Serbo-Croatian

**Serbo-Croatian** also known as **Serbo-Croat** or **Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS)** is a South-slavic language which is spoken in Bosnia, Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia.

South Slavic dialects historically formed a continuum. The turbulent history of the area, particularly due to expansion of the Ottoman Empire, resulted in a patchwork of dialectal and religious differences. Due to population migrations, Shtokavian became the most widespread in the western Balkans, intruding westwards into the area previously occupied by Chakavian and Kajkavian (which further blend into Slovenian in the northwest). Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs differ in religion and were historically often part of different cultural circles, although a large part of the nations have lived side by side under foreign overlords. During that period, the language was referred to under a variety of names, such as "Slavic", or according to region, "Bosnian", "Serbian" and "Croatian", the latter often in combination with "Slavonian" or "Dalmatian".

In the 19th century, Serbo-Croatian was standardized by Serbian and Croatian Writers, Linguists etc. long before Yugoslavia came into existence. From the very beginning, there were slightly different literary Serbian and Croatian standards, although both were based on the same Shtokavian subdialect, Eastern Herzegovinian. In the 20th century, Serbo-Croatian served as the official language of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (when it was called "Serbo-Croato-Slovenian"),and later as one of the official languages of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. After the breakup of Yugoslavia, "Serbo-Croatian" began falling out of official use, with Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia preferring "Bosnian", "Croatian", "Montenegrin", and "Serbian" respectively.

Like other South Slavic languages, Serbo-Croatian has a fairly simple phonology, with 5 vowels and 25 consonants. Its grammar evolved from Common Slavic, with complex inflection, preserving seven grammatical cases in nouns, pronouns, and adjectives. Verbs exhibit imperfective or perfective aspect, with a moderately complex tense system. Serbo-Croatian is a pro-drop language with flexible word order, subject–verb–object being the default. Serbo-Croatian is written in both the Latin and Cyrillic scripts (Cyrillic is primarily used in Serbia and Montenegro, Latin is used everywhere), both of which are entirely phonetic.

## Different standards

Main article: Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, Montenegrin Compared

Like a lot of things in the Balkans, the status of Serbo-Croatian is controversial. In Yugoslavia "Serbo-Croatian" was the official language, but since 1991, Bosnia Croatia Serbia and Montenegro are all separate countries that officially each have their own standard language. Most Bosnians, Croats, Montenegrins, and Serbs can communicate which each other just fine, but referring to the language as "Serbo-Croatian" isn't always appreciated, especially not by nationalists. Nowadays you might see the language being referred to as "naš jezik"(our language) or as the standard of the speaker's ethnic background. People often colloquially refer to their language as "Serbian", "Croatian" etc. while acknowledging that they understand the other standards just fine.

Have whatever opinion about the (dis)unity of the language that you'd like, I don't give one.

### Comparison

#### Serbian

* ~10 million native speakers
* Uses both the Latin and Cyrillic scripts
* Ekavian (the reflex of Old Church Slavonic letter yat is -e-; "child" in Serbian is "dete", "song" is "pesma")
* More Russian and Turkish vocabulary
* A lot of resources and input material available. Old Serbo-Croatian courses mostly teach you Serbian

#### Croatian

* ~6 million native speakers
* Always uses the Latin script
* Ijekavian (the reflex of yat is -ije- or -je-; "child" is "dijete", "song" is "pjesma")
* More "pure" Slavic and Latin vocabulary
* Respectable amount of resources and input material available

 File:Mostar.jpg
#### Bosnian

* ~2.5 million native speakers
* Generally uses the Latin script
* Ijekavian
* More Turkish vocabulary
* Few resources but a decent amount of input material (especially music) available

#### Montenegrin

* 0.3-0.5 million native speakers (depending on criteria)
* Uses both the Latin and Cyrillic scripts
* Ijekavian
* Has 2 additional letters: (Ś[sj],Ź[zj] in Latin) (Ć[sj],З́[zj] In Cyrillic)
* Very few resources and input material available

## Alphabets and spelling

Latinica, Serbian cyrillic script

There are two alphabets in use in Serbo-Croatian. The first one is a variant of the Latin alphabet often called Latinica, which is used in all standards of Serbo-Croatian. The second is a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet which is used in Serbia, Montenegro, and some parts of Bosnia. On a practical level, Latinica is a must-learn if you intend to learn Serbo-Croatian as it is used in all standards. Cyrillic isn't essential to learn if you're primarily interested in Croatian, but learning it takes little effort and can still come in handy.

## Resources

**Please list in what standard the resource is in**

General Resources

1 Serbian is only available from French. Croatian is only available from French, Italian and German

2No courses by memrise itself, but community-made courses are available

### Razgovorajte s nama (Croatian)

* Schoolbook. Consists of a textbook and a workbook
* Consists of 3 parts: A2/B1, B1/B2, B2/C1
* Contains speaking exercises; recommended to go through with a friend or family member who speaks the language
* Gives some info about Croatia
* Not available on most mainstream online shopping sites; might be difficult to obtain.

### Easy-Croatian (Croatian)

* Extensive grammar guide
* bretty gud for a free resource

### HR4EU (Croatian)

* Duolingo-like course
* Decent for beginners

## Input Material

for a more detailed overview, see: Serbo-Croatian Input Material

### Music

Rock/Metal

Pop

 Denis i Denis

Folk

 Sinan Sakić

### Movies

https://croatian.film/hr/ A site with Croatian films

### Reading

#### Bilingual text

http://www.croatianhistory.net/etf/parallel.html (Croatian)

http://www.supernova-soft.com/text\_aligner/parallel\_texts/ (Serbian, also contains some books in other languages)

## Brotips

* The Fact that Serbo-Croatian has seven cases might sound intimidating, But you should know the Nominative right away and the Dative and Locative have the exact same inflection, so you only really have to learn five.
* While the Serbo-Croatian standards are mostly mutually intelligible, it still might still be worth it to focus on one standard for consistency, especially if you like one Ex-Yu country more than the others or if you're learning it for family reasons and everyone from your family is from the same region.
* Not a lot of mainstream games have Serbo-Croatian translations, but most Indie games that support an enormous amount of langs support one or more Serbo-Croatian standards.

Scripts Serbian cyrillic script Latinica
Standards Bosnian Croatian Serbian Montenegrin
Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, Montenegrin Compared Serbo-Croatian Input Material