Serbian is practically the only European standard language whose speakers are fully functionallydigraphic,[18] using bothCyrillic andLatin alphabets. The Serbian Cyrillic alphabet was devised in 1814 by Serbian linguistVuk Karadžić, who created it based onphonemic principles. The Latin alphabet used for Serbian (latinica) was designed by the Croatian linguistLjudevit Gaj in the 1830s based on the Czech system with a one-to-one grapheme-phoneme correlation between the Cyrillic and Latin orthographies, resulting in a parallel system.[19]
Serbian is a standardized variety ofSerbo-Croatian,[20][21] aSlavic language (Indo-European), of theSouth Slavic subgroup. Other standardized forms of Serbo-Croatian areBosnian,Croatian, andMontenegrin. "An examination of all the major 'levels' of language shows that BCS is clearly a single language with a single grammatical system."[22] It has lower intelligibility with the Eastern South Slavic languagesBulgarian andMacedonian, than withSlovene (Slovene is part of the Western South Slavic subgroup, but there are still significant differences in vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation to the standardized forms of Serbo-Croatian, although it is closer to theKajkavian andChakavian dialects of Serbo-Croatian[23]).
Serbian was the official language ofMontenegro until October 2007, when the newConstitution of Montenegro replaced the Constitution of 1992. Amid opposition from pro-Serbian parties,[32]Montenegrin was made the sole official language of the country, and Serbian was given the status of a language in official use along withBosnian,Albanian, andCroatian.[33]
In the 2023 Montenegrin census, 43.18% declared Serbian to be their native language, while Montenegrin was declared by 34.52% of the population.[34]
Differences between standard Serbian and standard Croatian and Bosnian
Standard Serbian language uses bothCyrillic (ћирилица,ćirilica) andLatin script (latinica,латиница). Serbian is a rare example of synchronicdigraphia, a situation where all literate members of a society have two interchangeable writing systems available to them. Media and publishers typically select one alphabet or the other. In general, the alphabets are used interchangeably; except in the legal sphere, where Cyrillic is required, there is no context where one alphabet or another predominates.
Although Serbian language authorities have recognized the official status of both scripts in contemporary Standard Serbian for more than half of a century now, due to historical reasons, the Cyrillic script was made theofficial script of Serbia's administration by the 2006Constitution.[35]
The Latin script continues to be used in official contexts, although the government has indicated its desire to phase out this practice due to national sentiment. The Ministry of Culture believes that Cyrillic is the "identity script" of the Serbian nation.[36]
However, the law does not regulate scripts instandard language, or standard language itself by any means, leaving the choice of script as a matter of personal preference and to the free will in all aspects of life (publishing, media, trade and commerce, etc.), except in government paperwork production and in official written communication with state officials, which have to be in Cyrillic.[35] Traffic signs and directional signs, and place names, on main or international roads are to be written with both Cyrillic and Latin script.[37]
Usage
To most Serbians, the Latin script tends to imply a cosmopolitan or neutral attitude, while Cyrillic appeals to a more traditional or vintage sensibility.[38]
In media, the public broadcaster,Radio Television of Serbia, predominantly uses the Cyrillic script whereas the privately run broadcasters, likeRTV Pink, predominantly use the Latin script. Newspapers can be found in both scripts.
In the public sphere, with logos, outdoor signage and retail packaging, the Latin script predominates, although both scripts are commonly seen. The Serbian government has encouraged increasing the use of Cyrillic in these contexts.[38] Larger signs, especially those put up by the government, will often feature both alphabets; if the sign has English on it, then usually only Cyrillic is used for the Serbian text.
A survey from 2014 showed that 47% of the Serbian population favors the Latin alphabet whereas 36% favors the Cyrillic one.[39]
Latin script has become more and more popular in Serbia, as it is easier to input on phones and computers.[40]
Serbian is a highlyinflected language, with grammatical morphology for nouns, pronouns and adjectives as well as verbs.[41]
Nouns
Serbian nouns are classified into threedeclensional types, denoted largely by theirnominative case endings as "-a" type, "-i" and "-e" type. Into each of these declensional types may fall nouns of any of threegenders: masculine, feminine or neuter. Each noun may be inflected to represent the noun'sgrammatical case, of which Serbian has seven:
Nouns are further inflected to represent the noun'snumber, singular or plural.
Pronouns
Pronouns, when used, are inflected along the same case and number morphology as nouns. Serbian is apro-drop language, meaning that pronouns may be omitted from a sentence when their meaning is easily inferred from the text. In cases where pronouns may be dropped, they may also be used to add emphasis. For example:
Serbian
English equivalent
Kako si?
How are you?
A kako si ti?
And how areyou?
Adjectives
Adjectives in Serbian may be placed before or after the noun they modify, but must agree in number, gender and case with the modified noun.
Verbs
Serbian verbs are conjugated in four past forms—perfect,aorist,imperfect, andpluperfect—of which the last two have a very limited use (imperfect is still used in some dialects, but the majority of native Serbian speakers consider it archaic), onefuture tense (also known as the first future tense, as opposed to the second future tense or the future exact, which is considered a tense of theconditional mood by some contemporary linguists), and onepresent tense. These are the tenses of theindicative mood. Apart from the indicative mood, there is also theimperative mood. The conditional mood has two more tenses: the first conditional (commonly used in conditional clauses, both for possible and impossible conditional clauses) and the second conditional (without use in the spoken language—it should be used for impossible conditional clauses). Serbian has active and passivevoice.
Most Serbian words are of nativeSlavic lexical stock, tracing back to theProto-Slavic language. There are manyloanwords from different languages, reflecting cultural interaction throughout history. Notable loanwords were borrowed from Greek, Latin, Italian, Turkish, Hungarian, English, Russian, German, Czech and French.
Serbian literature emerged in theMiddle Ages, and included such works asMiroslavljevo jevanđelje (Miroslav's Gospel) in 1186 andDušanov zakonik (Dušan's Code) in 1349. Littlesecular medieval literature has been preserved, but what there is shows that it was in accord with its time; for example, theSerbian Alexandride, a book aboutAlexander the Great, and a translation ofTristan and Iseult into Serbian. Although not belonging to the literature proper, the corpus of Serbian literacy in the 14th and 15th centuries contains numerous legal, commercial and administrative texts with marked presence of Serbian vernacular juxtaposed on the matrix of SerbianChurch Slavonic.
In the mid-15th century, Serbia was conquered by theOttoman 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 beingepic poetry. The epic poems were mainly written down in the 19th century, and preserved in oral tradition up to the 1950s, a few centuries or even a millennium longer than by most other "epic folks".Goethe andJacob Grimm learned Serbian in order to read Serbian epic poetry in the 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, calledSlavonic-Serbian. This artificial idiom superseded the works of poets and historians likeGavrilo Stefanović Venclović, who wrote in essentially modern Serbian in the 1720s. These vernacular compositions have remained cloistered from the general public and received due attention only with the advent of modern literary historians and writers likeMilorad Pavić. In the early 19th century,Vuk Stefanović Karadžić promoted thespoken language of the people as a literary norm.
Dictionary of Serbo-Croatian Literary and Vernacular Language (Rečnik srpskohrvatskog književnog i narodnog jezika) is the biggest dictionary of Serbian (and Serbo-Croatian as a whole) and still unfinished. Starting in 1959, 21 volumes were published as of 2020 and about 40 are expected by the time it is finished.
Dictionary of Serbo-Croatian Literary Language (Rečnik srpskohrvatskoga književnog jezika) in six volumes in 1967–1976, started as a common project ofMatica srpska (published in Cyrillic) andMatica hrvatska (published in Latin). Only the first three volumes were published by Matica hrvatska due to negative feedback from Croatian linguists.
Dictionary of the Serbian language (Rečnik srpskoga jezika;ISBN978-86-7946-004-2) in one volume, published in 2007 byMatica srpska, which on more than 1500 pages inA4 format explains more than 85,000 entries.
Etymological dictionaries
The standard and the only completed etymological dictionary of Serbian is the "Skok", written by the Croatian linguistPetar Skok:Etimologijski rječnik hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika ("Etymological Dictionary of Croatian or Serbian"). I-IV.Zagreb 1971–1974.
There is also a new monumentalEtimološki rečnik srpskog jezika (Etymological Dictionary of Serbian). So far, two volumes have been published: I (with words on A-), and II (Ba-Bd).
There are specialized etymological dictionaries for German, Italian, Croatian, Turkish, Greek, Hungarian, Russian, English and other loanwords (cf. chapterword origin).
Сва људска бића рађају се слободна и једнака у достојанству и правима. Она су обдарена разумом и свешћу и треба једни према другима да поступају у духу братства.
Article 1 of theUniversal Declaration of Human Rights in Serbian, written in theLatin alphabet:[43]
Sva ljudska bića rađaju se slobodna i jednaka u dostojanstvu i pravima. Ona su obdarena razumom i svešću i treba jedni prema drugima da postupaju u duhu bratstva.
Article 1 of theUniversal Declaration of Human Rights in English:[44]
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
^"Národnostní menšiny v České republice a jejich jazyky" [National Minorities in Czech Republic and Their Language](PDF) (in Czech). Government of Czech Republic. p. 2.Archived(PDF) from the original on 2016-03-15.Podle čl. 3 odst. 2 Statutu Rady je jejich počet 12 a jsou uživateli těchto menšinových jazyků: ..., srbština a ukrajinština
^"Macedonia Overview". Minority Rights Group International.Archived from the original on 2012-10-26. Retrieved2012-10-24.
^Benjamin W. Fortson IV,Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction, 2nd ed. (2010, Blackwell), p. 431, "Because of their mutual intelligibility, Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian are usually thought of as constituting one language called Serbo-Croatian."
^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. Retrieved8 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.
^Zanelli, Aldo (2018).Eine Analyse der Metaphern in der kroatischen Linguistikfachzeitschrift Jezik von 1991 bis 1997 [Analysis of Metaphors in Croatian Linguistic JournalLanguage from 1991 to 1997]. Studien zur Slavistik; 41 (in German). Hamburg: Kovač. pp. 21, 83.ISBN978-3-8300-9773-0.OCLC1023608613.(NSK).(FFZG)
^Comrie, Bernard; Corbett, Greville G. (1 September 2003).The Slavonic Languages. Taylor & Francis. p. 45.ISBN978-0-203-21320-9. Retrieved23 December 2013.Following Vuk's reform of Cyrillic (see above) in the early nineteenth century, Ljudevit Gaj in the 1830s performed the same operation on Latinica, using the Czech system and producing a one-to-one symbol correlation between Cyrillic and Latinica as applied to the Serbian and Croatian parallel system.
Petrović, Dragoljub; Gudurić, Snežana (2010).Фонологија српскога језика. Beograd: Institut za srpski jezik SANU, Beogradska knjiga, Matica srpska.
Popović, I. (1955).Историја српскохрватског језика. Novi Sad: Матица српска.
Popović, L. (2004).From standard Serbian through standard Serbo-Croatian to standard Serbian.
Radovanović, Milorad (1996).Српски језик на крају века [The Serbian language at the end of the century]. Belgrade: Institute for the Serbian LanguageSANU.ISBN9788682873013.OCLC1169814518.
Simić, Ž. (1922).Srpska gramatika. G. Kon.
Vujanić, M.; Nikolić, M., eds. (2007).Речник српскога језика. Матица српска.
Isailović, Neven G.; Krstić, Aleksandar R. (2015). "Serbian Language and Cyrillic Script as a Means of Diplomatic Literacy in South Eastern Europe in 15th and 16th Centuries".Literacy Experiences concerning Medieval and Early Modern Transylvania. Cluj-Napoca: George Bariţiu Institute of History. pp. 185–195.
Kovačević, M. (2007). "Srpski jezik i njegove varijante".Srpsko Pitanje I Srbistika:255–262.
Marinković, M. (2010). "Srpski jezik u Osmanskom carstvu: primer četvorojezičnog udžbenika za učenje stranih jezika iz biblioteke sultana Mahmuda I".Slavistika.XIV.
Marojević, R. (1996). "Srpski jezik u porodici slovenskih jezika" [The Serbian language in the family of Slavic languages].Srpski jezik [The Serbian language]:1–2.
Mišić Ilić, B. (2015). "Srpski jezik u dijaspori: pogled iz lingvističkog ugla" [Serbian language in the diaspora].Srpski Jezik.20:289–307.
Okuka, M. (2009). "Srpski jezik danas: sociolingvistički status".Jezični varijeteti i nacionalni identiteti:215–233.
Petrović, T. (2001). "Speaking a different Serbian language: Refugees in Serbia between conflict and integration".Journal of Liberal Arts.6 (1):97–108.
Savić, Viktor (2016). "The Serbian Redaction of the Church Slavonic Language: From St. Clement, the Bishop of the Slavs, to St. Sava, the Serbian Archbishop".Slověne=Словѣне. International Journal of Slavic Studies.5 (2):231–339.
![[icon]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=https%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aWiki_letter_w_cropped.svg)
