The standard Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian languages differ in various aspects as outlined below. The various nuances are not 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. The Serbian language is one of the standard versions of the Å tokavian dialect, used primarily in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and by Serbs everywhere. ...

After the breakup of Yugoslavia, the Serbo-Croatian language, which was defined as the common and unified language of Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks and Montenegrins, also followed suit and officially split into three languages, still fully mutually intelligible. Official language Serbo-Croatian, Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian, Bosnian, Macedonian Capital Belgrade Largest city Belgrade Area (1991)  - Total  - % water Ranked xxst 255,804 km² Negligible Population  - Total (2004)  - Density Ranked xxth 20,522,972 80/km² Currency Yugoslav dinar Time zone  - in summer CET (UTC+1) CEST (UTC+2) National anthem... Serbo-Croatian (srpskohrvatski or hrvatskosrpski) is a name for a language of the Western group of the South Slavic languages. ... Serbs (Serbian: Срби, Srbi) are a south Slavic people who live mainly in Serbia-Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and, to a lesser extent, in Croatia. ... Croats (Croatian: Hrvati) are a south Slavic people mostly living in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and nearby countries. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Montenegrins are a South Slavic people who are primarily associated with the Republic of Montenegro. ...

It should be noted that Serbian and Bosnian language standards tend to be "inclusive", i.e. to accept a wider range of idioms, while Croatian standard is more restrictive. These approaches are, again, due to political connotations.

Writing

Script

Though all could theoretically use either, the scripts differ: Writing Systems of the World today A Specimen of typeset fonts and languages, by William Caslon, letter founder; from the 1728 Cyclopaedia. ...

• Croatian language uses the Latin alphabet.
• Bosnian language uses Latin alphabet in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Cyrillic alphabet in the Republika Srpska.
• Serbian language uses both Cyrillic alphabet and Latin alphabet. (Cyrillic is in official use in Serbia and Republika Srpska. Latin script is also accepted as defined by laws, and used roughly by 1/3 of native speakers as the first script, although no official records exist).

Historically, 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. The Croatian language is a language of the western group of South Slavic languages which is used primarily by the Croats. ... 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 or Босански језик) is one of the standard versions of the Central-South Slavic diasystem, based on the Å tokavian dialect. ... The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ... This article is in need of attention. ... The Cyrillic alphabet (or azbuka, from the old name of the first two 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. ... Official language Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian Note: The Constitution of Republika Srpska avoids naming the languages, and lists the languages of Serbs, Bosniaks, and Croats. ... The Serbian language is one of the standard versions of the Å tokavian dialect, used primarily in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and by Serbs everywhere. ... The Cyrillic alphabet (or azbuka, from the old name of the first two 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. ... The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ... Serbia and Montenegro  â€“ Serbia      â€“ Vojvodina      â€“ Kosovo (UN admin. ... Official language Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian Note: The Constitution of Republika Srpska avoids naming the languages, and lists the languages of Serbs, Bosniaks, and Croats. ... Tablet inscribed with the Glagolitic alphabet The Glagolitic alphabet or Glagolitsa is the oldest known Slavonic alphabet. ...

There was another, less standardized script. It had more versions and names: arvacko pismo/arvatica (means the script used by Croats; name was used in Povaljska listina), bosanica/bosančica (means the script that was from Bosnia), begovica (used by Bosniak nobility), poljičica (means it was from Poljica region in southern Croatia). In some regions of Croatia, it was used until late 1860's.

Muslims in areas of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro also once used a modified Arabic script (based on the Ottoman version) until early in the 20th century, primarily for literary or artistic purposes.

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. In human language, a phoneme is a set of phones (speech sounds or sign elements) that are cognitively equivalent. ... The Croatian alphabet is a modified and extended version of the Latin alphabet which is used in Croatian language. ... Serbian Cyrillic is the Serbian variant of the Cyrillic alphabet. ...

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 Cyrillic alphabet] while the official language in Serbia performs a phonetic transcription of them whenever possible, regardless of alphabet. Officially, Bosnian language follows the Croatian example, but many books and newspapers phonetically transcribe foreign names. Transliteration is a mapping from one system of writing into another. ... Transcription is the conversion into written, typewritten or printed form, of a 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 Croatian, while in Serbian the two are merged into single word. Bosnian accepts both variants:

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

Regardless of spelling, the pronunciation is the same.

Speaking

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: Shtokavian (Å tokavian, Å¡tokavski/штокавски) is the primary dialect of the Central South Slavic languages system, Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian language. ... Yat or Jat (, ) is the 32nd letter of the old Cyrillic alphabet and name of the sound represented by it. ... 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

Serbian language recognizes ekavian and ijekavian as equal variants, while the Croatian and Bosnian 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, Lika, Istria, Western Herzegovina, Turkish Croatia/Bosanska Krajina, Slavonia and northern Bačka (Vojvodina). So, for example: Serbia and Montenegro  â€“ Serbia      â€“ Vojvodina   â€“ Montenegro Kosovo (UN administration) Official languages Serbian, Hungarian, Slovak, Romanian, Croatian, Rusyn1 Capital Novi Sad Area  â€“ Total  â€“ % water  21,500 km²  n/a Population  â€“ Total (2002)  â€“ Density  2,031,992  94. ...

Bosnian official language allows both variants, and ambiguities are solved by preferring the Croatian variant, which is a general practice for Serbian-Croatian ambiguities. The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...

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. However, there are many people who do not speak this way. It is a regional or colloquial way of speaking.

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:

Internationalisms

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, modern age internationalisms entered Bosnian and Croatian mostly through German and Italian, while Serbian received them through French and Russian, so different localization patterns were established based on those languages. The case of English is special case.

Still, it is important to note that there are words from Russian that are considered "to be in spirit of Croatian language", and are felt as Croatian, not as foreign word. Other Russian loanwords are considered as "serbisms".

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. ...

Pronouns

In Serbian and Bosnian, pronoun what has form što when used as relative, but šta when used as interrogative; the latter applies also to relative sentences with interrogative meaning. Croatian uses što in all contexts. In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun phrase. ... A relative pronoun is a pronoun that marks a relative clause within a larger sentence. ... An interrogative pronoun (also known simply as an interrogative) is a pronoun used in asking questions. ...

This is applicable only to nominative case – in all other cases, all languages have the same declension – čega, čemu etc. for što. The nominative case is a grammatical case for a noun, which generally marks the subject of a verb, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments. ...

In Croatian, pronoun who has form tko, while Serbian and Bosnian use ko. The declension is same, kome, koga, etc. In addition, Croatian uses komu as an alternative form in dative case. The dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given. ...

In Croatian, the preferred clitic form of accusative of personal pronoun ona (she) is ju (her). In Serbian and Bosnian, je is preferred. In linguistics, a clitic is a word that syntactically functions as a free morpheme, but phonetically appears as a bound morpheme; it is always pronounced with a following or preceding word. ... The accusative case of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a verb. ...

Usage of locative pronouns gd(j)e, kuda i kamo differs between Serbian and Croatian (the latter not being used in Serbian):

Syntax

Infinitive vs. subjunctive

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. This is a remnant of subjunctive, and possibly an influence of Balkan linguistic union. Again, both alternatives are present and allowed in Bosnian. In grammar, the infinitive is the form of a verb that has no inflection to indicate person, number, mood or tense. ... In linguistics, prescription is the laying down or prescribing of normative rules for a language. ... The subjunctive mood (sometimes referred to as the conjunctive mood) is a grammatical mood of the verb that expresses wishes, commands (in subordinate clauses), and statements that are contrary to fact. ... Balkan linguistic union or Balkansprachbund is a name given to the similarities in grammar, syntax, vocabulary and phonology found in the languages of the Balkans, which belong to various Indo-European branches, such as Albanian, Greek, Romance and Slavic. ...

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.)

Interrogative constructs

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 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.

Trebati (need)

In Croatian, verb trebati (need or should) is transitive, as in English. In Serbian and Bosnian, it is impersonal, (as French il faut, or English construct is necessary (to)); the grammatical subject is either omitted (it), or presents the object of needing; the person that needs something is an indirect grammatical object, in dative case: In English grammar, a transitive verb is a verb that requires both a subject and one or more objects. ... An impersonal verb is a verb that cannot take a true subject, because it does not represent an action, occurrence, or state-of-being of any specific person, place, or thing. ... The dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given. ...

Vocabulary

Examples

Most differences among the languages lie in the vocabulary. However, most words are well understood, or even occasionally used, in other languages; in most cases, common usage favors one variant while the other(s) are regarded as "imported", archaic, dialectal or simply, more rarely used. 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, as it is the case with Czech, Slovak, Hungarian and German language. One of the features of Croatian language, common to many Central-European languages (Czech, German, Polish) is word coinage. ...

Note that there are only 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 (bîlo or bílo = white, bı̏lo = pulse, bílo = was). Serbo-Croatian or Croato-Serbian (srpskohrvatski or hrvatskosrpski), earlier also Serbo-Croat, was an official language of Yugoslavia (along with Slovenian and Macedonian). ...

In Serbian, word izvanredan (extraordinary) has only the positive meaning (excellent), vanredan being used for "unusual" or "out of order"; however, only izvanredan is used in Croatian in both contexts. Thus, Croatian phrase izvanredno stanje (martial law) sounds funny to Serbian ears. Martial law is the system of rules that takes effect (usually after a formal declaration) when a military authority takes control of the normal administration of justice. ...

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.

Names of the months

In the Croatian language months have Slavic names, while Serbian and Bosnian use the same set of international Latin-derived names as English. But Slavic names may also be used in the Bosnian language as well; Latin-derived names are preferred. Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ... Latin is an ancient 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". In spoken Croatian it is common to refer to a month by its number, in order to be understood by e.g. Bosniaks or Serbs. Croats therefore often say "peti mjesec" ("the fifth month") for May if they speak to people from other cultures.

Notes on comprehension

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 rule has scattered the local dialects all around.

• When Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats talk amongst each other, the other speakers usually understand them completely, save for the odd word, and quite often, they will know what that means. Nevertheless, when communicating with each other, there is a habit to use terms that are familiar to everyone, with the intent to avoid not being understood and/or confusion.
  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 masterpiece "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 Yugoslav wars of secession, 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 and 2001. ...

See also

• Shtokavian dialect
• Mutually intelligible languages
• Ausbausprache - Abstandsprache - Dachsprache

Shtokavian (Štokavian, štokavski/штокавски) is the primary dialect of the Central South Slavic languages system, Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian language. ... In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a property exhibited by two or more distinct languages when speakers of one or more of the languages can readily understand at least one or more of the other language(s) without intentional study or extraordinary effort. ... The Ausbausprache - Abstandsprache - Dachsprache framework is a tool developed by sociolinguists, e. ...

External links

• Peter Trudgill, Glocalisation and the Ausbau sociolinguistics of modern Europe (2004)

References

• Miro Kačić: Croatian and Serbian: Delusions and Distortions, Novi Most, Zagreb 1997
• "Hrvatski naš (ne)zaboravljeni" (Croatian, our (un) forgotten language), Stjepko Težak, 301 p., knjižnica Hrvatski naš svagdašnji (knj. 1), Tipex, Zagreb, 1999, ISBN 953-6022-35-4 (Croatian)