| Serbo-Croatian | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| srpskohrvatski, hrvatskosrpski српскохрватски, хрватскосрпски |
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| Spoken in | Serbia Kosovoa Croatia Bosnia and Herzegovina Montenegro |
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| Region | the Western Balkans | |||
| Ethnicity | Serb, Croat, Bosniak, Montenegrin | |||
| Native speakers | 16.3 million (2001–2006)[1] | |||
| Language family | ||||
| Standard forms |
Standard Serbo-Croatian (defunct)
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| Dialects |
Štokavian (standard)
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| Writing system | Latin (Gaj) Cyrillic (Serbian) |
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| Official status | ||||
| Official language in | Bosnia and Herzegovina (as Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian) Croatia (as Croatian) Kosovo (as Serbian)[2] Montenegro (as Montenegrin) Serbia (as Serbian) |
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| Regulated by |
Council for Standard Croatian Language Norm |
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| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-1 | sh (deprecated) | |||
| ISO 639-2 | scr, scc (deprecated) | |||
| ISO 639-3 | hbs – Macrolanguage individual codes: srp – Serbian hrv – Croatian bos – Bosnian |
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| Linguasphere | 53-AAA-g | |||
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Areas where Serbo-Croatian is spoken by a plurality of speakers (as of 2005).
Note: a Kosovo independence disputed, see 2008 Kosovo declaration of independence |
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Serbo-Croatian or Serbo-Croat, less commonly Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (BCS)[3][4] is a South Slavic language with multiple standards and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro. Croats and Serbs differ in religion and have historically lived under different empires, and have adopted slightly different literary forms as the official languages of their respective republics. Since independence, Bosnian has likewise been established as an official standard in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Currently, there is a movement to create a Montenegrin language, separating it from Serbian. Thus Serbo-Croatian generally goes by the ethnic names Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin.[5] All four standards are based on the same dialect, which had served as the official language of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and later of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, from 1918 to 1991.
The basis of the modern standards was established in the late 19th century, when the Eastern Herzegovinian subdialect of the Štokavian dialect was selected as a unified literary language of the Serbian and Croatian peoples. Later Yugoslav standard Serbo-Croatian was based on both literary traditions, Serbian (unofficially called "Eastern") and Croatian (unofficially called "Western"), as these were never fully unified. The dissolution of Yugoslavia spelled the end of attempts at a unified standard, and social conceptions of the language separated on ethnic and political lines.
Contents |
The term Serbo-Croatian was officially established with the joint Vienna Literary Agreement of 1850 while Serb and Croat lands were still part of the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires. Officially, the language was called variously Serbo-Croat, Croato-Serbian, Serbian and Croatian, Croatian and Serbian, Serbian or Croatian, Croatian or Serbian. From the end of the 1960s until the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, Serbs and Croats typically called the language "Serbian" or "Croatian", respectively, without implying a distinction between the two,[6] and indeed in newly independent Bosnia and Herzegovina, "Croatian", "Bosnian", and "Serbian" were considered to be three names of a single official language.[7] Today, use of the term "Serbo-Croatian" is controversial due to memories of Yugoslav politics and the variable meanings of the word language. It is still used for lack of succinct alternative, though alternate names have been used, such as Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (BCS), which is often seen in political contexts such as the Hague War Crimes tribunal.
Throughout the history of the South Slavs, the vernacular, literary, and written languages of the various regions and ethnicities developed and diverged independently. Prior to the 19th century, these languages, self-referred to themselves as "Illyric", "Slavic", "Slavonian", "Bosnian", "Serbian" or "Croatian", were unstandardized despite the presence of an extensive vernacular literature developed in the different local dialects.
The term Serbo-Croatian was mentioned for the first time by Slovene philologist Jernej Kopitar in a letter from 1836, although it cannot be ruled out that he had become acquainted with the term by reading the Slovak philologist Pavel Jozef Šafárik's manuscript "Slovanské starožitnosti" printed 1837. 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 Štokavian dialect 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.[8] 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 unified language.
With unification of the first Kingdom of Yugoslavia – the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes – the approach of Karadžić and the Illyrians became official. The official language was called "Serbo-Croato-Slovene" until the very end of that kingdom. Because of the unitarian politics of King Aleksandar I Karađorđević, as of 1929, the "Yugoslavian language" was the official language of Yugoslavia, the country's name was changed, and all ethnic denominations were erased. 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.[9] 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.[9] In the Communist-dominated second Yugoslavia, ethnic issues eased to an extent, but the matter of language remained blurred and unresolved. In 1954, every major Serbian and Croatian writer, linguist and literary critic, backed by Matica srpska and Matica hrvatska signed the Novi Sad Agreement, which in its first article stated: "The national language of the Serbs, Croats, and Montenegrins is a single language. And thus, the literary language which has developed on its foundation in two major centers, Belgrade and Zagreb, is a unity with two dialects, Ijekavian and Ekavian."[10]
It was later argued that this act was less of an agreement than a political document signed under political pressure, as many writers later asserted (e.g. the signers of the 1967 Declaration on the Status and Name of the Croatian Literary Language, with prominent Croatian intellectuals such as Miroslav Krleža). The Novi Sad agreement became the basis of language politics in the second Yugoslavia; however, many Croats were uneasy, viewing the merging of languages as the attempted "Serbianisation" of their Croatian idiom with markedly Serbian words or phrases. Also, many Serbian idiomatic constructs replaced Croatian idiomatic constructs in media and politics in Bosnia and Herzegovina and, gradually, in the vernacular speech. Some viewed it as proof of Serbian hegemony in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and some as a "natural" process of language change.
After the ethnic tensions of the 1970s, and after the easing of political pressure in the 1990s and the democratisation of the Yugoslav political system, the policy of forced merging of these languages was finally allowed to end, and speakers could call their languages whatever they wanted. Croatians officially returned to using the name they had used for the language before the dissolution of Yugoslavia (officially, they had called it Croatian until the mid 1970s). The Serbs officially called it Serbo-Croatian until 1997, when the Matica srpska made the Dictionary of the Serbian language. Since then Serbs have called it Serbian, but unofficially. The Constitution of Serbia (1990–2006) called the official language Serbo-Croatian, while the Constitution of Montenegro (1993–2007) called it Serbian with ijekavian pronunciation.[11]
Except during the period that extended roughly from the 1920s through the 1980s, people have not called the language Serbo-Croatian, but have tended to use their ethnic/national names.
For more information, see Differences between standard Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian.
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has specified different Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) numbers for Croatian (UDC 862, abbreviation hr) and Serbian (UDC 861, abbreviation sr), while the cover term Serbo-Croatian is used to refer to the combination of original signs (UDC 861/862, abbreviation sh). Furthermore, the ISO 639 standard designates the Bosnian language with the abbreviations bos and bs.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia considers what it calls BCS (Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian) to be the main language of all Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian defendants. The indictments, documents, and verdicts of the ICTY are not written with any regard for consistently following the grammatical prescriptions of any of the three standards – be they Serbian, Croatian, or Bosnian.
For utilitarian purposes, the Serbo-Croatian language is often called "Naš jezik" ("Our language") by native speakers. This politically correct term is frequently used to describe the Serbo-Croatian language by those who wish to avoid nationalistic and linguistic discussions.
The majority of mainstream Serbian linguists consider Serbian and Croatian to be one language, that is called Serbo-Croatian (srpskohrvatski) or Croato-Serbian (hrvatskosrpski). A minority of Serbian linguists are of the opinion that Serbo-Croatian did exist, but has, in the meantime, dissolved. Before 1900 and also now, a minority agree that a "Serbo-Croatian" language has never existed and that this term designates a Croatian variant of the Serbian language.[12]
The majority of Croatian linguists think that there was never anything like a unified Serbo-Croatian language, but two different standard languages that overlapped sometime in the course of history. Also, they claim that the language has never dissolved, since there was never a Serbo-Croatian standard language. A minority of Croatian linguists deny that the Croatian standard language is based on the Neoštokavian dialect. A more detailed discussion, incorporating arguments from the Croatian philology and contemporary linguistics, would be along the following lines:
Politics often becomes a major part of linguistic debates in this area.
The topic of language with the writers from Dalmatia and Dubrovnik prior to the 19th century is somewhat blurred by the fact they by and large placed more emphasis on whether they were Slavic rather than Italian, given that Dalmatian city-states were then inhabited by those two main groups. There was less notable distinction being made between Croats and Serbs, and this, among other things, has been used as an argument to state that these people's literature is not solely Croatian heritage, thus undermining the argument that modern-day Croatian is based on Old Croatian.
However, the major part of intellectuals and writers from Dalmatia who used the Štokavian dialect and were of Catholic faith had explicitly expressed Croatian national affiliation[1], as far back as the mid 16th and 17th centuries, some three hundred years before the Serbo-Croatian ideology had appeared. Their loyalty was first and foremost to the Catholic Christendom, but when they professed ethnic identity, they called it "Slovin" and "Illyrian" (a sort of forerunner of Catholic baroque pan-Slavism) and Croat – these 30-odd writers in the span of ca. 350 years themselves never mentioned Serb ethnic affiliation any time. It should also be noted that, in the pre-national era, a Catholic religious orientation did not necessarily equate with Croat ethnic identity in Dalmatia. A Croatian follower of Vuk Karadžić, Ivan Broz, noted that the Serbian affiliation was as foreign as Macedonian and Greek appellation at this time. Vatroslav Jagić pointed out in 1864:
(From The History of the Croatian language, Zagreb, 1864.)
On the other hand, the opinion of Jagić from 1864 is argued not to have firm grounds. When Jagić says "Croatian" he refers to few cases of referring to the Dubrovnik vernacular as ilirski (Illyrian). This was a common name for all Slavic vernaculars in Dalmatian cities among the Roman inhabitants. In the meantime, other written monuments are found that mention srpski, lingua serviana (= Serbian), and also some that mention Croatian.[14] By far the most competent Serbian scientist on Dubrovnik language issue, Milan Rešetar, who was born in Dubrovnik himself, wrote behalf of language characteristics: "The one who thinks that Croatian and Serbian are two separate languages, must confess that Dubrovnik always (linguistically) used to be Serbian."[14]
On the third hand, the former medieval texts from Dubrovnik and Montenegro dating before 16th century were not true Štokavian nor Serbian, but mostly specific Jekavian-Čakavian that was nearer to actual Adriatic islanders in Croatia.[15]
Nationalists have rather conflicting views about the language(s). The nationalists among the Croats conflictingly claim either that they speak an entirely separate language from Serbs and Bosnians or that these two peoples have, due to the longer lexicographic tradition among Croats, somehow "borrowed" their standard languages from them. Bosniak nationalists claim that both Croats and Serbs have "appropriated" the Bosnian language, since Ljudevit Gaj and Vuk Karadžić preferred the Neoštokavian-Ijekavian dialect, widely spoken in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as the basis for language standardization, whereas the nationalists among the Serbs claim either that any divergence in the language is artificial, or claim that the Štokavian dialect is theirs and the Čakavian Croats'— in more extreme formulations Croats have "taken" or "stolen" their language from the Serbs.
Proponents of unity among Southern Slavs claim that there is a single language with normal dialectal variations. The term "Serbo-Croatian" (or synonyms) is not officially used in any of the successor countries of former Yugoslavia.
In Serbia, the Serbian language is the official one, 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 language is moot.[16] Bosnian is an optional course in 1st and 2nd grade of the elementary school, while it is also in official use in the municipality of Novi Pazar.[17] However, its nomenclature is controversial, as there is incentive that it is referred to as "Bosniak" (bošnjački) rather than "Bosnian" (bosanski) (see Bosnian language for details).
Croatian is the official language of Croatia, while Serbian is also official in municipalities with significant Serb population.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, all three languages are recorded as official but in practice and media, mostly Bosnian and Serbian are applied. Therefore, confrontations have on occasion been absurd. The academic Muhamed Filipović in an interview to Slovenian television told of a local court in a Croatian district requesting a paid translator from Bosnian to Croatian before the trial could proceed.
The primary dialects are named after the most common question word what they use: Shtokavian uses the pronoun što or šta, Chakavian uses ča or ca, Kajkavian (kajkavski), kaj or kej. The Yugoslav standard language and all four contemporary standard languages are based on the Eastern Hercegovinian subdialect of Neo-Shtokavian, the other dialects not taught in schools or used by the state media. Often the Torlakian dialect is added to the list, though scholars nowadays usually classify it as a transitional dialect between Shtokavian and the Bulgaro-Macedonian (East South Slavic) dialect continuum.
The Serbo-Croatian dialects differ not only in the question for they're 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 subsequently been replaced by Štokavian during the period of migrations caused by Ottoman Turkish conquest of the Balkans in the 15th and the 16th century. 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 subliterary dialects are still being spoken.[18]
The difference 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.
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A basic distinction among the dialects is in the reflex of the long Common Slavic vowel jat, usually transcribed as *ě. Depending on the reflex, the dialects are divided into Ikavian, Ekavian, and Ijekavian accents, with the reflects of jat being /i/, /e/, and /ije/ or /je/ respectively. 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 the Ijekavian accent, while Serbian uses both Ekavian and Ijekavian forms (Ijekavian accent for Bosnian Serbs, Ekavian accent 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 Neoštokavian.
The following are some examples:
| English | Predecessor | Ekavian | Ikavian | Ijekavian | Ijekavian development |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| beautiful | *lěp | lep | lip | lijep | long ě → ije |
| time | *vrěme | vreme | vrime | vrijeme | |
| faith | *věra | vera | vira | vjera | short ě → je |
| crossing | *prělaz | prelaz | prеlaz or prijelaz |
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 |
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 Štokavian 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:
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) 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 plusquamperfect; and three moods: indicative, imperative, and conditional. However, the latter three tenses are typically used only in Štokavian writing, and the time sequence of the exact future is more commonly formed through an alternative construction.
In addition, like most Slavic languages, the Štokavian 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 aspect of the verb determines whether the act is completed or in progress in the referred time.
Through history, this language has been written in a number of writing systems:
The oldest texts since 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. Arabic alphabet formerly was used by Bosnian Muslims; Greek writing recently is out of use there, and Arabic and Glagolitic persisted so far partly in religious liturgies.
Today, it is written in both the Latin and Cyrillic scripts. Serbian and Bosnian variants use both alphabets, while Croatian uses the Latin only.
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 diagraphs 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.[19] The latter diagraphs, 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 |
| 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 |
| 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 |
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| Ina | Ина | Ина Инверзија Инјекција Иње |
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| Injekcija | Инјекција | ||
| Inverzija | Инверзија | ||
| Inje | 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), which is composed of the prefix nad- and the verb živ(j)eti. The Cyrillic version avoids the ambiguity by providing a unique single letter for each sound.
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.
The Serbo-Croatian vowel system is simple, with only five vowels in Štokavian. All vowels are monophthongs. The oral vowels are as follows:
| Latin script | Cyrillic script | IPA | Description | English approximation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| a | а | /a/ | open central unrounded | father |
| e | е | /ɛ/ | open-mid front unrounded | den |
| i | и | /i/ | close front unrounded | seek |
| o | о | /ɔ/ | open-mid back rounded | lord |
| u | у | /u/ | closed back rounded | pool |
The vowels can be short or long, but the phonetic quality doesn't 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.
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.
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/ВашинГтон), 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, Macedonian and Serbian. 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.
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 Swedish, Norwegian, Limburgish, Spanish spoken in Chile and Colombia (to a lesser extent), and Ancient Greek. Standard Neoštokavian Serbo-Croatian, which is used a basis for standard Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian, has four "accents", which involve either a rising or falling tone on either long or short vowels, with optional post-tonic lengths:
| Slavicist symbol |
IPA symbol |
Description |
|---|---|---|
| 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:
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 "Neoštokavian retraction"), but the quality of this new accent was different – its melody still "gravitated" towards the original syllable. Most Štokavian dialects (Neoštokavian) dialects underwent this shift, but Čakavian, Kajkavian and the Old Štokavian 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.
Serbo-Croatian orthography is supposed to be almost completely phonetic. Thus, every word is allegedly spelled exactly as it is pronounced. In practice, the writing system does not take into account allophones which occur as a result of interaction between words:
Also, there are some exceptions, mostly applied to foreign words and compounds, that favor morphological/etymological over phonetic spelling:
One systemic exception is that the consonant clusters ds and dš do not change into ts and tš (although d tends to be unvoiced in normal speech in such clusters):
Only a few words are intentionally "misspelled", mostly in order to resolve ambiguity:
The total number of persons who declared their native language as either 'Bosnian', 'Croatian', 'Serbian', 'Montenegrin', or 'Serbo-Croatian' in countries of the region is about 16 million.
Serbian is spoken by about 9 million mostly in Serbia (6.7m), Bosnia and Herzegovina (1.4m), and Montenegro (0.4m). Serbian minorities are found the Republic of Macedonia and Romania. In Serbia, there is about 760,000 second-language speakers of Serbian, including Hungarians in Vojvodina and the 400,000 estimated Roma. Familiarity of Kosovo Albanians with Serbian in Kosovo varies depending on age and education, and exact numbers are not available..
Croatian is spoken by roughly 4.7 million including some 575,000 in Bosnia and Herzegovina. A small Croatian minority lives in Italy known as Molise Croats have somewhat preserved traces of the Croatian language. In Croatia, 170,000 mostly Italians and Hungarians use it as a second language.
Bosnian is spoken by 2.2 million people, chiefly Bosniaks, including about 220,000 in Serbia and Montenegro.
Notion of Montenegrin as a separate standard from Serbian is relatively recent. In the 2003 census, around 150,000 Montenegrins, of the country's 620,000, declared Montenegrin as their native language. That figure is likely to increase since, due to the country's independence and strong institutional backing of Montenegrin language.
Serbo-Croatian is also a second language of many Slovenians 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.[20]
Outside of the Balkans, there are over 2 million native speakers of the language(s), especially in countries which are frequent targets of immigration, such as Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Sweden and the United States.
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