[A Handbook of Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian, Wayles Brown and Theresa Alt, SEELRC 2004](_blank)
/ref>[Lexical, Pragmatic, and Positional Effects on Prosody in Two Dialects of Croatian and Serbian, Rajka Smiljanic](_blank)
, Routledge, This is considered to be a feature of the Zagreb dialect, which has strong 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 ...
influence, rather than standard Croatian.
Regardless of vernacular differences, all three standard varieties exclusively promote the Neo-Shtokavian four-accentual system. Both dialects that are considered to be the basis of standard Serbian (Eastern Herzegovinian and Šumadija-Vojvodina dialects) have four accents.
Phonetics
Morphology
There are three principal "pronunciations" (''izgovori''/изговори) of the 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 ...
dialect that differ in their reflexes of the Proto-Slavic
Proto-Slavic (abbreviated PSl., PS.; also called Common Slavic or Common Slavonic) is the unattested, reconstructed proto-language of all Slavic languages. It represents Slavic speech approximately from the 2nd millennium B.C. through the 6th ...
vowel jat. Illustrated by the Common Slavic word for "child", ''dětę'', they are:
*dite in the Ikavian pronunciation
*dijete in the Ijekavian pronunciation
*dete in the Ekavian pronunciation
The Serbian language recognises Ekavian and Ijekavian as equally valid pronunciations, whereas Croatian and Bosnian accept only the Ijekavian pronunciation. In Bosnia and Herzegovina (regardless of the official language) and in Montenegro, the Ijekavian pronunciation is used almost exclusively.
Ikavian pronunciation is nonstandard, and is limited to dialectal use in Dalmatia, Lika, Istria, central Bosnia (area between Vrbas and Bosna), Western Herzegovina, Bosanska Krajina
Bosanska Krajina ( sr-cyrl, Босанска Крајина, ) is a geographical region, a subregion of Bosnia, in western Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is enclosed by a number of rivers, namely the Sava (north), Glina (northwest), Vrbanja and Vrba ...
, Slavonia and northern Bačka (Vojvodina
Vojvodina ( sr-Cyrl, Војводина}), officially the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, is an autonomous province that occupies the northernmost part of Serbia. It lies within the Pannonian Basin, bordered to the south by the national capital ...
). So, for example:
A few Croatian linguists have tried to explain the following differences in morphological structure for some words, with the introduction of a new vowel, "jat diphthong". This is not the opinion of most linguists.
Sometimes this leads to confusion: Serbian poticati (to stem from) is in Croatian and Bosnian "to encourage". Croatian and Bosnian "to stem from" is potjecati, whereas Serbian for "encourage" is podsticati.
Standard Bosnian allows both variants, and ambiguities are resolved by preferring the Croatian variant; this is a general practice for Serbian–Croatian ambiguities.
The phoneme /x/ (written as ''h'') has been volatile in eastern South Slavic dialects. In Serbian and some Croatian dialects (including some of those in Slavonia), it has been replaced with /j/, /v/, or elided, and subsequent standardisation sanctioned those forms:
However, /x/ and /f/ have been kept in many words as a distinct feature of Bosnian speech and language tradition, particularly under influence of Turkish and Arabic, and even introduced in some places where it etymologically did not exist. Those forms were in the mid 1990s also accepted in the orthography of the Bosnian language. However, 2018, in the new issue of the ''Orthography of the Bosnian language'', words without the phoneme /x/ (written as "h") are accepted due to their prevalence in language practice.
Because the Ijekavian pronunciation is common to all official standards, it will be used for examples on this page. Other than this, examples of different morphology are:
Internationalisms
Also many internationalism
Internationalism may refer to:
* Cosmopolitanism, the view that all human ethnic groups belong to a single community based on a shared morality as opposed to communitarianism, patriotism and nationalism
* International Style, a major architectur ...
s and transliterations are different:
(cf. German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
''organisieren'', '' konstruieren'', ''analysieren'')
Historically, modern-age internationalisms entered Bosnian and Croatian mostly through German and Italian, whereas they entered Serbian through French and Russian, so different localisation patterns were established based on those languages. Also, Greek borrowings came to Serbian directly, but through Latin into Croatian:
Most of terms for chemical element
A chemical element is a species of atoms that have a given number of protons in their atomic nucleus, nuclei, including the pure Chemical substance, substance consisting only of that species. Unlike chemical compounds, chemical elements canno ...
s are different: for international names, Bosnian and Croatian use ''-ij'' where Serbian has ''-ijum'' (''uranij''–''uranijum''). In some native names, Croatian have ''-ik'' where Serbian has -(o)nik (''kisik''–''kiseonik'' 'oxygen', ''vodik''–''vodonik'' 'hydrogen') and Bosnian accepts all variants. Yet others are totally different (''dušik''–''azot'' 'nitrogen', ''kositar''–''kalaj'' 'tin'). Some element names are the same: ''srebro'' (silver), ''zlato'' (gold), ''bakar'' (copper).
Some other imported words differ by grammatical gender
In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all noun ...
, feminine words having an ''-a'' suffix and masculine words having a zero-suffix:
Pronouns
In Serbian and Bosnian, the pronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun ( abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase.
Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not ...
''what'' is ''što'' when used as a relative, but ''šta'' when used as an interrogative
An interrogative clause is a clause whose form is typically associated with question-like meanings. For instance, the English sentence "Is Hannah sick?" has interrogative syntax which distinguishes it from its declarative counterpart "Hannah is ...
; the latter applies also to relative sentences with interrogative meaning. Croatian uses ''što'' in all contexts (but in colloquial speech, "šta" is often used).
This is applicable only to the nominative
In grammar, the nominative case ( abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or (in Latin and formal variants of Eng ...
and the accusative
The accusative case ( abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb.
In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘ ...
– in all other cases, the standards have the same forms: ''čega'', ''čemu'' etc. for ''što''.
In Croatian, the pronoun ''who'' has the form ''tko'', whereas in Serbian, Bosnian and Montenegrin it has ''ko'', but again, in colloquial speech, the initial "t" is usually omitted. The declension is the same: ''kome'', ''koga'', etc. In addition, Croatian uses ''komu'' as an alternative form in the dative case
In grammar, the dative case ( abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used in some languages to indicate the recipient or beneficiary of an action, as in "Maria Jacobo potum dedit", Latin for "Maria gave Jacob ...
.
The locative
In grammar, the locative case ( abbreviated ) is a grammatical case which indicates a location. It corresponds vaguely to the English prepositions "in", "on", "at", and "by". The locative case belongs to the general local cases, together with the ...
pronoun ''kamo'' is only used in Croatian:
Syntax
Infinitive versus subjunctive
With modal verbs such as ''ht(j)eti'' (want) or ''moći'' (can), the infinitive
Infinitive ( abbreviated ) is a linguistics term for certain verb forms existing in many languages, most often used as non-finite verbs. As with many linguistic concepts, there is not a single definition applicable to all languages. The word is de ...
is prescribed in Croatian, whereas the construction ''da'' (that/to) + present tense is preferred in Serbian. This subjunctive
The subjunctive (also known as conjunctive in some languages) is a grammatical mood, a feature of the utterance that indicates the speaker's attitude towards it. Subjunctive forms of verbs are typically used to express various states of unreality s ...
of sorts is possibly an influence of the Balkan sprachbund. Again, both alternatives are present and allowed in Bosnian (the first one is preferred in orthography, the latter is more common in colloquial language).
Here is an example of a yat reflection that is the same in everything but the syntax:
The sentence "I want to do that" could be translated with any of
*''Hoću to da uradim.''
*''Hoću to učiniti.''
This difference partly extends to the future tense, which in Serbo-Croatian is formed in a similar manner to 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, 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 the 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.
Interrogative constructs
In interrogative and relative constructs, standard Croatian prescribes using the interrogative participle ''li'' after the verb, whereas standard 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)
*Both ''Možeš li?'' and ''Da li možeš?'' (Can you, Do you can?) are common in Serbian.
In addition, non-standard ''je li'' ("Is it?"), usually elided to ''je l' '', is vernacular for forming all kinds of questions, e.g. ''Je l' možeš?''. In standard language, it is used only in questions involving auxiliary verb ''je'' (="is"):
*''Je li moguće?'' (Is it possible?) (Croatian)
*Both ''Je li moguće?'' and ''Da li je moguće?'' are common in Serbian.
In summary, the English sentence "I want to know whether I'll start working" would ''typically'' read:
*''Želim da znam hoću li početi 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.
The Croatian avoidance of ''da li'' is largely an expression of prescriptivism. In everyday speech in Croatia, ''da li'' is used, in fact, extensively, but avoided in written language.
Trebati
In formal Croatian, verb ''trebati'' (''need'' or ''should'') is transitive, as in English. In Serbian and Bosnian, it is impersonal, like the French ''il faut'', or the 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 the dative case
In grammar, the dative case ( abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used in some languages to indicate the recipient or beneficiary of an action, as in "Maria Jacobo potum dedit", Latin for "Maria gave Jacob ...
. The latter usage is, however, also encountered in Croatian, especially in spoken form.[):
]
Vocabulary
Examples
The greatest differences between the standards is in vocabulary
A vocabulary is a set of familiar words within a person's language. A vocabulary, usually developed with age, serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge. Acquiring an extensive vocabulary is one of the ...
. However, most words are well understood, and even occasionally used, in the other standards. In most cases, common usage favours one variant and the other(s) are regarded as "imported", archaic, dialectal, or simply more rarely used.
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 (a house)". However, "ličiti" is often used Croatian in the meaning of "to look like".
The word "bilo" means "white" in the Ikavian accent, "pulse" in official Croatian, and "was" in all official languages, although it is not so confusing when pronounced because of different accentuation
In linguistics, and particularly phonology, stress or accent is the relative emphasis or prominence given to a certain syllable in a word or to a certain word in a phrase or sentence. That emphasis is typically caused by such properties a ...
(''bîlo'' or ''bílo'' = white, ''bı̏lo'' = pulse, ''bílo'' = was).
In Serbian and Bosnian, the 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.
Also note that in most cases Bosnian officially allows almost all of the listed variants in the name of "language richness", and ambiguities are resolved by preferring the Croatian variant. Bosnian vocabulary writers based their decisions on usage of certain words in literary works by Bosnian authors.
Names of the months
The months have Slavic-derived names in Croatian, wheres Serbian and Bosnian have almost the same set of Latin-derived names as English. The Slavic-derived names may also be used in Bosnian, but the Latinate names are preferred.
The Latin-derived names of the months are well understood in Croatia and are used in several fixed expressions such as ''Prvi Maj'' (May 1), ''Prvi April'' (April Fools' Day) or ''Oktobarska revolucija'' (October Revolution).
In spoken Croatian and in western Bosnia it is common to refer to a month by its number. Therefore, many speakers refer to the month of May as ''peti mjesec'' ("the fifth month"). Saying ''sedmi peti'' (''seventh of fifth'') would be the equivalent of May 7.
Miscellaneous
*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
Colloquialism (), also called colloquial language, everyday language or general parlance, is the linguistic style used for casual (informal) communication. It is the most common functional style of speech, the idiom normally employed in conve ...
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 three of which are based on the same Neo-Štokavian dialect). This is not surprising, of course, for if the lines between the varieties were drawn not politically but linguistically, then there would be no borders at all. As Pavle Ivić
Pavle Ivić ( sr-cyr, Павле Ивић, ; 1 December 1924 – 19 September 1999) was a Serbian South Slavic dialectologist and phonologist.
Biography
Both his field work and his synthesizing studies were extensive and authoritative. A few of ...
explains, the continuous migration of Slavic populations during the five hundred years of Turkish rule has scattered the local dialects all around.
*When Bosniaks, Croats, Montenegrins and Serbs 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 (much as with British and American English speakers). 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, or the Latin-derived names can be used if "first month" itself is ambiguous, which makes it perfectly understandable for everyone. In Serbia, the names of the months are the same Latin-derived names as in English so again they are understandable for anyone who knows English or another Western European language.
*Even during the time of Yugoslavia it was common for publishers to do some adaptations to "Eastern" or "Western" standard. Especially translations were and are changed by the lectors. It is to be considered that Croatian and Serbian standards have completely different scientific terminology. Carl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, ph ...
's masterpiece "Psychology and Alchemy
''Psychology and Alchemy'', volume 12 in '' The Collected Works of C. G. Jung'', is Carl Jung's study of the analogies between alchemy, Christian dogma, and psychological symbolism.
Alchemy is central to Jung's hypothesis of the collective uncons ...
" was translated into Croatian in 1986, and adapted in the late 1990s into Serbian. Ivo Andrić
Ivo Andrić ( sr-Cyrl, Иво Андрић, ; born Ivan Andrić; 9 October 1892 – 13 March 1975) was a Yugoslav novelist, poet and short story writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1961. His writings dealt mainly with life in ...
had some problems in Croatia with publishers who changed his infinitive constructions and other expressions. Eventually, he managed to forbid that kind of intervention. In Montenegro, the publisher CID switched from the Ekavian to the Ijekavian accent after Montenegro's independence.
Language samples
The following samples, taken from article 1 to 6 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is an international document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly that enshrines the rights and freedoms of all human beings. Drafted by a UN committee chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt ...
, are "synonymous texts, translated as literally as possible" in the sense of Ammon designed to demonstrate the differences between the standard varieties treated in this article in a continuous text. However, even when there is a different translation, it does not necessarily mean that the words or expression from other languages do not exist in a respective language, e.g. the words ''osoba'' and ''pravni subjekt'' exist in all languages, but in this context, the word ''osoba'' is preferred in Croatian and Bosnian and the word ''pravni subjekt'' is favored in Serbian and Montenegrin. The word ''vjeroispovijest'' is mentioned just in the Montenegrin translation, but the same word exists in other standard varieties too - albeit in Serbian in the Ekavian variant ''veroispovest''.
See also
* Pluricentric Serbo-Croatian language
*Declaration on the Common Language
The Declaration on the Common Language ( sh, Deklaracija o zajedničkom jeziku / ) was issued in 2017 by a group of intellectuals and NGOs from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia who were working under the banner of a projec ...
2017
* Declaration on the Status and Name of the Croatian Literary Language
*Controversy over ethnic and linguistic identity in Montenegro
Controversy over ethnic and linguistic identity in Montenegro is an ongoing dispute over the ethnic and linguistic identity of several communities in Montenegro, a multiethnic and multilingual country in Southeastern Europe. There are several point ...
* Language secessionism in Serbo-Croatian
*Mutual intelligibility
In linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as ...
*Standard language
A standard language (also standard variety, standard dialect, and standard) is a language variety that has undergone substantial codification of grammar and usage, although occasionally the term refers to the entirety of a language that include ...
*Abstand and ausbau languages
In sociolinguistics, an abstand language is a language variety or cluster of varieties with significant linguistic distance from all others, while an ausbau language is a standard variety, possibly with related dependent varieties. Heinz Kloss i ...
*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 ...
*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 ...
*Serbo-Croatian phonology
Serbo-Croatian is a South Slavic language with four national standards. The Eastern Herzegovinian Neo-Shtokavian dialect forms the basis for Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian (the four national standards).
Standard Serbo-Croatian ...
*South Slavic dialect continuum
The South Slavic languages are one of three branches of the Slavic languages. There are approximately 30 million speakers, mainly in the Balkans. These are separated geographically from speakers of the other two Slavic branches ( West and East ...
References
External links
*
*{{cite journal, url=http://hrcak.srce.hr/file/48911, last=Kovačić, first=Marko, title=Serbian and Croatian: One language or languages?, journal=Jezikoslovlje, volume=6, issue=2, date=December 2005
Serbo-Croatian language
Bosnian language
Croatian language
Montenegrin language
Serbian language
Comparison of Slavic languages
Linguistic controversies