Dialects of Serbian

Lesson opening

This is the first part of the lesson. The rest, the exercises and the reviews are in the app.

Dialects of Serbian: one base, five ways of speaking

“Ekavian & ijekavian” laid out a single sound on the map: what became of the old vowel yat. “Serbian, Croatian & Bosnian” showed where the four standards part ways. One picture is left, and it is the liveliest: how Serbia itself talks, from the plains of Vojvodina down to Vranje. There is one standard, but several ways of speaking beneath it, and they differ far more than mleko and mlijeko: in the south-east a noun has hardly any cases left, and comparatives are built nothing like the way you learned them. This lesson will not teach you to speak a dialect. It teaches you to recognise one and not be thrown by it.

The dialect groups are named after the word for “what”

The dialects of the lands that now have four standards (Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin) are divided into three large dialect groups (narečja), each named after its word for “what”:

• Shtokavian (štokavsko): što / šta. All of Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and most of Croatia.
• Kajkavian (kajkavsko): kaj. Northern Croatia (Zagorje, Međimurje, and the older layer of Zagreb speech itself).
• Chakavian (čakavsko): ča. Istria, the islands and parts of the Croatian coast.

So: there is no Kajkavian or Chakavian in Serbia. Everything you hear between Subotica and Vranje is Shtokavian, which is to say it stands on the same base as the standard you are learning. The fine divisions begin inside Shtokavian.

Two axes that divide Shtokavian

Serbian dialectologists, following the classification of Pavle Ivić, divide Shtokavian by two features at once. The first is yat: in its place stands e (Ekavian dialects), je / ije (Ijekavian) or i (Ikavian). The second is the accent:

• Neo-Shtokavian: four accents, as in the standard. The stress once moved one syllable towards the start of the word and never falls on the last syllable (vòda “water” is stressed on the first); long vowels after the stress are kept (see “The four accents” and, later on, “Length after the stress”).
• Old Shtokavian: that shift never happened. The stress stays where it always was and often sits on the last syllable; there are fewer accents than in the standard.

Cross the two axes and you get the map. These are the five zones you need:

The first two zones are Neo-Shtokavian, and the standard stands on them: Šumadija–Vojvodina gave Serbia its Ekavian standard, East Herzegovinian gave the Ijekavian one (the Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin standards rest on the same Neo-Shtokavian base). The other three were left out of the norm, and the further south and east you go, the further speech drifts from the standard. Torlak is sometimes classed not as a Shtokavian dialect at all but as a transition zone towards Bulgarian and Macedonian; its section will show why.

Šumadija–Vojvodina: the dialect the standard stands on

This is the speech of Belgrade, Novi Sad and Kragujevac, and the base on which the Ekavian standard was described. The gap between it and your textbook is small, so this zone comes free to a learner. It has three noticeable traits.

Ekavian, with an “Ikavian” nisam. The zone is Ekavian, but in a very common word, the negative of “to be”, yat came out as i, and that form made it straight into the standard.

Cheat sheet

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Dialects of Serbian: the map on one screen

All of Serbian is Shtokavian (što/šta). Kajkavian (kaj) and Chakavian (ča): in Croatia, not in Serbia. Serbian dialects are divided on two axes: yat × accent.

• Neo-Shtokavian: 4 accents, as in the standard; stress never on the last syllable (vòda); long vowels after the stress kept.
• Old Shtokavian: stress in its old place, often on the last syllable (voda); fewer than four accents.

Five zones

Dialect markers

nisam (i, the norm), nesam (south, e), nijesam (Montenegro, ije): one word, three fates of yat. Ijekavian mlijeko, dijete are standard, not dialect. ś, ź exist in the Zeta dialects and the 2009 Montenegrin spelling rules, not in the Serbian standard.

Torlak: the Balkan language area

Looks like Bulgarian? These are shared Balkan traits; for someone from the south-east it is their home dialect, not another language.

Standard and dialect

• Speakers switch: dialect at home, the norm at work and on air.
• Your strategy: speak the standard, recognise the dialect.
• Don’t imitate a dialect or judge anyone’s speech; ask neutrally: Izvinite, kako se to kaže književno? Izvinite, možete li da ponovite? Možete li malo sporije, molim vas?