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Serbo-Croatian (srpskohrvatski or hrvatskosrpski) is a name for a language of the western group of the South Slavic languages.
Serbo-Croatian was one of the official languages in former Yugoslavia (the other two were Slovenian and Macedonian). It continues to be used under different names/standards in today's Serbia and Montenegro, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina and is still reasonably well understood in FYR Macedonia and Slovenia. The language is also spoken by Serbian and Croatian minorities in Austria, Hungary, Albania, Italy, Romania and elsewhere.
| Serbo-Croatian srpskohrvatski hrvatskosrpski | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro, and others |
| Region: | The Balkans |
| Total speakers: | approx. 21 million |
| Ranking: | approx. 44 |
| Genetic classification: | Indo-European |
| Official status | |
| Official language of: | -- |
| Regulated by: | -- |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | bs/hr/sr |
| ISO 639-2(B) | bos/scr/scc |
| ISO 639-2(T) | bos/hrv/srp |
| SIL | SRC |
The name Serbo-Croatian is a controversial issue due to history, politics, and the variable meaning of the word language.
From the genetic linguistics point of view, Serbo-Croatian grew out from Neo-Štokavian dialect and is/was considered one language with two generally mutually intelligible variants: "western" or Croatian (at the time, "Croato-Serbian") and "eastern" or Serbian (at the time, "Serbo-Croatian"). This point of view dominated from 1870s to 1960s. The use of national names for the variants could not accommodate Bosnian Muslims, nor did the general preference towards "Serbo-Croatian" as opposed to "Croato-Serbian" accommodate the Croats.
Genetic linguistics is, generally speaking, concerned mainly with two basic traits: the origin of a language and mutual intelligibility between languages thus defined. So, according to these criteria, spoken (of the laity) Hindi and Urdu are one language, as are Bulgarian and Macedonian. Genetically, there is not one German language, but at least two: one of them (Plattdeutsch) is, genetically, one language with Dutch language. English and Scots are in a rather similar position. Another example is the mutual intelligibility between speakers of Indonesian in Indonesia and Malay in Malaysia, Singapore and Portuguese with Galician etc. These criteria have dominated the thinking about South Slavic languages in the past 200 years.
The sociolinguistic situation is much more complex. Throughout the history of the south Slavs, the vernacular, literatures and written language of the regions and ethnicities developed independently and diverged to a point.
In the mid 19th century, both Serbian and Croatian writers and linguists decided to use the most widespread Štokavian dialect as a basis for their standard languages. Thus a bi-variant language appeared, which the Serbs officially called "Serbo-Croatian" and Croats "Croatian and Serbian". The variants of a supposedly single language functioned in practice as different standard languages. The common phrase used to describe this unusual situation was that Serbo-Croatian/Croatian or Serbian is a unified but not a unitary language.
After the ethnic tensions in the 1970s and especially after the breakup of Yugoslavia and the ensuing war in the 1990s, most speakers decided to call their language either Serbian, Croatian or Bosnian.
The name Serbo-Croatian is not used. Rather,
For more information, see: Differences in official languages in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has specified different Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) numbers for Croatian (UDC 862, acronym hr) and Serbian (UDC 861, acronym sr), while the "cover term" Serbo-Croatian is referenced as the combination of original signs-UDC 861/862, acronym sh. Furthermore, the ISO 639 standard specifies Bosnian language with acronyms bos and bs.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia considers what it calls BCS (Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian) to be the first language of all Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian defendants. The indictments, documents and verdicts of the ICTY are actually written in a "Yugoslav pidgin", with no regard to grammatical prescriptions given in any authoritative linguistic work from 1899 on — be they Serbian, Croatian or Bosnian.
Opinions of linguists in former Yugoslavia diverge.
Nationalists have rather conflicting views about the language(s). The nationalists among the Croats and Bosniaks claim that they speak entirely separate languages, whereas the nationalists among the Serbs claim that any divergence in the language is artificial, or claim that the Štokavian dialect is theirs and Čakavian Croat. Proponents of unity among Southern Slavs claim that there is a single language with normal dialectal variations.
Moderate people usually say that the issue of the language is exaggerated and that nomenclature is hardly important.
The primary dialects are named after the word for what. Čakavian (čakavski) uses the word ča; Kajkavian (kajkavski), kaj; and Štokavian (štokavski), što or šta. However, outside of this classification are Burgenland Croatian and Torlakian (torlački).
Furthermore, there are three ways of rendering the Proto-Slavic vowel jat. Čakavian mainly uses i, Kajkavian mainly uses e while Štokavian dialect is broken down into a secondary subdivision based on whether ije or e is used.
Each of these primary and secondary dialectical units break down into subdialects and accents by region. In the past it was not uncommon for individual villages to have some of their own words and phrases. However, throughout the twentieth century the various dialects have been strongly influenced by the Štokavian standards through mass media and public education and much of the "local color" has been lost.
With the breakup of Yugoslavia, nationalism has also caused many, especially in Bosnia and Hercegovina to modify their speech, or even attempt to change dialects entirely. The various wars have also caused mass migrations, and changed the ethnic makeup of some areas, especially in Bosnia, but also in Croatia and Serbia, especially in Vojvodina. In some areas it is unclear whether location or ethnicity is now the dominant factor in the dialect of the speaker.
Because of these forces, the speech patterns of some communities and regions are in a state of flux, and it is difficult to determine which dialects will die out entirely. Further research over the next few decades will be necessary to determine the changes made in the dialectical distribution of the language.
Although most linguists nowadays consider Štokavian, Čakavian, and Kajkavian as three dialects of one common language, there is a basis for considering the three as distinct tongues. However, since there is no clear-cut criteria for distinguishing a language from a dialect, and dialects are usually described in reference to standard languages, a notion of diasystem is frequently used instead of Serbo-Croatian.
The example sentence in the following sections means approximately "What is, is; it's how it always was, what will be, will be, and it'll be somehow!".
The Proto-Slavic vowel jat has changed over time and is now being rendered in three different ways:
The following are some examples:
| English | Predecessor | Ekavian | Ikavian | Ijekavian |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| time | vrěme | vreme | vrime | vrijeme |
| beautiful | lěp | lep | lip | lijep |
| girl | děvojka | devojka | divojka | djevojka |
| true | věran | veran | viran | vjeran |
| village | selo | selo | selo | selo |
| to need | trěbati | trebati | tribati | trebati | to heat | grějati | grejati | grijati | grijati |
The first two examples involve long vowels. For instance, the first e in vreme and the i in vrime are long, so the long diphthong ije is found in the Ijekavian form. In the third and fourth examples the corresponding ekavian and ikavian vowels are short, so the short diphthong je is found in the Ijekavian form.
However, there are some cases where that pattern of correspondence is altered. The fifth example selo is there as an example of a word in which the e did not derive from jat, and hence the word is the same in all three dialects. In other cases, especially when the jat is following on an r, Ijekavian also formed out an e, as we see in the sixth example, or an i as in the seventh example.
Main article: Štokavian dialect
The Štokavian dialect is spoken in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Hercegovina, and the greater part of Croatia. The Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian standard languages are all based on the štokavian dialect.
The primary subdivisions of Štokavian are based on the different ways the jat vowel has been changed. There are other differences between the standard dialects, including vocabulary, some syntax, and orthography. See Differences in official languages in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia.
Example: Što jest, jest; tako je uv(ij)ek bilo, što će biti, (biće|bit će), a nekako već će biti!
(The first option in the middle of the sentence is a difference between ekavian and ijekavian. The second option in the middle is an orthographic difference between Serbian and Croatian norms, respectively.)
Main article: Kajkavian dialect
Kajkavian is mostly spoken in northern Croatia, in and around Zagreb and near the Hungarian and Slovenian borders. It renders jat mostly as e, but note that this rendering cannot be equated to that of the ekavian štokavian dialects, as many kajkavian dialects distinguish a closed e (from jat) and an open e (from original e).
It also lacks several phonemes found in other dialects and has loanwords from the nearby Slovenian dialects as well as Russian.
Example: Kak je, tak je; tak je navek bilo, kak bu tak bu, a bu vre nekak kak bu!
Main article: Čakavian dialect
Čakavian is spoken in the western and southern parts of Croatia, mainly in Istria and Dalmatia. The Čakavian renders jat as i as well as as e, or even mixed Ekavian-Ikavian. Many dialects of Čakavian have a lot of loan words from Venetian and Italian.
Example: Ča je, je, tako je navik bilo, ča će bit, će bit, a nekako već će bit!
The Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian standard languages are all mainly based on the Štokavian dialect, although if they are considered as systems of dialects, one might observe that:
Although most linguists nowadays consider the štokavian, čakavian and kajkavian as three dialects of one common language, there is basis for considering the three as distinct tongues. However, since there is no clear-cut criterion for distinguishing a language from a dialect, and dialects are usually described in reference to standard languages, a notion of diasystem is frequently used instead of Serbo-Croatian.
There also exists a fourth dialect called torlački or torlak which is spoken in southern and eastern parts of Serbia, and it is often referred to as a transitional phase between štokavian and Macedonian.
It is even thought to fit into the so-called Balkan Sprachbund, an area of linguistic convergence among languages due to long-term contact rather than being related.
This dialect is spoken primarily in the federal state of Burgenland in Austria, but also in nearby areas in Vienna, Slovakia, and Hungary by descendants of Croats who migrated there in the 16th century. Because they were separated from other Croats for so long, this dialect or possibly family of dialects is quite different from standard Croatian. It has been heavily influenced by German and also Hungarian. In addition, it has some properties from all three of the major dialectical groups in Croatia, as the migrants did not all come from the same areas of Croatia.
At most 100,000 people speak Burgenland Croatian and almost all are bilingual in German. Its future is uncertain, but there is some movement to preserve it. It has official status in six districts of Burgenland, and is used in some schools in Burgenland and neighboring western parts of Hungary.
This dialect is spoken in three villages of the Italian region of Molise by the descendants of south Slavs who migrated there from the eastern Adriatic coast in the 15th century. Because these people have migrated away from the rest of their kinsmen so long ago, their diaspora language is rather distinct from the standard language, and rather influenced by Italian.
In addition, they have not been influenced by romantic nationalism of the 19th century (unlike the people in Burgenland who were separated but still within the same empire) so they have come to refer to their language merely as "Slavic". There has been some controversy as to whether they are Molise Croats or Molise Serbs. Currently they are generally considered to be Croatian rather than Serbian.
Serbo-Croatian is a highly inflected language. Traditional grammars list seven cases for nouns and adjectives: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, locative, and instrumental, reflecting the original seven cases of Proto-Slavic, and indeed older forms of Serbo-Croatian itself. However, in modern Štokavian locative has merged into dative.
Like most Slavic languages, there are three genders for nouns: masculine, feminine, and neuter, a distinction which is still present even in the plural (unlike Russian). They also have two numbers: singular and plural. However, some consider there to be four numbers, since after two (dva, dvije/dve), three (tri), and four (četiri), and all numbers ending in them (e.g. twenty-two, ninety-three, one hundred four, etc.) the genitive singular is used, and after all other numbers five (pet) and up, the genitive plural is used. (The number one (jedan) is treated as an adjective.) Adjectives are placed in front of the noun they modify and must agree in both case and number with it.
There are seven tenses for verbs: past, present, future, exact future, aorist, imperfect, and plusquamperfect; and three moods: indicative, imperative, and conditional. However, the latter three tenses are typically only used in writing, and the time sequence of the exact future is more commonly formed through an alternative construction.
In addition, like most Slavic languages, the verb also has one of two aspects: perfective or imperfective. Most verbs come in pairs with the perfective verb being created out of the imperfective by adding a prefix or making a stem change. This type of aspect is difficult to learn for most foreigners, including native English speakers, because it is both subtle and, at least among Indo-European languages, rare outside the Slavic branch. The imperfective aspect typically indicates that the action is unfinished, in progress, or repetitive; while the perfective aspect typically denotes that the action was completed, instantaneous, or of limited duration. Some tenses favor a particular aspect.
Through history, this language has been written in a number of writing systems:
The oldest preserved text written completely in the Latin alphabet is "Red i zakon sestara reda Svetog Dominika" from 1345.
Today, it is written in both the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets. Serbian and Bosnian use both alphabets, while Croatian uses only the Latin.
The Serbian Cyrillic alphabet was revised by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić in the 19th century. The Croatian Latin alphabet followed suit shortly afterwards, when Ljudevit Gaj defined it as standard Latin with five extra letters that had diacritical marks, apparently borrowing much from Czech, but also from Polish, and inventing uniquely Croatian digraphs "lj", "nj" and "dž".
In both cases, spelling is nearly phonetic and spellings in the two alphabets generally map to each other one-to-one:
Latin to Cyrillic
Cyrillic to Latin
| Sample collation |
|---|
| Ina |
| Injekcija |
| Inverzija |
| Inje |
Digraphs Lj, Nj and Dž represent distinct phonemes and are considered to be single letters. In crosswords, they're put into a single square and in collation, lj comes after lz and nj after nz, except in a few words where the individual letters are pronounced separately, for instance "nadživ(j)eti" (to outlive) which is composed of the prefix nad- and the verb živ(j)eti. The Cyrillic version avoids the ambiguity by using "Надживети" rather than "Наџивети".
Đ used to be commonly written as Dj on typewriters, but that practice led to too many ambiguities. It is also used on car license plates. Today Dj is often used again in place of Đ on the Internet.
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