Theromanization of Serbian is the representation of theSerbian language using theLatin script. Serbian is written in two alphabets;Serbian Cyrillic, a variation of theCyrillic script, andGaj's Latin alphabet, orlatinica, a variation of theLatin script. Both are widely used in Serbia. The Serbian language is thus an example ofdigraphia.
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The two alphabets are almost directly and completely interchangeable. Romanization can be done with no errors, but, due to the use ofdigraphs in the Latin script (due to letters "nj" (њ), "lj" (љ), and "dž" (џ)), knowledge of Serbian is sometimes required to do proper transliteration from Latin back to Cyrillic. Standard Serbian currently uses both alphabets. A survey from 2014 showed that 47% of the Serbian population favors the Latin alphabet whereas 36% favors Cyrillic; the remaining 17% has no preference.[1]
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Serbo-Croatian was regarded as a single language since the 1850Vienna Literary Agreement, to be written in two forms: one (Serb) in the adapted Serbian Cyrillic alphabet,ćirilica; the other (Croat) in the adapted Croatian Latin alphabet,[2] that is to sayGaj's Latin alphabet,latinica.
The Latin alphabet was not initially taught in schools in Serbia when it became independent in the 19th century. After a series of efforts by Serbian writersLjubomir Stojanović andJovan Skerlić, it became part of the school curriculum after 1914.[3]
During World War I,Austria-Hungary banned the Cyrillic alphabet in Bosnia[4] and its use in occupied Serbia was banned in schools.[5] Cyrillic was banned in theIndependent State of Croatia in World War II.[6] The government ofsocialist Yugoslavia made some initial effort to promote romanization, use of the Latin alphabet even in the Orthodox Serbian and Montenegrin parts of Yugoslavia, but met with resistance.[7] The use oflatinica did however become more common among Serbian speakers.
In late 1980s, a number of articles had been published in Serbia about a danger of Cyrillic being fully replaced by Latin, thereby endangering what was deemed a Serbian national symbol.[8]
Following thebreakup of Yugoslavia, Gaj's Latin alphabet remained in use inBosnian andCroatian standards ofSerbo-Croatian. Another standard of Serbo-Croatian,Montenegrin, uses a slightly modified version of it.
In 1993, the authorities ofRepublika Srpska underRadovan Karadžić andMomčilo Krajišnik decided to proclaimEkavian andSerbian Cyrillic to be official inRepublika Srpska, which was opposed both by nativeBosnian Serb writers at the time and the general public, and that decision was rescinded in 1994.[9] Nevertheless, it was reinstated in a milder form in 1996, and today still the use of Serbian Latin is officially discouraged in Republika Srpska, in favor of Cyrillic.[10]
Article 10 of theConstitution of Serbia[11] adopted by a referendum in 2006 defined Cyrillic as the official script inSerbia, while Latin was given the status of "Script in official use".
Today, Serbian is more likely to be romanized inMontenegro than in Serbia.[12] Exceptions to this include Serbian websites where use of Latin alphabet is often more convenient, and increasing use in tabloid and popular media such asBlic,Danas andSvet.[13] More established media, such as the formerly state-runPolitika, andRadio Television of Serbia,[14] or foreignGoogle News,[15]Voice of Russia[16] andFacebook tend to use Cyrillic script.[17] Some websites offer the content in both scripts, using Cyrillic as the source and auto generating Romanized version.
In 2013 in Croatia there weremassive protests against official Cyrillic signs on local government buildings inVukovar.[18]
Serbian place names are consistently spelled inlatinica using the mapping that exists between theSerbian Cyrillic alphabet andGaj's Latin alphabet.
Serbian personal names are usually romanized exactly the same way as place names. This is particularly the case with consonants which are common to otherSlavic Latin alphabets -Č,Ć,Š,Ž,Dž andĐ.
A problem is presented by the letterĐ/đ that represents theaffricate[dʑ] (the same sound written as <j> in most romanizations ofJapanese, similar, though not identical to english <j> as in "Jam"), which is still sometimes represented by "Dj". The letter Đ was not part of the original Gaj's alphabet, but was added byĐuro Daničić in the 19th century. Atranscribed "Dj" is still sometimes encountered in rendering Serbian names into English (e.g.Novak Djokovic), though strictly Đ should be used (as in Croatian).
In Serbian, foreign names are phoneticallytransliterated into both Latin and Cyrillic. For example, in Serbian,George Washington becomesDžordž Vašington orЏорџ Вашингтон,Winston Churchill becomesVinston Čerčil orВинстон Черчил andCharles de GaulleŠarl de Gol orШарл де Гол.[19] This change also happens in some European languages that use the Latin alphabet such asLatvian. The nameCatherine Ashton for instance gets transliterated intoKetrin Ešton orКетрин Ештон in Serbian.An exception to this are place names which are so well known as to have their own form (exonym): just as English hasVienna,Austria (and notGermanWien,Österreich) so Croatian and Serbian haveBeč, Austrija (Serbian Cyrillic:Беч, Аустрија).
The incomplete romanization of Serbian is written using theEnglish alphabet, also known as ASCII Serbian, by dropping diacritics. It is commonly used in SMS messages, comments on the Internet or e-mails, mainly when users do not have a Serbian keyboard installed. Serbian is a fully phonetic language with 30 sounds that can be represented with 30 Cyrillic letters, or with letters of 27 Gaj's Latin alphabet and three digraphs ("nj" for "њ", ”lj" for "љ", and "dž" for "џ"). In its ASCII form, the number of used letters drops down to 22, as the letters "q", "w", "x" and "y" are not used. This leads to some ambiguity due tohomographs, however, context is usually sufficient to clarify these issues.
Using incomplete romanization does not allow for easy transliteration back to Cyrillic without significant manual work. Google tried using a machine learning approach to solving this problem and developed an interactive text input tool that enables typing Serbian in ASCII and auto-converting to Cyrillic.[20] However, manual typing is still required with occasional disambiguation selection from the pop-up menu.
Serbian text can be converted from Cyrillic to Latin and vice versa automatically by computer. There are add-in tools available forMicrosoft Word[21] andOpenOffice.org,[22] as well as command line tools for Linux, MacOS and Windows.