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Easy Croaan (rev. 47b) / A9 Bosnian, Serbian and Montenegrin 531 / 600

A9 Bosnian, Serbian and Montenegrin

Bosnian, Serbian and Montenegrin are separate standard languages quite similar to

the Standard Croatian (some people consider them ‘variants’ of a single language). I

will summarize the most important differences.

You should keep in mind that there are regions in Croatia where some ‘Serbian’

words are used, and some ‘Croatian’ words can be found in Serbia as well. Of

course, Bosnian and Montenegrin are somewhere in the middle. Furthermore, we

can talk about ‘Croatian’ and ‘Serbian’ only if we discuss the standardized languages.

If we take into the account how people actually speak, the situation is much more

complex.

Spelling

The major difference is that Serbian and Montenegrin use another alphabet –

Cyrillic. However, each letter of Croatian Latin corresponds to one letter of Serbian

Cyrillic.

Actually, in Serbia today the Cyrillic alphabet is mostly used in official and

ceremonial uses. Majority of newspapers are published in the ‘Serbian Latin’ script

(identical to ‘Croatian Latin’). Web sites published in Cyrillic have usually a ‘LAT’

button somewhere. For instance, Politika daily has pages both in Cyrillic and Latin

(check CYR and LAT links on top), but B92 is in Latin only. Even the web site of

Serbian government has links ћирилица Cyrillic and latinica Latin on the top (Cyrillic

is chosen by default). Statistics show that about 1/6 of text on Serbian web sites is

written in the Cyrillic script.

In Montenegro, the Cyrillic alphabet is even less used. The web site of Montenegrin

government has the two links on top, but the Latin script is displayed as default.

Most web pages, even official ones, are in Latin script only.

Besides using Cyrillic script sometimes, there are few differences in spelling (both in

Serbian/Montenegrin Latin and Cyrillic). The first one is spelling of foreign names.

Serbian and Montenegrin usually respell them using approximated pronunciation:

original Serbian spelling

New York Njujork Њујорк

George Bush Džordž Buš Џорџ Буш

Chicago Čikago Чикаго

The second difference is spelling of the future tense. When an infinitive in -t is

immediately followed by an auxiliary ću², ćeš²... it’s spelled together, and the

infinitive-final -t is discarded, with possible sound mutations:

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