Montenegro is a country in Southeast Europe, located in the Balkans. It is bordered by Bosnia and Herzegovina to the north, Serbia to the northeast, Kosovo to the east, Albania to the southeast, and Croatia and the Adriatic Sea to the northwest with a coastline of 293.5 km. Podgorica is the country's capital and its largest city; it covers 10.4% of Montenegro's territory of 13,812 square kilometres (5,333 sq mi), and is home to roughly 31% of its total population of 621,000. Cetinje is the former royal capital and cultural centre of Montenegro and is the location of several national institutions, including the official residence of the President of Montenegro.
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.
"Muslims" is a designation for the ethnoreligious group of Serbo-Croatian-speaking Muslims and people of Muslim heritage, inhabiting mostly the territory of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The term, adopted in the 1971 Constitution of Yugoslavia, groups together a number of distinct South Slavic communities of Islamic ethnocultural tradition. Prior to 1993, a vast majority of present-day Bosniaks self-identified as ethnic Muslims, along with some smaller groups of different ethnicity, such as Gorani and Torbeši. This designation did not include Yugoslav non-Slavic Muslims, such as Turks, some Romani people and majority of Albanians.
The demographic history of Montenegro can be shown through census results and official documents which mention demographic composition.
Montenegrin is a normative variety of the Serbo-Croatian language mainly used by Montenegrins and is the official language of Montenegro. Montenegrin is based on the most widespread dialect of Serbo-Croatian, Shtokavian, more specifically on Eastern Herzegovinian, which is also the basis of Standard Croatian, Serbian, and Bosnian.
Demographic features of the population of Montenegro include population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects.
An independence referendum was held in Montenegro on 21 May 2006. It was approved by 55.5% of voters, narrowly passing the 55% threshold. By 23 May preliminary referendum results were recognized by all five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, suggesting widespread international recognition if Montenegro were to become formally independent. On 31 May the referendum commission officially confirmed the results of the referendum, verifying that 55.5% of the population of Montenegrin voters had voted in favor of independence. Because voters met the controversial threshold requirement of 55% approval, the referendum was incorporated into a declaration of independence during a special parliamentary session on 31 May. The Assembly of the Republic of Montenegro made a formal Declaration of Independence on Saturday 3 June.
The current Constitution of Montenegro was ratified and adopted by the Constitutional Parliament of Montenegro on 19 October 2007 in an extraordinary session by achieving the required two-thirds supermajority of votes. It was officially proclaimed on 22 October 2007, replacing the constitution of 1992.
Languages of Yugoslavia are all languages spoken in former Yugoslavia. They are mainly Indo-European languages and dialects, namely dominant South Slavic varieties as well as Albanian, Aromanian, Bulgarian, Czech, German, Italian, Venetian, Balkan Romani, Romanian, Pannonian Rusyn, Slovak and Ukrainian languages. There are also pockets where varieties of non-Indo-European languages, such as those of Hungarian and Turkish, are spoken.
Serbia has only one nationwide official language, which is Serbian. The largest other languages spoken in Serbia include Hungarian, Bosnian and Croatian. The Autonomous Province of Vojvodina has 6 official languages: Serbian, Hungarian, Slovak, Romanian, Croatian, Rusyn; whilst Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija, which Serbia claims as its own, has two: Albanian and Serbian.
The Serbian Cyrillic alphabet is a variation of the Cyrillic script used to write the Serbian language, updated in 1818 by the Serbian philologist and linguist Vuk Karadžić. It is one of the two alphabets used to write modern standard Serbian, the other being Gaj's Latin alphabet.
The official language of North Macedonia is Macedonian, while Albanian has co-official status. Macedonian is spoken by roughly two-thirds of the population natively, and as a second language by much of the rest of the population. Albanian is the largest minority language. There are a further five national minority languages: Turkish, Romani, Serbian, Bosnian, and Aromanian. The Macedonian Sign Language is the country's official sign language.
The romanization or Latinization of Serbian is the representation of the Serbian language using Latin letters. Serbian is written in two alphabets, Serbian Cyrillic, a variation of the Cyrillic alphabet, and Gaj's Latin, or latinica, a variation of the Latin alphabet. The Serbian language is an example of digraphia.
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.
Montenegrin nationalism is the nationalism that asserts that Montenegrins are a nation and promotes the cultural unity of Montenegrins.
The Serbian language is one of the officially recognized minority languages in Croatia. It is primarily used by the Serbs of Croatia. The Croatian Constitution, Croatian Constitutional law on national minorities rights, Law on Education in Language and Script of National Minorities and Law on Use of Languages and Scripts of National Minorities define the public co-official usage of Serbian in Croatia. Serbian and Croatian are two standardized varieties of the pluricentric Serbo-Croatian language. The majority of Serbs of Croatia use Ijekavian pronunciation of Proto-Slavic vowel jat except in the Podunavlje region in Vukovar-Syrmia and Osijek-Baranja Counties where local Serb population use Ekavian pronunciation. Post-World War II and Croatian War of Independence settlers in Podunavlje which have come from Bosnia, Dalmatia or Western Slavonia either use their original Ijekavian pronunciation, adopted Ekavian pronunciation or both of them depending on context. In 2011 Census majority of Serbs of Croatia declared Croatian standardized variety as their first language with Ijekavian pronunciation always being required standard form in Croatian. While Serbian variety recognizes both pronunciations as standard, Ekavian is the more common one as it is the dominant one in Serbia, with Ijekavian being dominant in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro and Croatia.
The Constitution of Croatia in its preamble defines Croatia as a nation state of ethnic Croats, a country of traditionally present communities that the constitution recognizes as national minorities and a country of all its citizens. National minorities explicitly enumerated and recognized in the Constitution are Serbs, Czechs, Slovaks, Italians, Hungarians, Jews, Germans, Austrians, Ukrainians, Rusyns, Bosniaks, Slovenes, Montenegrins, Macedonians, Russians, Bulgarians, Poles, Romani, Romanians, Istro-Romanians ("Vlachs"), Turks and Albanians. Article 12 of the constitution states that the official language in Croatia is Croatian, but also states that in some local governments another language and Cyrillic or some other script can be introduced in official use.
The spread of the Latin script has a long history, from its archaic beginnings in Latium to its rise as the dominant writing system in modernity. The ancestors of Latin letters are found in the Phoenician, Greek and Etruscan alphabets. As the Roman Empire expanded in classical antiquity, the Latin script and language spread along with its conquests, and remained in use in Italy, Iberia, and Western Europe after the Western Roman Empire's disappearance. During the early and high Middle Ages, the script was spread by Christian missionaries and rulers, replacing the indigenous writing systems of Central Europe, Northern Europe, and the British Isles.
