Serbo-Croatian language

From Wikinfo

The Serbo-Croatian language (Srpsko-Hrvatski or Hrvatsko-Srpski) is a language of the Western group of the South Slavic languages. It is the main language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro and is also spoken and understood in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Slovenia. The language is also spoken by Serbian and Croatian minorities in Austria, Hungary and Romania. There are currently three standard written versions of the language, Croatian, Serbian and Bosnian. See Differences in official languages in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia for relation among them. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia calls the language BCS (Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian) and considers it to be the first language of all Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian defendants. Some people consider Serbo-Croatian to be a fiction, attributed variously to different groups. Whether this is true or not is largely a matter of politics, but we will assume in this article that it is a language in itself.International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has specified different Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) numbers for Croatian (UDC 862, acronym hr) and Serbian (UDC 861, acronym sr), while the "cover term" Serbo-Croatian is referenced as the combination of original signs-UDC 861/862, acronym sh.

Serbo-Croatian is a highly inflected language. There are seven cases for nouns and adjectives: Nominative case, Genitive case, Dative case, Accusative case, Vocative case, Locative case, Instrumental case.

There are three numbers of nouns, adjectives and verbs - one of them, the large plural (above five) is expressed as a change of case from nominative to genitive. There are seven tenses of verbs and additional conditional constructs.

Dialect Groups

Serbo-Croatian is the common name for three large dialect groups, Shtokavian, Kajkavian and Chakavian. These have nothing to do with various standard versions, which are all based on the Shtokavian dialect. Furthermore, differences in the usage of dialects and variants is geographical, not ethnic. They have enough differences to be at times mutually unintelligable, but all share the same basic grammar.

The Shtokavian dialect is spoken in Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro and the greater part of Croatia. Its word for "what" is "&#353to". The Eastern or ekavian variant of Shtokavian, spoken in most of Serbia and far Eastern Croatia, renders the Proto-Slavic jat sound as "e". The Western or ijekavian variant which renders jat as "je" or "ije", is spoken in Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro and parts of Western Serbia.
The Kajkavian dialect is mostly spoken in North-Eastern Croatia. Its word for "what" is "kaj" and it renders jat as "e". It bears many similarities to eastern Slovenian dialects, but has no dual number.
The Chakavian dialect is spoken in Western Croatia, mainly in Istria and Dalmatia. Its word for "what" is "ča" and it renders jat as "i". It includes many words borrowed from Italian.

Alphabets

Through history, this language has been written with Latin, Greek, Angled and Round Glagolitic, Cyrillic and Arabic alphabets. Today, it is written in both the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets. Serbian and Bosnian standard version use both alphabets, while Croatian uses only Latin.

Serbian Cyrillic alphabet was revised by Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic in 19th century.

In both cases, spelling is nearly phonetic and spellings in the two alphabets generally map to each other one-to-one:

Latin to Cyrillic

A a B b C c Č č Ć ć D d Dž dž Đ đ E e F f G g H h I i J j K k
А а Б б Ц ц Ч ч Ћ ћ Д д Џ  џ  Ђ ђ Е е Ф ф Г г Х х И и Ј ј К к

L l Lj lj M m N n Nj nj O o P p R r S S Š š T t U u V v Z z Ž ž
Л л Љ  љ  М м Н н Њ  њ  О о П п Р р С с Ш ш Т т У у В в З з Ж ж

Cyrillic to Latin

А а Б б В в Г г Д д Ђ ђ Е е Ж ж З з И и Ј ј К к Л л Љ  љ  М м
A a B b V v G g D d Đ đ E e Ž ž Z z I i J j K k L l Lj lj M m

N n Nj Nj O o P p R r S s T t Ć ć U u F f H h C c Č č Dž dž Š š
Н н Њ  њ  О о П п Р р С с Т т Ћ ћ У у Ф ф Х х Ц ц Ч ч Џ  џ  Ш ш

Lj, Nj and Dž represent distinct phonemes and are considered to be single letters. In rare words, they can also be combinations of two letters and are then transcribed to Cyrillics separately. For instance, "nadživeti" (to live longer than) is transcribed "Надживети", not "Наџивети". &#272 used to be commonly written as Dj on typewriters, but that practice lead to too many ambiguities.