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 and Herzegovina, and Montenegro. It is a pluricentric language with four mutually intelligible standard varieties, namely Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin.
Serbian is the standardized variety of the Serbo-Croatian language mainly used by Serbs. It is the official and national language of Serbia, one of the three official languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina and co-official in Montenegro and Kosovo. It is a recognized minority language in Croatia, North Macedonia, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic.
Bosnian, sometimes referred to as Bosniak language, is the standardized variety of the Serbo-Croatian pluricentric language mainly used by ethnic Bosniaks. Bosnian is one of three such varieties considered official languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina, along with Croatian and Serbian. It is also an officially recognized minority language in Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Kosovo.
Standard Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian are different national variants and official registers of the pluricentric Serbo-Croatian language.
One of the defining features of modern Croatian is according to some a preference for word coinage from native Slavic morphemes, as opposed to adopting loanwords or replacing them altogether. This particularly relates to other Serbo-Croatian standards of Bosnian, Montenegrin and Serbian which liberally draw on Turkish, Latin, Greek, Russian and English loanwords.
This is a list of languages spoken in regions ruled by Balkan countries. With the exception of several Turkic languages, all of them belong to the Indo-European family. A subset of these languages is notable for forming a well-studied sprachbund, a group of languages that have developed some striking structural similarities over time.
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 by a belt of German, Hungarian and Romanian speakers.
Shtokavian or Štokavian is the prestige supradialect of the pluricentric Serbo-Croatian language and the basis of its Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin standards. It is a part of the South Slavic dialect continuum. Its name comes from the form for the interrogative pronoun for "what" što. This is in contrast to Kajkavian and Chakavian.
Kajkavian is a South Slavic supradialect or language spoken primarily by Croats in much of Central Croatia and Gorski Kotar.
Chakavian or Čakavian is a South Slavic supradialect or language spoken by Croats along the Adriatic coast, in the historical regions of Dalmatia, Istria, Croatian Littoral and parts of coastal and southern Central Croatia, as well as by the Burgenland Croats as Burgenland Croatian in southeastern Austria, northwestern Hungary and southwestern Slovakia as well as few municipalities in southern Slovenia on the border with Croatia.
Bartol Kašić was a Croatian Jesuit clergyman and grammarian during the Counter-Reformation, who wrote the first Illyrian grammar and translated the Bible and the Roman Rite into Illyrian.
The Užice dialect or Zlatibor dialect is a subdialect of the Shtokavian dialect of the Serbo-Croatian language. It is part of the Eastern Herzegovinian subdialects. It is traditionally spoken by c. 500,000 people – the Bosniaks and Serbs of the region – in the Zlatibor and Moravica Districts in the Užice region in the southwestern part of Serbia.
Croatian is the standardised variety of the Serbo-Croatian pluricentric language mainly used by Croats. It is the national official language and literary standard of Croatia, one of the official languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, the Serbian province of Vojvodina, the European Union and a recognized minority language elsewhere in Serbia and other neighbouring countries.
The Dubrovnik subdialect is a subdialect of the Shtokavian dialect of Serbo-Croatian. It is spoken in the area of Dubrovnik and the littoral of the former Republic of Ragusa, from Janjina on the Pelješac peninsula to the Croatian border with Montenegro, island of Mljet.
The Eastern Herzegovinian dialect is the most widespread subdialect of the Shtokavian dialect of Serbo-Croatian, both by territory and the number of speakers. It is the dialectal basis for all modern literary Serbo-Croatian standards: Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, and Montenegrin.
Fehim Škaljić is a retired Bosnian politician. He was member of Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina from 2014–2018.
Nezir Škaljić was a Bosnian Muslim politician who served as the third Mayor of Sarajevo (1899–1905) Škaljić was a jurist, previously serving as judge of Bosnia's Supreme Court and President of the Commercial Court. His governance coincided with Austro-Hungarian rule of Bosnia. Škaljić was recipient of a first class 'Grand Cross' Imperial Austrian Order of Franz Joseph.
Most Serbian words are of native Slavic lexical stock, tracing back to the Proto-Slavic language. There are many loanwords from different languages, reflecting cultural interaction throughout history. Notable loanwords were borrowed from Greek, Latin, Italian, Persian, Turkish, Hungarian, Russian, English and German.
The Dictionary of Serbo-Croatian Literary and Vernacular Language or the Dictionary of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts is the official dictionary of the Serbo-Croatian language published by the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. The publication of the Dictionary has started in 1959, and is ongoing. So far, 21 volumes have been published, with the latest, 21st volume, published in 2020 covering words starting with letter "p". About fifty more years are needed for the completion of the whole project. It is a historical dictionary whose entries are based on primary sources of actual usage in the last two centuries.
