The official language of Serbia is Serbian.[1] There are more than a dozen recognized minority languages, mainly spoken by the country’s ethnic minorities. Other languages have no official status and are largely spoken by immigrant communities.
The Serbian language predominates in most of Serbia and is a mother tongue of 84.4% of the country's population, including almost all ethnic Serbs and majority of ethnic Croats, Macedonians, Montenegrins, ethnic Muslims as well as over third of ethnic Roma and Bulgarians.
Recognized minority languages are in official use in municipalities and cities (54 in total) where share of respective ethnic minority in total population is more than 15%.[2][3] Additionaly, five minority languages (Hungarian, Slovak, Romanian, Croatian, and Rusyn) are in the official use by the provincial administration in Vojvodina.
Complete education cycle in minority languages, from preschool to university level, is available in following languages: Hungarian, Bosnian, Albanian, Slovak, Romanian, Croatian, Bulgarian, and Rusyn. Furthermore, seven more minority languages are taught as part of the subject "Mother Tongue with Elements of Ethnic Culture": Romani, Vlach, Macedonian, Bunjevac, German, Ukrainian, and Czech. As of 2025, some 60,000 children and youth attend classes in minority languages at all levels of education.[4]
The right to information in minority languages is realized through print and electronic media. Newspapers, magazines, and other publications are issued in minority languages, while radio and television stations broadcast programs in those languages.[5]
Other languages have no official status and are largely spoken by immigrant communities. Russian is most widely spoken of these, native to 0.1% of the total population. Other languages include Chinese and Arabic.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
