Spoken in: Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia.

Region: Central Europe, Southern Europe.

Total speakers: over 12 million.

Language family: Indo-European, Slavic, South Slavic, Western South Slavic, Serbian.

Official status
Official language in: Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Republic of Macedonia, Romania, Hungary (in some municipalities).

Regulated by: Board for Standardization of the Serbian Language.

Serbian (српски језик; srpski jezik) is the most spoken South Slavic language. It is one of the standard versions of the Shtokavian dialect, used primarily in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia, and by Serbs in the Serbian diaspora. The former standard is known as Serbo-Croatian, now split into Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian standards. It counts among official (and minority) languages of Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia, Romania, Republic of Macedonia and Hungary.

Two alphabets are used to write the Serbian language: a variation on the Cyrillic alphabet, devised by Vuk Karadžić, and a variation on the Latin alphabet, devised by Ljudevit Gaj. The characters of the two alphabets map to each other one-to-one.

Serbian orthography is very consistent: approximation of the principle "one letter per sound". This principle is represented by Adelung's saying, "Write as you speak and read as it is written", the principle used by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić when reforming the Cyrillic orthography of Serbian in the 19th century.

Standard Serbian is based on the Štokavian dialect. The Ekavian variant is spoken mostly in Serbia and Ijekavian in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, south-western Serbia, and Croatia. The base for is the Ijekavian dialect is East-Herzegovinian, and of the Ekavian, the Šumadija-Vojvodina dialect. Features of other Shtokavian dialects, as well of the Torlakian dialect, which is spoken in southern Serbia, are not accepted as standard.


Writing systems

Serbian Cyrillic and Serbian Latin, from Comparative orthography of European languages. Source: Vuk Stefanović Karadžić Srpske narodne pjesme (Serbian folk poems), Vienna, 1841Serbian language can be written in two different alphabets: Serbian Cyrillic script (ћирилица) and the Serbian Latin (latinica).

Cyrillic order (called Azbuka (азбука): А Б В Г Д Ђ Е Ж З И Ј К Л Љ М Н Њ О П Р С Т Ћ У Ф Х Ц Ч Џ Ш

Latin order (called abeceda): A B C Č Ć D Dž Đ E F G H I J K L Lj M N Nj O P R S Š T U V Z Ž

Use of scripts

Cyrillic alphabet was in exclusive use in Serbia before the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was formed (1918), but Latin was used by Serbs in the coastal area of modern Montenegro as well as in Croatia (Dubrovnik-Neretva County), and Bosnia and Herzegovina (mainly Herzegovina which adjoins the latter two areas). Some famous literary historians and critics from Belgrade, as Jovan Skerlić, proposed to abolish literary chaos and end arguments by accepting Latin as the only alphabet. Especially during the socialist era, Latin has made a major breakthrough even in Serbia proper. Since the constitutional reforms in the early 1970s, most documents were published in "Serbo-Croatian" Cyrillic and "Croato-Serbian" (sometimes Serbo-Croatian) Latin. Enciklopedija Jugoslavije was published in Zagreb in "Croatian or Serbian" (the way Croats referred to Serbo-Croatian language) Latin, "Serbo-Croat" (the way Serbs, Montenigriens, Muslims and all other nations in Yugoslavia referred to Serbo-Croatian langage) Cyrillic, Slovenian, Macedonian, Albanian and Hungarian. The only Yugoslav (not traditionally Serbian, Croatian nor Bosnian) newspaper Borba was printed in both alphabets: one page in Cyrillic, the following page in Latinic and so on all through the journal, with the script of the front page alternating between the two every day. Whilst Serbo-Croat was widely accepted (before the Yugoslav Wars), the Cyrillic alphabet was used predominantly in central Serbia and in Montenegro (until the late 1990s). The Latin alphabet was preferred in Croatia and the only one used by the Croats. In Belgrade, the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina and in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in the larger more vibrant towns of Serbia, either alphabet would be used as and how the writer would choose.

The exact percentage of use of alphabets is difficult to assess today. Of the major newspapers, Politika, Večernje Novosti, Glas Javnosti, and Dnevnik are printed in Cyrillic, while Blic, Kurir, Danas and Press use Latin. Of the major TV outlets, only the public service Radio Television of Serbia uses primarily Cyrillic (as well as former BK TV), while Pink, B92 and most others use Latin. An informal poll on the Internet forum SerbianCafe.com showed no apparent preference. According to the data collected by Association for Protection of Cyrillic, over 80% of public inscriptions in Novi Sad is in Latin, and over 60% in Belgrade; 5/6 of (randomly sampled) magazines is in Latin, as well as vast majority of university textbooks (however, the proportion is the opposite for high-school ones).

Many e-mail and even web documents written in Serbian use basic ASCII, where Serbian Latin letters that use diacritics (Ž Ć Č Š) are either replaced with the base, undiacritised forms (Z C C S) or with two letter combinations that are pronounced similarly (Zh, Tj, Ch, Sh), letter Đ is replaced with Dj, and Dž with Dz. The original words are then recognized from the context. This is not an official alphabet, and is considered bad practice, but there are some documents in Serbian that use this simplified alphabet. This is common practice in other languages that use letters with diacritics.

Equivalence of scripts

The Cyrillic letters <Љ>, <Њ> and <Џ> are represented by digraphs in the Latin alphabet. In digraphs, letters are always written together - even in top-down text - and are also sorted as one letter (e.g. ljubav, 'love', comes after lopta, 'ball'). The present Cyrillic script, having been devised for the language itself, is precise because there is no ambiguity involved in reading Lj, Nj and Dž: for example, both Cyrillic инјекција (mathematical injection or medical injection) and његов ('his') are written with <nj> in Latin form. Thus, automatic transliteration of Cyrillic text to Latin is straightforward, but automatic transliteration of Latin text to Cyrillic requires additional heuristic rules.


History

Before 1400, most Serbian vernaculars had two accents, both with fall intonation—the short one and the long one. That is why they are called "old accents". By 1500, the old accents moved by one syllable towards the beginning of the word, changing their quality to rising accents. For instance junâk (hero) became jùnāk. The old accents, logically remained only when they were on first syllable. Not all dialects had that evolution; those who had it are called neo-shtokavian. The irradiation point was in east Herzegovina, between Prokletije mountains and town of Trebinje. Since the 1500s people had been emigrating from this area. The biggest migrations were to the north, then toward Military Krajina and to the seaside (Dubrovnik area, including islands of Mljet and Šipan). In 1920s and 1930s royal government tried to settle people from this poor mountainous area to Kosovo basin. Vojvodina was settled with inhabitants from this area after the WW II.


Morphology

Declension

There are seven cases in Serbian: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, instrumental and locative. It is commonly mistaken, that locative and dative have the same form, and that morphologically the number of cases is six. The accent is in many examples different in dative and locative: cf. strâni ('to the site' dative)/ (na) stráni ('on the site' locative) or (ka) sâtu ('to the clock tower')/ (na) sátu ('on the clock').

The number of cases, in concert with a non-fixed word-order, can make Serbian difficult to learn for speakers of languages without a strong case system.

Conjugation

Serbian verbs are conjugated in 4 past tenses - perfect, aorist, imperfect, and pluperfect, of which the last two have a very limited use (imperfect is still used in some dialects, but majority of native Serbian speakers consider it archaic); 1 future tense (aka 1st future tense - as opposed to the 2nd future tense or the future exact, which is considered a tense of the conditional mood by some contemporary linguists), and 1 present tense. These are the tenses of the indicative mood. Apart from the indicative mood, there is also the imperative mood. The conditional mood has two more tenses, the 1st conditional (commonly used in conditional clauses, both for possible and impossible conditional clauses), and the 2nd conditional (without use in spoken language - it should be used for impossible conditional clauses). Serbian language has active and passive voice.

As for the non-finite verb forms, Serbian language has 1 infinitive, 2 adjectival participles (the active and the passive), and 2 adverbial participles (the present and the past).


Vocabulary

There are many loanwords from different languages:

- There are plenty of loanwords from German. The great number of them are specific for vernaculars which were situated in Austrian monarchy (Vojvodina, Slavonija, Lika and partly Bosnia). Most cultural words attested before World War II, were borrowed from (or via) German, even when they are of French or English origin (šorc, boks). The accent is an excellent indicator for that, since German loanwords in Serbian have rising accents.

- Italian words in standard language were often borrowed via German (makarone). If they were taken directly from Italian, they show specific, not regular adaptations. For instance špagète for Italian spaghetti rather than the "expected" špàgete.

- On the other hand, as in Croatian, there are plenty of Italian loanwords in the coastal vernaculars (in Spič, Paštrovići, Boka Kotorska, Dubrovnik area and at Kvarner coast), as well as in the vernaculars near the coаst. In some Croatian vernaculars, Italian loanwords made up to 40-50% of the vernacular vocabulary in the 1930s. Most common are words borrowed from Venetian (brancin, altroke, ardura, karonja ('lazy man'), pršut(a)). Some toponyms such as Budva and Boka Kotorska ('bay of Kotor') are borrowed from Venetian.

- In the coastal area, many words were borrowed from the Dalmatian language (murina, imbut), a Romance language, that was extinct by 1900. Many toponyms were also borrowed from Dalmatian (Kakrc, Luštica, Lovćen, Sutomore< Sancta Maria).

- The number of Turkish loanwords is very large. However, these words are disappearing from the standard language at a faster rate than any other language's contributions. In Belgrade, for instance,čakšire (чакшире) was the only word for trousers before World War II, today pantalone (панталоне) is current; some 30-50 years ago avlija (авлија) was a common word for courtyard or backyard in Belgrade, today it is dvorište (двориште); only 15 years ago čaršav (чаршав) was usual for tablecloth, today it is stoljnjak (стољњак). The greatest number of Turkish loanwords had and have vernaculars of south Serbia (including Kosovo), followed by those of Bosnia and Herzegovina and central Serbia. Many Turkish loanwords are usual in the vernaculars of Vojvodina, Slavonija, Montenegro and Lika as well.

- Greek loanwords are very common in Old Serbian (Serbian-Slavonic). Some words are present and common in modern vernaculars in central Serbia (and also in other areas) and in the standard language: hiljada (хиљада), tiganj (тигањ), patos (патос). Many words of Orthodox ceremony are of Greek origin (parastos (парастос)).

- The number of Hungarian loanwords in the standard language is small: bitanga (битанга), alas (алас), ašov (ашов)). However, they are present in some vernaculars of Vojvodina and Slavonia and also in historical documents, local literature. Some place names in northern central Serbia as Barajevo, are probably of Hungarian origin.

- Two Serbian words that are used in many of the world's languages are vampire and paprika. Slivovitz and ćevapčići are Serbian words which have spread together with the Serbian food/drink they refer to. Paprika and slivovitz are borrowed via German; paprika itself entered German via Hungarian. Vampire spread in many languages via Bram Stoker's famous novel.


Serbian literature

Miroslavljevo jevanđelje (The Gospel of Miroslav), a manuscript, ca. 1180Serbian literature emerged in the Middle Ages, and included such works as Miroslavljevo jevanđelje (Miroslav's Gospel) in 1192 and Dušanov zakonik (Dušan's Code) in 1349. Little secular medieval literature has been preserved, but what there is shows that it was in accord with its time; for example, Serbian Alexandride, a book about Alexander the Great, and a translation of Tristan and Iseult into Serbian. Although not belonging to the literature proper, the corpus of Serbian literacy in the 1300s and 1400s contains numerous legal, commercial and administrative texts with marked presence of Serbian vernacular juxtaposed on the matrix of Serbian Church Slavonic.

In the mid-15th century, Serbia was conquered by the Ottoman Empire and, for the next 400 years there was no opportunity for the creation of secular written literature. However, some of the greatest literary works in Serbian come from this time, in the form of oral literature, the most notable form being Serbian epic poetry. The epic poems were mainly written down in the 19th century, and preserved in oral tradition up to 1950s, that is few centuries or even a millennium longer then by most other "epic folks". Goethe and Jacob Grimm learned Serbian language in order to read Serbian epic poetry in original. By the end of the 18th century, the written literature had become estranged from the spoken language. In the second half of the 18th century, the new language appeared, called Slavonic-Serbian. This artificial idiom superseded works of poets and historians like Gavrilo Stefanović Venclović, who wrote in essentially modern Serbian in 1720s- just, these vernacular compositions have remained cloistered from the general public and received due attention only with the advent of modern literary historians and writers like Milorad Pavić. In the early 19th century, Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, promoted the spoken language of the people as a literary norm.

The first printed book in Serbian, Oktoih was printed in Cetinje in 1494, 40 years after Gutenberg's invention of movable type.


Dictionaries

Serious Serbian and Croatian dictionaries regularly include Croatian only, and Serbian only words. Three Serbian words that are used in many of the world's languages are vampire, paprika (borrowed via Hungarian), and slivovitz.

Standard dictionaries

Rečnik sprkohrvatskog književnog i narodnog jezika (Dictionary of Serbian standard language and vernaculars) is the biggest dictionary of Serbian language and still unfinished. Starting with 1959, 16 volumes were published, about 40 are expected. Works of Croatian authors are excerpted, if published before 1991.

Rečnik srpskohrvatskoga književnog jezika in 6 volumes, started as a common project of Matica srpska and Matica hrvatska, but only the first three volumes were also published in Croato-Serbian (hrvatskosrpski).

There are no high-standard volume dictionaries whether of Serbian nor of Croatian language. Matica srpska is preparing one. Several volume dictionaries were published in Croatia (for Croatian language) during the 90s and till today (Anić, Enciklopedijski rječnik, Hrvatski rječnik).

Historical dictionaries

The Rječnik hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika (I-XXIII), published by Yugoslav academy of sciencies and arts (JAZU) from 1880 to 1976 is the only general historical dictionary of Serbian language. His first editor was Đuro Daničić, followed by Pero Budmani and famous "vukovac" Toma Maretić. The sources are, especially in first volumes, mainly shtokavian.

Etymological dictionaries

The standard and the only completed etymological dictionary of Serbian language is so-called "Skok": Petar Skok. Etimologijski rječnik hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika. I-IV. Zagreb 1971-1974.

There is also a new monumental Etimološki rečnik srpskog jezika (Etymological dictionary of Serbian language). Up to now, two volumes were published: I (with words on A-), and II (Ba-Bd).