Serbian language

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{{Infobox Language |name=Serbian |nativename=српски srpski |familycolor=Indo-European |states=Serbia and Montenegro,
Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Republic of Macedonia, Croatia, Sweden, Hungary, Romania, Albania and other countries |speakers=11,144,758 |rank=around 75 |fam2=Slavic |fam3=South Slavic |fam4=Western South Slavic |nation=Serbia and Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina |agency=Council for Standardization of the Serbian Language |iso1=sr|iso2b=scc|iso2t=srp|iso3=srp}}

The Serbian language is one of the standard versions of the Štokavian dialect, used primarily in Serbia and Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and by Serbs everywhere. The former standard was known as Serbo-Croatian language, now split into Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian standards.

The Serbian alphabet is very consistent: one letter per sound with an insignificant number of exceptions. This phonetic principle is represented in the saying: "Write as you speak and read as it is written", the principle used (though not invented) by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić when reforming the Cyrillic spelling of Serbian in the 19th century.

Another rare feature of Serbian language is the presence of two alphabets: Cyrillic and Latin. The two alphabets are almost equivalent; the only difference is in the glyphs used. This is due to historical reasons; Serbian once being a part of the Serbo-Croat unification brought Latinic usage into Serbia.

1 Alphabets
- 1.1 Notes
2 Phonology
- 2.1 Vowels
- 2.2 Consonants
3 Morphology
- 3.1 Cases
4 Serbian literature
5 Demographics
6 Trivia
7 Differences to similar languages
8 See also
9 Dictionaries
10 External links

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Alphabets

Image:AlphabetiSerborum 1841.jpg

The following compares Српска Ћирилица (Serbian Cyrillic script) or Aзбука (Azbuka) with Srpska Latinica (Serbian Latin script) or Abeceda.

Cyrillic	Latin	Cyrillic	Latin
А	A	Н	N
Б	B	Њ	Nj
В	V	О	O
Г	G	П	P
Д	D	Р	R
Ђ	Đ	С	S
Е	E	Т	T
Ж	Ž	Ћ	Ć
З	Z	У	U
И	I	Ф	F
Ј	J	Х	H
К	K	Ц	C
Л	L	Ч	Č
Љ	Lj	Џ	Dž
М	M	Ш	Š

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Notes

The letters Lj, Nj and Dž are represented by two characters in the Latin alphabet and are always written together even in top-down text). They are also sorted together (i.e. ljubav comes after lopta).
Cyrillic is considered more precise because there is no ambiguity involved in reading Lj, Nj and Dž. For example, both Cyrillic "инјекција" (mathematical injection or medical injection) and "његов" (his) are written with "nj" in Latin form. Thus, transliteration of Cyrillic text to Latin is straightforward but causes loss of information that makes it harder to perform the inverse.
The sort order of the two alphabets is different.

Cyrillic: А Б В Г Д Ђ Е Ж З И Ј К Л Љ М Н Њ О П Р С Т Ћ У Ф Х Ц Ч Џ Ш

Roman: A B C Č Ć D Dž Đ E F G H I J K L Lj M N Nj O P R S Š T U V Z Ž

Many e-mail and even web documents written in Serbian use basic ASCII, where Serbian Latin letters that use diacritics (Ž Ć Č Š) are replaced with the base, undiacritised forms (Z C C S), letter Đ is replaced with Dj, and Dž with Dz. The original words are then recognized from the context. This is not an official alphabet, and is considered a bad practice, but there are some documents in Serbian that use this simplified alphabet. This is common practice in other languages that use letters with diacritics.

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Phonology

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Vowels

The Serbian vowel system is simple, with only five vowels. All vowels are monophthongs. The oral vowels are as follows:

Latin script	Cyrillic script	IPA	Description	English approximation
a	а	Template:IPA	open front unrounded	father
i	и	Template:IPA	close front unrounded	seek
e	е	Template:IPA	open-mid front unrounded	ten
o	о	Template:IPA	open-mid back rounded	caught (British)
u	у	Template:IPA	closed back rounded	boom

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Consonants

The consonant system is more complicated, and its characteristic features are series of affricate and palatal consonants. As in English, voicedness is phonemic, but aspiration is not.

Latin script	Cyrillic script	IPA	Description	English approximation
trill
r	р	Template:IPA	alveolar trill	rolled r as in Spanish carro
approximants
v	в	Template:IPA	labiodental approximant	vase
j	ј	Template:IPA	palatal approximant	yes
laterals
l	л	Template:IPA	lateral alveolar approximant	lock
lj	љ	Template:IPA	palatal lateral approximant	volume
nasals
m	м	Template:IPA	bilabial nasal	man
n	н	Template:IPA	alveolar nasal	not
nj	њ	Template:IPA	palatal nasal	canyon
fricatives
f	ф	Template:IPA	voiceless labiodental fricative	phase
s	с	Template:IPA	voiceless alveolar fricative	some
z	з	Template:IPA	voiced alveolar fricative	zero
š	ш	Template:IPA	voiceless postalveolar fricative	sheer
ž	ж	Template:IPA	voiced postalveolar fricative	vision
h	х	Template:IPA	voiceless velar fricative	loch
affricates
c	ц	Template:IPA	voiceless alveolar affricate	pots
dž	џ	Template:IPA	voiced postalveolar affricate	dodge
č	ч	Template:IPA	voiceless postalveolar affricate	chair
đ	ђ	Template:IPA	voiced alveolo-palatal affricate	schedule
ć	ћ	Template:IPA	voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate	nature
plosives
b	б	Template:IPA	voiced bilabial plosive	abuse
p	п	Template:IPA	voiceless bilabial plosive	top
d	д	Template:IPA	voiced alveolar plosive	dog
t	т	Template:IPA	voiceless alveolar plosive	talk
g	г	Template:IPA	voiced velar plosive	god
k	к	Template:IPA	voiceless velar plosive	duck

In consonant clusters all consonants are either voiced or voiceless. All the consonants are voiced (if the last consonant is normally voiced) or voiceless (if the last consonant is normally voiceless). This rule does not apply to approximants — a consonant cluster may contain voiced approximants and voiceless consonants; as well as to foreign words (Washington would be transcribed as VašinGton/ВашинГтон), personal names and when consonants are not inside of one syllable.

R can be syllabic, playing the role of a vowel in certain words (occasionally, it can even have a long accent). For example, the tongue-twister na vrh brda vrba mrda involves four words with syllabic r. A similar feature exists in Czech, Slovak and Macedonian. Very rare, l can be syllabic (in the name for the river "Vltava", 'l' is syllabic) as well as lj, m, n and nj in jargon.

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Morphology

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Cases

There are seven cases in Serbian: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, instrumental and locative, although locative and dative nearly always have the same form. This, in concert with a non-fixed word-order, can make Serbian difficult to learn for speakers of languages without a strong case system. In Serbian, the sentence "Anna loves Philip" can therefore variously be expressed thus:

Ana voli Filipa
Ana Filipa voli
Voli Ana Filipa
Voli Filipa Ana
Filipa Ana voli
Filipa voli Ana

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Serbian literature

Image:Jevandj.gif Main article: Serbian literature

Serbian literature emerged in the Middle Ages, and included such works as Miroslavljevo jevanđelje (The Gospel of Miroslav) in 1192 and Dušanov zakonik (Dušan's Code) in 1349. Little secular mediæval literature has been preserved, but what there is shows that it was in accord with its time; for example, Serbian Alexandride, a book about Alexander the Great, and a translation of Tristan and Isolde into Serbian.

In the mid-15th century, Serbia was conquered by the Ottoman 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 being Serbian epic poetry. It is known that Goethe learned the Serbian language in order to read Serbian epic poetry in the original. Written literature was produced only for religious use in churches and monasteries, and held to Old Church Slavonic. 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, called Slavonic-Serbian. In the early 19th century, Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, following the work of Sava Mrkalj, reformed the Cyrillic alphabet by introducing the phonetic principle, as well as promoting the spoken language of the people as a literary norm.

The first printed book in Serbian, Oktoih was produced in Cetinje in 1494, only 40 years after Gutenberg's invention of movable type.

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Demographics

Figures of speakers according to countries:

Serbia and Montenegro: 7,170,000
- Serbia: 6,770,000
  - Vojvodina: 1,557,020 (2002)
  - Central Serbia: 5,063,679 (2002)
  - Kosovo: 150,000
- Montenegro: 401,382 (2003)
Bosnia-Herzegovina: 1,500,000
USA: around 500,000
Canada: 55,545 (2001 census, 40,580 of that in Ontario)
Croatia: 44,629 (2001)
Republic of Macedonia: 33,315 (2001)
Romania: 20,377 (2001)
Australia: 50,000 (2001)

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Trivia

Two Serbian words that are used in many of the world's languages are vampire and slivovitz (though the etymology and origin of the word vampire is disputed [1]).

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