Standard Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian are different national variants and official registers of the pluricentric Serbo-Croatian language. Contents.

History In socialist Yugoslavia, the language was approached as a pluricentric language with two regional normative varieties: Eastern (used in Serbia, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina by all ethnicities, either with the Ekavian or the Ijekavian pronunciation) and Western (used in Croatia by all ethnicities, the Ijekavian pronunciation only). However, due to discontent in Croatian intellectual circles, beginning in the late 1960s Croatian cultural workers started to refer to the language exclusively as 'the Croatian literary language', or sometimes 'the Croatian or Serbian language', as was common before Yugoslavia.

Bolstered with the 1967 Declaration on the Name and Status of the Croatian Literary Language, these two names were subsequently prescribed in the Croatian constitution of 1974. The language was regarded as one common language with different variants and dialects. The unity of the language was emphasised, making the differences not an indicator of linguistic divisions, but rather factors enriching the 'common language' diversity. West European scientists judge the Yugoslav language policy as an exemplary one: Although three-quarters of the population spoke one language, no single language was official on a federal level. Official languages were declared only at the level of constituent republics and provinces. (COBISS-Sr) .

Post-communist era

With the breakup of the Yugoslav Federation, in search of additional indicators of independent and separate national identities, language became a political instrument in virtually all of the new republics. With a boom of neologisms in Croatia and a privileged position of the Cyrillic script in Serb-inhabited parts of the new states, every state and entity showed a 'nationalisation' of the language.

After the declaration of independence in 1992, Bosnian linguists reinstated the inherited Proto-Slavic *x, realised as h, in forms retained in Bosniak vernacular speech—such as lahak and mehak, with cognates in Slovenian lahek/mehek, Czech lehký and Russian лёгкий/мягкий. They also favoured ć over št in forms such as općina and uopće, and standardised older vernacular usage of some Turkish, German and Hungarian loanwords.

The independent standardisation of the language in Montenegro, debated among Montenegrin academics since the 1990s, culminated in the 2009 orthography and 2010 grammar reform. Most notably, Montenegrins codified the late-jotation reflexes ś and ź as distinct phonemes and letters, replacing or competing with earlier sj/zj spellings in forms such as śekira/sjekira, śedi/sjedi, and źenica/zjenica, and preserved a number of archaic lexical and grammatical features of traditional Montenegrin usage.

Serbian, Montenegrin and Bosnian standards varieties tend to be inclusive, i.e. to accept a wider range of idioms and to use loanwords (German, Italian and Turkish), whereas the Croatian language policy is more purist and prefers neologisms (ÖNB). to loan-words, as well as the re-use of neglected older words. Yet there is criticism of the puristic language policy even in Croatia, as exemplified by linguist Snježana Kordić.

In 2017, numerous prominent writers, scientists, journalists, activists and other public figures from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia signed the Declaration on the Common Language, faced with "the negative social, cultural and economic consequences of political manipulations of language in the current language policies of the four countries", which "include using language as an argument justifying the segregation of schoolchildren in some multiethnic environments, unnecessary 'translation' in administration or the media, inventing differences where they do not exist, bureaucratic coercion, as well as censorship (and necessarily also self-censorship), where linguistic expression is imposed as a criterion of ethnonational affiliation and a means of affirming political loyalty".

Despite the 'nationalisation' of the language in the four countries, "lexical differences between the ethnic variants are extremely limited, even when compared with those between closely related Slavic languages (such as standard Czech and Slovak, Bulgarian and Macedonian), and grammatical differences are even less pronounced. More importantly, complete understanding between the ethnic variants of the standard language makes translation and second language teaching impossible", which all means that it is still a pluricentric language. "An examination of all the major 'levels' of language show that BCS is clearly a single language with a single grammatical system."

Writing

Script

Though all of the language variants could theoretically use either, the scripts differ: Bosnian and Montenegrin officially use both the Latin and Cyrillic scripts, but the Latin one is more in widespread use. Croatian exclusively uses the Latin alphabet. Serbian uses both the Cyrillic and Latin scripts. Cyrillic is the official script of the administration in Serbia and Republika Srpska, but the Latin script is the more widely used in media and especially on the Internet.

Phonemes

Three out of four standard variants have the same set of 30 regular phonemes, so the Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian Latin and Serbian Cyrillic alphabets map one to one with one another and with the phoneme inventory, while Montenegrin alphabet has 32 regular phonemes, the additional two being and .

Some linguists analyse the yat reflexes and , commonly realised as in Croatian and Bosnian dialects, as a separate phoneme – "jat diphthong" – or even two phonemes, one short and one long. There are even several proposals by Croatian linguists for an orthography reform concerning these two diphthongs, but they have not been seriously considered for implementation.

The standardisation of Montenegrin in 2009 has introduced two new letters, and , for the sounds and respectively. These are optional spellings of the digraphs and . Critics argue that and are merely allophones of and in Herzegovinian dialects such as Montenegrin, and therefore the new letters are not required for an adequate orthography.

Most dialects of Serbia and Montenegro originally lack the phoneme , instead having , , or nothing (silence). was introduced with language unification, and the Serbian and Montenegrin standards allow for some doublets such as snaja–snaha and hajde–ajde. However, in other words, especially those of foreign origin, is mandatory.

In some regions of Croatia and Bosnia, the sounds for letters (realised as in most other dialects) and merged or nearly merged, usually into . The same happened with their voiced counterparts, i.e. () and () merged into . As result, speakers of those dialects often have difficulties distinguishing these sounds.

Orthography

The Serbian variety usually phonetically transcribes foreign names and words (although both transcription and transliteration are allowed), whereas the Croatian standard usually transliterates (i.e. keeping foreign spellings intact). Bosnian and Montenegrin accept both models, but transliteration is often preferred.

Also, when the subject of the future tense is omitted, producing a reversal of the infinitive and auxiliary "ću", only the final "i" of the infinitive is orthographically elided in Croatian and Bosnian, whereas in Serbian and Montenegrin the two have merged into a single word: "Uradit ću to." (Croatian/Bosnian) "Uradiću to." (Serbian/Montenegrin)

Phonology

Accentuation

In general, the Shtokavian dialects that represent the foundation of the four standard varieties have four pitch accents on stressed syllables: falling tone on a short vowel, written e.g. in dictionaries; rising tone on a short vowel, written e.g. ; falling tone on a long vowel, written e.g. ; and rising tone on a long vowel, written e.g. . In addition, the following unstressed vowel may be either short, , or long, . In declension and verb conjugation, accent shifts, both by type and position, are very frequent.

The distinction between four accents and preservation of post accent lengths is common in vernaculars of western Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, in parts of Serbia, as well as in parts of Croatia with a strong Serb presence. In addition, a distinct characteristics of some vernaculars is stress shift to proclitics, e.g. phrase u Bosni (in Bosnia) will be pronounced instead of as in northern parts of Serbia.

The northern vernaculars in Serbia also preserve the four-accent system, but the unstressed lengths have been shortened or disappeared in some positions. However, the shortening of post-accent lengths is in progress in all Shtokavian vernaculars, even in those most conservative in Montenegro. Stress shift to proclitics is, however, in northern Serbia rare and mostly limited to negative verb constructs (ne znam = I don't know > ).

The situation in Croatia, is however, different. A large proportion of speakers of Croatian, especially those coming from Zagreb, do not distinguish between rising and falling accents.A Handbook of Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian, Wayles Brown and Theresa Alt, SEELRC 2004Lexical, Pragmatic, and Positional Effects on Prosody in Two Dialects of Croatian and Serbian, Rajka Smiljanic , Routledge, This is considered to be a feature of the Zagreb dialect, which has strong Kajkavian influence, rather than standard Croatian.

Regardless of vernacular differences, all three standard varieties exclusively promote the Neo-Shtokavian four-accentual system. Both dialects that are considered to be the basis of standard Serbian (Eastern Herzegovinian and Šumadija-Vojvodina dialects) have four accents.

Phonetics

Feature CroatianExamples are given by http://hjp.znanje.hr/. BosnianExamples are given by Rječnik bosanskog jezika. Sarajevo, 2007. Rječnik bosanskoga jezika. Sarajevo, 2010. SerbianExamples are given by Rečnik srpskoga jezika. Novi Sad, 2011. Montenegrin English Opposition -u/e burza berza stock exchange porculan porcelanporculan porcelan porcelain Opposition -u/i tanjur tanjir pjat tanjir plate Opposition -u/o barun baron baron krumpir krompir potato Opposition -i/o(j) ubojstvo ubistvo murder djelomično djelimično d(j)elimično djelimično partially Opposition -io/iju milijun milion million Opposition -i/je after l/t proljev proliv diarrhoea stjecaj stjecajsticaj sticaj coincidence Opposition -s/z inzistirati insistirati insist Opposition -s/c financije finansijefinancije finansije finance Opposition -t/ć plaća plaćaplata plata salary sretan sretansrećan srećan happy Opposition -št/šć korištenje korišćenje usage Opposition -k/h kor hor choir kirurg hirurg surgeon klor hlor chlorine Opposition -ač/er boksač bokser boxer tenisač teniser tennis player Opposition -l/-∅ after o sol so salt vol vo ox kolčić kočićkolčić štap kočić štapkočić stick Serbian and Montenegrin often drop or do not add initial or medial 'h' čahura čaura cartridge hrvač rvač wrestler hrđa rđa rust Serbian and Montenegrin drop final 'r' jučer juče yesterday večer veče evening također takođe also

Morphology

There are three principal "pronunciations" (izgovori/изговори) of the Shtokavian dialect that differ in their reflexes of the Proto-Slavic vowel jat. Illustrated by the Common Slavic word for "child", dětę, they are: dite in the Ikavian pronunciation dijete in the Ijekavian pronunciation dete in the Ekavian pronunciation

The Serbian language recognises Ekavian and Ijekavian as equally valid pronunciations, whereas Croatian, Montenegrin and Bosnian accept only the Ijekavian pronunciation. In Bosnia and Herzegovina (regardless of the official language) and in Montenegro, the Ijekavian pronunciation is used almost exclusively.