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Gaj's Latin alphabet ( sh-Latn-Cyrl, Gajeva latinica, separator=" / ", Гајева латиница}, ), also known as ( sh-Cyrl, абецеда, ) or ( sh-Cyrl, гајица, link=no, ), is the form of the
Latin script The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern I ...
used for writing
Serbo-Croatian Serbo-Croatian () – also called Serbo-Croat (), Serbo-Croat-Bosnian (SCB), Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS), and Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS) – is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia an ...
and all of its standard varieties: Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian. The alphabet was initially devised by Croatian linguist Ljudevit Gaj in 1835 during the
Illyrian movement The Illyrian movement ( sh-Latn-Cyrl, Ilirski pokret, Илирски покрет; sl, Ilirsko gibanje) was a pan-South-Slavic cultural and political campaign with roots in the early modern period, and revived by a group of young Croatian inte ...
in ethnically Croatian parts of
Austrian Empire The Austrian Empire (german: link=no, Kaiserthum Oesterreich, modern spelling , ) was a Central-Eastern European multinational great power from 1804 to 1867, created by proclamation out of the realms of the Habsburgs. During its existence ...
. It was largely based on
Jan Hus Jan Hus (; ; 1370 – 6 July 1415), sometimes anglicized as John Hus or John Huss, and referred to in historical texts as ''Iohannes Hus'' or ''Johannes Huss'', was a Czech theologian and philosopher who became a Church reformer and the insp ...
's Czech alphabet and was meant to serve as a unified orthography for three Croat-populated kingdoms within the Austrian Empire at the time, namely
Croatia , image_flag = Flag of Croatia.svg , image_coat = Coat of arms of Croatia.svg , anthem = "Lijepa naša domovino"("Our Beautiful Homeland") , image_map = , map_caption = , capit ...
, Dalmatia and
Slavonia Slavonia (; hr, Slavonija) is, with Dalmatia, Croatia proper, and Istria, one of the four historical regions of Croatia. Taking up the east of the country, it roughly corresponds with five Croatian counties: Brod-Posavina, Osijek-Baran ...
, and their three dialect groups,
Kajkavian Kajkavian (Kajkavian noun: ''kajkavščina''; Shtokavian adjective: ''kajkavski'' , noun: ''kajkavica'' or ''kajkavština'' ) is a South Slavic regiolect or language spoken primarily by Croats in much of Central Croatia, Gorski Kotar and no ...
,
Chakavian Chakavian or Čakavian (, , , sh-Latn, čakavski proper name: or own name: ''čokovski, čakavski, čekavski'') is a South Slavic regiolect or language spoken primarily by Croats along the Adriatic coast, in the historical regions of Dalmat ...
and
Shtokavian Shtokavian or Štokavian (; sh-Latn, štokavski / sh-Cyrl, italics=no, штокавски, ) is the prestige dialect of the pluricentric Serbo-Croatian language and the basis of its Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin standards. It ...
, which historically utilized different spelling rules. A slightly modified version of it was later adopted as the formal Latin writing system for the unified Serbo-Croatian standard language per the
Vienna Literary Agreement The Vienna Literary Agreement (Serbo-Croatian: ''Bečki književni dogovor'', Бечки књижевни договор) was the result of a meeting held in March 1850, when writers from Kingdom of Croatia (Habsburg), Croatia, Principality ...
. It served as one of the official scripts in the unified South Slavic state of
Yugoslavia Yugoslavia (; sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Jugoslavija, Југославија ; sl, Jugoslavija ; mk, Југославија ;; rup, Iugoslavia; hu, Jugoszlávia; rue, label=Pannonian Rusyn, Югославия, translit=Juhoslavija ...
alongside Vuk's Cyrillic alphabet. A slightly reduced version is used as the alphabet for Slovene, and a slightly expanded version is used as the alphabet for modern standard Montenegrin. A modified version is used for the
romanization Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, a ...
of Macedonian. It further influenced alphabets of Romani languages that are spoken in
Southeast Europe Southeast Europe or Southeastern Europe (SEE) is a geographical subregion of Europe, consisting primarily of the Balkans. Sovereign states and territories that are included in the region are Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia (a ...
, namely
Vlax Vlax Romani is a Romani language#Dialects, dialect group of the Romani language. Vlax Romani varieties are spoken mainly in Southeastern Europe by the Romani people.Norbert Boretzky and Birgit Igla. Kommentierter Dialektatlas des Romani. Wiesbade ...
and Balkan Romani.


Letters

The alphabet consists of thirty upper and lower case letters: Gaj's original alphabet contained the digraph , which Serbian linguist
Đuro Daničić Đuro Daničić ( sr-Cyrl, Ђуро Даничић, ; 4 April 1825 – 17 November 1882), born Đorđe Popović ( sr-cyr, Ђорђе Поповић) and also known as Đura Daničić ( sr-Cyrl, Ђура Даничић), was a Serbian philologist, ...
later replaced with the letter . The letters do not have names, and consonants are normally pronounced as such when spelling is necessary (or followed by a short schwa, e.g. ). When clarity is needed, they are pronounced similar to the
German alphabet German orthography is the orthography used in writing the German language, which is largely phonemic. However, it shows many instances of spellings that are historic or analogous to other spellings rather than phonemic. The pronunciation of alm ...
: ''a, be, ce, če, će, de, dže, đe, e, ef, ge, ha, i, je, ka, el, elj, em, en, enj, o, pe, er, es, eš, te, u, ve, ze, že''. These rules for pronunciation of individual letters are common as far as the 22 letters that match the
ISO basic Latin alphabet The ISO basic Latin alphabet is an international standard (beginning with ISO/IEC 646) for a Latin-script alphabet that consists of two sets (uppercase and lowercase) of 26 letters, codified in various national and international standards and ...
are concerned. The use of others is mostly limited to the context of linguistics, while in mathematics, is commonly pronounced ''jot'', as in the German of Germany. The missing four letters are pronounced as follows: as ''ku'' or ''kju'', as ''dublve'', ''duplo v'' or ''duplo ve'', as ''iks'', as ''ipsilon''. Letters , , and represent the sounds , , and , but often are transcribed as , , and .


Digraphs

Digraphs , and are considered to be single letters: * In dictionaries, ''njegov'' comes after ''novine'', in a separate section after the end of the section; ''bolje'' comes after ''bolnica''; ''nadžak'' (digraph ) comes after ''nadživjeti'' (prefix ''nad-''), and so forth. *If only the initial letter of a word is capitalized, only the first of the two component letters is capitalized: ''Njemačka'' ('
Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
'), not ''NJemačka''. In
Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, wh ...
, the form is referred to as '' titlecase'', as opposed to the uppercase form , representing one of the few cases in which titlecase and uppercase differ. Uppercase is used only if the entire word was capitalized: ''NJEMAČKA''. *In vertical writing (such as on signs), , , are written horizontally, as a unit. For instance, if ''mjenjačnica'' ('
bureau de change A bureau de change (plural bureaux de change, both ) (British English) or currency exchange (American English) is a business where people can exchange one currency for another. Nomenclature Although originally French, the term "bureau de chang ...
') is written vertically, appears on the fourth line (but note and appear separately on the first and second lines, respectively, because contains two letters, not one). In
crossword A crossword is a word puzzle that usually takes the form of a square or a rectangular grid of white- and black-shaded squares. The goal is to fill the white squares with letters, forming words or phrases, by solving clues which lead to the ans ...
puzzles, , , each occupy a single square. *If words are written with a space between each letter (such as on signs), each digraph is written as a unit. For instance: ''M J E NJ A Č N I C A''.


Origins

The Serbo-Croatian Latin alphabet was mostly designed by Ljudevit Gaj, who modelled it after
Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus' Places * Czech, ...
(č, ž, š) and Polish (ć), and invented , and , according to similar solutions in Hungarian (ly, ny and dzs, although dž combinations exist also in Czech and Polish). In 1830 in Buda, he published the book ''Kratka osnova horvatsko-slavenskog pravopisanja'' ("Brief basics of the Croatian-Slavonic orthography"), which was the first common Croatian
orthography An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and ...
book. It was not the first ever Croatian orthography work, as it was preceded by works of Rajmund Đamanjić (1639),
Ignjat Đurđević Ignjat Đurđević (also Ignazio Giorgi; February 1675 – 21 January 1737) was a baroque poet and translator from the Republic of Ragusa, best known for his long poem ''Uzdasi Mandaljene pokornice'' ("''Sighs of Repentant Magdalene''"). He wr ...
and
Pavao Ritter Vitezović Pavao Ritter Vitezović (; 7 January 1652 – 20 January 1713) was a Habsburg-Croatian polymath, variously described as a historian, linguist, publisher, poet, political theorist, diplomat, printmaker, draughtsman, cartographer, writer and print ...
. Croats had previously used the Latin script, but some of the specific sounds were not uniformly represented. Versions of the Hungarian alphabet were most commonly used, but others were too, in an often confused, inconsistent fashion. Gaj followed the example of Pavao Ritter Vitezović and the
Czech orthography Czech orthography is a system of rules for proper formal writing (orthography) in Czech. The earliest form of separate Latin script specifically designed to suit Czech was devised by Czech theologian and church reformist Jan Hus, the namesake of ...
, making one letter of the Latin script for each sound in the language. Following
Vuk Karadžić Vuk Stefanović Karadžić ( sr-Cyrl, Вук Стефановић Караџић, ; 6 November 1787 (26 October OS)7 February 1864) was a Serbian philologist, anthropologist and linguist. He was one of the most important reformers of the moder ...
's reform of Cyrillic in the early nineteenth century, in the 1830s Ljudevit Gaj did the same for ''latinica'', using the Czech system and producing a one-to-one grapheme-phoneme correlation between the Cyrillic and Latin orthographies, resulting in a parallel system.
Đuro Daničić Đuro Daničić ( sr-Cyrl, Ђуро Даничић, ; 4 April 1825 – 17 November 1882), born Đorđe Popović ( sr-cyr, Ђорђе Поповић) and also known as Đura Daničić ( sr-Cyrl, Ђура Даничић), was a Serbian philologist, ...
suggested in his ''Rječnik hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika'' ("Dictionary of Croatian or Serbian language") published in 1880 that Gaj's digraphs , , and should be replaced by single letters : , , and respectively. The original Gaj alphabet was eventually revised, but only the digraph has been replaced with Daničić's , while , and have been kept.


Correspondence Serbian Cyrillic-Latin alphabets

The following table provides the upper and lower case forms of the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet, along with the equivalent forms in the Serbian Latin alphabet and the
International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation ...
(IPA) value for each letter. The letters do not have names, and consonants are normally pronounced as such when spelling is necessary (or followed by a short schwa, e.g. /fə/).:


Computing

In the 1990s, there was a general confusion about the proper
character encoding Character encoding is the process of assigning numbers to Graphics, graphical character (computing), characters, especially the written characters of Language, human language, allowing them to be Data storage, stored, Data communication, transmi ...
to use to write text in Latin Croatian on computers. *An attempt was made to apply the 7-bit " YUSCII", later "CROSCII", which included the five letters with diacritics at the expense of five non-letter characters ( , @), but it was ultimately unsuccessful. Because the ASCII character @ sorts before A, this led to jokes calling it ''žabeceda'' (''žaba''=frog, ''abeceda''=alphabet). *Other short-lived vendor-specific efforts were also undertaken. *The 8-bit
ISO 8859-2 ISO/IEC 8859-2:1999, ''Information technology — 8-bit single-byte coded graphic character sets — Part 2: Latin alphabet No. 2'', is part of the ISO/IEC 8859 series of ASCII-based standard character encodings, first edition published in 1987. ...
(Latin-2) standard was developed by ISO. *
MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...
introduced 8-bit encoding CP852 for Central European languages, disregarding the ISO standard. * Microsoft Windows spread yet another 8-bit encoding called
CP1250 Windows-1250 is a code page used under Microsoft Windows to represent texts in Central European and Eastern European languages that use Latin script, such as Czech (which is its main user with half its use, though Czech has 96.6% use of UTF-8, and ...
, which had a few letters mapped one-to-one with ISO 8859-2, but also had some mapped elsewhere. *
Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancestor, ' ...
's Macintosh Central European encoding does not include the entire Gaj's Latin alphabet. Instead, a separate codepage, called MacCroatian encoding, is used. *
EBCDIC Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code (EBCDIC; ) is an eight- bit character encoding used mainly on IBM mainframe and IBM midrange computer operating systems. It descended from the code used with punched cards and the corresponding ...
also has a Latin-2 encoding. The preferred
character encoding Character encoding is the process of assigning numbers to Graphics, graphical character (computing), characters, especially the written characters of Language, human language, allowing them to be Data storage, stored, Data communication, transmi ...
for Croatian today is either the
ISO 8859-2 ISO/IEC 8859-2:1999, ''Information technology — 8-bit single-byte coded graphic character sets — Part 2: Latin alphabet No. 2'', is part of the ISO/IEC 8859 series of ASCII-based standard character encodings, first edition published in 1987. ...
, or the
Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, wh ...
encoding
UTF-8 UTF-8 is a variable-length character encoding used for electronic communication. Defined by the Unicode Standard, the name is derived from ''Unicode'' (or ''Universal Coded Character Set'') ''Transformation Format 8-bit''. UTF-8 is capable of ...
(with two bytes or 16 bits necessary to use the letters with diacritics). However, , one can still find programs as well as databases that use
CP1250 Windows-1250 is a code page used under Microsoft Windows to represent texts in Central European and Eastern European languages that use Latin script, such as Czech (which is its main user with half its use, though Czech has 96.6% use of UTF-8, and ...
, CP852 or even CROSCII. Digraphs , and in their upper case, title case and lower case forms have dedicated Unicode code points as shown in the table below, However, these are included chiefly for backwards compatibility with legacy encodings which kept a one-to-one correspondence with Cyrillic; modern texts use a sequence of characters.


Usage for Slovene

Since the early 1840s, Gaj's alphabet was increasingly used for Slovene. In the beginning, it was most commonly used by Slovene authors who treated Slovene as a variant of Serbo-Croatian (such as Stanko Vraz), but it was later accepted by a large spectrum of Slovene-writing authors. The breakthrough came in 1845, when the Slovene conservative leader
Janez Bleiweis Janez Bleiweis (19 November 1808 – 29 November 1881) was a Slovene conservative politician, journalist, physician, veterinarian, and public figure. He was the leader of the so-called Old Slovene political movement. Already during his lifetime, ...
started using Gaj's script in his journal '' Kmetijske in rokodelske novice'' ("Agricultural and Artisan News"), which was read by a wide public in the countryside. By 1850, Gaj's alphabet (known as ''gajica'' in Slovene) became the only official
Slovene alphabet The Slovene alphabet ( sl, slovenska abeceda, or ''slovenska gajica'' ) is an extension of the Latin script used to write Slovene. The standard language uses a Latin alphabet which is a slight modification of the Croatian Gaj's Latin alphabet, ...
, replacing three other writing systems that had circulated in the
Slovene Lands The Slovene lands or Slovenian lands ( sl, Slovenske dežele or in short ) is the historical denomination for the territories in Central and Southern Europe where people primarily spoke Slovene. The Slovene lands were part of the Illyrian provin ...
since the 1830s: the traditional '' bohoričica'', named after Adam Bohorič, who codified it; the ''
dajnčica The Dajnko alphabet ( sl, dajnčica) was a Slovene alphabet invented by Peter Dajnko. It was used from 1824 to 1839 mostly in Styria (in what is now eastern Slovenia). History Dajnko introduced his alphabet in 1824 in his book ''Lehrbuch der win ...
'', named after Peter Dajnko; and the ''
metelčica The Metelko alphabet ( sl, metelčica) was a Slovene writing system developed by Franc Serafin Metelko. It was used by a small group of authors from 1825 to 1833 but it was never generally accepted. Metelko introduced his alphabet in the book ...
'', named after Franc Serafin Metelko. The Slovene version of Gaj's alphabet differs from the Serbo-Croatian one in several ways: *The Slovene alphabet does not have the characters and ; the sounds they represent do not occur in Slovene. *In Slovene, the digraphs and are treated as two separate letters and represent separate sounds (the word
polje A polje, also karst polje or karst field, is a large flat plain found in karstic geological regions of the world, with areas usually . The name derives from the Slavic languages and literally means 'field', whereas in English ''polje'' specific ...
is pronounced or in Slovene, as opposed to in Serbo-Croatian). *While the phoneme exists in modern Slovene and is written , it is used in only borrowed words and so and are considered separate letters, not a digraph. As in Serbo-Croatian, Slovene orthography does not make use of diacritics to mark accent in words in regular writing, but
headword In morphology and lexicography, a lemma (plural ''lemmas'' or ''lemmata'') is the canonical form, dictionary form, or citation form of a set of word forms. In English, for example, ''break'', ''breaks'', ''broke'', ''broken'' and ''breaking'' ...
s in dictionaries are given with them to account for homographs. For instance, letter can be pronounced in four ways (, , and ), and letter in two ( and , though the difference is not
phonemic In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west ...
). Also, it does not reflect consonant voicing assimilation: compare e.g. Slovene and Serbo-Croatian ('junkyard', 'waste').


Usage for Macedonian

Romanization Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, a ...
of Macedonian is done according to Gaj's Latin alphabetMacedonian Latin alphabet, Pravopis na makedonskiot literaturen jazik, B. Vidoeski, T. Dimitrovski, K. Koneski, K. Tošev, R. Ugrinova Skalovska - Prosvetno delo Skopje, 1970, p.99 but is slightly modified. Gaj's ''ć'' and ''đ'' are not used at all, with ''ḱ'' and ''ǵ'' introduced instead. The rest of the letters of the alphabet are used to represent the equivalent Cyrillic letters. Also, Macedonian uses the letter ''dz'', which is not part of the Serbo-Croatian phonemic inventory. However, the backs of record sleeves published in the former
Yugoslavia Yugoslavia (; sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Jugoslavija, Југославија ; sl, Jugoslavija ; mk, Југославија ;; rup, Iugoslavia; hu, Jugoszlávia; rue, label=Pannonian Rusyn, Югославия, translit=Juhoslavija ...
, by non-Macedonian publishers, (such as Mizar's debut album) used ''ć'' and ''đ'', like other places.


Keyboard layout

The standard Gaj's Latin alphabet
keyboard layout A keyboard layout is any specific physical, visual or functional arrangement of the keys, legends, or key-meaning associations (respectively) of a computer keyboard, mobile phone, or other computer-controlled typographic keyboard. is the actua ...
for personal computers is as follows: ::


See also

*
Glagolitic alphabet The Glagolitic script (, , ''glagolitsa'') is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. It is generally agreed to have been created in the 9th century by Saint Cyril, a monk from Thessalonica. He and his brother Saint Methodius were sent by the Byzan ...
*
Montenegrin alphabet The Montenegrin alphabet is the collective name given to "''Abeceda''" (Montenegrin Latin alphabet) and "''Азбука''" ( Montenegrin Cyrillic alphabet), the writing systems used to write the Montenegrin language. It was adopted on 9 June 200 ...
*
Serbian Cyrillic alphabet The Serbian Cyrillic alphabet ( sr, / , ) is a variation of the Cyrillic script used to write the Serbian language, updated in 1818 by Serbian linguist Vuk Karadžić. It is one of the two alphabets used to write standard modern Serbian, t ...
*
Serbo-Croatian Serbo-Croatian () – also called Serbo-Croat (), Serbo-Croat-Bosnian (SCB), Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS), and Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS) – is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia an ...
*
Slovene alphabet The Slovene alphabet ( sl, slovenska abeceda, or ''slovenska gajica'' ) is an extension of the Latin script used to write Slovene. The standard language uses a Latin alphabet which is a slight modification of the Croatian Gaj's Latin alphabet, ...
*
Yugoslav braille Yugoslav Braille is a family of closely related braille alphabets used for South Slavic languages of former Yugoslavia, namely Serbo-Croatian, Slovene and Macedonian. It is based on the unified international braille conventions, with the letters ...
* Yugoslav manual alphabet * Romanization of Serbian – describes usage not the alphabet


Sources

* *


References


External links


Omniglot
{{List of writing systems Latin alphabets
Alphabet An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syllab ...
Alphabet An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syllab ...
Serbo-Croatian language Slovene alphabet Writing systems introduced in the 19th century Bosnian language 1835 introductions