Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian Languages

I

Introduction

Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian Languages, closely related languages, comprising, along with Slovenian, the western group of the South Slavic languages. The languages were formerly grouped together as one language, Serbo-Croatian, Croato-Serbian, or Serbo-Croato-Bosnian. Bosnian is spoken in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Croatian is spoken in Croatia and in nearby Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary, Italy, and Slovakia. Serbian has the largest number of speakers, in both Serbia and Montenegro. Small communities of people who speak the language are also found in neighboring countries and in North America.

Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian have three main dialects: Čakavian (or Ča, pronounced cha), spoken primarily in the Adriatic islands and along the coast of Croatia; Kajkavian (Kaj, pronounced to rhyme with sky), spoken in northern Croatia; and Štokavian (Što, pronounced shto), spoken throughout the rest of the region.

II

Characteristics

The modern Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian literary languages developed during the 19th century. The 1850 Vienna Agreement, a compromise between Croatian and Serbian literary figures and intellectuals, established the Štokavian dialect as the basis of a united literary language. The literary language had two major varieties: western, or Croatian, which is written in the Latin alphabet; and eastern, or Serbian, written primarily in the Cyrillic alphabet. There was also a de facto Bosnian standard, more often written in the Latin alphabet. Today the region has three official literary languages based on these divisions, but in most ways the three languages differ less than American, British, and Australian English.

This use of different alphabets in Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian reflects the historical religious and cultural differences between the regions. Speakers and writers in the western region became Roman Catholic, adopted the Latin alphabet, and looked to Rome for cultural and religious guidance, whereas the eastern region became Eastern Orthodox, adopted the Cyrillic alphabet, and looked toward Constantinople (now İstanbul) and later toward Russia.

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Aside from the alphabets, the differences between the varieties have been almost entirely in vocabulary, with a few differences in syntax (the organization of words in sentences). The varieties have essentially identical sound systems; the differences between the pronunciations of British and American English are much greater than those between the varieties of Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian. Despite some significant differences in vocabulary, a majority of the people living in Australia, Canada, Great Britain, and the United States generally believe that they speak and write varieties of the same language, English. The fact that the majority of Bosnians, Croats, and Serbs now claim that they speak different languages demonstrates how the difference between languages and dialects, or varieties, can lie in the perceptions of the speakers. These perceptions are influenced by a variety of historical, political, cultural, and religious factors in each region.

The Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian literary languages are notable for their vowel systems. The vowels a, e, i, o, u, and r may be long or short (referring to the relative duration of the vowel’s sound) and may have rising or falling intonation (referring to the relative pitch of the voice while producing the sound). Thus the written word sela may have four different pronunciations and meanings, depending upon whether the first vowel is long or short and whether it has a rising or falling intonation. When r is a vowel it sounds much like the middle sound in the English words work and bird.

There are also subdialects in the languages: Ekavian, Ikavian, and Ijekavian (or Jekavian). These are distinguished most easily by their pronunciation of a certain earlier vowel sound. This vowel may appear as e, i, je, or ije (spoken somewhat like the ye in “yes”). The word for “milk,” for example, is mleko in the Ekavian dialect, mliko in Ikavian, and mlijeko in Ijekavian. Whereas literary Croatian uses the Ijekavian dialect spellings, as does Bosnian, literary Serbian primarily uses the Ekavian spellings. Montenegro uses Ijekavian with the Cyrillic alphabet.

Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian have preserved most of the case forms from Common Slavic (the parent language of all the Slavic languages): nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, and vocative. The locative case from Common Slavic has merged with the dative and is used with certain prepositions. Nouns belong to one of three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter, as in the Latin and German languages. Case, gender, and number (singular or plural) are indicated by the addition of an ending to the noun.

Verb forms include a present tense, two future tenses, a past (perfect) tense, and a pluperfect tense. The literary languages, especially in the Ekavian or eastern variant, have preserved two other past tenses from Common Slavic: imperfect and aorist. The imperfect resembles the English progressive tense (the verb phrase was sleeping in “While I was sleeping …”), whereas the aorist is a narrative tense similar to the simple past tense in English (“I came home, ate a snack, and read the newspaper”).

III

Politics and History

The languages have been heavily affected by politics. The Vienna Agreement of 1850 was part of an effort to unify the South Slavs. Under the regime of Yugoslavian president Josip Broz Tito, the 1954 Novi Sad Agreement declared Serbo-Croatian a single language with two official variants, a western and an eastern. This agreement held, although under considerable strain, until the collapse of Yugoslavia in 1991.

Since the collapse of Yugoslavia each successor country has sought to reaffirm its ethnic identity through language. Linguistic separatists have been very active in making up new words to replace words formerly shared with the other dialects. The Croats have sought to purify Croatian of Serbian influence, whereas Bosniaks (Muslim Bosnians) have embraced Arabic and Turkish words. Some Montenegrins seek to have the variant of Serbian spoken in Montenegro declared a separate language called Montenegrin. See also Wars of Yugoslav Succession.

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