Languages of Serbia

Languages of Serbia
Linguistic map of Serbia
Official languages	Serbian
Regional languages	Hungarian, Slovak, Romanian, Croatian, Rusyn, Albanian
Sign languages	Yugoslav Sign Language
Common keyboard layouts	South Slavic Latin and Serbian Cyrillic keyboard

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Serbia has only one nationwide official language, which is Serbian. Other languages spoken in Serbia include Albanian (spoken in Preševo Valley and Kosovo), Hungarian, Romanian, Slovak, Rusyn, Croatian (all of which are official regional languages in the Vojvodina province), Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Romani, Czech, Bosnian, Vlach, Bunjevac, Macedonian, Montenegrin, etc.

Serbian language

Serbian language predominates in most of Serbia, excluding several municipalities in Vojvodina and southern Serbia, as well excluding larger part of Kosovo. Bosnian, Croatian and Bunjevac language, which are, according to census, spoken in some parts of Serbia are virtually identical with Serbian, while declared speakers of Bulgarian language from southern Serbia are actually speakers of Torlakian dialect, which is considered as one of the dialects of the Serbian language by Serbian linguists.

Serbian language spoken in Serbia has several dialects: Šumadija-Vojvodina, Smederevo-Vršac, Kosovo-Resava, Prizren South Morava, Svrljig-Zaplanje, Timok-Lužnica (Torlakian), Eastern Herzegovina, and Zeta-South Sandžak. Šumadija-Vojvodina and Eastern Herzegovina dialects are basys for modern standard Serbian.

Throughout part of southern Serbia, a dialect by the name of Torlakian is spoken. Although it has no standard form and continues to be spoken without any form of official status, Torlakian may be seen by some as constituting a separate language. It forms a part of the South Slavic dialect continuum, and is transitional between the eastern south Slavic languages (mainly Bulgarian and Macedonian) and the western south Slavic languages (of which Serbian is a part).

Regional languages

There are six official regional languages in the autonomous province of Vojvodina: Serbian, Hungarian, Romanian, Slovak, Rusyn, and Croatian. Serbian is a main language used by provincial administration and by all city and municipal administrations in Vojvodina. Other five languages are used by provincial administration and by selected city or municipal administrations. In practice, Serbian is a lingua franca of the region and number of declared native speakers of Serbian in the province exceedes the number of declared ethnic Serbs. Among other languages, Hungarian and Slovak are dominant in several municipalities, while other languages are dominant only in several villages.

Albanian and Serbian are two official languages of Kosovo.

See also

• Languages of Vojvodina

References

•  This article incorporates public domain material from the CIA World Factbook document "2006 edition".

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