Serbian, Croatian & Bosnian

Lesson opening

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

Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian: what really differs

The lesson “Ekavian & ijekavian” showed that Ijekavian is not “the Croatian pronunciation”: millions of Serbs speak it too. Now the whole picture: where the standards part ways, which words differ at the bakery, and what happens when you bring your Serbian to Zagreb or Sarajevo. The subject is sensitive: we describe what the standards do, and we do not decide for anyone what their language should be called.

One system, four standards

One everyday sentence, as it is said in Belgrade and in Zagreb:

Of nine words, two differ: one word (voz against vlak, “train”) and one habit (da plus the present tense against the infinitive, “that I go” against “to go”). The cases, the prepositions and the word order all stay put. That is the typical difference: a word here and a habit there, much like British “lift” and American “elevator”.

• Shared grammar: the same endings, the same aspect pairs, the same past tense with the participle in -o/-la/-lo, clitics in second position.
• Shared core vocabulary: voda, kuća, ruka, raditi, hvala, molim (water, house, hand, to work, thank you, please).
• One spelling principle: mostly “write as you speak”, and one Latin alphabet for all, gajica (named after its creator, Ljudevit Gaj), with č ć š ž đ dž (the Montenegrin norm adds ś and ź).

Vocabulary: the pairs you hear at once

Words are where most of the differences lie. You know five pairs from the lesson “Synonyms & antonyms”; here they are with the others. Learn the Serbian word; the Croatian one you only need to recognise:

From the same series comes šargarepa — mrkva “carrot”. Not every pair is strict: Serbs also call the week sedmica (nedelja is Sunday too). And note two traps: in Croatian vilica is “fork”, while in Serbian the same word means “jaw” (a fork is viljuška); Croatian otok is “island”, while Serbian otok usually means “swelling”.

International word or home-grown word

The second layer is systematic: where the Serbian norm takes the international word, the Croatian norm often prefers a home-grown one: fabrika — tvornica “factory”, biblioteka — knjižnica “library”, ambasada — veleposlanstvo “embassy”, računar — računalo “computer”. You need not learn them, just recognise them on a sign.

Cheat sheet

The cheat sheet — everything essential from the lesson on one page. In the app it opens at any time.

Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian: a map of the differences

One Shtokavian base, four standards, shared grammar; no interpreter needed. Official names: Serbian, Croatian, Montenegrin; Bosnia and Herzegovina has three (Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian). Linguists often call them varieties of one pluricentric language. Call a language what the speaker calls it.

Common pairs

International or home-grown

Greek reading or Latin reading

• hemija — kemija, hirurg — kirurg, haos — kaos, Evropa — Europa. English ch = /k/ follows the Croatian side.
• Names: Serbian spells by sound (Šekspir, Njujork), Croatian keeps the original (Shakespeare, New York).

Croatian months

Serbian and Bosnian: januar, februar, mart, april… (international).

Signs of the norm

Some -irati verbs are Serbian too: studirati, trenirati, montirati.

Script, pronunciation, Bosnian

• Serbia: both alphabets (Cyrillic official), Ekavian. Croatia: Latin only, Ijekavian. Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro: both alphabets, Ijekavian.
• Bosnian: an h its neighbours lack (kahva, lahko, sahat), more Turkish loanwords (komšija, avlija, amidža), both words of a pair: hljeb, hiljada / kruh, tisuća.

In practice

• You are understood everywhere; do not switch to “Croatian”: a mixture sounds worse than steady Serbian.
• In Croatia: a word or two if you like (kruh, kava), the months, the signs: Zračna luka, Kolodvor, Ljekarna.
• Croatian text: tko, što, -irati, radit ću. Bosnian: Ijekavian with ko, kahva.