The official languages in Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia and Montenegro differ in various aspects as outlined below. The various nuances aren't nearly as linguistically important as is the symbolic value that is assigned to them by their ethnically, religiously, socially and politically diverse group of speakers. An official language is a language that is given a unique legal status in the countries, states, and other territories. ... Bosnia and Herzegovina (officially Bosna i Hercegovina, shortened to BiH, also in English variously written Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bosnia and Hercegovina, Bosnia-Hercegovina) is a mountainous country in the western Balkans. ... Jump to: navigation, search This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... Jump to: navigation, search Serbia and Montenegro  â€“ Serbia    â€“ Kosovo and Metohia        (UN administration)    â€“ Vojvodina  â€“ Montenegro Official language Serbian Capital Podgorica Former Royal Capital Cetinje President Filip Vujanović Prime Minister Milo Đukanović Area  â€“ Total  â€“ % water  13,812 km²  n/a Population  â€“ Total (2003)  â€“ Density  616,258  48. ...

Writing

Jump to: navigation, search Writing may refer to two activities: the inscribing of characters on a medium, with the intention of forming words and other constructs that represent language or record information, and the creation of material to be conveyed through written language. ...

Script

Though all could theoretically use either, the scripts differ: Jump to: navigation, search A writing system, also called a script, is a type of symbolic system used to represent elements or statements expressible in language. ...

• official language in Croatia uses the Latin alphabet. The Cyrillic script is barely used and is not official (used by some ethnic serbians).
• official language in Bosnia and Herzegovina uses both Cyrillic alphabet and Latin alphabet
• official language in Serbia uses Cyrillic alphabet. The Latinic script is privately used but not official (see Talk page)

In history, Croats, Serbs and Montenegrins have used glagolica script; Croatian form was mostly "squared", while Serb form was "mostly" rounded. Still, both peoples unrarely had mixed forms of glagolica letters used. Glagolica is the oldest South Slavic script. In Bosnia, another, less standardized script based on glagolica was used so it had more versions and names: bosanica (means the script that was originally from Bosnia), begovica (used by Bosniak nobility), bosančica. In some regions of Croatia, it was used until 1860's. Jump to: navigation, search The Croatian language is a language of the western group of South Slavic languages which is used primarily by the Croats. ... Jump to: navigation, search The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ... The Bosnian language (Bosanski jezik) is one of the standard versions of the Central-South Slavic diasystem, based on the Å tokavian dialect. ... The Cyrillic alphabet (or azbuka, from the old name of the first letters) is an alphabet used to write six natural Slavic languages (Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Serbian, and Ukrainian) and many other languages of the former Soviet Union, Asia and Eastern Europe. ... Jump to: navigation, search The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ... Jump to: navigation, search The Serbian language is one of the standard versions of the Å tokavian dialect (former standard was known as Serbo-Croatian language). ... The Cyrillic alphabet (or azbuka, from the old name of the first letters) is an alphabet used to write six natural Slavic languages (Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Serbian, and Ukrainian) and many other languages of the former Soviet Union, Asia and Eastern Europe. ... Tablet inscribed with the Glagolitic alphabet The Glagolitic alphabet or Glagolitsa is the oldest known Slavonic alphabet. ...

Bosniaks had used the Arabic script until early in the 20th century. Jump to: navigation, search Bosniaks (in Bosnian: Bošnjaci) are a south Slavic people living chiefly in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro and Croatia. ...

Phonemes

All official languages have the same set of regular phonemes, so the Croatian Latin and Serbian Cyrillic alphabets map 1:1. However, these letters/phonemes are not unknown to other South Slavic peoples. Jump to: navigation, search In oral language, a phoneme is the theoretical basic unit of sound that can be used to distinguish words or morphemes; that is, changing a phoneme in a word produces either nonsense, or a different word with a different meaning. ... The Croatian literary language is based on the Latin alphabet. ... Serbian Cyrillic is the Serbian variant of the Cyrillic alphabet. ...

In some regions of Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia, the sound "h" does not exist but that is not part of the literary standard.

In some regions of Croatia and Bosnia, the sounds "č" and "ć" and also "dž" and "đ" are either indistinct or pronounced as ć and đ respectively. Then, in some regions of Croatia, sounds "č" and "ć" are spoken in "softer" version - "č" is pronounced between literary "č" and "ć", while "ć" is spoken much softer; somewhere it turnes into "tj" (better to say, "t+soft vowel"). Similar is with "dž" and "đ". In some regions in Croatia, "dž" is spoken as "đ" or "ž", while "đ" sounds the same way as in literary standard, or as a "dj". Again, that is not reflected in the official language.

Orthography

The official language in Croatia alphabetically transliterates foreign names (and sometimes words) even in children's books [but not from Russian, and all other languages using Cirillic alphabet] while in Serbia, you have a phonetic transcription of them with the Latinic letters corrsponding the the Cyrillic, but again, if the purpose of ones name were to be official, then it would be in Cyrillic. Officially, Bosnian language follows the Croatian example, but many books and newspapers phonetically transcribe foreign names. The orthography of a language is the set of rules of how to write correctly in the writing system of a language. ... Transliteration in a narrow sense is a mapping from one system of writing into another. ... Transcription is the conversion into written, typewritten or printed form, of a written source—such as the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica articles of which are transcribed into the Wikipedia—or spoken language source, such as the proceedings of a court hearing. ...

Also, when the subject of the future tense is omitted, producing a reversal of infinitive and auxiliary "ću", only final "i" of the infinitive is elided in the Bosnian and Croatian vernacular, while in Serbian the two are merged into single word:

• "Uradit ću to." (Bosnian/Croatian)
• "Uradiću to." (Serbian)

Regardless of spelling, the pronunciation is the same.

Speaking

Speech: (n. ...

Accentuation

Accentuation of the official languages is different. Accents mark speakers as a member of a group by their pronunciation of the standard language. ...

However, accentuation is different within Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia themselves, see below for full explanation.

Morphology

There are three variants of the Štokavian dialect that stem from different reflex of proto-Slavic vowel jat. The jat appears in modern dialects in the following way: the Church Slavonic word for child, děte, is: Morphology is the following: In linguistics, morphology is the study of the structure of word forms. ... Shtokavian (Å tokavian, Å¡tokavski) is the primary dialect of the Central South Slavic languages system, Serbian, Bosnian, Zlatiborian, and Croatian. ... Church Slavonic may refer to: Old Church Slavonic language Church Slavonic language This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...

• dete in Ekavian
• dite in Ikavian
• dijete in Ijekavian

The official language in Serbia and Montenegro recognises ekavian and ijekavian as equal variants while the official language in Croatia uses only ijekavian. In Bosnia and Herzegovina (regardless of the official language) and in Montenegro, ijekavian is used almost exclusively. Ikavian is limited to dialectal use in Dalmatia, Istria, Western Herzegovina and northern Bačka (Vojvodina). So, for example: Serbia and Montenegro  â€“ Serbia    â€“ Kosovo and Metohia        (UN administration)    â€“ Vojvodina  â€“ Montenegro Official languages Serbian, Hungarian, Slovak, Romanian, Croatian, Rusin1 Capital Novi Sad Area  â€“ Total  â€“ % water  21,500 km²  n/a Population  â€“ Total (2002)  â€“ Density  2,031,992  94. ...

A few Croatian linguists have tried to explain the following differences in morphological structure for some words with introduction of a new vowel, "jat diphthong". This is not the opinion of most linguists. The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...

Sometimes this leads to confusion: Serbian poticati (to stem from) is in Croatian "to encourage". Croatian "to stem from" is potjecati, while Serbian for "encourage" is podsticati.

Bosnian official language allows both variants, and ambiguities are solved by preferring the Croatian variant, which is a general practice for Serbian-Croatian ambiguities.

Another example for phonetical differences is words which have h in Croatian and Bosnian, but v in Serbian:

Phonetically and phonologically, the phoneme "h" is reinstated in many words as a distinct feature of Bosnian speech and language tradition:

As ijekavian is the common dialect of all official languages, it will be used for examples on this page. Other than this, examples of different morphology are:

Also many internationalisms are different: In linguistics (especially in German linguistics), an internationalism is a loanword that occurs in several languages with the same or at least similar meaning and etymology. ...

This is because, historically, internationalisms entered Bosnian and Croatian mostly through German, while Serbian received them through French and Russian, so different localization patterns were established based on those languages.

Notes: the term "ostvariti" is preferred over "realizovati/realizirati"; here the word has been used as it is an internationalism. In the Bosnian language, the variant in braces is also allowed, but the other variant is preferred.

Some other imported words are of masculine gender in Serbian and Bosnian, but feminine gender in Croatian: The word masculine can refer to: the property of being biologically male masculinity, a traditionally male gender role the masculine grammatical gender This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... The word feminine can refer to: the property of being biologically female femininity, a traditionally female gender role the feminine grammatical gender This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...

Syntax

With modal verbs such as ht(j)eti (want) or moći (can), the infinitive is prescribed in Croatian, while the construction da (that/to) + present tense is preferred in Serbian. Again, both alternatives are present and allowed in Bosnian. Jump to: navigation, search Syntax, originating from the Greek words συν (sun, meaning ‘together’) and ταξις (taxis, meaning sequence/order), can be described as the study of the rules, or patterned relations that govern the way the words in a sentence come together. ... In linguistics, prescription is the laying down or prescribing of normative rules for a language. ...

The sentence "I want to do that" could be translated with any of

• Hoću to da uradim
• Hoću to uraditi

This difference partly extends to future tense, which in Serbo-Croatian is formed in a similar manner as in English, using (elided) present of verb "ht(j)eti" -> "hoću"/"hoćeš"/... -> "ću"/"ćeš"/... as auxiliary verb. Here, the infinitive is formally required in both variants:

• Ja ću to uraditi. (I shall do that.)

However, when da+present is used instead, in it can additionally express the subject's will or intention to perform the action:

• Ja ću to da uradim. (I will do that.)

This form is more frequently used in Serbia and Bosnia. The nuances in meaning between two constructs can be slight or even lost (especially in Serbian dialects), in similar manner as the shall/will distinction varies across English dialects. Overuse of da+present is regarded as Germanism in Serbian linguistic circles, and it can occasionally lead to awkward sentences.

However, Croatians seldom naturally use da+present form. Instead, a different form can be used to express will:

• Ja hoću to uraditi. (I want to do that.)

In interrogative and relative constructs, Croatian uses inversion, while Serbian also allows forms with da li. (A similar situation exists in French, where a question can be formed either by inversion or using est-ce que, and can be stretched in English with modal verbs):

• Možeš li? (Can you?) (Croatian and Serbian)
• Da li možeš? (Do you can?) (Serbian)

In addition, non-grammatical je li, ("Is it?") usually elided to jel' is frequent in Serbian and Bosnian vernacular for forming all kinds of questions, e.g. Jel' možeš?. In official language, it is used only in questions involving auxiliary verb je (="is"):

• Je li moguće? (Is it possible?) (Croatian and Serbian)
• Da li je moguće? (Serbian)

As a summary, English sentence "I want to know whether I'll start working" would typically read:

• Želim da znam da li ću da počnem da radim. (spoken Serbian)
• Želim znati hoću li početi raditi (spoken Croatian)

although many in-between combinations could be met in vernacular speech, depending on speaker's dialect, idiolect, or even mood.

Vocabulary

Vocabulary is different to some extent. Examples: Jump to: navigation, search A vocabulary is a set of words known to a person or other entity, or that are part of a specific language. ...

¹⁾ All month names are different. See below for full table
²⁾ This is an excellent example of foreign influences. "Put" and "cesta" are Slavic, "drum" is Greek and "džada" is Turkish. Moreover, the central difference lies in the fact that Croatian is, unlike Serbian or Bosnian, a purist language. One of the features of Croatian language, common to many Central-European languages (Czech, German, Polish) is word coinage. ...

Note that there are a few differences that can cause confusion, for example the verb "ličiti" means "to look like" in Serbian and Bosnian, but in Croatian it is "sličiti"; "ličiti" means "to paint". The word "bilo" means "white" in ikavian, "pulse" in official Croatian and "was" in all official languages, although it's not so confusing when pronounced because of different accentuation.

Also note that in most cases Bosnian officially allows all of the listed variants in the name of "language richness" (or lack thereof), and ambiguities are resolved by preferring the Croatian variant. Generally, no rule for the vocabulary treatment in Bosnian language can be deduced. Bosnian vocabulary writers based their decisions on usage of certain words in literary works by Bosnian authors.

In Croatian language months have Slavic names, while Serbian and Bosnian use the same set of international Latin-derived names as English. Jump to: navigation, search Latin is an Indo-European language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ...

International names of months are well understood in Croatia and several names of internationally important events are still commonly known using the international name of the month: "1. maj", "1. april", "oktobarska revolucija".

Important notes on understanding

It is important to notice a few issues:

• Pronunciation and vocabulary differs among dialects spoken within Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia themselves. Each larger region has its own pronunciation and it is reasonably easy to guess where a speaker is from by their accent and/or vocabulary. Colloquial vocabulary can be particularly different from the official standards.
  This is one of the arguments for claiming it is all one and the same language: there are more differences within the territories of the official languages themselves than there are between the standards (all of which inherit from the standards established in Yugoslavian times, when Serbo-Croatian was the official language). This is not surprising, of course, for if the lines between the languages were drawn not politically but linguistically, then there would be no continuum at all. As Pavle Ivić explains, the continuous migration of Slavic populations during the five hundred years of Turkish occupation has scattered the local dialects all around. This does not answer the primary question, and that is: does a Bosniak want to speak the same language as a Serb, or to call his language by the same name as a Serb?

• When Bosnians,Serbs and Croats talk amongst each other, the other speakers may or may not understand them completely. But, when communicating with each other, in the interest of better understanding, they will use terms that are easier to understand for everyone.
  For example, to avoid confusion with the names of the months, they can be referred to as the "first month", "second month" and so on which makes it perfectly understandable for everyone. In Serbia, the names of the months are the international ones so again they are understandable for anyone who knows English or another Western European language.

• Entire books and movies have been "translated" from one language to another. However, the translation of the Serbian movie Rane (Wounds) into Croatian for example turned it from a tragedy into a comedy, as the whole audience was laughing at the "translation." On the other hand: probably the most bizarre case is Swiss psychologist Jung's masterwork “Psychology and Alchemy,” translated into Croatian in 1986, and retranslated, in late 1990s, into Serbian not from the original German, but from Croatian. A translation and “translation's translation” differ on virtually every page—orthographically, lexically, syntactically and semantically. However, these translations were done after the bloody civil wars, and the translations were taken to extreme distances to diverge the languages as much as possible.

A colloquialism is an informal expression, that is, an expression not used in formal speech or writing. ... The Yugoslav wars were a series of violent conflicts in the territory of the former Yugoslavia that took place between 1991-2001. ...

See also

• Shtokavian dialect
• Serbo-Croatian language
• Mutually intelligible languages
• Dialects in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia