SERBIAN-ENGLISH

PREFACE
THE Slavonic languages form one of the groups of the great family of
Indo-European languages, to which most of the other European languages
also belong.
The Slavonic languages fall into three divisions the eastern, western,
and southern. To the eastern division belongs Russian (Great Russian
and Little Russian or Ruthenian) ; to the western division, Polish,
Bohemian, and Lusatian-Wendish (still spoken in parts of Saxony and
Prussia); and to the southern division, Slovene, Serbo-Croatian, and
Bulgarian.
Slovene is spoken by about one and a half million people in the Austrian
provinces of Istria, Carniola, and Carinthia ; Serbo-Croatian is spoken
throughout the Austrian province of Dalmatia, the Hungarian provinces
of Croatia and Slavonia, the joint Austro-Hungarian territories of
Bosnia and Hercegovina, in the southern parts of the kingdom of Hungary
(known as the Banat and Badka), throughout the kingdoms of Serbia
and Montenegro and in parts of Macedonia ; altogether by about nine
million people. Bulgarian is spoken throughout Bulgaria and in parts
of Macedonia by about five millions.
Of these three languages which form the southern division of the
Slavonic languages, Slovene and Serbo-Croatian are very similar both in
vocabulary and structure ; on the other hand, Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian,
though they contain a large number of words common to both
languages, are very dissimilar in grammar.
The Slav nations employ two different alphabets, the Latin and that
known as the Cyrillic, so-called because its author is assumed to have
been the Greek missionary St. Cyril, a native of Salonika, who, with his
brother St. Methodius, was sent by the Church at Constantinople, in the
ninth century, to convert the Slavs who inhabited the basin of the Danube.
After the division of the Churches the Slav nations fell into two
sections, those who had been converted from and owed allegiance to
Constantinople, and those who stood in a similar position to Rome. The
first section included the Russians and the Bulgarians, the second the
Poles, Bohemians, and the Slovenes.
The Serbo-Croatian people was divided between the two, that part of
it which lay more to the east and nearer Constantinople, i.e. roughly
speaking the kingdoms of Serbia and Montenegro and the eastern parts
of Bosnia and Hercegovina, became incorporated in the Eastern Orthodox
Church at Constantinople, while that part of it which lay more to the
west and nearer Rome, that is, roughly speaking, the western parts of
Bosnia and Hercegovina, Dalmatia, Croatia, and Slavonia, fell under
the influence of the Western or Roman Church. It thus happened that
the Serbo-Croatian people, which was ethnically and linguistically one,
became, from the point of view ot religion and civilization, divided into
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2071925