Serbian language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Serbian (српски srpski) | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Serbia and Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Republic of Macedonia, Croatia, Sweden, Hungary, Romania, Albania and other countries |
|
| Total speakers: | 11,144,758 | |
| Ranking: | around 75 | |
| Genetic classification: | Indo-European Slavic South Slavic Western South Slavic Serbian |
|
| Official status | ||
| Official language of: | Serbia and Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina | |
| Regulated by: | Council for Standardization of the Serbian Language | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | sr | |
| ISO 639-2: | scc (B) | srp (T) |
| ISO/DIS 639-3: | srp | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
The Serbian language is one of the standard versions of the Štokavian dialect (former standard was known as Serbo-Croatian language). Serbian is used primarily in Serbia and Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and by Serbs everywhere. It should not be mistaken for the larger language continuum Serbo-Croatian language.
The Serbian alphabet is very consistent: one letter per sound with an insignificant number of exceptions. This phonetic principle is represented in the saying: "Write as you speak and read as it is written", the principle used (though not invented) by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić when reforming the Cyrillic spelling of Serbian in the 19th century.
Another rare feature of Serbian language is the presence of two alphabets: Cyrillic and Latin. The two alphabets are almost equivalent; the only difference is in the glyphs used. This is due to historical reasons; Serbian once being a part of the Serbo-Croat unification brought Latinic usage into Serbia.
Contents |
Alphabets
The following compares Српска Ћирилица (Serbian Cyrillic script) or Aзбука (Azbuka) with Srpska Latinica (Serbian Latin script) or Abeceda.
| Cyrillic | Latin | Cyrillic | Latin | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| А | A | Н | N | |
| Б | B | Њ | Nj | |
| В | V | О | O | |
| Г | G | П | P | |
| Д | D | Р | R | |
| Ђ | Đ | С | S | |
| Е | E | Т | T | |
| Ж | Ž | Ћ | Ć | |
| З | Z | У | U | |
| И | I | Ф | F | |
| Ј | J | Х | H | |
| К | K | Ц | C | |
| Л | L | Ч | Č | |
| Љ | Lj | Џ | Dž | |
| М | M | Ш | Š |
Notes
- The letters Lj, Nj and Dž are represented by two characters in the Latin alphabet and are always written together even in top-down text). They are also sorted together (i.e. ljubav comes after lopta).
- Cyrillic is considered more precise because there is no ambiguity involved in reading Lj, Nj and Dž. For example, both Cyrillic "инјекција" (mathematical injection or medical injection) and "његов" (his) are written with "nj" in Latin form. Thus, transliteration of Cyrillic text to Latin is straightforward but causes loss of information that makes it harder to perform the inverse.
- The sort order of the two alphabets is different.
- Azbuka: А Б В Г Д Ђ Е Ж З И Ј К Л Љ М Н Њ О П Р С Т Ћ У Ф Х Ц Ч Џ Ш
- Abeceda: A B C Č Ć D Dž Đ E F G H I J K L Lj M N Nj O P R S Š T U V Z Ž
- Many e-mail and even web documents written in Serbian use basic ASCII, where Serbian Latin letters that use diacritics (Ž Ć Č Š) are replaced with the base, undiacritised forms (Z C C S), letter Đ is replaced with Dj, and Dž with Dz. The original words are then recognized from the context. This is not an official alphabet, and is considered a bad practice, but there are some documents in Serbian that use this simplified alphabet. This is common practice in other languages that use letters with diacritics.
Phonology
Vowels
The Serbian vowel system is simple, with only five vowels. All vowels are monophthongs. The oral vowels are as follows:
| Latin script | Cyrillic script | IPA | X-SAMPA | Description | English approximation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| a | а | [a] | [a] | open front unrounded | father |
| i | и | [i] | [i] | close front unrounded | seek |
| e | е | [ε] | [E] | open-mid front unrounded | ten |
| o | о | [ɔ] | [o] | open-mid back rounded | caught (British) |
| u | у | [u] | [u] | closed back rounded | boom |
Consonants
The consonant system is more complicated, and its characteristic features are series of affricate and palatal consonants. As in English, voicedness is phonemic, but aspiration is not.
In consonant clusters all consonants are either voiced or voiceless. All the consonants are voiced (if the last consonant is normally voiced) or voiceless (if the last consonant is normally voiceless). This rule does not apply to approximants — a consonant cluster may contain voiced approximants and voiceless consonants; as well as to foreign words (Washington would be transcribed as VašinGton/ВашинГтон), personal names and when consonants are not inside of one syllable.
R can be syllabic, playing the role of a vowel in certain words (occasionally, it can even have a long accent). For example, the tongue-twister na vrh brda vrba mrda involves four words with syllabic r. A similar feature exists in Czech, Slovak and Macedonian. Very rare, l can be syllabic (in the name for the river "Vltava", 'l' is syllabic) as well as lj, m, n and nj in jargon.
Morphology
Cases
There are seven cases in Serbian: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, instrumental and locative. This, in concert with a non-fixed word-order, can make Serbian difficult to learn for speakers of languages without a strong case system. In Serbian, the sentence "Anna loves Philip" can therefore variously be expressed thus:
- Ana voli Filipa
- Filipa voli Ana
- Ana Filipa voli
- Filipa Ana voli
- Voli Ana Filipa
- Voli Filipa Ana
Serbian literature
Main article: Serbian literature
Serbian literature emerged in the Middle Ages, and included such works as Miroslavljevo jevanđelje (The Gospel of Miroslav) in 1192 and Dušanov zakonik (Dušan's Code) in 1349. Little secular mediæval literature has been preserved, but what there is shows that it was in accord with its time; for example, Serbian Alexandride, a book about Alexander the Great, and a translation of Tristan and Isolde into Serbian.
In the mid-15th century, Serbia was conquered by the Ottoman Empire and, for the next 400 years there was no opportunity for the creation of secular written literature. However, some of the greatest literary works in Serbian come from this time, in the form of oral literature, the most notable form being Serbian epic poetry. It is known that Goethe learned the Serbian language in order to read Serbian epic poetry in the original. Written literature was produced only for religious use in churches and monasteries, and held to Old Church Slavonic. By the end of the 18th century, the written literature had become estranged from the spoken language. In the second half of the 18th century, the new language appeared, called Slavonic-Serbian. In the early 19th century, Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, following the work of Sava Mrkalj, reformed the Cyrillic alphabet by introducing the phonetic principle, as well as promoting the spoken language of the people as a literary norm.
The first printed book in Serbian, Oktoih was produced in Cetinje in 1494, only 40 years after Gutenberg's invention of movable type.
Demographics
Figures of speakers according to countries:
- Serbia-Montenegro: 7,170,000
- Serbia: 6,770,000
- Vojvodina: 1,557,020 (2002)
- Central Serbia: 5,063,679 (2002)
- Kosovo: 150,000
- Montenegro: 401,382 (2003)
- Serbia: 6,770,000
- Bosnia-Herzegovina: 1,500,000
- USA: around 500,000
- Canada: 55,545 (2001 census, 40,580 of that in Ontario)
- Croatia: 44,629 (2001)
- Republic of Macedonia: 33,315 (2001)
- Romania: 20,377 (2001)
- Australia: 50,000 (2001)
Trivia
Two Serbian words that are used in many of the world's languages are vampire and slivovitz (though the etymology and origin of the word vampire is disputed [1]).
Differences to similar languages
Main article: Differences in official languages in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia
See also
- Serbo-Croatian language
- Common phrases in Serbian
- Serbian proverbs
- Serbian tongue-twisters
- Famous non-Serbs who were speaking or learning the language
- Šatrovački (slang form)
- Romano-Serbian language (mix with Romany)
External links
- Standard language as an instrument of culture and the product of national history — an article by pre-eminent linguist Pavle Ivić
- Serbian School Learn Serbian online for free. en:Serbian language
