two alphabets that perfectly match each other (Latin and Cyrillic), thanks to Ljudevit Gaj and Vuk Karadžić. Croats exclusively use Latin script and Serbs equally use both Cyrillic and Latin. Although Cyrillic is taught in Bosnia, most Bosnians, especially non-Serbs (Bosniaks and Croats), favor Latin.
* The list of 100 words of the basic Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin vocabulary, as set out by Morris Swadesh, shows that all 100 words are identical.[123] According to Swadesh, 81 per cent are sufficient to be considered as a single language.[124]
* Typologically and structurally, these standard variants have virtually the same grammar, i.e. morphology and syntax.[125][126]
* Serbo-Croatian was standardised in the mid-19th century, and all subsequent attempts to dissolve its basic unity have not succeeded.
* The affirmation of distinct Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin languages is politically motivated.
* According to phonology, morphology and syntax, these standard variants are essentially one language because they are based on the same, Štokavian dialect.[127]

Serbo-Croatian is not a language

* Similar arguments are made for other official standards which are drawn from identical or nearly identical material bases and which therefore constitute pluricentric languages, such as Malaysian (Malaysian Malay), and Indonesian (together called Malay),[128] or Standard Hindi and Urdu (together called Hindustani or Hindi-Urdu).[129]
* However, some argue that these arguments have flaws. Phonology, morphology, and syntax are not the only dimensions of a language: other fields (semantics, pragmatics, stylistics, lexicology, etc.) also differ slightly. However, it is the case with other pluricentric languages.[130] A comparison is made to the closely related North Germanic languages (or dialects, if one prefers), though these are not fully mutually intelligible[131] as the Serbo-Croatian standards are. A closer comparison may be General American and Received Pronunciation in English, which are closer to each other than the latter is to other dialects which are subsumed under "British English".
* That the standardization of the Croatian language was a long process spanning several centuries, and that it was mostly based, aside Chakavian and Kajkavian influences, on the Dubrovnik subdialect which as a specific western idiom of the Eastern Herzegovinian dialect has linguistic origin in Western Shtokavian and is significantly different to the general Eastern Herzegovinian itself, and on Western Shtokavian (alike Serbian which is based only on Eastern Shtokavian which includes Eastern Herzegovinian).[132][133][134][135][136] Since the Croatian as recorded in old Croatian literature from Dubrovnik which would gain a prestige status (e.g. Držić and Gundulić's works in the 16th and 17th centuries) is virtually the same as the contemporary standard Croatian (understandable archaisms apart), it is evident that the 19th-century formal standardization was just the final touch in the process that, as far as Croatian is concerned, had lasted more than three centuries.[136]

#### Serbian linguists

[edit]

In 2021, the Board for Standardization of the Serbian Language issued an opinion that Serbo-Croatian is one language, and that it should be referred to as "Serbian language", while "Croatian", "Bosnian" and "Montenegrin" are to be considered merely local names for Serbian language. This opinion was widely criticized by Croatian government and representatives of the Croatian minority in Serbia.[137] Serbian linguist Ranko Bugarski called this opinion "absurd" and "legacy of the 19th century linguistics". He said that Serbo-Croatian should be considered one language in a scientific sense under the "Serbo-Croatian" label, but four different languages in an administrative sense.[138] Legally, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin are all officially recognized minority languages in Serbia.[138] The Serbian Government also officially recognized Bunjevac language as a standard minority language in 2018[139] and was approved by the Serbian Ministry of Education for learning in schools.[140]

### Political connotations

[edit]

In nationalist linguistics exist conflicting views on shared or related linguistical heritage. Those nationalists among the Croats conflictingly claim either that they speak an entirely separate language from Serbs and Bosniaks or that these two peoples have, due to the longer literary and lexicographic tradition of popular language among Croats, somehow "borrowed" their standard languages from them (e.g. Serbian literature until early-19th century was primarily written in Serbian recension of Church Slavonic and Slavonic-Serbian[141]).[citation needed] There's a common debate about positive or negative influence of the Croatian Vukovians, and perception that Vuk Karadžić invented the Greater Serbian linguistic ideology which is culturally appropriating Croatian language/dialects and literary tradition (although a great part of the criticism should be directed to the early Slavists instead).[132] Bosniak nationalists claim that both Croats and Serbs have "appropriated" the Bosnian language, since Ljudevit Gaj and Vuk Karadžić preferred the Neo-Štokavian Ijekavian dialect, widely spoken in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as the basis for language standardization.[citation needed] Whereas the nationalists among the Serbs claim either that any divergence in the standard language is artificial, and that the whole Shtokavian dialect is Serbian (and hence the Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin standard languages are variations of the Serbian language), and only the Chakavian and Kajkavian dialects are Croatian, in more extreme formulations accusing the Croats to have "taken" or "stolen" their language from the Serbs.[132][142]

### ISO classification

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Since 18 February 2000, the ISO 639 classification has recognized Serbo-Croatian as a macrolanguage, deprecating its original ISO 639-1 code `sh`.[143] In ISO 639-3, Serbo-Croatian is assigned the code `hbs`, which has no equivalent in ISO 639-2.[144]

Although the ISO 639‑1 code `sh` has been deprecated, it remains recognized as an IETF language tag under BCP 47.[145]

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has also defined a Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) number for the Serbo-Croatian language group (811.163.4), with subdivisions for Serbian (811.163.41) and Croatian (811.163.42).[146]

## Demographics

[edit]

Countries where a standard form of Serbo-Croatian is an official language

Countries where one or more forms are designated as minority languages

About 18 million people declare their native language as either 'Bosnian', 'Croatian', 'Serbian', 'Montenegrin', or 'Serbo-Croatian'.[1]

Serbian is spoken by 10 million people around the world, mostly in Serbia (7.8 million), Bosnia and Herzegovina (1.2 million), and Montenegro (300,000). Besides these, Serbian minorities are found in Kosovo, North Macedonia and in Romania.[147] In Serbia, there are about 760,000 second-language speakers of Serbian, including Hungarians in Vojvodina and the 400,000 estimated Roma.[citation needed] In Kosovo, Serbian is spoken by the members of the Serbian minority which approximates between 70,000 and 100,000.[148][149] Familiarity of Kosovar Albanians with Serbian varies depending on age and education, and exact numbers are not available.

Croatian is spoken by 6.8 million people in the world, including 4.1 million in Croatia and 600,000 in Bosnia and Herzegovina.[150] A small Croatian minority that lives in Italy, known as Molise Croats, have somewhat preserved traces of Croatian. In Croatia, 170,000, mostly Italians and Hungarians, use it as a second language.[citation needed]

Bosnian is spoken by 2.7 million people worldwide, chiefly Bosniaks, including 2.0 million in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 200,000 in Serbia and 40,000 in Montenegro.[151]

Montenegrin is spoken by 300,000 people globally.[152] The notion of Montenegrin as a separate standard from Serbian is relatively recent. In the 2011 census, around 229,251 Montenegrins, of the country's 620,000, declared Montenegrin as their native language.

Serbo-Croatian is also a second language of many Slovenians[153] and Macedonians, especially those born during the time of Yugoslavia. According to the 2002 census, Serbo-Croatian and its variants have the largest number of speakers of the minority languages in Slovenia.[154]

## Grammar

[edit]

Tomislav Maretić's 1899 Grammar of Croatian or Serbian

Further information: Serbo-Croatian grammar

Serbo-Croatian is a highly inflected language. Traditional grammars list seven cases for nouns and adjectives: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, locative, and instrumental, reflecting the original seven cases of Proto-Slavic, and indeed older forms of Serbo-Croatian itself. However, in modern Shtokavian the locative has almost merged into dative (the only difference is based on accent in some cases), and the other cases can be shown declining; namely:

* For all nouns and adjectives, the instrumental, dative, and locative forms are identical (at least orthographically) in the plural: ženama, ženama, ženama; očima, očima, očima; riječima, riječima, riječima.
* There is an accentual difference between the genitive singular and genitive plural of masculine and neuter nouns, which are otherwise homonyms (seljáka, seljaka) except that on occasion an "a" (which might or might not appear in the singular) is filled between the last letter of the root and the genitive plural ending (kapitalizma, kapitalizama).
* The old instrumental ending "ju" of the feminine consonant stems and in some cases the "a" of the genitive plural of certain other sorts of feminine nouns is fast yielding to "i": noći instead of noćju, borbi instead of boraba and so forth.
* Almost every Shtokavian number is indeclinable, and numbers after prepositions have not been declined for a long time.

Like most Slavic languages, there are mostly three genders for nouns: masculine, feminine, and neuter, a distinction which is still present even in the plural (unlike Russian and, in part, the Čakavian dialect). They also have two numbers: singular and plural. However, some consider there to be three numbers (paucal or dual, too), since (still preserved in closely related Slovene) after two (dva, dvije/dve), three (tri) and four (četiri), and all numbers ending in them (e.g. twenty-two, ninety-three, one hundred four, but not twelve through fourteen) the genitive singular is used, and after all other numbers five (pet) and up, the genitive plural is used. (The number one [jedan] is treated as an adjective.) Adjectives are placed in front of the noun they modify and must agree in both case and number with it.

There are seven tenses for verbs: past, present, future, exact future, aorist, imperfect, and pluperfect; and three moods: indicative, imperative, and conditional. However, the latter three tenses are typically used only in Shtokavian writing, and the time sequence of the exact future is more commonly formed through an alternative construction.

In addition, like most Slavic languages, the Shtokavian verb also has one of two aspects: perfective or imperfective. Most verbs come in pairs, with the perfective verb being created out of the imperfective by adding a prefix or making a stem change. The imperfective aspect typically indicates that the action is unfinished, in progress, or repetitive; while the perfective aspect typically denotes that the action was completed, instantaneous, or of limited duration. Some Štokavian tenses (namely, aorist and imperfect) favor a particular aspect (but they are rarer or absent in Čakavian and Kajkavian). Actually, aspects "compensate" for the relative lack of tenses, because verbal aspect determines whether the act is completed or in progress in the referred time.

## Phonology

[edit]

Main article: Serbo-Croatian phonology

### Vowels

[edit]

The Serbo-Croatian vowel system is simple, with only five vowels in Shtokavian. All vowels are monophthongs. The oral vowels are as follows:

Latin script | Cyrillic script | IPA | Description | English approximation

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a | а | /a/ | open central unrounded | father
e | е | /e/ | mid front unrounded | den
i | и | /i/ | close front unrounded | seek
o | о | /o/ | mid back rounded | lord
u | у | /u/ | close back rounded | pool

The vowels can be short or long, but the phonetic quality does not change depending on the length. In a word, vowels can be long in the stressed syllable and the syllables following it, never in the ones preceding it.

### Consonants

[edit]

The consonant system is more complicated, and its characteristic features are series of affricate and palatal consonants. As in English, voice is phonemic, but aspiration is not.

Latin script | Cyrillic script | IPA | Description[155] | English approximation

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trill
r | р | /r/ | alveolar trill | rolled (vibrating) r as in carramba
approximants
v | в | /ʋ/ | labiodental approximant | roughly between vortex and war
j | ј | /j/ | palatal approximant | year
laterals
l | л | /l/ | alveolar lateral approximant | light
lj | љ | /ʎ/ | palatal lateral approximant | roughly battalion
nasals
m | м | /m/ | bilabial nasal | man
n | н | /n/ | alveolar nasal | not
nj | њ | /ɲ/ | palatal nasal | British news or American canyon
fricatives
f | ф | /f/ | voiceless labiodental fricative | five
z | з | /z/ | voiced dental sibilant | zero
s | с | /s/ | voiceless dental sibilant | some
ž | ж | /ʒ/ | voiced postalveolar fricative | television
š | ш | /ʃ/ | voiceless postalveolar fricative | sharp
h | х | /x/ | voiceless velar fricative | loch
affricates
c | ц | /t͡s/ | voiceless dental affricate | pots
dž | џ | /d͡ʒ/ | voiced postalveolar affricate | as English jam
č | ч | /t͡ʃ/ | voiceless postalveolar affricate | as English check
đ | ђ | /d͡ʑ/ | voiced alveolo-palatal affricate | roughly jeans
ć | ћ | /t͡ɕ/ | voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate | roughly cheese
plosives
b | б | /b/ | voiced bilabial plosive | book
p | п | /p/ | voiceless bilabial plosive | top
d | д | /d/ | voiced dental plosive | dog
t | т | /t/ | voiceless dental plosive | stop
g | г | /ɡ/ | voiced velar plosive | good
k | к | /k/ | voiceless velar plosive | duck

In consonant clusters all consonants are either voiced or voiceless. All the consonants are voiced if the last consonant is normally voiced or voiceless if the last consonant is normally voiceless. This rule does not apply to approximants - a consonant cluster may contain voiced approximants and voiceless consonants; as well as to foreign words (Washington would be transcribed as VašinGton), personal names and when consonants are not inside of one syllable.

/r/ can be syllabic, playing the role of the syllable nucleus in certain words (occasionally, it can even have a long accent). For example, the tongue-twister navrh brda vrba mrda involves four words with syllabic /r/. A similar feature exists in Czech, Slovak, and Macedonian. Very rarely other sonorants can be syllabic, like /l/ (in bicikl), /ʎ/ (surname Štarklj), /n/ (unit njutn), as well as /m/ and /ɲ/ in slang.[citation needed]

### Pitch accent

[edit]

Further information: Pitch accent § Serbo-Croatian, and Serbo-Croatian phonology § Pitch accent

Apart from Slovene, Serbo-Croatian is the only Slavic language with a pitch accent (simple tone) system. This feature is present in some other Indo-European languages, such as Norwegian, Ancient Greek, and Punjabi. Neo-Shtokavian Serbo-Croatian, which is used as the basis for standard Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian, has four "accents", which involve either a rising or falling tone on either long or short vowels, with optional post-tonic lengths:

Serbo-Croatian accent system  Slavicist
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e | [e] | non-tonic short vowel
ē | [eː] | non-tonic long vowel
è | [ě] | short vowel with rising tone
é | [ěː] | long vowel with rising tone
ȅ | [ê] | short vowel with falling tone
ȇ | [êː] | long vowel with falling tone

The tone stressed vowels can be approximated in English with set vs. setting? said in isolation for a short tonic e, or leave vs. leaving? for a long tonic i, due to the prosody of final stressed syllables in English.

General accent rules in the standard language:

1. Monosyllabic words may have only a falling tone (or no accent at all – enclitics);
2. Falling tone may occur only on the first syllable of polysyllabic words;
3. Accent can never occur on the last syllable of polysyllabic words.

There are no other rules for accent placement, thus the accent of every word must be learned individually; furthermore, in inflection, accent shifts are common, both in type and position (the so-called "mobile paradigms"). The second rule is not strictly obeyed, especially in borrowed words.

Comparative and historical linguistics offers some clues for memorising the accent position: If one compares many standard Serbo-Croatian words to e.g. cognate Russian words, the accent in the Serbo-Croatian word will be one syllable before the one in the Russian word, with the rising tone. Historically, the rising tone appeared when the place of the accent shifted to the preceding syllable (the so-called "Neo-Shtokavian retraction"), but the quality of this new accent was different – its melody still "gravitated" towards the original syllable. Most Shtokavian (Neo-Shtokavian) dialects underwent this shift, but Chakavian, Kajkavian and the Old-Shtokavian dialects did not.

Accent diacritics are not used in the ordinary orthography, but only in the linguistic or language-learning literature (e.g. dictionaries, orthography and grammar books). However, there are very few minimal pairs where an error in accent can lead to misunderstanding.

## Orthography

[edit]

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Serbo-Croatian orthography is almost entirely phonetic. Thus, most words should be spelled as they are pronounced. In practice, the writing system does not take into account allophones which occur as a result of interaction between words:

* bit će - pronounced biće (and only written separately in Bosnian and Croatian)
* od toga - pronounced otoga (in many vernaculars)
* iz čega - pronounced iščega (in many vernaculars)

Also, there are some exceptions, mostly applied to foreign words and compounds, that favor morphological/etymological over phonetic spelling:

* postdiplomski (postgraduate) - pronounced [pôzdiploːmskiː]

One systemic exception is that the consonant clusters ds and dš are not respelled as ts and tš (although d tends to be unvoiced in normal speech in such clusters):

* predstava [prětstaʋa] (show)
* odšteta [ôtʃteta] (damages)

Only a few words are intentionally "misspelled", mostly in order to resolve ambiguity:

* šeststo [ʃêːsto] (six hundred) - pronounced šesto (to avoid confusion with "šesto" [sixth], pronounced the same)
* prstni [př̩sniː] (adj., finger) - pronounced prsni (to avoid confusion with "prsni" [pr̩̂sniː] [adj., chest]), differentiated by tone in some areas (where the short rising tone contrasts with the short falling tone).

### Writing systems

[edit]

Main articles: Gaj's Latin alphabet, Serbian Cyrillic alphabet, and Yugoslav Braille

Through history, this language has been written in a number of writing systems:

* Glagolitic alphabet, chiefly in Croatia.
* Bosančica, Arebica (mostly in Bosnia and Herzegovina).
* Cyrillic script.
* various modifications of the Latin and Greek alphabets.

The oldest texts since the 11th century are in Glagolitic, and the oldest preserved text written completely in the Latin alphabet is Red i zakon sestara reda Svetog Dominika, from 1345. The Arabic alphabet had been used by Bosniaks; Greek writing is out of use there, and Arabic and Glagolitic persisted so far partly in religious liturgies.

The Serbian Cyrillic alphabet was revised by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić in the 19th century.

The Croatian Latin alphabet (Gajica) followed suit shortly afterwards, when Ljudevit Gaj defined it as standard Latin with five extra letters that had diacritics, apparently borrowing much from Czech, but also from Polish, and inventing the unique digraphs ⟨lj⟩, ⟨nj⟩ and ⟨dž⟩. These digraphs are represented as ⟨ļ⟩, ⟨ń⟩ and ⟨ǵ⟩ respectively in the Rječnik hrvatskog ili srpskog jezika, published by the former Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts in Zagreb.[156] The latter digraphs, however, are unused in the literary standard of the language. All in all, this makes Serbo-Croatian the only Slavic language to officially use both the Latin and Cyrillic scripts, albeit the Latin version is more commonly used.

In both cases, spelling is phonetic and spellings in the two alphabets map to each other one-to-one:

Latin to Cyrillic A | a | B | b | C | c | Č | č | Ć | ć | D | d | Dž | dž | Đ | đ | E | e | F | f | G | g | H | h | I | i | J | j | K | k

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А | а | Б | б | Ц | ц | Ч | ч | Ћ | ћ | Д | д | Џ | џ | Ђ | ђ | Е | е | Ф | ф | Г | г | Х | х | И | и | Ј | ј | К | к
L | l | Lj | lj | M | m | N | n | Nj | nj | O | o | P | p | R | r | S | s | Š | š | T | t | U | u | V | v | Z | z | Ž | ž
Л | л | Љ | љ | М | м | Н | н | Њ | њ | О | о | П | п | Р | р | С | с | Ш | ш | Т | т | У | у | В | в | З | з | Ж | ж
Cyrillic to Latin А | а | Б | б | В | в | Г | г | Д | д | Ђ | ђ | Е | е | Ж | ж | З | з | И | и | Ј | ј | К | к | Л | л | Љ | љ | М | м

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A | a | B | b | V | v | G | g | D | d | Đ | đ | E | e | Ž | ž | Z | z | I | i | J | j | K | k | L | l | Lj | lj | M | m
Н | н | Њ | њ | О | о | П | п | Р | р | С | с | Т | т | Ћ | ћ | У | у | Ф | ф | Х | х | Ц | ц | Ч | ч | Џ | џ | Ш | ш
N | n | Nj | nj | O | o | P | p | R | r | S | s | T | t | Ć | ć | U | u | F | f | H | h | C | c | Č | č | Dž | dž | Š | š
Sample collation Latin collation order  | Cyrillic
collation
order

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Latin  | Cyrillic
equivalent
Ina  | Ина | Ина
Injekcija  | Инјекција | Инјекција
Inverzija  | Инверзија | Инверзија
Inje  | Иње | Иње

The digraphs Lj, Nj and Dž represent distinct phonemes and are considered to be single letters. In crosswords, they are put into a single square, and in sorting, lj follows l and nj follows n, except in a few words where the individual letters are pronounced separately. For instance, nadživ(j)eti "to outlive" is composed of the prefix nad- "out, over" and the verb živ(j)eti "to live". The Cyrillic alphabet avoids such ambiguity by providing a single letter for each phoneme: наджив(ј)ети.

Đ used to be commonly written as Dj on typewriters, but that practice led to too many ambiguities. It is also used on car license plates. Today Dj is often used again in place of Đ on the Internet as a replacement due to the lack of installed Serbo-Croat keyboard layouts.

Serbian, Bosnian and Montenegrin standards officially use both alphabets, while Croatian uses the Latin only.

Latin script has been rising in popularity in Serbia with the advent of the digital age and Internet in Serbia,[157] whether due to restraints (Cyrillic letters use up twice the space and therefore cost on SMS[158]), accessibility (intention to be readable internationally, as the Latin alphabet is taught in all four countries speaking the language) or ease of use. This has been perceived by Serbian government officials as a suppression and threat for existence of the national script that is Cyrillic, with the Ministry of Culture and Information of Serbia pushing for more tight language laws on top of those stipulated by the existing Constitution.[157]

Montenegrin alphabet, adopted in 2009, provides replacements of sj and zj with an addition of acute accent on s and z, forming ⟨ś⟩ and ⟨ź⟩ in both Latin and Cyrillic, but they remain largely unused, even by the Parliament of Montenegro which introduced them.[159]

An experimental alphabet called 'Slavica [sh]' fusing Latin and Cyrillic was devised by linguistic amateur Rajko Igić in 1986 and published in his 1987 book Nova slovarica in a quixotic attempt to mend the linguistic differences and ambiguities between the two alphabets, carefully avoiding graphemes that look alike and following the principle of 'one sound, one letter' already accomplished by the Cyrillic alphabet.[160][161]

Unicode has separate characters for the digraphs lj (Ǉ, ǈ, ǉ), nj (Ǌ, ǋ, ǌ) and dž (Ǆ, ǅ, ǆ).

## Dialects

[edit]

Main article: Dialects of Serbo-Croatian

See also: South Slavic dialect continuum

South Slavic historically formed a dialect continuum, i.e. each dialect has some similarities with the neighboring one, and differences grow with distance. However, migrations from the 16th to 18th centuries resulting from the spread of Ottoman Empire on the Balkans have caused large-scale population displacement that broke the dialect continuum into many geographical pockets. Migrations in the 20th century, primarily caused by urbanization and wars, also contributed to the reduction of dialectal differences.

The primary dialects are named after the most common question word for what: Shtokavian uses the pronoun što or šta, Chakavian uses ča or ca, Kajkavian (kajkavski), kaj or kej. In native terminology they are referred to as nar(j)ečje, which would be equivalent of "group of dialects", whereas their many subdialects are referred to as dijalekti "dialects" or govori "speeches".

The pluricentric Serbo-Croatian standard language and all four contemporary standard variants are based on the Eastern Herzegovinian subdialect of Neo-Shtokavian. Other dialects are not taught in schools or used by the state media. The Torlakian dialect is often added to the list, though sources usually note that it is a transitional dialect between Shtokavian and the Bulgaro-Macedonian dialects.

Likely distribution of major dialects prior to the 16th-century migrations | Shtokavian subdialects (Pavle Ivić, 1988). Yellow is the widespread Eastern Herzegovinian subdialect that forms the basis of all national standards, though it is not spoken natively in any of the capital cities. | Mid-20th-century distribution of dialects in Croatia

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The Serbo-Croatian dialects differ not only in the question word they are named after, but also heavily in phonology, accentuation and intonation, case endings and tense system (morphology) and basic vocabulary. In the past, Chakavian and Kajkavian dialects were spoken on a much larger territory, but have been replaced by Štokavian during the period of migrations caused by Ottoman Turkish conquest of the Balkans in the 15th and the 16th centuries. These migrations caused the koinéisation of the Shtokavian dialects, that used to form the West Shtokavian (more closer and transitional towards the neighbouring Chakavian and Kajkavian dialects) and East Shtokavian (transitional towards the Torlakian and the whole Bulgaro-Macedonian area) dialect bundles, and their subsequent spread at the expense of Chakavian and Kajkavian. As a result, Štokavian now covers an area larger than all the other dialects combined, and continues to make its progress in the enclaves where non-literary dialects are still being spoken.[162]

The differences among the dialects can be illustrated on the example of Schleicher's fable. Diacritic signs are used to show the difference in accents and prosody, which are often quite significant, but which are not reflected in the usual orthography.

Neo-Štokavian Ijekavian/Ekavian

Óvca i kònji

Óvca koja níje ìmala vȕnē vȉd(j)ela je kònje na br(ij)égu. Jèdan je òd njīh vȗkao téška kȍla, drȕgī je nòsio vèliku vrȅću, a trȅćī je nòsio čòv(j)eka.

Óvca rȅče kònjima: «Sȑce me bòlī glȅdajūći čòv(j)eka kako jȁšē na kònju».

A kònji rȅkoše: «Slȕšāj, ȏvco, nȃs sȑca bòlē kada vȉdīmo da čòv(j)ek, gospòdār, rȃdī vȕnu od ovácā i prȁvī òd(j)eću zá se. I ȍndā óvca nȇmā vȉše vȕnē.

Čȗvši tō, óvca pȍb(j)eže ȕ polje.

Old Štokavian (Orubica, Posavina):

Óvca i kònji

Óvca kòjā nî ìmala vȕnē vȉdla kònje na brîgu. Jèdān od njȉjū vũkō tȇška kȍla, drȕgī nosȉjo vȅlikū vrȅću, a trȅćī nosȉjo čovȉka.

Óvca kȃza kȍnjima: «Sȑce me bolĩ kad glȅdām kako čòvik na kònju jȁšī».

A kònji kāzȁše: «Slȕšāj, ȏvco, nãs sȑca bolũ kad vȉdīmo da čòvik, gȁzda, prȁvī vȕnu od ovãc i prȁvī rȍbu zá se od njẽ. I ȍndā ōvcȁ néma vȉšē vȕnē.

Kad tȏ čȕ ōvcȁ, ȕteče ȕ polje.

Čakavian (Matulji near Rijeka):

Ovcȁ i konjı̏

Ovcȁ kȃ ni imȅla vȕni vȉdela je konjȉ na brȇge. Jedȃn je vȗkal tȇški vȏz, drȕgi je nosîl vȅlu vrȅt'u, a trȅt'i je nosîl čovȅka.

Ovcȁ je reklȁ konjȇn: «Sȑce me bolĩ dok glȅdan čovȅka kako jȁše na konjȅ».

A konjȉ su reklȉ: «Poslȕšaj, ovcȁ, nȃs sȑca bolẽ kad vȉdimo da čovȅk, gospodãr dȅla vȕnu od ovãc i dȅla rȍbu zȃ se. I ȍnda ovcȁ nĩma vȉše vȕni.

Kad je tȏ čȕla, ovcȁ je pobȅgla va pȍje.

Kajkavian (Marija Bistrica):

õfca i kȍjni

õfca tera nı̃je imȅ̩la vȕne vȉdla je kȍjne na briẽgu. Jȇn od nîh je vlẽ̩ke̩l tẽška kȍla, drȕgi je nȍsil vȅliku vrȅ̩ču, a trẽjti je nȍsil čovȅ̩ka.

õfca je rȇkla kȍjnem: «Sȑce me bolĩ kad vîdim čovȅka kak jȃše na kȍjnu».

A kȍjni su rȇkli: «Poslȕhni, õfca, nȃs sȑca bolĩju kad vîdime da čȍve̩k, gospodãr, dȇ̩la vȕnu ot õfci i dȇ̩la oblȅ̩ku zȃ se. I ȏnda õfca nȇma vȉše vȕne.

Kad je to čȗla, õfca je pobȇ̩gla f pȍlje.

English language

The Sheep and the Horses

[On a hill,] a sheep that had no wool saw horses, one of them pulling a heavy wagon, one carrying a big load, and one carrying a man quickly.

The sheep said to the horses: "My heart pains me, seeing a man driving horses".

The horses said: "Listen, sheep, our hearts pain us when we see this: a man, the master, makes the wool of the sheep into a warm garment for himself. And the sheep has no wool".

Having heard this, the sheep fled into the plain.

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### Division by jat reflex

[edit]

Main article: yat

A series of isoglosses crosscuts the main dialects. The modern reflexes of the long Common Slavic vowel jat, usually transcribed *ě, vary by location as /i/, /e/, and /ije/ or /je/. Local varieties of the dialects are labeled Ikavian, Ekavian, and Ijekavian, respectively, depending on the reflex. The long and short jat is reflected as long or short */i/ and /e/ in Ikavian and Ekavian, but Ijekavian dialects introduce a ije/je alternation to retain a distinction.

Standard Croatian and Bosnian are based on Ijekavian, whereas Serbian uses both Ekavian and Ijekavian forms (Ijekavian for Bosnian Serbs, Ekavian for most of Serbia). Influence of standard language through state media and education has caused non-standard varieties to lose ground to the literary forms.

The jat-reflex rules are not without exception. For example, when short jat is preceded by r, in most Ijekavian dialects developed into /re/ or, occasionally, /ri/. The prefix prě- ("trans-, over-") when long became pre- in eastern Ijekavian dialects but to prije- in western dialects; in Ikavian pronunciation, it also evolved into pre- or prije- due to potential ambiguity with pri- ("approach, come close to"). For verbs that had -ěti  in their infinitive, the past participle ending -ěl evolved into -io in Ijekavian Neo-Štokavian.

The following are some examples:

English  | Predecessor  | Ekavian  | Ikavian  | Ijekavian  | Ijekavian development

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beautiful  | *lěp  | lep  | lip  | lijep  | long ě → ije
time  | *vrěme  | vreme  | vrime  | vrijeme
faith  | *věra  | vera  | vira  | vjera  | short ě → je
crossing  | *prělaz  | prelaz  | prilaz  | prеlaz or
prijelaz  | pr \+ long ě → prije
times  | *vrěmena  | vremena  | vrimena  | vremena  | r \+ short ě → re
need  | *trěbati  | trebati  | tribat(i)  | trebati
heat  | *grějati  | grejati  | grijati  | grijati  | r \+ short ě → ri
saw  | *viděl  | video  | vidio  | vidio  | ěl → io
village  | *selo  | selo  | selo  | selo  | e in root, not ě

## Derived words in English

[edit]

Wiktionary has a category on English terms derived from Serbo-Croatian.

* Cravat, from French cravate "Croat", by analogy with Flemish Krawaat and German Krabate, from Serbo-Croatian Hrvat,[163] as cravats were characteristic of Croatian dress
* Polje, from Serbo-Croatian polje "field"[164]
* Slivovitz, from German Slibowitz, from Bulgarian slivovitza or Serbo-Croatian šljivovica "plum brandy", from Old Slavic *sliva "plum" (cognate with English sloe)[165]
* Tamburitza, Serbo-Croatian diminutive of tambura, from Turkish, from Persian ṭambūr "tanbur"[166]
* Uvala, from Serbo-Croatian uvala "hollow"[167]
* Vampire, from Serbo-Croatian vampir via German Vampir or French Vampire[168]

## See also

[edit]

* Language portal
* Linguistics portal
* Bosnia and Herzegovina portal
* Croatia portal
* Serbia portal

* Comparison of Serbo-Croatian standard varieties
* Relative clause § Serbo-Croatian
* Serbo-Croatian kinship

## Notes

[edit]

1. ^ a b c Officially codified Montenegrin alphabet for the standard Montenegrin language expands on Gaj's Latin and Serbian Cyrillic alphabets with two additional letters (see the section § Writing systems); these language reforms, however, have not entered everyday use.
2. ^ English pronunciation: /ˌsɜːrboʊkroʊˈeɪʃən/ ⓘ SUR-boh-kroh-AY-shən[9][10]; alternatively, Serbo-Croat.
3. ^ Serbo-Croatian pronunciation: [sr̩pskoxř̩ʋaːtskiː]
4. ^ BCMS expands on earlier designations such as Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS)[12] or Serbo-Croat-Bosnian (SCB),[13] following the codification and gradual recognition of Montenegrin as a standard language variety distinct from Serbian. These designations have also been alternatively separated with a forward slash (/), i.e. Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian or Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian.

## References

[edit]

### Citations

[edit]

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107. ^ Kordić, Snježana (2009). "Plurizentrische Sprachen, Ausbausprachen, Abstandsprachen und die Serbokroatistik" [Pluricentric languages, Ausbau languages, Abstand languages and Serbo-Croatian studies]. Zeitschrift für Balkanologie (in German). 45 (2): 213–214\. ISSN 0044-2356. OCLC 680567046. SSRN 3439240. CROSBI 436361. ZDB-ID 201058-6. Archived (PDF) from the original on 29 May 2012. Retrieved 21 January 2019.
108. ^ Mader Skender, Mia (2022). "Schlussbemerkung" [Summary]. Die kroatische Standardsprache auf dem Weg zur Ausbausprache [The Croatian standard language on the way to ausbau language] (PDF) (Dissertation). UZH Dissertations (in German). Zurich: University of Zurich, Faculty of Arts, Institute of Slavonic Studies. pp. 196–197\. doi:10.5167/uzh-215815. Retrieved 8 June 2022. "Obwohl das Kroatische sich in den letzten Jahren in einigen Gebieten, vor allem jedoch auf lexikalischer Ebene, verändert hat, sind diese Änderungen noch nicht bedeutend genug, dass der Terminus Ausbausprache gerechtfertigt wäre. Ausserdem können sich Serben, Kroaten, Bosnier und Montenegriner immer noch auf ihren jeweiligen Nationalsprachen unterhalten und problemlos verständigen. Nur schon diese Tatsache zeigt, dass es sich immer noch um eine polyzentrische Sprache mit verschiedenen Varietäten handelt."
109. ^ Zanelli, Aldo (2018). Eine Analyse der Metaphern in der kroatischen Linguistikfachzeitschrift Jezik von 1991 bis 1997 [Analysis of Metaphors in Croatian Linguistic Journal Language from 1991 to 1997]. Studien zur Slavistik; 41 (in German). Hamburg: Kovač. p. 21\. ISBN 978-3-8300-9773-0. OCLC 1023608613. (NSK). (FFZG)
110. ^ Alexander 2006, p. 424–426.
111. ^ Decision of 23 June 1997, Prosecutor v. Delalic and Delic
112. ^ "Kordić's publications in Književna republika". Bib.irb.hr. Retrieved 2013-09-01. ZDB-ID 2122129-7.
113. ^ Petković, Nikola (5 September 2010). "Mrsko zrcalo pred licima jezikoslovaca" [A nasty mirror reflects back at linguists] (in Serbo-Croatian). Rijeka: Novi list. p. 7 in the arts section Mediteran. ISSN 1334-1545. Archived from the original on 15 March 2012. Retrieved 18 July 2012.
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115. ^ Kordić, Snježana (2003). "Demagogija umjesto znanosti (odgovor Daliboru Brozoviću)" [Demagogy instead of science (response to Dalibor Brozović)] (PDF). Književna Republika (in Serbo-Croatian). 1 (7–8): 176–202\. ISSN 1334-1057. S2CID 171739712. SSRN 3433060. CROSBI 430252. ZDB-ID 2122129-7. Archived (PDF) from the original on 1 June 2012. Retrieved 8 April 2022.7–8&rft.pages=176-202&rft.date=2003&rft_id=https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:171739712#id-name=S2CID&rft_id=https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3433060#id-name=SSRN&rft.issn=1334-1057&rft.aulast=Kordić&rft.aufirst=Snježana&rft_id=http://bib.irb.hr/datoteka/430252.DEMAGOGIJA_UMJESTO_ZNANOSTI.PDF&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:Serbo-Croatian" class="Z3988"> (CROLIB).
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129. ^ Dua, Hans Raj (1992). "Hindi-Urdu as a pluricentric language". In Clyne, Michael G. (ed.). Pluricentric Languages: Differing Norms in Different Nations. Contributions to the sociology of language 62. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 381–400\. ISBN 978-3-11-012855-0. OCLC 24668375.
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131. ^ Kordić, Snježana (2024). "Ideology Against Language: The Current Situation in South Slavic Countries" (PDF). In Nomachi, Motoki; Kamusella, Tomasz (eds.). Languages and Nationalism Instead of Empires. Routledge Histories of Central and Eastern Europe. London: Routledge. pp. 167–179\. doi:10.4324/9781003034025-11. ISBN 978-0-367-47191-0. OCLC 1390118985. S2CID 259576119. SSRN 4680766. COBISS.SR 125229577. COBISS 171014403. Archived from the original on 10 January 2024. Retrieved 23 January 2024. p. 168–169: "the mutual intelligibility between the standard varieties spoken in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia is at the highest level, meaning that it is significantly higher than between spoken standard Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. Research conducted by the Nordic Culture Fund (Nordiska kulturfonden) and the Nordic Council of Ministers (Nordiska ministerrådet) from 2002 to 2005 with native speakers of Danish, Norwegian and Swedish under the age of twenty-five showed that Copenhagen's youth understand only 36 percent of spoken Swedish and 41 percent of spoken Norwegian; Oslo's youth understand 71 percent of spoken Swedish and 65 percent of spoken Danish; Stockholm's youth understand 55 percent of spoken Norwegian and 34 percent of spoken Danish."
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136. ^ a b Brozović, Dalibor (2007). "Hrvatski jezik, njegovo mjesto unutar južnoslavenskih i drugih slavenskih jezika, njegove povijesne mijene kao jezika hrvatske književnosti". Neka bitna pitanja hrvatskoga jezičnog standarda (in Croatian). Školska knjiga. pp. 155–278\. ISBN 978-953-0-50840-8.
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147. ^ Serbian at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
148. ^ Ramet, Sabrina P.; Valenta, Marko (2016-09-22). Ethnic Minorities and Politics in Post-Socialist Southeastern Europe. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-316-98277-8.
149. ^ "Kosovo's Demographic Destiny Looks Eerily Familiar". Balkan Insight. 2019-11-07. Retrieved 2021-06-29.
150. ^ Croatian at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
151. ^ Bosnian at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
152. ^ Montenegrin at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
153. ^ Törnquist-Plewa, Barbara (2002). Resic, Sanimir (ed.). The Balkans in Focus: Cultural Boundaries in Europe. Lund, Sweden: Nordic Academic Press. p. 198\. ISBN 9789187121708. OCLC 802047788.
154. ^ "Raziskava Položaj in status pripadnikov narodov nekdanje Jugoslavije vRS.pdf" (PDF) (in Slovenian). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-10-07. Retrieved 2010-11-25.
155. ^ Kordić 2006, p. 5.
156. ^ (in Serbo-Croatian) Gramatika hrvatskosrpskoga jezika, Group of Authors (Ivan Brabec, Mate Hraste and Sreten Živković), Zagreb, 1968.
157. ^ a b Crosby, Alan; Martinović, Iva (August 28, 2018). "In The Age Of The Internet, Serbia Aims To Keep Its Cyrillic Alive". Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Retrieved 5 September 2018.
158. ^ "SMS poruke na ćirilici skuplje" [SMS messages in Cyrillic are more expensive] (in Serbo-Croatian). 021.rs. 29 December 2011. Retrieved 6 March 2023.
159. ^ Šćepanović, Lela (2 February 2017). "Crnogorski se govori i bez ś" [Montenegrin is also spoken without ś]. Radio Slobodna Evropa (in Serbo-Croatian). Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Retrieved 29 October 2022. "Slova ś i ź odnedavno ne koristi ni Skupština Crne Gore, prva i jedina državna institucija koja ih je nakon reforme crnogorskog jezika koristila u zvaničnoj komunikaciji." [The letters ś and ź have recently not been used even by the Parliament of Montenegro, the first and only state institution that used them in official communication after the reform of the Montenegrin language.]
160. ^ Hansen-Löve, Aage Ansgar [in German] (2000). "Slavica". Wiener Slawistischer Almanach [Vienna Slavic Almanac]. 46. Indiana University Press: 265. ISSN 0258-6819. OCLC 4668662.
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163. ^ "cravat". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
164. ^ "polje". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
165. ^ "slovovitz". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
166. ^ "tamburitza". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
167. ^ "uvala". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
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* Blum, Daniel (2002). Sprache und Politik : Sprachpolitik und Sprachnationalismus in der Republik Indien und dem sozialistischen Jugoslawien (1945–1991) [Language and Policy: Language Policy and Linguistic Nationalism in the Republic of India and the Socialist Yugoslavia (1945–1991)]. Beiträge zur Südasienforschung (in German). Vol. 192\. Würzburg: Ergon. p. 200\. ISBN 978-3-89913-253-3. OCLC 51961066.
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* Ćalić, Jelena (2021). "Pluricentricity in the classroom: the Serbo-Croatian language issue for foreign language teaching at higher education institutions worldwide". Sociolinguistica: European Journal of Sociolinguistics. 35 (1). De Gruyter: 113–140\. doi:10.1515/soci-2021-0007. ISSN 0933-1883. S2CID 244134335.
* Greenberg, Robert D. (2004). Language and Identity in the Balkans: Serbo-Croatian and its Disintegration (1st ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780191514555.
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* Gröschel, Bernhard (2009). Das Serbokroatische zwischen Linguistik und Politik: mit einer Bibliographie zum postjugoslavischen Sprachenstreit [Serbo-Croatian Between Linguistics and Politics: With a Bibliography of the Post-Yugoslav Language Dispute]. Lincom Studies in Slavic Linguistics (in German). Vol. 34\. Munich: Lincom Europa. p. 451\. ISBN 978-3-929075-79-3. LCCN 2009473660. OCLC 428012015. OL 15295665W. COBISS 43144034. Contents.
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* Mappes-Niediek, Norbert (2005). Die Ethno-Falle: der Balkan-Konflikt und was Europa daraus lernen kann [The Ethnic Trap: the Balkan conflict and what Europe can learn from it] (in German). Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag. p. 224\. ISBN 978-3-86153-367-2. OCLC 61665869.
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* Thomas, Paul-Louis (2003). "Le serbo-croate (bosniaque, croate, monténégrin, serbe): de l'étude d'une langue à l'identité des langues" [Serbo-Croatian (Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, Serbian): from the study of a language to the identity of languages]. Revue des études slaves (in French). 74 (2–3): 311–325\. doi:10.3406/slave.2002.6801. ISSN 0080-2557. OCLC 754204160. ZDB-ID 208723-6.2–3&rft.pages=311-325&rft.date=2003&rft_id=info:oclcnum/754204160&rft.issn=0080-2557&rft_id=info:doi/10.3406/slave.2002.6801&rft.aulast=Thomas&rft.aufirst=Paul-Louis&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:Serbo-Croatian" class="Z3988">

## Further reading

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* Banac, Ivo: Main Trends in the Croatian Language Question. Yale University Press, 1984.
* Bunčić, D., 2016. Serbo-Croatian/Serbian: Cyrillic and Latin. Biscriptality: A Sociolinguistic Typology, pp. 231–246.
* Franolić, Branko: A Historical Survey of Literary Croatian. Nouvelles éditions Latines, Paris, 1984.
* Franolić, B., 1983. The development of literary Croatian and Serbian. Buske Verlag.
* Franolić, Branko (1988). Language Policy in Yugoslavia with special reference to Croatian. Paris: Nouvelles Editions Latines.
* Franolić, Branko; Žagar, Mateo (2008). A Historical Outline of Literary Croatian & The Glagolitic Heritage of Croatian Culture. London & Zagreb: Erasmus & CSYPN. ISBN 978-953-6132-80-5.
* Greenberg, Robert D. (1999). "In the Aftermath of Yugoslavia's Collapse: The Politics of Language Death and Language Birth". International Politics. 36 (2): 141–158.
* Greenberg, Robert D. (2013). "Language, Religion, and Nationalism: The Case of the Former Serbo-Croatian". Typen slavischer Standardsprachen: Theoretische, methodische und empirische Zugaenge. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. pp. 217–231\. ISBN 9783447100281.
* Ivić, Pavle: Die serbokroatischen Dialekte. the Hague, 1958.
* Jakobsen, Per (2008). "O strukturalno-lingvističkim konstantama srpskohrvatskog jezika (inventar fonema i fonotaktička struktura)" [Serbocroatian structural-linguistic constants (inventory of phonemes and phonotactic structure)]. In Ostojić, Branislav (ed.). Jezička situacija u Crnoj Gori – norma i standardizacija (in Serbo-Croatian). Podgorica: Crnogorska akademija nauka i umjetnosti. pp. 25–34\. ISBN 978-86-7215-207-4. (COBISS-CG) Archived 2018-10-05 at the Wayback Machine.
* Kristophson, Jürgen (2000). "Vom Widersinn der Dialektologie: Gedanken zum Štokavischen" [Dialectological Nonsense: Thoughts on Shtokavian]. Zeitschrift für Balkanologie (in German). 36 (2): 178–186\. ISSN 0044-2356. ZDB-ID 201058-6.
* Magner, Thomas F.: Zagreb Kajkavian dialect. Pennsylvania State University, 1966.
* Magner, Thomas F. (1991). Introduction to the Croatian and Serbian Language (Revised ed.). Pennsylvania State University.
* Merk, Hening (2008). "Neka pragmatična zapažanja o postojanju srpskohrvatskog jezika". In Ostojić, Branislav (ed.). Jezička situacija u Crnoj Gori – norma i standardizacija (in Serbo-Croatian). Podgorica: Crnogorska akademija nauka i umjetnosti. pp. 295–299\. ISBN 978-86-7215-207-4. (COBISS-CG) Archived 2018-10-05 at the Wayback Machine.
* Murray Despalatović, Elinor: Ljudevit Gaj and the Illyrian Movement. Columbia University Press, 1975.
* Spalatin, C., 1966. Serbo-Croatian or Serbian and Croatian?: Considerations on the Croatian Declaration and Serbian Proposal of March 1967. Journal of Croatian Studies, 7, pp. 3–13.
* Scando-Slavica, Volume 68, 2022 - Issue 1. 2022. Scando-Slavica, Volume 68, 2022 - Issue 1
* Vergunova, Ludmila: The geographic distribution of Proto-Slavic dialectisms and the genesis of the South Slavic languages. 1996\. (UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN LIBRARY)
* Vukotić, Vuk: On the Discursive Construction of Dialectal Varieties: The Case of Central South Slavic ‘Supradialects’. Scando-Slavica, Volume 68, 2022 - Issue 1
* Zekovic, Sreten & Cimeša, Boro: Elementa montenegrina, Chrestomatia 1/90. CIP, Zagreb 1991.

## External links

[edit]

Serbo-Croatian edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wikiquote has quotations related to Serbo-Croatian.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Serbo-Croatian language.

* Ethnologue - the 15th edition of Ethnologue (released 2005) shows changes in this area:
* Previous Ethnologue entry for Serbo-Croatian
* Ethnologue 15th Edition report on western South Slavic languages
* Serbian and Croatian alphabets at Omniglot.
* "Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, Or Montenegrin? Or Just 'Our Language'?", Radio Free Europe, February 21, 2009
* Browne, Wayles; Alt, Theresa (2004), A Handbook of Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian (PDF), SEELRC

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Serbo-Croatian language

Literary languages|

* Bosnian
* Croatian
* Montenegrin
* Serbian
* Microlanguages
* Burgenland Croatian
* Molise Croatian
* Comparison of literary languages

Dialects|

| Shtokavian|

| Old-Shtokavian|

* Eastern Bosnian
* Kosovo–Resava
* Smederevo–Vršac
* Slavonian (or Eastern Slavonian)
* Šokac
* Zeta–Raška (also known as Zeta–South Sandžak)
* Cetinje–Bar
* Bjelopavlići–Vasojevići
* Ozrinići–Broćanac
* Sjenica–Novi Pazar

|

Neo-Shtokavian|

* Younger Ikavian (or Bosnian–Dalmatian)
* Bunjevac
* Dubrovnik
* Eastern Herzegovinian
* Užice
* Šumadija–Vojvodina

Chakavian|

* Buzet
* Northern Chakavian
* Central Chakavian
* Southern Chakavian
* Southeastern Chakavian
* Southwestern Istrian
* Lastovo

Kajkavian|

* Gora [hr]
* Križevci–Podravina
* Lower Sutla
* Prigorje
* Turopolje–Posavina
* Zagor–Međimurje

Torlakian1|

* Prizren–Timok
* Prizren–South Morava
* Gora2
* Janjevo–Letnica
* Svrljig–Zaplanje (or Western Torlakian)
* Timok–Lužnica (or Eastern Torlakian)

Reflexes of *ě|

* Ekavian
* Ijekavian
* Ikavian

Features|

| Writing|

* Gaj's Latin alphabet
* Montenegrin alphabet
* Serbian Cyrillic alphabet
* Yugoslav Braille

|

Other|

* Grammar
* Loanwords
* Greek
* Turkish
* Phonology
* Relative clauses

History|

* Illyrian language
* Illyrian movement
* Vienna Literary Agreement
* Novi Sad Agreement
* Declaration on the Common Language

Literature|

* Bosnian literature
* Croatian literature
* Vukovians
* Montenegrin literature
* Serbian literature
* Medieval
* Poetry

Related topics|

* Arebica
* Baška tablet
* Codex Marianus
* Humac tablet
* Serbian manuscripts
* Romano-Serbian
* Slavonic-Serbian
* Vatican Croatian Prayer Book
* Yugoslav Sign Language

* 1also considered part of the Shtokavian dialect (as the Prizren–Timok dialect)
* 2also considered part of the Northern Macedonian dialects

Links to related articles

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Languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Official languages|

* Bosnian
* Croatian
* Serbian

Other languages|

* Vlax Romani
* Yugoslav Sign Language

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Languages of Croatia

Official languages|

* Croatian

Minority languages|

* Bosnian
* Czech
* Hungarian
* Italian
* Romani
* Pannonian Rusyn
* Serbian
* Slovak

Sign languages|

* Yugoslav Sign Language

See Also: Minority languages of Croatia

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Languages of Montenegro

Official languages|

* Montenegrin
* Venetian

Minority languages|

* Albanian
* Bosnian
* Croatian
* Serbian
* Romani

Sign languages|

* Yugoslav Sign Language

See Also: Minority languages of Montenegro

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Languages of Serbia

Official language|

* Serbian

Minority languages|

* Albanian
* Bosnian
* Bulgarian
* Croatian
* Hungarian
* Macedonian
* Slovak
* Romani
* Romanian
* Rusyn

Sign languages|

* Yugoslav Sign Language

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Slavic languages

History|

* Proto-Balto-Slavic
* Up to Proto-Slavic
* Proto-Slavic (Accent)
* Church Slavonic
* Old Church Slavonic
* Cyrillic script
* Glagolitic script
* Modern languages

East Slavic|

* Belarusian
* Simple speech
* Old East Slavic
* Old Novgorodian
* Ruthenian
* Russian
* dialects
* Alaskan Russian
* Doukhobor Russian
* Rusyn
* Ukrainian
* dialects
* Canadian Ukrainian
* Simple speech

South Slavic|

| Eastern|

* Bulgarian
* Church Slavonic
* Old Church Slavonic
* Macedonian

|

Transitional|

* Torlakian

Western [ru]|

* Alpine Slavic
* Serbo-Croatian
* Bosnian
* Croatian
* Montenegrin
* Serbian
* Slavomolisano
* Slovene

West Slavic|

| Czech–Slovak|

* Czech
* Biblical Czech
* Czechoslovak
* Knaanic
* Moravian
* White Croatian
* Slovak
* Camaldolese Slovak
* Eastern Slovak
* Pannonian Rusyn

|

Lechitic|

* East Lechitic
* Polish
* Masurian
* dialects
* Old Polish
* Middle Polish
* Silesian
* Lach
* Pomeranian
* Kashubian
* Slovincian
* West Lechitic
* Marcho-Magdeburgian
* Polabian
* Rani

Sorbian|

* Upper Sorbian
* Lower Sorbian
* Schleifer

Microlanguages
and dialects|

| East Slavic|

* Carpathian Rusyn
* Lemko
* Odesan Russian
* Podlachian
* West Polesian

|

South Slavic|

* Banat Bulgarian
* Chakavian
* Burgenland Croatian
* Kajkavian
* Pomak
* Prekmurje Slovene
* Resian
* Shtokavian
* Slavomolisano
* Bunjevac
* Slavic dialects of Greece

West Slavic|

* Eastern Slovak
* Pannonian Rusyn
* Goral
* Knaanic
* Lach
* Silesian
* Cieszyn Silesian

Mixed languages|

* Balachka
* 20th century Bohemian Romani
* Kyakhta Russian–Chinese Pidgin
* Mednyj Aleut
* Ponaschemu
* Quelia
* Romano-Serbian
* Runglish
* Russenorsk
* Solombala English
* Surzhyk
* Taimyr Pidgin Russian
* Trasianka

Constructed
languages|

* Pan-Slavic language
* Interslavic
* Lydnevi
* Army Slavic
* Iazychie
* Slavonic-Serbian

Historical
phonology|

* Slavic first palatalization
* Slavic second palatalization
* Slavic liquid metathesis and pleophony
* Monophthongization
* Dybo's law
* Havlík's law
* Hirt's law
* Illič-Svityč's law
* Ivšić's law
* Meillet's law
* Pedersen's law
* Ruki sound law
* Van Wijk's law
* Winter's law

Italics indicate extinct languages.

Authority control databases: National |

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* BnF data
* Czech Republic
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* Sweden
* Israel

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