Serbian

Where it’s spoken

Serbian is the official language of Serbia, co-official in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo, and a recognized minority language in Montenegro, Croatia, Hungary, Romania, North Macedonia, and Slovakia. Significant Serbian diaspora communities live in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the United States, Australia, and Canada.

What it sounds like

Serbian shares its phonology and grammar with Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin — collectively called BCMS or Serbo-Croatian. It has a pitch accent system, seven noun cases, and the distinctive consonants č, ć, dž, đ. The Ekavian variety (predominant in Serbia) and Ijekavian variety (used in Bosnia and Montenegro) differ in how Old Slavic “yat” is reflected.

How it’s written

Serbian is famously digraphic — both Cyrillic (azbuka) and Latin (abeceda) are official. The Cyrillic alphabet of 30 letters is associated with traditional/Orthodox identity, while Latin is widely used in commerce and digital communication. The two alphabets are in perfect one-to-one correspondence.

History

Serbian was reformed by Vuk Karadžić in the 19th century, who simplified the Cyrillic alphabet, adopted the “write as you speak” principle, and standardized the Štokavian dialect base.