Shopping on line can be easy, simple and save you lots of money. It can also take a lot of your time, frustrate you, and result in unwanted purchases. Now the same can be said for regular high street shopping, but with the vast opportunity presented by the Internet it will pay you to spend a few minutes reading this and understanding how to better optimize your Serbian Language shopping experience:

1. Compare - without doubt the biggest advantage that the Serbian Language offers shoppers today is the ability to compare thousands of Serbian Language at a time. This is a great thing, but not necessarily all the time! Too much can be daunting at times so take advantage of the great comparison sites and where possible let them do the hard work for you.

2. Research - if it has been said it will be on the internet. Ignorance is no longer a justifiable reason for buying the wrong thing. Take the time to research in detail everything that you could possible want to know about

3. Testimonials - don't know anybody that has bought a Serbian Language? Wrong! If the Serbian Language is good the internet will let you know. Use the Internet as a friend and get testimonials before you buy.

4. Questions - Got a question about Serbian Language then search the Forums, FAQ's, Blogs etc. Don't be afraid to ask .....

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6. Returns - still worried that even after all of the above your Serbian Language wont be what you want? Check out the returns policy. There is so much competition now that someone, somewhere is bound to offer the terms that you are comfortable with.

7. Feedback - happy with your Serbian Language then let people know, after all you are depending on others people input in your buying decision, so why not give a little back.

8. Security - check for the yellow padlock on the Serbian Language site before you buy, and the s after http:/ /i.e. https:// = a secure site

9. Contact - got a question about Serbian Language, or want to leave a comment then check out the sites contact page. Reputable companies have them and respond.

10. Payment - ready to pay for your Serbian Language, then use your credit card or PayPal! Be aware of companies that don't accept them, there may be genuine reasons but given the huge amount of choice you have when buying online there is no reason at all not to buy via credit card or PayPal.

{{Infobox Language|name=Serbian|nativename=|pronunciation=|familycolor=Indo-European|states=Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia, and others.], Southern Europe|fam3=[South Slavic languages|fam4=Western South Slavic|nation=

(in some municipalities)|agency=Board for Standardization of the Serbian Language, used primarily in [Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia, and by Serbs in the Serbian diaspora. The former standard is known as Serbo-Croatian, now split into Serbian, Croatian language and Bosnian language standards.

Two alphabets are used to write the Serbian language: a Serbian Cyrillic alphabet on the Cyrillic alphabet, devised by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, and a Gaj's Latin alphabet on the Latin alphabet, devised by Ljudevit Gaj. The characters of the two alphabets map to each other one-to-one.

Serbian orthography is very consistent: approximation of the principle "one letter per sound". This principle is represented by Adelung's saying, "Write as you speak and read as it is written", the principle used by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić when reforming the Cyrillic orthography of Serbian in the 19th century.

Standard Serbian is based on the Štokavian dialect. The Ekavian variant is spoken mostly in Serbia and Ijekavian in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, south-western Serbia, and Croatia. The base for is the Ijekavian dialect is East-Herzegovinian, and of the Ekavian, the Šumadija-Vojvodina dialect. Features of other Shtokavian dialects, as well of the Torlakian dialect, which is spoken in southern Serbia, are not accepted as standard.

Writing systems Srpske narodne pjesme (Serbian folk poems), Vienna, 1841

Serbian language can be written in two different alphabets: Serbian Cyrillic alphabet (ћирилица) and the Gaj's Latin alphabet (latinica).

{| class="wikitable"|- style="background: #efefef;"! Cyrillic alphabet! Latin alphabet| rowspan="16" style="background: white; border-top: none; border-bottom: none; width: 4em;" |  ! Cyrillic! Latin|---- | A (Cyrillic)| A| [N| [B| [Nj (digraph)|---- | Ve (Cyrillic)| V| [O| [G| [P| [D| [R| [D with stroke#South Slavic languages| Es (Cyrillic)| S| [E| [T| [Ž| [Ć| [Z| [U| [I| [F| [J| [H| [K| [C| [L| [Č| [LJ (letter)| Dzhe| DŽ|---- | Em (Cyrillic)| [M| [Š of the two alphabets is different.

Use of scripts Cyrillic alphabet was in exclusive use in Serbia before the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was formed (1918), but Latin was used by Serbs in the coastal area of modern Montenegro as well as in Croatia (Dubrovnik-Neretva County), and Bosnia and Herzegovina (mainly Herzegovina which adjoins the latter two areas). Some famous literary historians and critics from Belgrade, as Jovan Skerlić, proposed to abolish literary chaos and end arguments by accepting Latin as the only alphabet. Especially during the socialist era, Latin has made a major breakthrough even in Serbia proper. Since the constitutional reforms in the early 1970s, most documents were published in "Serbo-Croatian" Cyrillic and "Croato-Serbian" (sometimes Serbo-Croatian) LatinCf. The Službeni list SFRJ (Federal Gazette), was published from 1974 to 1991 in Serbo-Croat, Croato-Serbian, Macedonian, Slovenian and in the languages of national minorities. Enciklopedija Jugoslavije was published in Zagreb in "Croatian or Serbian" (the way Croats referred to Serbo-Croatian language) Latin, "Serbo-Croat" (the way Serbs, Montenigriens, Muslims and all other nations in Yugoslavia referred to Serbo-Croatian langage) Cyrillic, Slovenian, Macedonian, Albanian and Hungarian. The only Yugoslav (not traditionally Serbian, Croatian nor Bosnian) newspaper Borba was printed in both alphabets: one page in Cyrillic, the following page in Latinic and so on all through the journal, with the script of the front page alternating between the two every day. Whilst Serbo-Croat was widely accepted (before the Yugoslav Wars), the Cyrillic alphabet was used predominantly in central Serbia and in Montenegro (until the late 1990s). The Latin alphabet was preferred in Croatia and the only one used by the Croats. In Belgrade, the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina and in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in the larger more vibrant towns of Serbia, either alphabet would be used as and how the writer would choose.

The exact percentage of use of alphabets is difficult to assess today. Of the major newspapers, Politika, Večernje Novosti, Glas Javnosti, and Dnevnik (Novi Sad) are printed in Cyrillic, while Blic, Kurir, Danas and Press (newspaper) use Latin. Of the major TV outlets, only the public service Radio Television of Serbia uses primarily Cyrillic (as well as former RTV BK Telecom), while Pink, B92 and most others use Latin. An informal poll on the Internet forum SerbianCafe.com showed no apparent preference. According to the data collected by Association for Protection of Cyrillic, over 80% of public inscriptions in Novi Sad is in Latin, and over 60% in Belgrade; 5/6 of (randomly sampled) magazines is in Latin, as well as vast majority of university textbooks (however, the proportion is the opposite for high-school ones).

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 either replaced with the base, undiacritised forms (Z C C S) or with two letter combinations that are pronounced similarly (Zh, Tj, Ch, Sh), 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 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.

Equivalence of scripts The Cyrillic letters , and are represented by Digraph (orthography)s in the Latin alphabet. In digraphs, letters are always written together - even in top-down text - and are also Collation as one letter (e.g. ljubav, 'love', comes after lopta, 'ball'). The present Cyrillic script, having been devised for the language itself, is precise because there is no ambiguity involved in reading Lj (digraph), Nj (digraph) and Dž (digraph): for example, both Cyrillic инјекција (Injective function or Injection (medicine)) and његов ('his') are written with in Latin form. Thus, automatic transliteration of Cyrillic text to Latin is straightforward, but automatic transliteration of Latin text to Cyrillic requires additional heuristic rules.

Phonology Vowels The Serbian vowel system is simple, with only five vowels. All vowels are monophthongs. The oral vowels are as follows: Consonant-Vowel Interactions in Serbian: Features, Representations and Constraint Interactions, Bruce Morén, Center for Advanced Study of Theoretical Linguistics, Tromsø, 2005

{]! Description! English approximation|-| align="center" | a| align="center" | а| align="center" | | Open front unrounded vowel| f'ather|-| align="center" | i| align="center" | и| align="center" | | Close front unrounded vowel| seek|-| align="center" | e| align="center" | е| align="center" | | Open-mid front unrounded vowel| ten|-| align="center" | o| align="center" | о| align="center" | | Open-mid back rounded vowel| caught (British)|-| align="center" | u| align="center" | у| align="center" | | close back rounded vowel| boom|}

Consonants The consonant system is more complicated, and its characteristic features are series of affricate and Palatal consonant consonants. As in English, voicedness is phoneme, but aspiration (phonetics) is not. The consonant phoneme table for Serbian is as follows (corresponding Latin letters are below the International Phonetic Alphabet symbols)

{| class="wikitable"|- align="center"! colspan ="15"| Consonant Phonemes of Serbian|-!! colspan="2" | Bilabial! colspan="2" ]-
Labiodental! colspan="2" | Dental consonant! colspan="2" | Alveolar consonant! colspan="2" | Postalveolar consonant-
Postalveolar consonant! colspan="2" | Palatal! colspan="2" ]|- align="center"! Nasal consonant| colspan="2" |
M| colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" |
N| colspan="2" || colspan="2" |
Nj| colspan="2" ||- align="center"! Plosive consonant|
P|
B| colspan="2" ||
T|
D| colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" ||
K|
G|- align="center"! Affricate consonant| colspan="2" || colspan="2" ||
C|| colspan="2" ||
Č|
Dž|
Ć|
Đ| colspan="2" ||- align="center"! Fricative consonant| colspan="2" ||
F||
S|
Z| colspan="2" ||
Š|
Ž| colspan="2" || colspan="2" |
H|- align="center"! Approximant consonant| colspan="2" |||
V| colspan="6" || colspan="2" |
J| colspan="2" ||- align="center"! Trill consonant| colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="6" |
R| colspan="2" || colspan="2" ||- align="center"! Lateral consonant| colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="6" |
L| colspan="2" |
Lj| colspan="2" ||} V is often also described as a (lowered) fricative (), A Handbook of Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian, Wayles Brown and Theresa Alt, SEELRC 2004 which is phonetically closer. However, on phonological level, it doesn't interact with unvoiced consonants as a fricative normally would, but as an approximant.

' can be syllabic, playing the role of a vowel in certain words (it can even have a long accent). For example, the tongue-twister na vrh brda vrba mrda involves four words with syllabic . A similar feature exists in Czech language, Slovak language, Macedonian language and many other languages. In some vernaculars can be syllabic as well. However, in the standard language, it appears only in loanwords as in the name for the Czech river Vltava for instance, or debakl (дебакл), monokl (монокл) and bicikl (бицикл).

In Serbian, the phonemes , , , and (in contrast to Croatian and Bosnian vernaculars) have an independent phonetic realization in most vernaculars.P. Ivic, Dva glavna pravca razvoja konsonantizma u srpskohrvatskom jeziku, Iz istorije srpskohrvatskog jezika, Niš 1991, p. 82ff.

Phonetic interactions While the basic sound system is fairly simple, Serbian phonology is very complicated: there are numerous interactions (sandhi rules) between voices at morpheme boundaries which cause sound changes, with numerous exceptions. The changes include:



Voicing and devoicing 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.

Prosody Accents Serbian has an extended system of accentuation. From the phonological point of view it has four accents which are divided into two groups according to their quality:

However, their realization varies according to vernacular. That is why Đuro Daničić, Pero Budmani, Josip Matešić and other scientists have given different descriptions of the four Serbian accents. The old accents are rather close to Italian and English accent types, and the new ones to German (this can be easily seen through loanwords).

Here is one possibility of phonetic realization of 4 Serbian accents:

  • Short falling (kratkosilazni; symbol `` – double grave accent) as in Mïlica (PNfem). Pronunciation: ('i' is stressed and short, as in English thick,cut).
  • Long falling (dugosilazni; symbol ^) as in pîvo ('beer'). Pronunciation: ('i' is stressed, first low, than high and than again low, as in English seek, Italian Gino, Marco).
  • Short rising (kratkouzlazni; symbol ` – grave accent)as in màskara ('eye makeup'). Pronunciation: (the first 'a' is slightly stressed, the second 'a' is higher than the first one, and the third 'a' is even higher than the second one, as in German Arbeiter, Matratze).
  • Long rising (dugouzlazni; symbol ´) as in čokoláda ('chocolate'). Pronunciation: ('a' is stressed, longer than the other vowels, and the intonation is slightly rising, as in German Balade or Schokolade).


    • The "finest" realization—the differences between the accents are relatively small, words are pronounced without any special effort—can be found in the most respectable vernaculars of Piva and Drobnjak and in Belgrade and partly in familiar vernaculars in Kolubara district and south-western Banat. These two groups of vernaculars gave the base for Belgrade old speaker school. Already in surrounding Nikšić (Montenegro), Dubrovnik (Croatia), Užice (Serbia) area stress is more intensive.Modern surveys have shown for instance, that there is a minimal difference in Piva and Drobnjak (where the family of Vuk Stefanović Karadžić had come from) between the syllables that carry short-stressed accent with fall intonation and the short-stressed with rise intonation. In the first edition of Vuk's dictionary (1818), Vuk even marked these two accents as one and the same accent. Cf. preface by P. Ivić in reprint edition (1968) The difference between the short-stressed accent with falling acentuation and the short-stressed with rise accent is almost lost in two-syllable words (cf. the surveys of Pavle Ivić on Serbian prosody). Word and sentence prosody in Serbocroatian, by Ilse Lehiste and Pavle Ivić. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1986. The informal speech- slang in Belgrade has very special, neutralized accentuation (the oppositions falling/rising, short/long is only partly based on genuine word accents, far more on phonetic letter structure of the word).

    Unstressed lengths Not only the stressed syllables can be short or long. Other syllables have that feature as well. In neo-shtokavian vernaculars, the unstressed long syllable (unstressed length) can occur only after the accented syllable (these lengths are usually called postaccent lengths. Their symbol is macron (-): dèvōjka ('girl'), Jugòslāvīja (Yugoslavia).

    The phonetic realization of postaccent lengths is different. In vernaculars of Piva and Drobnjak they are rather very short, without any stress components. In some other East-Herzegowinian vernaculars, they are almost stressed (of course, less intense than the really stressed syllable). In many vernaculars—for instance in Belgrade, and in many places in Vojvodina—postaccents lengths are almost lost. That's why foreign students are not expected to pay much attention to them.

    History Before 1400, most Serbian vernaculars had two accents, both with fall intonation—the short one and the long one. That is why they are called "old accents". By 1500, the old accents moved by one syllable towards the beginning of the word, changing their quality to rising accents. For instance junâk (hero) became jùnāk. The old accents, logically remained only when they were on first syllable. Not all dialects had that evolution; those who had it are called neo-shtokavian. The irradiation point was in east Herzegovina, between Prokletije mountains and town of Trebinje. Since the 1500s people had been emigrating from this area. The biggest migrations were to the north, then toward Military Krajina and to the seaside (Dubrovnik area, including islands of Mljet and Šipan). In 1920s and 1930s royal government tried to settle people from this poor mountainous area to Kosovo basin. Vojvodina was settled with inhabitants from this area after the WW II.

    When all old accents had moved to the beginning of the word for one syllable, this was the result:



    Grammar Morphology Declension There are seven cases in Serbian: nominative, genitive, Dative case, Accusative case, vocative, Instrumental case and locative. It is commonly mistaken, that locative and dative have the same form, and that morphologically the number of cases is six. The accent is in many examples different in dative and locative: cf. strâni ('to the site' dative)/ (na) stráni ('on the site' locative) or (ka) sâtu ('to the clock tower')/ (na) sátu ('on the clock').

    The number of cases, in concert with a non-fixed word-order, can make Serbian difficult to learn for speakers of languages without a strong case system.

    Conjugation Further in Serbian conjugation

    Serbian verbs are conjugated in 4 past tenses - Perfect aspect, aorist, imperfect, and pluperfect, of which the last two have a very limited use (imperfect is still used in some dialects, but majority of native Serbian speakers consider it archaic); 1 future tense (aka 1st future tense - as opposed to the 2nd future tense or the future exact, which is considered a tense of the conditional mood by some contemporary linguists), and 1 present tense. These are the tenses of the indicative mood. Apart from the indicative mood, there is also the imperative mood. The conditional mood has two more tenses, the 1st conditional (commonly used in conditional clauses, both for possible and impossible conditional clauses), and the 2nd conditional (without use in spoken language - it should be used for impossible conditional clauses). Serbian language has active and passive voice.

    As for the non-finite verb forms, Serbian language has 1 infinitive, 2 adjectival participles (the active and the passive), and 2 adverbial participles (the present and the past).

    Syntax The default word order is Agent Verb Object. However, since inflection in most cases uniquely determines the role in sentence, Serbian is mostly a free word order language, and as such it is often cited by Chomsky and other generative syntacticians.

    In Serbian, the sentence "Grandpa makes brandy" can therefore variously be expressed thus:



    All six orders can be stressed in three ways - the first option stressing either WHO makes brandy, WHAT is made by Grandpa, or WHO makes brandy. However, although possible, some word orders may appear unnatural out of context.

    Vocabulary





    Serbian literature (The Gospel of Miroslav), a manuscript, ca. 1180

    Serbian literature emerged in the Middle Ages, and included such works as Miroslavljevo jevanđelje (Miroslav's Gospel) in 1192 and Dušanov zakonik (Dušan's Code) in 1349. Little secular medieval 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 Iseult into Serbian. Although not belonging to the literature proper, the corpus of Serbian literacy in the 1300s and 1400s contains numerous legal, commercial and administrative texts with marked presence of Serbian vernacular juxtaposed on the matrix of Serbian Church Slavonic language.

    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. The epic poems were mainly written down in the 19th century, and preserved in oral tradition up to 1950s, that is few centuries or even a millennium longer then by most other "epic folks". Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Jacob Grimm learned Serbian language in order to read Serbian epic poetry in original. 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. This artificial idiom superseded works of poets and historians like Gavrilo Stefanović Venclović, who wrote in essentially modern Serbian in 1720s- just, these vernacular compositions have remained cloistered from the general public and received due attention only with the advent of modern literary historians and writers like Milorad Pavić (writer). In the early 19th century, Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, promoted the spoken language of the people as a literary norm.

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

    Dictionaries Serious Serbian and Croatian dictionaries regularly include Croatian only, and Serbian only words. Three Serbian words that are used in many of the world's languages are vampire, paprika (borrowed via Hungarian language), and slivovitz.

    Standard dictionaries



    Bilingual dictionaries

    Historical dictionaries The Rječnik hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika (I-XXIII), published by Yugoslav academy of sciencies and arts (Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts) from 1880 to 1976 is the only general historical dictionary of Serbian language. His first editor was Đuro Daničić, followed by Pero Budmani and famous "vukovac" Toma Maretić. The sources are, especially in first volumes, mainly shtokavian.

    Etymological dictionaries

    The standard and the only completed etymological dictionary of Serbian language is so-called "Skok":Petar Skok. Etimologijski rječnik hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika. I-IV. Zagreb 1971-1974.

    There is also a new monumental Etimološki rečnik srpskog jezika (Etymological dictionary of Serbian language). Up to now, two volumes were published: I (with words on A-), and II (Ba-Bd).

    There are specialized etymological dictionaries for German, Italian, Dalmatian, Turkish, Greek, Hungarian, Russian, English and other loanwords (cf. chapter word origin).

    Dialect dictionaries Gliša Elezović, Rečnik kosovsko-metohiskog dijalekta I-II. 1932/1935. Brana Mitrović, Rečnik leskovačkog govora. Leskovac 1984. Nikola Živković, Rečnik pirotskog govora. Pirot, 1987. Miodrag Marković, Rečnik crnorečkog govora I-II. 1986/1993. Jakša Dinić, Rečnik timočkog govora I-III.1988-1992. Momčilo Zlatanović, Rečnik govora južne Srbije. Vranje, 1998, 1–491. Milija Stanić, Uskočki rečnik I–II. Beograd 1990/1991. Miloš Vujičić, Rečnik govora Prošćenja kod Mojkovca. Podgorica, 1995. Srđan Musić, Romanizmi u severozapadnoj Boki Kotorskoj. 1972. Mihailo Bojanić/ Rastislava Trivunac, Rječnik dubrovačkog govora. Beograd 2003. Svetozar Gagović, Iz leksike Pive. Beograd 2004. Rada Stijović, Iz leksike Vasojevića. 1990. Drago Ćupić — Željko Ćupić, Rečnik govora Zagarača. 1997. Vesna Lipovac-Radulović, Romanizmi u Crnoj Gori — jugoistočni dio Boke Kotorske. Cetinje — Titograd, 1981. Vesna Lipovac-Radulović, Romanizmi u Budvi i Paštrovićima. Novi Sad 1997. Rečnik sprskih govora Vojvodine. Novi Sad. M. Peić — G. Bačlija, Rečnik bačkih Bunjevaca. Novi Sad 1990. Mile Tomić, Rečnik radimskog govora — dijaspora, Rumunija. 1989.

    Geographic distribution Figures of speakers according to countries:

    Differences among similar languages See also

    References

    External links

    Online dictionaries

    {{Infobox Language|name=Serbian|nativename=|pronunciation=|familycolor=Indo-European|states=Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia, and others.], Southern Europe|fam3=[South Slavic languages|fam4=Western South Slavic|nation=

    (in some municipalities)|agency=Board for Standardization of the Serbian Language, used primarily in [Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia, and by Serbs in the Serbian diaspora. The former standard is known as Serbo-Croatian, now split into Serbian, Croatian language and Bosnian language standards.

    Two alphabets are used to write the Serbian language: a Serbian Cyrillic alphabet on the Cyrillic alphabet, devised by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, and a Gaj's Latin alphabet on the Latin alphabet, devised by Ljudevit Gaj. The characters of the two alphabets map to each other one-to-one.

    Serbian orthography is very consistent: approximation of the principle "one letter per sound". This principle is represented by Adelung's saying, "Write as you speak and read as it is written", the principle used by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić when reforming the Cyrillic orthography of Serbian in the 19th century.

    Standard Serbian is based on the Štokavian dialect. The Ekavian variant is spoken mostly in Serbia and Ijekavian in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, south-western Serbia, and Croatia. The base for is the Ijekavian dialect is East-Herzegovinian, and of the Ekavian, the Šumadija-Vojvodina dialect. Features of other Shtokavian dialects, as well of the Torlakian dialect, which is spoken in southern Serbia, are not accepted as standard.

    Writing systems Srpske narodne pjesme (Serbian folk poems), Vienna, 1841

    Serbian language can be written in two different alphabets: Serbian Cyrillic alphabet (ћирилица) and the Gaj's Latin alphabet (latinica).

    {| class="wikitable"|- style="background: #efefef;"! Cyrillic alphabet! Latin alphabet| rowspan="16" style="background: white; border-top: none; border-bottom: none; width: 4em;" |  ! Cyrillic! Latin|---- | A (Cyrillic)| A| [N| [B| [Nj (digraph)|---- | Ve (Cyrillic)| V| [O| [G| [P| [D| [R| [D with stroke#South Slavic languages| Es (Cyrillic)| S| [E| [T| [Ž| [Ć| [Z| [U| [I| [F| [J| [H| [K| [C| [L| [Č| [LJ (letter)| Dzhe| DŽ|---- | Em (Cyrillic)| [M| [Š of the two alphabets is different.

    Use of scripts Cyrillic alphabet was in exclusive use in Serbia before the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was formed (1918), but Latin was used by Serbs in the coastal area of modern Montenegro as well as in Croatia (Dubrovnik-Neretva County), and Bosnia and Herzegovina (mainly Herzegovina which adjoins the latter two areas). Some famous literary historians and critics from Belgrade, as Jovan Skerlić, proposed to abolish literary chaos and end arguments by accepting Latin as the only alphabet. Especially during the socialist era, Latin has made a major breakthrough even in Serbia proper. Since the constitutional reforms in the early 1970s, most documents were published in "Serbo-Croatian" Cyrillic and "Croato-Serbian" (sometimes Serbo-Croatian) LatinCf. The Službeni list SFRJ (Federal Gazette), was published from 1974 to 1991 in Serbo-Croat, Croato-Serbian, Macedonian, Slovenian and in the languages of national minorities. Enciklopedija Jugoslavije was published in Zagreb in "Croatian or Serbian" (the way Croats referred to Serbo-Croatian language) Latin, "Serbo-Croat" (the way Serbs, Montenigriens, Muslims and all other nations in Yugoslavia referred to Serbo-Croatian langage) Cyrillic, Slovenian, Macedonian, Albanian and Hungarian. The only Yugoslav (not traditionally Serbian, Croatian nor Bosnian) newspaper Borba was printed in both alphabets: one page in Cyrillic, the following page in Latinic and so on all through the journal, with the script of the front page alternating between the two every day. Whilst Serbo-Croat was widely accepted (before the Yugoslav Wars), the Cyrillic alphabet was used predominantly in central Serbia and in Montenegro (until the late 1990s). The Latin alphabet was preferred in Croatia and the only one used by the Croats. In Belgrade, the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina and in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in the larger more vibrant towns of Serbia, either alphabet would be used as and how the writer would choose.

    The exact percentage of use of alphabets is difficult to assess today. Of the major newspapers, Politika, Večernje Novosti, Glas Javnosti, and Dnevnik (Novi Sad) are printed in Cyrillic, while Blic, Kurir, Danas and Press (newspaper) use Latin. Of the major TV outlets, only the public service Radio Television of Serbia uses primarily Cyrillic (as well as former RTV BK Telecom), while Pink, B92 and most others use Latin. An informal poll on the Internet forum SerbianCafe.com showed no apparent preference. According to the data collected by Association for Protection of Cyrillic, over 80% of public inscriptions in Novi Sad is in Latin, and over 60% in Belgrade; 5/6 of (randomly sampled) magazines is in Latin, as well as vast majority of university textbooks (however, the proportion is the opposite for high-school ones).

    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 either replaced with the base, undiacritised forms (Z C C S) or with two letter combinations that are pronounced similarly (Zh, Tj, Ch, Sh), 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 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.

    Equivalence of scripts The Cyrillic letters , and are represented by Digraph (orthography)s in the Latin alphabet. In digraphs, letters are always written together - even in top-down text - and are also Collation as one letter (e.g. ljubav, 'love', comes after lopta, 'ball'). The present Cyrillic script, having been devised for the language itself, is precise because there is no ambiguity involved in reading Lj (digraph), Nj (digraph) and Dž (digraph): for example, both Cyrillic инјекција (Injective function or Injection (medicine)) and његов ('his') are written with in Latin form. Thus, automatic transliteration of Cyrillic text to Latin is straightforward, but automatic transliteration of Latin text to Cyrillic requires additional heuristic rules.

    Phonology Vowels The Serbian vowel system is simple, with only five vowels. All vowels are monophthongs. The oral vowels are as follows: Consonant-Vowel Interactions in Serbian: Features, Representations and Constraint Interactions, Bruce Morén, Center for Advanced Study of Theoretical Linguistics, Tromsø, 2005

    {]! Description! English approximation|-| align="center" | a| align="center" | а| align="center" | | Open front unrounded vowel| f'ather|-| align="center" | i| align="center" | и| align="center" | | Close front unrounded vowel| seek|-| align="center" | e| align="center" | е| align="center" | | Open-mid front unrounded vowel| ten|-| align="center" | o| align="center" | о| align="center" | | Open-mid back rounded vowel| caught (British)|-| align="center" | u| align="center" | у| align="center" | | close back rounded vowel| boom|}

    Consonants The consonant system is more complicated, and its characteristic features are series of affricate and Palatal consonant consonants. As in English, voicedness is phoneme, but aspiration (phonetics) is not. The consonant phoneme table for Serbian is as follows (corresponding Latin letters are below the International Phonetic Alphabet symbols)

    {| class="wikitable"|- align="center"! colspan ="15"| Consonant Phonemes of Serbian|-!! colspan="2" | Bilabial! colspan="2" ]-
    Labiodental! colspan="2" | Dental consonant! colspan="2" | Alveolar consonant! colspan="2" | Postalveolar consonant-
    Postalveolar consonant! colspan="2" | Palatal! colspan="2" ]|- align="center"! Nasal consonant| colspan="2" |
    M| colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" |
    N| colspan="2" || colspan="2" |
    Nj| colspan="2" ||- align="center"! Plosive consonant|
    P|
    B| colspan="2" ||
    T|
    D| colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="2" ||
    K|
    G|- align="center"! Affricate consonant| colspan="2" || colspan="2" ||
    C|| colspan="2" ||
    Č|
    Dž|
    Ć|
    Đ| colspan="2" ||- align="center"! Fricative consonant| colspan="2" ||
    F||
    S|
    Z| colspan="2" ||
    Š|
    Ž| colspan="2" || colspan="2" |
    H|- align="center"! Approximant consonant| colspan="2" |||
    V| colspan="6" || colspan="2" |
    J| colspan="2" ||- align="center"! Trill consonant| colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="6" |
    R| colspan="2" || colspan="2" ||- align="center"! Lateral consonant| colspan="2" || colspan="2" || colspan="6" |
    L| colspan="2" |
    Lj| colspan="2" ||} V is often also described as a (lowered) fricative (), A Handbook of Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian, Wayles Brown and Theresa Alt, SEELRC 2004 which is phonetically closer. However, on phonological level, it doesn't interact with unvoiced consonants as a fricative normally would, but as an approximant.

    ' can be syllabic, playing the role of a vowel in certain words (it can even have a long accent). For example, the tongue-twister na vrh brda vrba mrda involves four words with syllabic . A similar feature exists in Czech language, Slovak language, Macedonian language and many other languages. In some vernaculars can be syllabic as well. However, in the standard language, it appears only in loanwords as in the name for the Czech river Vltava for instance, or debakl (дебакл), monokl (монокл) and bicikl (бицикл).

    In Serbian, the phonemes , , , and (in contrast to Croatian and Bosnian vernaculars) have an independent phonetic realization in most vernaculars.P. Ivic, Dva glavna pravca razvoja konsonantizma u srpskohrvatskom jeziku, Iz istorije srpskohrvatskog jezika, Niš 1991, p. 82ff.

    Phonetic interactions While the basic sound system is fairly simple, Serbian phonology is very complicated: there are numerous interactions (sandhi rules) between voices at morpheme boundaries which cause sound changes, with numerous exceptions. The changes include:



    Voicing and devoicing 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.

    Prosody Accents Serbian has an extended system of accentuation. From the phonological point of view it has four accents which are divided into two groups according to their quality:

    However, their realization varies according to vernacular. That is why Đuro Daničić, Pero Budmani, Josip Matešić and other scientists have given different descriptions of the four Serbian accents. The old accents are rather close to Italian and English accent types, and the new ones to German (this can be easily seen through loanwords).

    Here is one possibility of phonetic realization of 4 Serbian accents:

  • Short falling (kratkosilazni; symbol `` – double grave accent) as in Mïlica (PNfem). Pronunciation: ('i' is stressed and short, as in English thick,cut).
  • Long falling (dugosilazni; symbol ^) as in pîvo ('beer'). Pronunciation: ('i' is stressed, first low, than high and than again low, as in English seek, Italian Gino, Marco).
  • Short rising (kratkouzlazni; symbol ` – grave accent)as in màskara ('eye makeup'). Pronunciation: (the first 'a' is slightly stressed, the second 'a' is higher than the first one, and the third 'a' is even higher than the second one, as in German Arbeiter, Matratze).
  • Long rising (dugouzlazni; symbol ´) as in čokoláda ('chocolate'). Pronunciation: ('a' is stressed, longer than the other vowels, and the intonation is slightly rising, as in German Balade or Schokolade).


    • The "finest" realization—the differences between the accents are relatively small, words are pronounced without any special effort—can be found in the most respectable vernaculars of Piva and Drobnjak and in Belgrade and partly in familiar vernaculars in Kolubara district and south-western Banat. These two groups of vernaculars gave the base for Belgrade old speaker school. Already in surrounding Nikšić (Montenegro), Dubrovnik (Croatia), Užice (Serbia) area stress is more intensive.Modern surveys have shown for instance, that there is a minimal difference in Piva and Drobnjak (where the family of Vuk Stefanović Karadžić had come from) between the syllables that carry short-stressed accent with fall intonation and the short-stressed with rise intonation. In the first edition of Vuk's dictionary (1818), Vuk even marked these two accents as one and the same accent. Cf. preface by P. Ivić in reprint edition (1968) The difference between the short-stressed accent with falling acentuation and the short-stressed with rise accent is almost lost in two-syllable words (cf. the surveys of Pavle Ivić on Serbian prosody). Word and sentence prosody in Serbocroatian, by Ilse Lehiste and Pavle Ivić. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1986. The informal speech- slang in Belgrade has very special, neutralized accentuation (the oppositions falling/rising, short/long is only partly based on genuine word accents, far more on phonetic letter structure of the word).

    Unstressed lengths Not only the stressed syllables can be short or long. Other syllables have that feature as well. In neo-shtokavian vernaculars, the unstressed long syllable (unstressed length) can occur only after the accented syllable (these lengths are usually called postaccent lengths. Their symbol is macron (-): dèvōjka ('girl'), Jugòslāvīja (Yugoslavia).

    The phonetic realization of postaccent lengths is different. In vernaculars of Piva and Drobnjak they are rather very short, without any stress components. In some other East-Herzegowinian vernaculars, they are almost stressed (of course, less intense than the really stressed syllable). In many vernaculars—for instance in Belgrade, and in many places in Vojvodina—postaccents lengths are almost lost. That's why foreign students are not expected to pay much attention to them.

    History Before 1400, most Serbian vernaculars had two accents, both with fall intonation—the short one and the long one. That is why they are called "old accents". By 1500, the old accents moved by one syllable towards the beginning of the word, changing their quality to rising accents. For instance junâk (hero) became jùnāk. The old accents, logically remained only when they were on first syllable. Not all dialects had that evolution; those who had it are called neo-shtokavian. The irradiation point was in east Herzegovina, between Prokletije mountains and town of Trebinje. Since the 1500s people had been emigrating from this area. The biggest migrations were to the north, then toward Military Krajina and to the seaside (Dubrovnik area, including islands of Mljet and Šipan). In 1920s and 1930s royal government tried to settle people from this poor mountainous area to Kosovo basin. Vojvodina was settled with inhabitants from this area after the WW II.

    When all old accents had moved to the beginning of the word for one syllable, this was the result:



    Grammar Morphology Declension There are seven cases in Serbian: nominative, genitive, Dative case, Accusative case, vocative, Instrumental case and locative. It is commonly mistaken, that locative and dative have the same form, and that morphologically the number of cases is six. The accent is in many examples different in dative and locative: cf. strâni ('to the site' dative)/ (na) stráni ('on the site' locative) or (ka) sâtu ('to the clock tower')/ (na) sátu ('on the clock').

    The number of cases, in concert with a non-fixed word-order, can make Serbian difficult to learn for speakers of languages without a strong case system.

    Conjugation Further in Serbian conjugation

    Serbian verbs are conjugated in 4 past tenses - Perfect aspect, aorist, imperfect, and pluperfect, of which the last two have a very limited use (imperfect is still used in some dialects, but majority of native Serbian speakers consider it archaic); 1 future tense (aka 1st future tense - as opposed to the 2nd future tense or the future exact, which is considered a tense of the conditional mood by some contemporary linguists), and 1 present tense. These are the tenses of the indicative mood. Apart from the indicative mood, there is also the imperative mood. The conditional mood has two more tenses, the 1st conditional (commonly used in conditional clauses, both for possible and impossible conditional clauses), and the 2nd conditional (without use in spoken language - it should be used for impossible conditional clauses). Serbian language has active and passive voice.

    As for the non-finite verb forms, Serbian language has 1 infinitive, 2 adjectival participles (the active and the passive), and 2 adverbial participles (the present and the past).

    Syntax The default word order is Agent Verb Object. However, since inflection in most cases uniquely determines the role in sentence, Serbian is mostly a free word order language, and as such it is often cited by Chomsky and other generative syntacticians.

    In Serbian, the sentence "Grandpa makes brandy" can therefore variously be expressed thus:



    All six orders can be stressed in three ways - the first option stressing either WHO makes brandy, WHAT is made by Grandpa, or WHO makes brandy. However, although possible, some word orders may appear unnatural out of context.

    Vocabulary





    Serbian literature (The Gospel of Miroslav), a manuscript, ca. 1180

    Serbian literature emerged in the Middle Ages, and included such works as Miroslavljevo jevanđelje (Miroslav's Gospel) in 1192 and Dušanov zakonik (Dušan's Code) in 1349. Little secular medieval 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 Iseult into Serbian. Although not belonging to the literature proper, the corpus of Serbian literacy in the 1300s and 1400s contains numerous legal, commercial and administrative texts with marked presence of Serbian vernacular juxtaposed on the matrix of Serbian Church Slavonic language.

    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. The epic poems were mainly written down in the 19th century, and preserved in oral tradition up to 1950s, that is few centuries or even a millennium longer then by most other "epic folks". Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Jacob Grimm learned Serbian language in order to read Serbian epic poetry in original. 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. This artificial idiom superseded works of poets and historians like Gavrilo Stefanović Venclović, who wrote in essentially modern Serbian in 1720s- just, these vernacular compositions have remained cloistered from the general public and received due attention only with the advent of modern literary historians and writers like Milorad Pavić (writer). In the early 19th century, Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, promoted the spoken language of the people as a literary norm.

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

    Dictionaries Serious Serbian and Croatian dictionaries regularly include Croatian only, and Serbian only words. Three Serbian words that are used in many of the world's languages are vampire, paprika (borrowed via Hungarian language), and slivovitz.

    Standard dictionaries



    Bilingual dictionaries

    Historical dictionaries The Rječnik hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika (I-XXIII), published by Yugoslav academy of sciencies and arts (Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts) from 1880 to 1976 is the only general historical dictionary of Serbian language. His first editor was Đuro Daničić, followed by Pero Budmani and famous "vukovac" Toma Maretić. The sources are, especially in first volumes, mainly shtokavian.

    Etymological dictionaries

    The standard and the only completed etymological dictionary of Serbian language is so-called "Skok":Petar Skok. Etimologijski rječnik hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika. I-IV. Zagreb 1971-1974.

    There is also a new monumental Etimološki rečnik srpskog jezika (Etymological dictionary of Serbian language). Up to now, two volumes were published: I (with words on A-), and II (Ba-Bd).

    There are specialized etymological dictionaries for German, Italian, Dalmatian, Turkish, Greek, Hungarian, Russian, English and other loanwords (cf. chapter word origin).

    Dialect dictionaries Gliša Elezović, Rečnik kosovsko-metohiskog dijalekta I-II. 1932/1935. Brana Mitrović, Rečnik leskovačkog govora. Leskovac 1984. Nikola Živković, Rečnik pirotskog govora. Pirot, 1987. Miodrag Marković, Rečnik crnorečkog govora I-II. 1986/1993. Jakša Dinić, Rečnik timočkog govora I-III.1988-1992. Momčilo Zlatanović, Rečnik govora južne Srbije. Vranje, 1998, 1–491. Milija Stanić, Uskočki rečnik I–II. Beograd 1990/1991. Miloš Vujičić, Rečnik govora Prošćenja kod Mojkovca. Podgorica, 1995. Srđan Musić, Romanizmi u severozapadnoj Boki Kotorskoj. 1972. Mihailo Bojanić/ Rastislava Trivunac, Rječnik dubrovačkog govora. Beograd 2003. Svetozar Gagović, Iz leksike Pive. Beograd 2004. Rada Stijović, Iz leksike Vasojevića. 1990. Drago Ćupić — Željko Ćupić, Rečnik govora Zagarača. 1997. Vesna Lipovac-Radulović, Romanizmi u Crnoj Gori — jugoistočni dio Boke Kotorske. Cetinje — Titograd, 1981. Vesna Lipovac-Radulović, Romanizmi u Budvi i Paštrovićima. Novi Sad 1997. Rečnik sprskih govora Vojvodine. Novi Sad. M. Peić — G. Bačlija, Rečnik bačkih Bunjevaca. Novi Sad 1990. Mile Tomić, Rečnik radimskog govora — dijaspora, Rumunija. 1989.

    Geographic distribution Figures of speakers according to countries:

    Differences among similar languages See also

    References

    External links

    Online dictionaries



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