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{{About|the language}}
{{Infobox language
| name = Central South Slavic
| altname = 
{{(!}} class{{=}}"wikitable sortable mw-collapsible mw-collapsed"
{{!}}+
! colspan="2" {{!}}Shtokavian
{{!-}}
{{!}} colspan="2" {{!}}''štokavski'' 
{{!-}}
!Native to
{{!}}[[Serbia]], [[Croatia]], [[Bosnia and Herzegovina]], [[Montenegro]], [[Romania]], [[Hungary]]
{{!-}}
!Native speakers
{{!}}13 million<sup>[''[[wikipedia:Citation needed|citation needed]]'']</sup>
{{!-}}
![[Language family]]
{{!}}[[Indo-European languages|Indo-European]]
* [[Balto-Slavic languages|Balto-Slavic]]
** [[Slavic languages|Slavic]]
*** [[South Slavic languages|South Slavic]]
**** Western
***** [[Bosnian language|Central Sout Slavic]]
****** '''Shtokavian'''
{{!-}}
!Standard forms
{{!}}[[Serbian language|Serbian]]

[[Croatian language|Croatian]]

[[Bosnian language|Bosnian]]

[[Montenegrin language|Montenegrin]]

Standard Serbo-Croatian (defunct)
{{!-}}
! colspan{{=}}"2" {{!}}Language codes
{{!-}}
![[ISO 639-3]]
{{!}}–
{{!-}}
![[Glottolog]]
{{!}}<code>shto1242</code>
{{!-}}
![[Linguasphere Observatory|Linguasphere]]
{{!}}<code>53-AAA-ga to -gf &</code> 
<code>53-AAA-gi (-gia to -gii)</code>
{{!-}}
{{!}}Shtokavian subdialects (Pavle Ivić 1988)
{{!-}}
{{!}} colspan{{=}}"2" {{!}}'''This article contains [[International Phonetic Alphabet|IPA]] phonetic symbols.''' Without proper [[Help:IPA#Rendering%20issues|rendering support]], you may see [[Replacement character|question marks, boxes, or other symbols]] instead of [[Unicode]] characters. For a guide to IPA symbols, see [[Help:IPA]].
{{!)}}
'''Shtokavian''' or '''Štokavian''' ([[Help:IPA/English|/ʃtɒˈkɑːviən, -ˈkæv-/]];{{plainlist|
*[[Serbian language|Serbian]]
*[[Croatian language|Croatian]]
*[[Bosnian language|Bosnian]]
*[[Montenegrin language|Montenegrin]]}} 
| nativename = {{plainlist|
*{{lang|sh-Latn|srpskohrvatski}} / {{lang|sh-Latn|hrvatskosrpski}}
*{{lang|sh-Cyrl|српскохрватски}} / {{lang|sh-Cyrl|хрватскосрпски}}}}
| states = [[Serbia]], [[Croatia]], [[Bosnia and Herzegovina]], [[Montenegro]], and [[Kosovo]]
| region = 
| ethnicity = [[Serbs|Serb]], [[Croats|Croat]], [[Bosniaks|Bosniak]], [[Montenegrins|Montenegrin]], [[Bunjevci|Bunjevac]]
| speakers = {{sigfig|21|2}} million
| date = 2011
| ref = <ref>{{cite web |url=http://assets.cambridge.org/97805212/94485/excerpt/9780521294485_excerpt.pdf |title=The Slavic Languages |work=Cambridge Language Surveys |page=7 |accessdate=19 June 2017}}</ref>
| familycolor = Indo-European
| fam2 = [[Balto-Slavic languages|Balto-Slavic]]
| fam3 = [[Slavic languages|Slavic]]
| fam4 = [[South Slavic languages|South Slavic]]
| fam5 = [[Western South Slavic languages|Western South Slavic]]
| fam6 = [[Central South Slavic languages|Central South Slavic]]
| stand1 = [[Serbian language|Serbian]]
| stand2 = [[Croatian language|Croatian]]
| stand3 = [[Bosnian language|Bosnian]]
| stand4 = [[Montenegrin language|Montenegrin]] (incipient)
| dia1 = '''[[Dialects of Serbo-Croatian]]''':
| dia2 = [[Shtokavian]] (standard)
| dia3 = [[Chakavian]]
| dia4 = [[Kajkavian]]
| dia5 = [[Torlakian]] (disputed)
| script = {{plainlist|
*[[Latin script|Latin]] ([[Gaj's Latin alphabet|Gaj]])
*[[Cyrillic script|Cyrillic]] ([[Serbian Cyrillic alphabet|Serbian]] and [[Montenegrin Cyrillic alphabet|Montenegrin]])
*[[Yugoslav Braille]]}}
| iso1 = sh
| iso1comment = (deprecated)
| iso2 = [[ISO639-3:scr|scr]],&nbsp;[[ISO639-3:scc|scc]]
| iso2comment = (deprecated)
| iso3 = hbs
| lc1 = bos
| ld1 = [[Bosnian language|Bosnian]]
<!-- This is the unrelated [[Sherbro language]]
| lc2 = bun 
| ld2 = [[Bunjevac dialect|Bunjevac]]
-->
| lc2 = cnr
| ld2 = [[Montenegrin language|Montenegrin]]
| lc3 = hrv
| ld3 = [[Croatian language|Croatian]]
| lc4 = kjv
| ld4 = [[Kajkavian]]
| lc5 = srp
| ld5 = [[Serbian language|Serbian]]
| lc6 = svm
| ld6 = [[Slavomolisano]]
| lingua = 53-AAA-g
| glotto = moli1249
| glottorefname = Molise–SKB
| nation = {{plainlist|
*{{flag|Serbia}} <small>(as Serbian)</small>
*{{flag|Croatia}} <small>(as Croatian)</small>
*{{flag|Bosnia and Herzegovina}} <small>(as Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian)</small>
*{{flag|Montenegro}}<br><small>(as Montenegrin)</small>
*{{flag|Kosovo}} <small>(as Serbian)</small><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.kushtetutakosoves.info/repository/docs/Constitution.of.the.Republic.of.Kosovo.pdf |title=Constitution of the Republic of Kosovo |page=2 |date= |accessdate=2012-08-17}}</ref>
*{{EU}}<br><small>(as Croatian)</small>}}
| minority = {{plainlist|
*{{flag|Austria}} ([[Burgenland Croatian|Burgenland]]){{citation needed|date=April 2016}}
*{{flag|Hungary}} (in [[Baranya County]]){{citation needed|date=April 2016}}
*{{flag|Italy}} ([[Slavomolisano|Molise]])<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.sardegnacultura.it/documenti/7_93_20061218095702.pdf|title=Legge Regionale n.15 del 14 maggio 1997 - Tutela e valorizzazione del patrimonio culturale delle minoranze linguistiche nel Molise - Bollettino Ufficiale n. 10 del 16.5.1997|publisher=Sardegna Cultura|date= |accessdate=2018-07-15}}</ref>
*{{flag|Romania}} (in [[Carașova]], [[Lupac]]){{citation needed|date=April 2016}}
*{{flag|Slovakia}}<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.b92.net/eng/news/society-article.php?yyyy=2010&mm=02&dd=09&nav_id=65083 |title=B92.net |publisher=B92.net |date= |accessdate=2013-09-01 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20131110174015/http://www.b92.net/eng/news/society-article.php?yyyy=2010&mm=02&dd=09&nav_id=65083 |archivedate=2013-11-10 |df= }}</ref>
*{{CZE}}<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.minorityrights.org/?lid=1834 |title=Minority Rights Group International : Czech Republic : Czech Republic Overview |publisher=Minorityrights.org |date= |accessdate=2012-10-24}}</ref>
*{{MKD}}<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.minorityrights.org/?lid=4021 |title=Minority Rights Group International : Macedonia : Macedonia Overview |publisher=Minorityrights.org |date= |accessdate=2012-10-24}}</ref>}}
| agency = {{plainlist|
*[[Institute of Croatian Language and Linguistics]] (Croatian)
*[[Board for Standardization of the Serbian Language]] (Serbian)
*[[University of Sarajevo]] (Bosnian)}}
| map = Serbo croatian language2005.png
| mapcaption = {{legend|#a7f0f0|Areas where Serbo-Croatian is spoken by a plurality of inhabitants (as of 2005){{update-inline|date=July 2018}}<br />
----
<small>'''Note:''' <sup>a</sup> [[Kosovo]] independence disputed, see [[2008 Kosovo declaration of independence]]</small>
| notice = IPA
}}}}
{{South Slavic languages sidebar}}

'''Serbo-Croatian''' ({{IPAc-en|audio=En-us-Serbo-Croatian.ogg|ˌ|s|ɜːr|b|oʊ|k|r|oʊ|ˈ|eɪ|ʃ|ən|,_|-|b|ə|-}};<!-- DO NOT CHANGE THE STRESS – IT IS IN ACCORDANCE WITH WHAT LPD SAYS --><ref name="lpd">{{citation|last=Wells|first=John C.|year=2008|title=Longman Pronunciation Dictionary|edition=3rd|publisher=Longman|isbn=978-1-4058-8118-0}}</ref>{{refn|name=jones2003|{{Citation |last=Jones |first=Daniel |author-link=Daniel Jones (phonetician) |title=English Pronouncing Dictionary |editors=Peter Roach, James Hartmann and Jane Setter |place=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press |orig-year=1917 |year=2003 |isbn=3-12-539683-2 }}}} {{lang|sh-Latn|srpskohrvatski}} / {{lang|sh-Cyrl|српскохрватски}} also called '''Serbo-Croat''' {{IPAc-en|ˌ|s|ɜːr|b|oʊ|ˈ|k|r|oʊ|æ|t|,_|-|b|ə|-}},<!-- DO NOT CHANGE THE STRESS – IT IS IN ACCORDANCE WITH WHAT LPD SAYS --><ref name="lpd" />{{refn|name=jones2003}} '''Serbo-Croat-Bosnian''' ('''SCB'''),<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Čamdžić |first1=Amela |last2=Hudson |first2=Richard |year= |title=Serbo-Croat-Bosnian clitics and Word Grammar |publisher=UCL Psychology and Language Sciences |url=http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/PUB/WPL/02papers/camdzic_hudson.pdf |accessdate=11 September 2013}}</ref> '''Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian''' ('''BCS'''),<ref>{{citation|last=Alexander|first=Ronelle|title=Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian – A Grammar with Sociolinguistic Commentary|publisher=The University of Wisconsin Press|year=2006|isbn=978-0-299-21194-3}}</ref> or '''Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian''' ('''BCMS''')<ref name=ThomasOsipov />) is a [[South Slavic languages|South Slavic language]] and the primary language of [[Serbia]], [[Croatia]], [[Bosnia and Herzegovina]], and [[Montenegro]]. It is a [[pluricentric language]] with four<ref>{{cite book|last=Mørk |first=Henning |year=2002 |language=Danish |title=Serbokroatisk grammatik: substantivets morfologi |trans-title=Serbo-Croatian Grammar: Noun Morphology |series=Arbejdspapirer ; vol. 1 |location=Århus |publisher=Slavisk Institut, Århus Universitet |page=unpaginated (Preface) |oclc=471591123}}</ref> [[mutually intelligible]] standard varieties.

South Slavic dialects historically formed a [[dialect continuum|continuum]]. The turbulent history of the area, particularly due to expansion of the [[Ottoman Empire]], resulted in a patchwork of dialectal and religious differences. Due to population migrations, [[Shtokavian]] became the most widespread dialect in the western Balkans, intruding westwards into the area previously occupied by [[Chakavian]] and [[Kajkavian]] (which further blend into [[Slovene language|Slovenian]] in the northwest). [[Bosniaks]], [[Croats]] and [[Serbs]] differ in religion and were historically often part of different cultural circles, although a large part of the nations have lived side by side under foreign overlords. During that period, the language was referred to under a variety of names, such as "Slavic", "Illyrian", or according to region, "Bosnian", "Serbian" and "Croatian", the latter often in combination with "Slavonian" or "Dalmatian".

Serbo-Croatian was [[standard language|standardized]] in the mid-19th-century [[Vienna Literary Agreement]] by Croatian and Serbian writers and philologists, decades before a Yugoslav state was established.{{Sfn | Blum | 2002 | pp = 130–132}} From the very beginning, there were slightly different literary Serbian and Croatian standards, although both were based on the same Shtokavian subdialect, [[Eastern Herzegovinian dialect|Eastern Herzegovinian]]. In the 20th century, Serbo-Croatian served as the official language of the [[Kingdom of Yugoslavia]] (when it was called "Serbo-Croato-Slovenian"),<ref name="Busch2004" /> and later as one of the official languages of the [[Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia]]. The [[breakup of Yugoslavia]] affected language attitudes, so that [[Language secessionism#In Serbo-Croatian|social conceptions of the language separated]] on ethnic and political lines. Since the [[breakup of Yugoslavia]], Bosnian has likewise been established as an official standard in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and there is an ongoing movement to codify a separate Montenegrin standard. Serbo-Croatian thus generally goes by the names [[Serbian language|Serbian]], [[Croatian language|Croatian]], [[Bosnian language|Bosnian]], and sometimes [[Montenegrin language|Montenegrin]] and [[Bunjevac dialect|Bunjevac]].<ref>"The same language [Croatian] is referred to by different names, Serbian (srpski), Serbo-Croat (in Croatia: hrvatsko-srpski), Bosnian (bosanski), based on political and ethnic grounds. […] the names Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian are politically determined and refer to the same language with possible slight variations." ({{Harvnb | Brown | Anderson | 2006 | p = 294}})</ref>

Like other South Slavic languages, Serbo-Croatian has a simple [[Serbo-Croatian phonology|phonology]], with the common five-vowel system and twenty-five consonants. Its [[Serbo-Croatian grammar|grammar]] evolved from [[History of the Slavic languages|Common Slavic]], with complex [[inflection]], preserving seven [[grammatical case]]s in nouns, pronouns, and adjectives. Verbs exhibit [[imperfective aspect|imperfective]] or [[perfective aspect]], with a moderately complex tense system. Serbo-Croatian is a [[pro-drop language]] with flexible word order, [[subject–verb–object]] being the default. It can be written in [[Serbian Cyrillic]] or [[Gaj's Latin alphabet]], whose thirty letters mutually map one-to-one, and the [[orthography]] is highly [[Phonemic orthography|phonemic]] in all standards.

== Name ==
Throughout the history of the South Slavs, the vernacular, literary, and written languages (e.g. Chakavian, Kajkavian, Shtokavian) of the various regions and ethnicities developed and diverged independently. Prior to the 19th century, they were collectively called "Illyric", "Slavic", "Slavonian", "Bosnian", "Dalmatian", "Serbian" or "Croatian".<ref>{{cite journal |author=Kordić, Snježana |authorlink=Snježana Kordić |title=Moderne Nationalbezeichnungen und Texte aus vergangenen Jahrhunderten |trans-title=Modern nation names and texts in the past |url=http://www.zeitschrift-fuer-balkanologie.de/index.php/zfb/article/view/222/222 |language=German |journal=Zeitschrift für Balkanologie |volume=46 |issue=1 |pages=40–41 |year=2010 |issn=0044-2356 |id={{ZDB|201058-6}} |archivedate=23 August 2012 |archiveurl=https://www.webcitation.org/6A7zcF9G9?url=http://bib.irb.hr/datoteka/495349.MODERNE_NATIONALBEZEICHNUNGEN.PDF |accessdate=11 May 2014 |df= }}</ref> Since the XIX century the term ''Illyrian'' or ''Illyric'' was used quite often (thus creating confusion with the [[Illyrian language]]). Although the word ''Illyrian'' was used on a few occasions before, the widespread usage of the term began after [[Ljudevit Gaj]] and several other prominent linguists met at [[Ljudevit Vukotinović]]'s house to discuss the issue in 1832.<ref>{{cite book|last=Despalatović |first=Elinor Murray |title=Ljudevit Gaj and the Illyrian Movement |publisher=East European Quarterly; [[Columbia University Press]] |page=64 |location= New York and London |year=1975 |isbn=0-914710-05-2}}</ref> The term ''Serbo-Croatian'' was first used by [[Jacob Grimm]] in 1824,{{Sfn | Lencek | 1976 | p = 46}}{{Sfn | Pohl | 1996 | pp = 209–210}} popularized by the Viennese philologist [[Jernej Kopitar]] in the following decades, and accepted by Croatian [[Zagreb]] grammarians in 1854 and 1859.{{Sfn | Lencek | 1976 | p = 49}} At that time, Serb and Croat lands were still part of the [[Ottoman Empire|Ottoman]] and [[Austrian Empire]]s. Officially, the language was called variously ''Serbo-Croat, Croato-Serbian, Serbian and Croatian, Croatian and Serbian, Serbian or Croatian, Croatian or Serbian.'' <!-- more data needed: in which periods and where? --> Unofficially, Serbs and Croats typically called the language "Serbian" or "Croatian", respectively, without implying a distinction between the two,{{Sfn | Brown | Anderson | 2006 | p = 259}} and again in independent [[Bosnia and Herzegovina]], "Bosnian", "Croatian", and "Serbian" were considered to be three names of a single official language.<ref>"In 1993 the authorities in Sarajevo adopted a new language law (Službeni list Republike Bosne i Hercegovine, 18/93): In the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Ijekavian standard literary language of the three constitutive nations is officially used, designated by one of the three terms: Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian." ({{Harvnb | Bugarski | Hawkesworth | 2006 | p = 142}})</ref> Croatian linguist [[Dalibor Brozović]] advocated the term ''Serbo-Croatian'' as late as 1988, claiming that in an analogy with Indo-European, Serbo-Croatian does not only name the two components of the same language, but simply charts the limits of the region in which it is spoken and includes everything between the limits (‘Bosnian’ and ‘Montenegrin’).<ref>{{cite book |last=Brozović |first=Dalibor |authorlink=Dalibor Brozović |title=Jezik, srpskohrvatski/hrvatskosrpski, hrvatski ili srpski : izvadak iz II izdanja Enciklopedije Jugoslavije |publisher=Jugoslavenski Leksikografski zavod "Miroslav Krleža" |page=4 |language=Serbo-Croatian |chapter=Jezik, srpskohrvatski/hrvatskosrpski, hrvatski ili srpski |trans-chapter=Language, Serbo-Croatian/Croato-Serbian, Croatian or Serbian : Extract From the Second Edition of the Encyclopedia of Yugoslavia |location=Zagreb |year=1988 |isbn=86-7053-014-7 |oclc=645757653}}</ref> Today, use of the term "Serbo-Croatian" is controversial due to the prejudice that nation and language must match.<ref>{{cite book|last=Richter Malabotta |first=Melita |editor1-last=Busch |editor1-first=Brigitta |editor2-last=Kelly-Holmes |editor2-first=Helen |title=Language, Discourse and Borders in the Yugoslav Successor States |publisher=Multilingual Matters |page=81 |chapter=Semantics of War in Former Yugoslavia |location=Clevedon |year=2004 |oclc=803615012}}</ref>{{Sfn | Mappes-Niediek | 2005 | p = 30}}<ref>{{cite book |last=Kordić |first=Snježana |authorlink=Snježana Kordić |editor1-last=Ajdačić |editor1-first=Dejan |editor2-last=Lazarević Di Đakomo |editor2-first=Persida |title=U čast Pera Jakobsena: zbornik radova |publisher=SlovoSlavia |pages=225–239 |language=Serbo-Croatian |chapter=Ideologija nacionalnog identiteta i nacionalne kulture |trans-chapter=The ideology of national identity and culture |chapter-url=http://bib.irb.hr/datoteka/522531.Ideologija_nacionalnog.PDF |series=Studia in honorem ; vol. 1 |location=Beograd |year=2010 |url-status=live |isbn=978-86-87807-02-0 |oclc=723062357 |archivedate=23 August 2012 |archiveurl=https://www.webcitation.org/6A7zYF94N?url=http://bib.irb.hr/datoteka/522531.Ideologija_nacionalnog.PDF |accessdate=28 March 2015 |df= }}</ref> It is still used for lack of a succinct alternative,<ref>{{cite book|last=Obst |first=Ulrich |editor1-last=Okuka |editor1-first=Miloš |editor2-last=Schweier |editor2-first=Ulrich |title=Festschrift für Peter Rehder zum 65. Geburtstag |series=Welt der Slaven ; vol. 21 |publisher=Otto Sagner |page=212 |language=German |chapter=Zum genitivus qualitatis und zu alternativen Möglichkeiten in den drei ’Buddenbrooks’-Übersetzungen aus dem kroatischen und serbischen Sprachgebiet |location=Munich |year=2004 |oclc=55018584}}</ref> though alternative names have emerged, such as ''Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian'' (BCS),<ref>Tomasz Kamusella. ''The Politics of Language and Nationalism in Modern Central Europe''. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. pp. 228, 297.</ref> which is often seen in political contexts such as the [[International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia]].

== History ==

=== Early development ===
[[Image:Humacka ploca.jpg|thumb|Humac tablet, ~1000 AD]]
[[File:Hvalov_zbornik1.jpg|thumb|[[Hval's Codex]], 1404]]

[[Old Church Slavonic]] was adopted as the language of the [[liturgy]]. This language was gradually adapted to non-liturgical purposes and became known as the Croatian version of Old Slavonic. The two variants of the language, liturgical and non-liturgical, continued to be a part of the [[Glagolitic]] service as late as the middle of the 19th century. The earliest known Croatian Church Slavonic Glagolitic manuscripts are the ''Glagolita Clozianus'' and the ''Vienna Folia'' from the 11th century.<ref name="encyclopedia">{{cite book |title=Encyclopedia of the languages of Europe |last=Price |first=Glanville |year=1998 |publisher= Blackwell Publishers Ltd|location=Oxford, UK |isbn=0-631-19286-7 |page=425 |<!-- accessdate=8 March 2012 -->}}</ref>

{{listen|filename=Baška_tablet.wav|title=Speech example|description=An example of Old Croatian used in Baška tablet.}}

The beginning of written Serbo-Croatian can be traced from the 10th century and on when Serbo-Croatian medieval texts were written in five scripts: [[Latin script|Latin]], [[Glagolitic script|Glagolitic]], [[Early Cyrillic]], [[Bosnian Cyrillic]] (''bosančica/bosanica''),<ref>{{cite journal |last=Kapetanovic |first=Amir |title=HRVATSKA SREDNJOVJEKOVNA LATINICA |journal=Hrvatska Srednjovjekovna Latinica |year=2005 |url=https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:-FfopGzc4sYJ:www.ihjj.hr/images/Izdanja/Rasprave/31_23_susret_Kapetanovic.pdf+amir+kapetanovic+hrvatska+srednjovjekovna+latinica&hl=hr&gl=hr&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESgQtRoCdABc_WUuJP8hR8BPDF7rKm5524iRm7SQ_9NveXR7vd5BLh0Rid3WZJPhnMsIF5E6_9CCZRBjLJTQLfeAdaIyHbrKDTblw4i1J_SKf4qOwi0f5mD4zr6mLIB_Nnhh_1WT&sig=AHIEtbQAFkElGfn2sHCefPWxrMFWYSUbDw}}</ref> and [[Arebica]], the last principally by Bosniak nobility. Serbo-Croatian competed with the more established literary languages of [[Latin]] and Old Slavonic in the west and Persian and Arabic in the east.

Old Slavonic developed into the Serbo-Croatian variant of [[Church Slavonic]] between the 12th and 16th centuries.

Among the earliest attestations of Serbo-Croatian are the [[Humac tablet]], dating from the 10th or 11th century, written in Bosnian Cyrillic and Glagolitic; the [[Plomin tablet]], dating from the same era, written in Glagolitic; the [[Valun tablet]], dated to the 11th century, written in Glagolitic and Latin; and the [[Inscription of Župa Dubrovačka]], a Glagolitic tablet dated to the 11th century.

The [[Baška tablet]] from the late 11th century was written in Glagolitic.<ref>{{cite journal |url=http://hrcak.srce.hr/index.php?show=clanak&id_clanak_jezik=21348 | first = Branko | last = Fučić | authorlink = Branko Fučić |title=Najstariji hrvatski glagoljski natpisi |journal=[[Slovo (journal)|Slovo]] |publisher=[[Old Church Slavonic Institute]] |volume=21 |date=September 1971 |language=Serbo-Croatian}}</ref> It is a large stone tablet found in the small [[Church of St. Lucy, Jurandvor]] on the Croatian island of [[Krk]] that contains text written mostly in [[Chakavian dialect|Chakavian]] in the Croatian [[commons:Category:Angular Glagolitic letters|angular Glagolitic]] script. It is also important in the history of the nation as it mentions [[Zvonimir]], the king of Croatia at the time.

The [[Charter of Ban Kulin]] of 1189, written by [[Ban Kulin]] of Bosnia, was an early Shtokavian text, written in Bosnian Cyrillic.

The luxurious and ornate representative texts of Serbo-Croatian Church Slavonic belong to the later era, when they coexisted with the Serbo-Croatian vernacular literature. The most notable are the "[[Missal]] of Duke Novak" from the Lika region in northwestern Croatia (1368), "Evangel from Reims" (1395, named after the town of its final destination), [[Hrvoje's Missal]] from Bosnia and Split in Dalmatia (1404),<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.danstopicals.com/hvalovzbornik.htm |title=Hrvoje's Missal ~ 1403–1404  |accessdate=9 March 2012 }}</ref> and the first printed book in Serbo-Croatian, the Glagolitic [[Missale Romanum Glagolitice]] (1483).<ref name="encyclopedia" />

During the 13th century Serbo-Croatian vernacular texts began to appear, the most important among them being the "Istrian land survey" of 1275 and the "[[Vinodol Codex]]" of 1288, both written in the Chakavian dialect.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.ihjj.hr/oHrJeziku-vinodol-zakon.html |title=VINODOLSKI ZAKON (1288) |accessdate=9 March 2012 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://archive.is/20120314161751/http://www.ihjj.hr/oHrJeziku-vinodol-zakon.html |archivedate=14 March 2012 |df= }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.ihjj.hr/oHrJeziku-Istarski-razvod.html |title=Istarski Razvod |accessdate=9 March 2012 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://archive.is/20120707211237/http://www.ihjj.hr/oHrJeziku-Istarski-razvod.html |archivedate=7 July 2012 |df= }}</ref>

The [[Shtokavian dialect]] literature, based almost exclusively{{Citation needed|date=August 2010}} on Chakavian original texts of religious provenance ([[missal]]s, [[breviary|breviaries]], [[Breviary|prayer books]]) appeared almost a century later. The most important purely Shtokavian vernacular text is the [[Vatican Croatian Prayer Book]] (c. 1400).<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.zupa-svetoga-antuna-bj.hr/duhovna_misao.php?subaction=showfull&id=1151333873&archive=&start_from=&ucat=2& |archive-url=https://wayback.archive-it.org/all/20171011114124/http://zupa-svetoga-antuna-bj.hr/ |url-status=dead |archive-date=11 October 2017 |title=Vatikanski hrvatski molitvenik |accessdate=9 March 2012 |df= }}</ref>

Both the language used in legal texts and that used in Glagolitic literature gradually came under the influence of the vernacular, which considerably affected its [[phonology|phonological]], [[morphology (linguistics)|morphological]], and [[lexicology|lexical]] systems. From the 14th and the 15th centuries, both secular and religious songs at church festivals were composed in the vernacular.

Writers of early Serbo-Croatian [[religious]] [[poetry]] (''začinjavci'') gradually introduced the vernacular into their works. These ''začinjavci'' were the forerunners of the rich literary production of the 16th-century literature, which, depending on the area, was Chakavian-, Kajkavian-, or Shtokavian-based.<ref name="encyclopedia" /> The language of religious poems, translations, [[miracle play|miracle]] and [[morality play]]s contributed to the popular character of medieval Serbo-Croatian literature.

One of the earliest dictionaries, also in the Slavic languages as a whole, was the ''Bosnian–Turkish Dictionary'' of 1631 authored by [[Muhamed Hevaji Uskufi]] and was written in the [[Arebica]] script.<ref>{{cite web | title = Gammel ordbok i ny drakt |date = 2012-04-10 | publisher = [[University of Oslo]] | language = Norwegian | url = http://www.hf.uio.no/ilos/for-ansatte/aktuelt/saker/2012/bosnisk-ordbok.html}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=Testimony of a Bosnian |last=Tanović-Miller|first=Naza|year=2001|publisher= [[Texas A&M University Press]]|page=209; ''"Turkish-Bosnian" dictionary, one of the first Slavic dictionaries in Europe, was written by a Bosnian ethnographer and poet, Muhamed Hevai Uskufi, from Tuzla in 1631.''}}</ref>

===Gallery===
<gallery perrow="4">File:Humacka ploca 2v.jpg|Humac tablet from the 10th century
File:Bascanska ploca.jpg|[[Baška tablet]], Island Krk c. 1100
File:Povelja Kulina bana.jpg|Charter of Bosnian [[Ban Kulin]] from the 12th century
File:Vinodol.jpg|The Vinodol Codex, 1288
File:Novak.jpg|Glagolitic Missal of Duke Novak, 1368
File:Vatican Croatian Prayer Book.jpg|[[Vatican Croatian Prayer Book]] c. 1400
File:Hrvoje's missal 1.jpg|[[Hrvoje's Missal]], 1404

File:Razvod.jpg|A page from the "Istrian land survey" of 1526
</gallery>

=== Modern standardization ===
[[File:Rjecnik hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika.jpg|left|thumb|upright|[[Đuro Daničić]], ''Rječnik hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika'' (Croatian or Serbian Dictionary), 1882]]
[[File:Gramatika bosanskog jezika.jpg|thumb|upright|''Gramatika bosanskoga jezika'' (Grammar of the Bosnian Language), 1890]]

In the mid-19th century, Serbian (led by self-taught writer and folklorist [[Vuk Stefanović Karadžić]]) and most Croatian writers and linguists (represented by the [[Illyrian movement]] and led by [[Ljudevit Gaj]] and [[Đuro Daničić]]), proposed the use of the most widespread dialect, [[Shtokavian dialect|Shtokavian]], as the base for their common standard language. Karadžić standardised the [[Serbian Cyrillic alphabet]], and Gaj and Daničić standardized the [[Gaj's Latin Alphabet|Croatian Latin alphabet]], on the basis of vernacular speech phonemes and the principle of phonological spelling. In 1850 Serbian and Croatian writers and linguists signed the [[Vienna Literary Agreement]], declaring their intention to create a unified standard.{{Sfn | Greenberg | 2004 | p = 24}} Thus a complex bi-variant language appeared, which the Serbs officially called "Serbo-Croatian" or "Serbian or Croatian" and the Croats "Croato-Serbian", or "Croatian or Serbian". Yet, in practice, the variants of the conceived common literary language served as different literary variants, chiefly differing in lexical inventory and stylistic devices. The common phrase describing this situation was that Serbo-Croatian or "Croatian or Serbian" was a single language. During the [[Austro-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina]], the language of all three nations was called "Bosnian" until the death of administrator [[Benjamin von Kállay|von Kállay]] in 1907, at which point the name was changed to "Serbo-Croatian".<ref>{{cite book |title=Industrialization of Bosnia-Hercegovina: 1878–1918 |last=Sugar |first=Peter F. |year=1963 |publisher=University of Washington Press |page=201}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia at Peace and at War: Selected Writings, 1983–2007 |last=Ramet |first=Sabrina P. |year=2008 |publisher=LIT Verlag Münster |chapter=Nationalism and the 'Idiocy' of the Countryside: The Case of Serbia |pages=74–76 |isbn=978-3-03735-912-9}}</ref><ref name=velikonja>{{cite book |title=Religious Separation and Political Intolerance in Bosnia-Herzegovina |last=Velikonja |first=Mitja |year=1992 |publisher=Texas A&M University Press |isbn=1-58544-226-7}}</ref>

With unification of the first the [[Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes]] – the approach of Karadžić and the Illyrians became dominant. The official language was called "Serbo-Croato-Slovenian" (''srpsko-hrvatsko-slovenački'') in the 1921 constitution.<ref name="Busch2004">{{cite book|last1=Busch|first1=Birgitta|last2=Kelly-Holmes|first2=Helen|title=Language, Discourse and Borders in the Yugoslav Successor States|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MlXQ5zKb_VQC&pg=PA26|year=2004|publisher=Multilingual Matters|isbn=978-1-85359-732-9|pages=26}}</ref> In 1929, the constitution was suspended,<ref>{{cite book|last=Tomasevich|first=Jozo|title=Contemporary Yugoslavia|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=a--6hauBIb4C&pg=PA8|year=1969|publisher=University of California Press|pages=8–9}}</ref> and the country was renamed the [[Kingdom of Yugoslavia]], while the official language of Serbo-Croato-Slovene was reinstated in the 1931 constitution.<ref name="Busch2004" />

In June 1941, the Nazi puppet [[Independent State of Croatia]] began to rid the language of "Eastern" (Serbian) words, and shut down Serbian schools.<ref name="Crowe2013">{{cite book|author=David M. Crowe|title=Crimes of State Past and Present: Government-Sponsored Atrocities and International Legal Responses|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GRTdAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA61|date=13 September 2013|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-317-98682-9|pages=61–}}</ref>

On January 15, 1944, the Anti-Fascist Council of the People's Liberation of Yugoslavia ([[AVNOJ]]) declared Croatian, Serbian, Slovene, and Macedonian to be equal in the entire territory of Yugoslavia.{{Sfn | Greenberg | 2004 | p = 115}} In 1945 the decision to recognize Croatian and Serbian as separate languages was reversed in favor of a single Serbo-Croatian or Croato-Serbian language.{{Sfn | Greenberg | 2004 | p = 115}} In the [[Communist]]-dominated [[Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia|second Yugoslavia]], ethnic issues eased to an extent, but the matter of language remained blurred and unresolved.

In 1954, major Serbian and Croatian writers, linguists and literary critics, backed by [[Matica srpska]] and [[Matica hrvatska]] signed the [[Novi Sad Agreement]], which in its [[The Novi Sad Agreement#The text of the Novi Sad Agreement|first conclusion]] stated: "Serbs, Croats and Montenegrins share a single language with two equal variants that have developed around Zagreb (western) and Belgrade (eastern)". The agreement insisted on the [[The Novi Sad Agreement#The text of the Novi Sad Agreement|equal status]] of Cyrillic and Latin scripts, and of Ekavian and Ijekavian pronunciations.<ref name=JonkeRazvoj>{{cite journal|author=Jonke, Ljudevit |authorlink=Ljudevit Jonke |title=Razvoj hrvatskoga književnog jezika u 20. stoljeću |trans-title=The Development of the Croatian language in the 20th century |journal=[[Jezik]] |volume=16 |issue=1 |page=18 |year=1968 |language=Serbo-Croatian  |issn=0021-6925}}</ref> It also specified that ''Serbo-Croatian'' should be the name of the language in official contexts, while in unofficial use the traditional ''Serbian'' and ''Croatian'' were to be retained.<ref name=JonkeRazvoj /> Matica hrvatska and Matica srpska were to work together on a dictionary, and a committee of Serbian and Croatian linguists was asked to prepare a ''pravopis''. During the sixties both books were published simultaneously in Ijekavian Latin in Zagreb and Ekavian Cyrillic in Novi Sad.{{Sfn | Kordić | 2010 | pp = 303–304}} Yet Croatian linguists claim that it was an act of unitarianism. The evidence supporting this claim is patchy: Croatian linguist Stjepan Babić complained that the television transmission from Belgrade always used the Latin alphabet<ref name=BabHh>{{cite book|last=Babić |first=Stjepan| authorlink=Stjepan Babić |year=2004 |language=Serbo-Croatian |title=Hrvanja hrvatskoga |trans-title=Croatian Language Quarrels |location=Zagreb |publisher=Školska knjiga |page=36 |isbn=953-0-61428-4}}</ref>— which was true, but was not proof of unequal rights, but of frequency of use and prestige. Babić further complained that the Novi Sad Dictionary (1967) listed side by side words from both the Croatian and Serbian variants wherever they differed,<ref name=BabHh /> which one can view as proof of careful respect for both variants, and not of unitarism. Moreover, Croatian linguists criticized those parts of the Dictionary for being unitaristic that were written by Croatian linguists.<ref>{{cite journal |author=Milutinović, Zoran |title=Review of the Book ''Jezik i nacionalizam'' |journal=[[The Slavonic and East European Review]] |volume=89 |issue=3 |pages=522–523 |year=2011 |url=http://www.snjezana-kordic.de/Rec_SEER.pdf |issn=0037-6795 |oclc=744233642 |id={{ZDB|209925-1}} |archivedate=7 July 2012 |url-status=live |archiveurl=https://www.webcitation.org/68yTd2jaR?url=http://www.snjezana-kordic.de/Rec_SEER.pdf |accessdate=25 May 2014 |df= }}</ref> And finally, Croatian linguists ignored the fact that the material for the ''Pravopisni rječnik'' came from the Croatian Philological Society.<ref>{{cite journal|author=Jonke, Ljudevit |authorlink=Ljudevit Jonke |title=Drugi i treći sastanak Pravopisne komisije |trans-title=The second and third meeting of The Orthographic Commission |journal=Jezik |volume=4 |issue=2 |page=59 |year=1955 |language=Serbo-Croatian |issn=0021-6925}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |author=Jonke, Ljudevit |authorlink=Ljudevit Jonke |title=Pravopis hrvatskosrpskoga književnog jezika |trans-title=Serbo-Croatian Spelling-Book |journal=Jezik |volume=9 |issue=2 |pages=57–59 |year=1961 |language=Serbo-Croatian |issn=0021-6925}}</ref> Regardless of these facts, Croatian intellectuals brought the [[Declaration on the Status and Name of the Croatian Literary Language]] in 1967. On occasion of the publication’s 45th anniversary, the Croatian weekly journal Forum published the Declaration again in 2012, accompanied by a critical analysis.<ref>{{cite news |title=SOS ili tek alibi za nasilje nad jezikom |trans-title=SOS, or nothing but an alibi for violence against language |url=http://bib.irb.hr/datoteka/578565.O_Deklaraciji_Forum.jpg |language=Serbo-Croatian |location=Zagreb |publisher=''Forum'' |date=16 March 2012 |pages=38–39 |issn=1848-204X |archivedate=7 July 2012 |url-status=live |archiveurl=https://www.webcitation.org/68yT7x9My?url=http://bib.irb.hr/datoteka/578565.O_Deklaraciji_Forum.jpg |accessdate=9 April 2013 |df= }}</ref>

West European scientists judge the Yugoslav language policy as an exemplary one:{{Sfn | Gröschel | 2009 | p = 72}}{{Sfn | Mappes-Niediek | 2005 | pp = 18, 64}} although three-quarters of the population spoke one language, no single language was official on a federal level.{{Sfn | Blum | 2002 | pp = 41–42}} Official languages were declared only at the level of constituent republics and provinces,<ref name=Gak>{{cite journal |author=Gak, Vladimir G. |authorlink= |title=K tipologii form jazykovoj politiki |trans-title=Towards a typology of language policy |journal=Voprosy jazykoznanija |volume=5 |issue= |pages=122–123 |year=1989 |url= |doi= |language=Russian |issn= }}</ref>{{Sfn | Blum | 2002 | pp = 47–48}}{{Sfn | Gröschel | 2003 | pp = 160–161}} and very generously: Vojvodina had five (among them Slovak and Romanian, spoken by 0.5 per cent of the population), and Kosovo four (Albanian, Turkish, Romany and Serbo-Croatian).<ref name=Gak />{{Sfn | Blum | 2002 | p = 65}} Newspapers, radio and television studios used sixteen languages,{{Sfn | Blum | 2002 | p = 81}} fourteen were used as languages of tuition in schools, and nine at universities.<ref name=Gak />{{Sfn | Blum | 2002 | pp = 73–79}} Only the Yugoslav Army used Serbo-Croatian as the sole language of command, with all other languages represented in the army’s other activities—however, this is not different from other armies of multilingual states,{{Sfn | Blum | 2002 | pp = 69–80}} or in other specific institutions, such as international air traffic control where English is used worldwide. All variants of Serbo-Croatian were used in state administration and republican and federal institutions.<ref name=Gak /> Both Serbian and Croatian variants were represented in respectively different grammar books, dictionaries, school textbooks and in books known as pravopis (which detail spelling rules).{{Sfn | Kordić | 2010 | pp = 291–292}} Serbo-Croatian was a kind of soft standardisation.<ref>{{cite book|editor1-last=Busch |editor1-first=Brigitta |editor2-last=Kelly-Holmes |editor2-first=Helen |title=Language, Discourse and Borders in the Yugoslav Successor States |publisher=Multilingual Matters |pages=51, 54 |chapter=Semantics of War in Former Yugoslavia |location=Clevedon |year=2004 |oclc=803615012}}</ref> However, legal equality could not dampen the prestige Serbo-Croatian had: since it was the language of three quarters of the population, it functioned as an unofficial lingua franca.{{Sfn | Kordić | 2010 | pp = 294–295}} And within Serbo-Croatian, the Serbian variant, with twice as many speakers as the Croatian,{{Sfn | Gröschel | 2009 | p = 38}} enjoyed greater prestige, reinforced by the fact that Slovene and Macedonian speakers preferred it to the Croatian variant because their languages are also Ekavian.{{Sfn | Kordić | 2010 | p = 299}} This is a common situation in other pluricentric languages, e.g. the variants of German differ according to their prestige, the variants of Portuguese too.{{Sfn | Ammon | 1995 | pp = 484, 494–497}} Moreover, all languages differ in terms of prestige: "the fact is that languages (in terms of prestige, learnability etc.) are not equal, and the law cannot make them equal".<ref>"die Tatsache, dass Sprachen (in ihrem Prestige, ihrer Erlernbarkeit etc.) nicht gleich sind und auch per Gesetz nicht gleich gemacht werden können" ({{Harvnb | Blum | 2002 | p = 170}})</ref>

In 2017, the "Declaration of the Common Language" (''Deklaracija o zajedničkom jeziku''), signed by a group of NGOs and linguists from former Yugoslavia, argues that all variants belong to a common polycentric language.<ref>{{cite web|title=Post-Yugoslav 'Common Language' Declaration Challenges Nationalism|publisher=Balkan Insight|url=http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/post-yugoslav-common-language-declaration-challenges-nationalism-03-29-2017}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=Is Serbo-Croatian a language?|publisher=Economist|url=https://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2017/04/economist-explains-4}}</ref>

== Demographics ==
[[File:Map of Serbo-Croatian language.png|thumbnail|300px|{{legend|#004DFF|Countries where a standard form of Serbo-Croatian is an official language.}}
{{legend|#88C4FF|Countries where one or more forms are designated as a minority languages.}}]]
{{Refimprove|date=January 2010}}
The total number of persons who declared their native language as either 'Bosnian', 'Croatian', 'Serbian', 'Montenegrin', or 'Serbo-Croatian' in countries of the region is about 16 million.

Serbian is spoken by about 9.5 million, mostly in Serbia (6.7m), Bosnia and Herzegovina (1.4m), and Montenegro (0.4m). Serbian minorities are found in the [[Republic of Macedonia]] and in [[Romania]]. In Serbia, there are about 760,000 second-language speakers of Serbian, including Hungarians in [[Vojvodina]] and the 400,000 estimated Roma. Familiarity of [[Kosovo Albanians]] with Serbian in [[Kosovo]] varies depending on age and education, and exact numbers are not available.

Croatian is spoken by roughly 4.8 million, including some 575,000 in Bosnia and Herzegovina. A small Croatian minority that lives in Italy, known as [[Molise Croats]], have somewhat preserved traces of the Croatian language. In Croatia, 170,000, mostly [[Italians]] and [[Hungarians]], use it as a [[second language]].

Bosnian is spoken by 2.2 million people, chiefly [[Bosniaks]], including about 220,000 in Serbia and Montenegro.

The notion of Montenegrin as a separate standard from Serbian is relatively recent. In the 2003 census, around 150,000 Montenegrins, of the country's 620,000, declared Montenegrin as their native language. That figure is likely to increase, due to the country's independence and strong institutional backing of Montenegrin language.

Serbo-Croatian is also a [[second language]] of many [[Slovenians]] and [[Macedonians (ethnic group)|Macedonians]], especially those born during the time of Yugoslavia. According to the 2002 Census, Serbo-Croatian and its variants have the largest number of speakers of the minority languages in Slovenia.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.inv.si/DocDir/Publikacije-PDF/Raziskovalna%20porocila/Raziskava_Polozaj_in_status_pripadnikov_narodov_nekdanje_Jugoslavije_v_RS.pdf| title=Raziskava Položaj in status pripadnikov narodov nekdanje Jugoslavije vRS.pdf|language=Slovenian}}</ref>

Outside the Balkans, there are over 2 million native speakers of the language(s), especially in countries which are frequent targets of immigration, such as [[Australia]], [[Austria]], [[Brazil]], [[Canada]], [[Chile]], [[Germany]], [[Hungary]], [[Italy]], [[Sweden]] and the [[United States]].

== Grammar ==
[[File:Gramatika i stilistika hrvatskoga ili srpskoga knjizevnoga jezika.JPG|thumb|[[Tomislav Maretić]]'s 1899 Grammar of Croatian or Serbian.]]
{{Further|Serbo-Croatian grammar}}

Serbo-Croatian is a highly [[inflected language]]. Traditional grammars list seven [[Grammatical case|cases]] for [[noun]]s and [[adjective]]s: [[Nominative case|nominative]], [[Genitive case|genitive]], [[Dative case|dative]], [[Accusative case|accusative]], [[Vocative case|vocative]], [[Locative case|locative]], and [[Instrumental case|instrumental]], reflecting the original seven cases of [[Proto-Slavic language|Proto-Slavic]], and indeed older forms of Serbo-Croatian itself. However, in modern [[Shtokavian dialect|Shtokavian]] the locative has almost merged into dative (the only difference is based on accent in some cases), and the other cases can be shown declining; namely:
* For all nouns and adjectives, instrumental = dative = locative (at least orthographically) in the plural: ''ženama'', ''ženama'', ''ženama''; ''očima'', ''očima'', ''očima''; ''riječima'', ''riječima'', ''riječima''.
* There is an accentual difference between the genitive [[singular (grammatical number)|singular]] and genitive [[plural]] of masculine and neuter nouns, which are otherwise homonyms (''seljaka'', ''seljaka'') except that on occasion an "a" (which might or might not appear in the singular) is filled between the last letter of the root and the genitive plural ending (''kapitalizma'', ''kapitalizama'').
* The old instrumental ending "ju" of the feminine consonant stems and in some cases the "a" of the genitive plural of certain other sorts of feminine nouns is fast yielding to "i": ''noći'' instead of ''noćju'', ''borbi'' instead of ''boraba'' and so forth.
* Almost every Shtokavian number is indeclinable, and numbers after prepositions have not been declined for a long time.

Like most Slavic languages, there are mostly three [[Grammatical gender|genders]] for nouns: masculine, feminine, and neuter, a distinction which is still present even in the plural (unlike [[Russian language|Russian]] and, in part, the [[Chakavian dialect|Čakavian dialect]]). They also have two [[Grammatical number|numbers]]: singular and plural. However, some consider there to be three numbers ([[paucal]] or ''dual,'' too), since (still preserved in closely related [[Slovene language|Slovene]]) after two (''dva'', ''dvije''/''dve''), three (''tri'') and four (''četiri''), and all numbers ending in them (e.g. twenty-two, ninety-three, one hundred four) the genitive singular is used, and after all other numbers five (''pet'') and up, the genitive plural is used. (The number one [''jedan''] is treated as an adjective.) Adjectives are placed in front of the noun they modify and must agree in both case and number with it.

There are seven [[Grammatical tense|tenses]] for verbs: [[past tense|past]], [[present tense|present]], [[future tense|future]], exact future, [[aorist]], [[imperfect]], and [[pluperfect]]; and three [[Grammatical mood|moods]]: [[indicative]], [[Imperative mood|imperative]], and [[conditional mood|conditional]]. However, the latter three tenses are typically used only in Shtokavian writing, and the time sequence of the exact future is more commonly formed through an alternative construction.

In addition, like most Slavic languages, the Shtokavian verb also has one of two [[Grammatical aspect|aspects]]: [[Perfective aspect|perfective]] or [[Imperfective aspect|imperfective]]. Most verbs come in pairs, with the perfective verb being created out of the imperfective by adding a [[Prefix (linguistics)|prefix]] or making a stem change. The imperfective aspect typically indicates that the action is unfinished, in progress, or repetitive; while the perfective aspect typically denotes that the action was completed, instantaneous, or of limited duration. Some Štokavian tenses (namely, aorist and imperfect) favor a particular aspect (but they are rarer or absent in Čakavian and Kajkavian). Actually, aspects "compensate" for the relative lack of tenses, because aspect of the verb determines whether the act is completed or in progress in the referred time.

== Phonology ==
{{Main|Serbo-Croatian phonology}}

=== Vowels ===
The Serbo-Croatian [[vowel]] system is simple, with only five vowels in Shtokavian. All vowels are [[monophthong]]s. The oral vowels are as follows:

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Latin script
! Cyrillic script
! [[help:IPA|IPA]]
! Description
! English approximation
|-
| style="text-align:center;"| '''a'''
| style="text-align:center;"| '''а'''
| style="text-align:center;"| {{IPA|/a/}}
| [[Open central unrounded vowel|open central unrounded]]
| ''f'''a'''ther''
|-
| style="text-align:center;"| '''e'''
| style="text-align:center;"| '''е'''
| style="text-align:center;"| {{IPA|/e/}}
| [[Mid front unrounded vowel|mid front unrounded]]
| ''d'''e'''n''
|-
| style="text-align:center;"| '''i'''
| style="text-align:center;"| '''и'''
| style="text-align:center;"| {{IPA|/i/}}
| [[Close front unrounded vowel|close front unrounded]]
| ''s'''ee'''k''
|-
| style="text-align:center;"| '''o'''
| style="text-align:center;"| '''о'''
| style="text-align:center;"| {{IPA|/o/}}
| [[Mid back rounded vowel|mid back rounded]]
| ''l'''o'''rd''
|-
| style="text-align:center;"| '''u'''
| style="text-align:center;"| '''у'''
| style="text-align:center;"| {{IPA|/u/}}
| [[Close back rounded vowel|close back rounded]]
| ''p'''oo'''l''
|}

The vowels can be short or long, but the phonetic quality does not change depending on the length. In a word, vowels can be long in the stressed syllable and the syllables following it, never in the ones preceding it.

=== Consonants ===
The [[consonant]] system is more complicated, and its characteristic features are series of [[affricate]] and [[Palatal consonant|palatal]] consonants. As in English, [[voice (phonetics)|voice]] is [[phoneme|phonemic]], but [[aspiration (phonetics)|aspiration]] is not.

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Latin script
! Cyrillic script
! [[help:IPA|IPA]]
! Description{{Sfn | Kordić | 2006 | p = 5}}
! English approximation
|-
! colspan="6" | [[Trill consonant|trill]]
|-
| style="text-align:center;"| '''r'''
| style="text-align:center;"| '''р'''
| style="text-align:center;"| {{IPA|/r/}}
| [[alveolar trill]]
| rolled (vibrating) '''r''' as in ''ca'''rr'''amba''
|-
! colspan="6" | [[approximants]]
|-
| style="text-align:center;"| '''v'''
| style="text-align:center;"| '''в'''
| style="text-align:center;"| {{IPA|/ʋ/}}
| [[labiodental approximant]]
| roughly between '''''v'''ortex'' and '''''w'''ar''
|-
| style="text-align:center;"| '''j'''
| style="text-align:center;"| '''ј'''
| style="text-align:center;"| {{IPA|/j/}}
| [[palatal approximant]]
| '''''y'''ear''
|-
! colspan="6" | [[Lateral consonant|laterals]]
|-
| style="text-align:center;"| '''l'''
| style="text-align:center;"| '''л'''
| style="text-align:center;"| {{IPA|/l/}}
| [[alveolar lateral approximant]]
| '''''l'''ight''
|-
| style="text-align:center;"| '''lj'''
| style="text-align:center;"| '''љ'''
| style="text-align:center;"| {{IPA|/ʎ/}}
| [[palatal lateral approximant]]
| roughly ''batta'''li'''on''
|-
! colspan="6" | [[Nasal stop|nasals]]
|-
| style="text-align:center;"| '''m'''
| style="text-align:center;"| '''м'''
| style="text-align:center;"| {{IPA|/m/}}
| [[bilabial nasal]]
| '''''m'''an''
|-
| style="text-align:center;"| '''n'''
| style="text-align:center;"| '''н'''
| style="text-align:center;"| {{IPA|/n/}}
| [[alveolar nasal]]
| '''''n'''ot''
|-
| style="text-align:center;"| '''nj'''
| style="text-align:center;"| '''њ'''
| style="text-align:center;"| {{IPA|/ɲ/}}
| [[palatal nasal]]
| '''''n'''ews'' or American ''ca'''ny'''on''
|-
! colspan="6" | [[fricatives]]
|-
| style="text-align:center;"| '''f'''
| style="text-align:center;"| '''ф'''
| style="text-align:center;"| {{IPA|/f/}}
| [[voiceless labiodental fricative]]
| '''''f'''ive''
|-
| style="text-align:center;"| '''s'''
| style="text-align:center;"| '''с'''
| style="text-align:center;"| {{IPA|/s/}}
| [[voiceless dental sibilant]]
| '''''s'''ome''
|-
| style="text-align:center;"| '''z'''
| style="text-align:center;"| '''з'''
| style="text-align:center;"| {{IPA|/z/}}
| [[voiced dental sibilant]]
| '''''z'''ero''
|-
| style="text-align:center;"| '''š'''
| style="text-align:center;"| '''ш'''
| style="text-align:center;"| {{IPA|/ʃ/}}
| [[voiceless postalveolar fricative]]
| '''''sh'''arp''
|-
| style="text-align:center;"| '''ž'''
| style="text-align:center;"| '''ж'''
| style="text-align:center;"| {{IPA|/ʒ/}}
| [[voiced postalveolar fricative]]
| ''televi'''si'''on''
|-
| style="text-align:center;"| '''h'''
| style="text-align:center;"| '''х'''
| style="text-align:center;"| {{IPA|/x/}}
| [[voiceless velar fricative]]
| ''lo'''ch'''''
|-
! colspan="6" | [[affricates]]
|-
| style="text-align:center;"| '''c'''
| style="text-align:center;"| '''ц'''
| style="text-align:center;"| {{IPA|/t͡s/}}
| [[voiceless dental affricate]]
| ''po'''ts'''''
|-
| style="text-align:center;"| '''dž'''
| style="text-align:center;"| '''џ'''
| style="text-align:center;"| {{IPA|/d͡ʒ/}}
| [[voiced postalveolar affricate]]
| roughly ''e'''j'''ect''
|-
| style="text-align:center;"| '''č'''
| style="text-align:center;"| '''ч'''
| style="text-align:center;"| {{IPA|/t͡ʃ/}}
| [[voiceless postalveolar affricate]]
| roughly '''''ch'''eck''
|-
| style="text-align:center;"| '''đ'''
| style="text-align:center;"| '''ђ'''
| style="text-align:center;"| {{IPA|/d͡ʑ/}}
| [[voiced alveolo-palatal affricate]]
| roughly '''''J'''ews''
|-
| style="text-align:center;"| '''ć'''
| style="text-align:center;"| '''ћ'''
| style="text-align:center;"| {{IPA|/t͡ɕ/}}
| [[voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate]]
| roughly '''''ch'''oose''
|-
! colspan="6" | [[plosives]]
|-
| style="text-align:center;"| '''b'''
| style="text-align:center;"| '''б'''
| style="text-align:center;"| {{IPA|/b/}}
| [[voiced bilabial plosive]]
| '''''b'''ook''
|-
| style="text-align:center;"| '''p'''
| style="text-align:center;"| '''п'''
| style="text-align:center;"| {{IPA|/p/}}
| [[voiceless bilabial plosive]]
| ''to'''p'''''
|-
| style="text-align:center;"| '''d'''
| style="text-align:center;"| '''д'''
| style="text-align:center;"| {{IPA|/d/}}
| [[voiced dental plosive]]
| '''''d'''og''
|-
| style="text-align:center;"| '''t'''
| style="text-align:center;"| '''т'''
| style="text-align:center;"| {{IPA|/t/}}
| [[voiceless dental plosive]]
| ''i'''t'''''
|-
| style="text-align:center;"| '''g'''
| style="text-align:center;"| '''г'''
| style="text-align:center;"| {{IPA|/ɡ/}}
| [[voiced velar plosive]]
| '''''g'''ood''
|-
| style="text-align:center;"| '''k'''
| style="text-align:center;"| '''к'''
| style="text-align:center;"| {{IPA|/k/}}
| [[voiceless velar plosive]]
| ''du'''ck'''''
|}

In [[consonant cluster]]s 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 [[approximant]]s{{spaced ndash}}a consonant cluster may contain voiced approximants and voiceless consonants; as well as to foreign words (''Washington'' would be transcribed as ''VašinGton''), personal names and when consonants are not inside of one syllable.

{{IPA|/r/}} can be syllabic, playing the role of the syllable nucleus in certain words (occasionally, it can even have a long accent). For example, the [[tongue-twister]] ''navrh brda vrba mrda'' involves four words with syllabic {{IPA|/r/}}. A similar feature exists in [[Czech language|Czech]], [[Slovak language|Slovak]], and [[Macedonian language|Macedonian]]. Very rarely other sonorants can be syllabic, like {{IPA|/l/}} (in ''bicikl''), {{IPA|/ʎ/}} (surname ''Štarklj''), {{IPA|/n/}} (unit ''njutn''), as well as {{IPA|/m/}}  and {{IPA|/ɲ/}} in [[slang]].{{Citation needed|date=April 2010}}

=== Pitch accent ===
{{Further|Pitch accent#Serbo-Croatian|Serbo-Croatian phonology#Pitch accent}}

Apart from [[Slovene language|Slovene]], Serbo-Croatian is the only Slavic language with a [[Pitch-accent language|pitch accent]] (simple [[Tone (linguistics)|tone]]) system. This feature is present in some other [[Indo-European languages]], such as [[Swedish language|Swedish]], [[Norwegian language|Norwegian]], and [[Ancient Greek]]. Neo-Shtokavian Serbo-Croatian, which is used as the basis for standard Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian, has four "accents", which involve either a [[Tone contour|rising or falling tone]] on either long or short vowels, with optional post-tonic lengths:

{| class="wikitable"
|+Serbo-Croatian accent system
|-
!Slavicist<br />symbol!![[International Phonetic Alphabet|IPA]]<br />symbol!!Description
|- style="text-align:center;"
|'''e'''||{{IPA|[e]}}||align="left"|non-tonic short vowel
|- style="text-align:center;"
|'''ē'''||{{IPA|[eː]}}||align="left"|non-tonic long vowel
|- style="text-align:center;"
|'''è'''||{{IPA|[ě]}}||align="left"|short vowel with rising tone
|- style="text-align:center;"
|'''é'''||{{IPA|[ěː]}}||align="left"|long vowel with rising tone
|- style="text-align:center;"
|'''ȅ'''||{{IPA|[ê]}}||align="left"|short vowel with falling tone
|- style="text-align:center;"
|'''ȇ'''||{{IPA|[êː]}}||align="left"|long vowel with falling tone
|}

The tone stressed vowels can be approximated in English with ''set'' vs. ''setting?'' said in isolation for a short tonic ''e,'' or ''leave'' vs. ''leaving?'' for a long tonic ''i,'' due to the [[prosody (linguistics)|prosody]] of final stressed syllables in English.

General accent rules in the standard language:

# Monosyllabic words may have only a falling tone (or no accent at all – [[enclitic]]s);
# Falling tone may occur only on the first syllable of polysyllabic words;
# Accent can never occur on the last syllable of polysyllabic words.

There are no other rules for accent placement, thus the accent of every word must be learned individually; furthermore, in inflection, accent shifts are common, both in type and position (the so-called "[[mobile paradigm]]s"). The second rule is not strictly obeyed, especially in borrowed words.

Comparative and historical linguistics offers some clues for memorising the accent position: If one compares many standard Serbo-Croatian words to e.g. [[cognate]] Russian words, the accent in the Serbo-Croatian word will be one syllable before the one in the Russian word, with the rising tone. Historically, the rising tone appeared when the place of the accent shifted to the preceding syllable (the so-called "Neoshtokavian retraction"), but the quality of this new accent was different – its melody still "gravitated" towards the original syllable. Most Shtokavian dialects (Neoshtokavian) dialects underwent this shift, but Chakavian, Kajkavian and the Old Shtokavian dialects did not.

Accent diacritics are not used in the ordinary orthography, but only in the linguistic or language-learning literature (e.g. dictionaries, orthography and grammar books). However, there are very few [[minimal pair]]s where an error in accent can lead to misunderstanding.

== Orthography ==
{{unreferenced section|date=December 2013}}
Serbo-Croatian orthography is almost entirely phonetic. Thus, most words should be spelled as they are pronounced. In practice, the writing system does not take into account [[allophone]]s which occur as a result of interaction between words:
* bit će{{spaced ndash}}pronounced ''biće'' (and only written separately in Bosnian and Croatian)
* od toga{{spaced ndash}}pronounced ''otoga'' (in many vernaculars)
* iz čega{{spaced ndash}}pronounced ''iščega'' (in many vernaculars)

Also, there are some exceptions, mostly applied to foreign words and compounds, that favor morphological/etymological over phonetic spelling:
* postdiplomski (postgraduate){{spaced ndash}}pronounced ''pozdiplomski''

One systemic exception is that the consonant clusters '''ds''' and '''dš''' do not change into '''ts''' and '''tš''' (although ''d'' tends to be unvoiced in normal speech in such clusters):
* predstava (show)
* odšteta (damages)

Only a few words are intentionally "misspelled", mostly in order to resolve ambiguity:
* šeststo (six hundred){{spaced ndash}}pronounced ''šesto'' (to avoid confusion with "šesto" [sixth])
* prstni (adj., finger){{spaced ndash}}pronounced ''prsni'' (to avoid confusion with "prsni" [adj., chest])

=== Writing systems ===
{{Main|Gaj's Latin alphabet|Serbian Cyrillic alphabet|Yugoslav Braille}}
Through history, this language has been written in a number of writing systems:
* [[Glagolitic alphabet]], chiefly in [[Croatia]].
* [[Arabic alphabet]] (mostly in [[Bosnia and Herzegovina|Bosnia]]).
* [[Cyrillic script]].
* various modifications of the [[Latin alphabet|Latin]] and [[Greek alphabet|Greek]] alphabets.

The oldest texts since the 11th century are in [[Glagolitic]], and the oldest preserved text written completely in the Latin alphabet is "Red i zakon sestara reda Svetog Dominika", from 1345. The Arabic alphabet had been used by [[Bosniaks]]; Greek writing is out of use there, and Arabic and Glagolitic persisted so far partly in religious liturgies.

Today, it is written in both the [[Latin script|Latin]] and [[Cyrillic script|Cyrillic]] scripts. Serbian and [[Bosnian language|Bosnian]] variants use both alphabets, while Croatian uses the Latin only.

Latin script has become more and more popular in Serbia, as it is easy to input on phones and computers.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Crosby |first1=Alan |last2=Martinovic |first2=Iva |title=In The Age Of The Internet, Serbia Aims To Keep Its Cyrillic Alive |url=https://www.rferl.org/a/in-the-age-of-the-internet-serbia-aims-to-keep-its-cyrillic-alive/29458055.html |accessdate=5 September 2018 |agency=RFE/RL |date=August 28, 2018}}</ref>

The Serbian Cyrillic alphabet was revised by [[Vuk Stefanović Karadžić]] in the 19th century.

The Croatian Latin alphabet (''[[Gaj's Latin alphabet|Gajica]]'') followed suit shortly afterwards, when [[Ljudevit Gaj]] defined it as standard [[Latin]] with five extra letters that had [[diacritic]]s, apparently borrowing much from [[Czech language|Czech]], but also from [[Polish language|Polish]], and inventing the unique [[digraph (orthography)|digraphs]] "lj", "nj" and "dž". These digraphs are represented as "ļ, ń and ǵ" respectively in the "Rječnik hrvatskog ili srpskog jezika", published by the former [[Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts]] in [[Zagreb]].<ref>{{in lang|sh}} Gramatika hrvatskosrpskoga jezika, Group of Authors (Ivan Brabec, Mate Hraste and Sreten Živković), Zagreb, 1968.</ref> The latter digraphs, however, are unused in the literary standard of the language. All in all, this makes Serbo-Croatian the only Slavic language to officially use both the Latin and Cyrillic scripts, albeit the Latin version is more commonly used.

In both cases, spelling is phonetic and spellings in the two alphabets map to each other one-to-one:

'''Latin to Cyrillic'''
{| class="wikitable"
|-
| A || a || B || b || C || c || Č || č || Ć || ć || D || d || Dž || dž || Đ || đ || E || e || F || f || G || g || H || h || I || i || J || j || K || k
|-
| А || а || Б || б || Ц || ц || Ч || ч || Ћ || ћ || Д || д || Џ || џ || Ђ || ђ || Е || е || Ф || ф || Г || г || Х || х || И || и || Ј || ј || К || к
|}
{| class="wikitable"
|-
| L || l || Lj || lj || M || m || N || n || Nj || nj || O || o || P || p || R || r || S || s || Š || š || T || t || U || u || V || v || Z || z || Ž || ž
|-
| Л || л || Љ || љ || М || м || Н || н || Њ || њ || О || о || П || п || Р || р || С || с || Ш || ш || Т || т || У || у || В || в || З || з || Ж || ж
|}

'''Cyrillic to Latin'''
{| class="wikitable"
|-
| А || а || Б || б || В || в || Г || г || Д || д || Ђ || ђ || Е || е || Ж || ж || З || з || И || и || Ј || ј || К || к || Л || л || Љ || љ || М || м
|-
| A || a || B || b || V || v || G || g || D || d || Đ || đ || E || e || Ž || ž || Z || z || I || i || J || j || K || k || L || l || Lj || lj || M || m
|}
{| class="wikitable"
|-
| Н || н || Њ || њ || О || о || П || п || Р || р || С || с || Т || т || Ћ || ћ || У || у || Ф || ф || Х || х || Ц || ц || Ч || ч || Џ || џ || Ш || ш
|-
| N || n || Nj || nj || O || o || P || p || R || r || S || s || T || t || Ć || ć || U || u || F || f || H || h || C || c || Č || č || Dž || dž || Š || š
|}

{| class="wikitable" style="float:right; margin-left:1em;"
|-
! colspan="4" | Sample collation
|-
! colspan="2" | Latin collation order
! rowspan = 6 | &nbsp;
! rowspan="2" | Cyrillic<br />collation<br />order
|-
!Latin 
!<span style="color:#606060;">Cyrillic<br />equivalent</span>
|-
|Ina
|<span style="color:#606060;">Ина</span>
| rowspan="4" | Ина<br /> Инверзија<br /> Инјекција <br /> Иње
|-
|Injekcija
|<span style="color:#606060;">И'''нј'''екција</span>
|-
|Inverzija
|<span style="color:#606060;">Инверзија</span>
|-
|Inje
|<span style="color:#606060;">И'''њ'''е</span>
|}

The [[digraph (orthography)|digraphs]] ''Lj'', ''Nj'' and ''Dž'' represent distinct [[phoneme]]s and are considered to be single letters. In crosswords, they are put into a single square, and in [[sorting]], lj follows l and nj follows n, except in a few words where the individual letters are pronounced separately. For instance, ''nadživ(j)eti'' "to outlive" is composed of the prefix ''nad-'' "out, over" and the verb ''živ(j)eti'' "to live". The Cyrillic alphabet avoids such ambiguity by providing a single letter for each phoneme.

''Đ'' used to be commonly written as ''Dj'' on typewriters, but that practice led to too many ambiguities. It is also used on car [[license plate]]s. Today ''Dj'' is often used again in place of ''Đ'' on the Internet as a replacement due to the lack of installed Serbo-Croat keyboard layouts.

[[Unicode]] has separate characters for the digraphs lj (Ǉ, ǈ, ǉ), nj (Ǌ, ǋ, ǌ) and dž (Ǆ, ǅ, ǆ).

== Dialects ==
{{Main|Dialects of Serbo-Croatian}}
:''See also:'' [[Dialect continuum#South Slavic continuum|''South Slavic dialect continuum'']]
South Slavic historically formed a [[Dialect continuum#South Slavic continuum|dialect continuum]], i.e. each dialect has some similarities with the neighboring one, and differences grow with distance. However, migrations from the 16th to 18th centuries resulting from the spread of [[Ottoman Empire]] on the Balkans have caused large-scale population displacement that broke the dialect continuum into many geographical pockets. Migrations in the 20th century, primarily caused by [[urbanization]] and wars, also contributed to the reduction of dialectal differences.

The primary dialects are named after the most common question word for ''what'': [[Shtokavian dialect|Shtokavian]] uses the pronoun ''što'' or ''šta'', [[Chakavian dialect|Chakavian]] uses ''ča'' or ''ca'', [[Kajkavian dialect|Kajkavian (''kajkavski'')]], ''kaj'' or ''kej''. In native terminology they are referred to as ''nar(j)ečje'', which would be equivalent of "group of dialects", whereas their many subdialects are referred to as ''dijalekti ''"dialects" or ''govori ''"speeches".

The pluricentric Serbo-Croatian standard language and all four contemporary standard variants [[Ausbausprache#Interrelation of the abstand and ausbau statuses|are based]] on the [[Eastern Herzegovinian dialect|Eastern Herzegovinian]] subdialect of Neo-Shtokavian. Other dialects are not taught in schools or used by the state media. The [[Torlakian dialect]] is often added to the list, though sources usually note that it is a transitional dialect between Shtokavian and the Bulgaro-Macedonian dialects.

{|
|[[File:Serbo croatian dialects historical distribution 2.png|thumb|Likely distribution of major dialects prior to the 16th-century migrations]]
|[[File:Shtokavian subdialects1988 incl Slovenia.png|thumb|Shtokavian subdialects (Pavle Ivić, 1988). Yellow is the widespread Eastern Herzegovinian subdialect that forms the basis of all national standards, though it is not spoken natively in any of the capital cities.]]
|[[File:Croatian dialects.PNG|thumb|Mid-20th-century distribution of dialects in Croatia]]
|}

The Serbo-Croatian dialects differ not only in the question word they are named after, but also heavily in phonology, accentuation and intonation, case endings and tense system (morphology) and basic vocabulary. In the past, Chakavian and Kajkavian dialects were spoken on a much larger territory, but have been replaced by Štokavian during the period of migrations caused by Ottoman Turkish conquest of the Balkans in the 15th and the 16th centuries. These migrations caused the koinéisation of the Shtokavian dialects, that used to form the West Shtokavian (more closer and transitional towards the neighbouring Chakavian and Kajkavian dialects) and East Shtokavian (transitional towards the Torlakian and the whole Bulgaro-Macedonian area) dialect bundles, and their subsequent spread at the expense of Chakavian and Kajkavian. As a result, Štokavian now covers an area larger than all the other dialects combined, and continues to make its progress in the enclaves where non-literary dialects are still being spoken.<ref>E.g., big coastal Croatian cities [[Rijeka]] and [[Split (city)|Split]] together with their hinterland become basically completely Štokavianised during the 20th century, which had been Čakavian-speaking urban centres.</ref>

The differences among the dialects can be illustrated on the example of [[Schleicher's fable]]. Diacritic signs are used to show the difference in accents and prosody, which are often quite significant, but which are not reflected in the usual orthography.

{{Clear}}
{{col-begin}} style="font-size:90%;"
{{col-5}}
:'''Neoštokavian Ijekavian/Ekavian'''

: Óvca i kònji

:Óvca koja níje ìmala vȕnē vȉd(j)ela je kònje na br(ij)égu. Jèdan je òd njīh vȗkao téška kȍla, drȕgī je nòsio vèliku vrȅću, a trȅćī je nòsio čòv(j)eka.

:Óvca rȅče kònjima: «Sȑce me bòlī glȅdajūći čòv(j)eka kako jȁšē na kònju».

:A kònji rȅkoše: «Slȕšāj, ȏvco, nȃs sȑca bòlē kada vȉdīmo da čòv(j)ek, gospòdār, rȃdī vȕnu od ovácā i prȁvī òd(j)eću zá se. I ȍndā óvca nȇmā vȉše vȕnē.

:Čȗvši tō, óvca pȍb(j)eže ȕ polje.
{{col-5}}

: '''Old Štokavian ([[Orubica]], [[Posavina]])''':

:Óvca i kònji

:Óvca kòjā nî ìmala vȕnē vȉdla kònje na brîgu. Jèdān od njȉjū vũkō tȇška kȍla, drȕgī nosȉjo vȅlikū vrȅću, a trȅćī nosȉjo čovȉka.

: Óvca kȃza kȍnjima: «Svȅ me bolĩ kad glȅdām kako čòvik na kònju jȁšī».

:A kònji kāzȁše: «Slȕšāj, ȏvco, nãs sȑca bolũ kad vȉdīmo da čòvik, gȁzda, prȁvī vȕnu od ovãc i prȁvī rȍbu zá se od njẽ. I ȍndā  ōvcȁ néma vȉšē vȕnē.

:Kad tȏ čȕ ōvcȁ, ȕteče ȕ polje.
{{col-5}}

: '''Čakavian ([[Matulji]] near Rijeka)''':

:Ovcȁ i konjı̏

:Ovcȁ kȃ ni imȅla vȕni vȉdela je konjȉ na brȇge. Jedȃn je vȗkal tȇški vȏz, drȕgi je nosîl vȅlu vrȅt'u, a trȅt'i je nosîl čovȅka.

:Ovcȁ je reklȁ konjȇn: «Sȑce me bolĩ dok glȅdan čovȅka kako jȁše na konjȅ».

:A konjȉ su reklȉ: «Poslȕšaj, ovcȁ, nȃs sȑca bolẽ kad vȉdimo da čovȅk, gospodãr dȅla vȕnu od ovãc i dȅla rȍbu zȃ se. I ȍnda ovcȁ nĩma vȉše vȕni.

:Kad je tȏ čȕla, ovcȁ je pobȅgla va pȍje.
{{col-5}}

: '''Kajkavian ([[Marija Bistrica]])''':

:õfca i kȍjni

:õfca tera nı̃je imȅ̩la vȕne vȉdla je kȍjne na briẽgu. Jȇn od nîh je vlẽ̩ke̩l tẽška kȍla, drȕgi je nȍsil vȅliku vrȅ̩ču, a trẽjti je nȍsil čovȅ̩ka.

:õfca je rȇkla kȍjnem: «Sȑce me bolĩ kad vîdim čovȅka kak jȃše na kȍjnu».

:A kȍjni su rȇkli: «Poslȕhni, õfca, nȃs sȑca bolĩju kad vîdime da čȍve̩k, gospodãr, dȇ̩la vȕnu ot õfci i dȇ̩la oblȅ̩ku zȃ se. I ȏnda õfca nȇma vȉše vȕne.

:Kad je to čȗla, õfca je pobȇ̩gla f pȍlje.
{{col-5}}

: '''English language'''

: The Sheep and the Horses

:[On a hill,] a sheep that had no wool saw horses, one of them pulling a heavy wagon, one carrying a big load, and one carrying a man quickly.

: The sheep said to the horses: "My heart pains me, seeing a man driving horses".

: The horses said: "Listen, sheep, our hearts pain us when we see this: a man, the master, makes the wool of the sheep into a warm garment for himself. And the sheep has no wool".

: Having heard this, the sheep fled into the plain.

{{col-5}}

{{col-end}}

=== Division by ''jat'' reflex ===
{{Main|yat}}

A basic distinction among the dialects is in the reflex of the long [[Proto-Slavic language|Common Slavic]] vowel ''[[yat|jat]]'', usually transcribed as *ě. Depending on the reflex, the dialects are divided into Ikavian, Ekavian, and Ijekavian, with the reflects of ''jat'' being /i/, /e/, and /ije/ or /je/ respectively. The long and short ''jat'' is reflected as long or short */i/ and /e/ in Ikavian and Ekavian, but Ijekavian dialects introduce a ''ije''/''je'' alternation to retain a distinction.

Standard Croatian and Bosnian are based on Ijekavian, whereas Serbian uses both Ekavian and Ijekavian forms (Ijekavian for Bosnian Serbs, Ekavian for most of Serbia). Influence of standard language through state media and education has caused non-standard varieties to lose ground to the literary forms.

The jat-reflex rules are not without exception. For example, when short ''jat'' is preceded by ''r'', in most Ijekavian dialects developed into /re/ or, occasionally, /ri/. The prefix ''prě-'' ("trans-, over-") when long became ''pre-'' in eastern Ijekavian dialects but to ''prije-'' in western dialects; in Ikavian pronunciation, it also evolved into ''pre-'' or ''prije-'' due to potential ambiguity with ''pri-'' ("approach, come close to"). For verbs that had ''-ěti '' in their infinitive, the past participle ending ''-ěl'' evolved into ''-io'' in Ijekavian Neoštokavian.

The following are some examples:

{| class="wikitable"
|-
!English
!Predecessor
!Ekavian
!Ikavian
!Ijekavian
!Ijekavian development
|-
|beautiful
|*lěp
|lep
|lip
|lijep
| rowspan="2"| long ''ě'' → ''ije''
|-
|time
|*vrěme
|vreme
|vrime
|vrijeme
|-
|faith
|*věra
|vera
|vira
|vjera
|short ''ě'' → ''je''
|-
|crossing
|*prělaz
|prelaz
|prеlaz ''or''<br />prijelaz
|prеlaz ''or''<br />prijelaz
|''pr'' + long ''ě'' → ''prije''<!--Does the /p/ really matter?-->
|-
|times
|*vrěmena
|vremena
|vrimena
|vremena
| rowspan="2"| ''r'' + short ''ě'' → ''re''
|-
|need
|*trěbati
|trebati
|tribat(i)
|trebati
|-
|heat
|*grějati
|grejati
|grijati
|grijati
|''r'' + short ''ě'' → ''ri''
|-
|saw
|*viděl
|video
|vidio
|vidio
|''ěl'' → ''io''
|-
|village
|*selo
|selo
|selo
|selo
|''e'' in root, not ''ě''
|}

== Present sociolinguistic situation ==

=== Comparison with other pluricentric languages ===
Enisa Kafadar argues that there is only one Serbo-Croatian language with several varieties.<ref name=Kafadar>{{cite book|last=Kafadar |first=Enisa |editor1-last=Henn-Memmesheimer |editor1-first=Beate |editor2-last=Franz |editor2-first=Joachim |title=Die Ordnung des Standard und die Differenzierung der Diskurse; Teil 1 |publisher=Peter Lang |page=103 |language=German |chapter=Bosnisch, Kroatisch, Serbisch – Wie spricht man eigentlich in Bosnien-Herzegowina? |trans-chapter=Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian – How do people really speak in Bosnia-Herzegovina? |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=63hKaFGtTDAC&pg=PA95 |location=Frankfurt am Main |year=2009 |isbn=9783631599174 |oclc=699514676 |accessdate=9 August 2014}}</ref> This has made it possible to include all four varieties in a new grammar book.<ref name=ThomasOsipov>{{cite book |last1=Thomas |first1=Paul-Louis |last2=Osipov |first2=Vladimir |year=2012 |title=Grammaire du bosniaque, croate, monténégrin, serbe |trans-title=Grammar of Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian |language=French |series=Collection de grammaires de l'Institut d'études slaves ; vol. 8 |location=Paris |publisher=Institut d'études slaves |page=624 |isbn=9782720404900 |oclc=805026664 |lay-url=http://www.etudes-slaves.paris-sorbonne.fr/spip.php?article1002}}</ref> Daniel Bunčić concludes that it is a pluricentric language, with four standard variants spoken in Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina.<ref name=Buncic>{{cite book |last=Bunčić |first=Daniel |editor1-last=Kempgen |editor1-first=Sebastian |title=Deutsche Beiträge zum 14. Internationalen Slavistenkongress, Ohrid, 2008 |series=Welt der Slaven |publisher=Otto Sagner |page=93 |language=German |chapter=Die (Re-)Nationalisierung der serbokroatischen Standards |trans-chapter=The (Re-)Nationalisation of Serbo-Croatian Standards |location=Munich |year=2008 |oclc=238795822}}</ref> The mutual intelligibility between their speakers "exceeds that between the standard variants of English, French, German, or Spanish".{{Sfn | Thomas | 2003 | p = 325}} Other linguists have argued that the differences between the variants of Serbo-Croatian are less significant than those between the variants of English,<ref>{{cite journal|author=McLennan, Sean |title=Sociolinguistic Analysis of "Serbo-Croatian" |trans-title=Sociolinguistic Analysis of ’Serbo-Croatian’ |url=http://www.shaav.com/professional/linguistics/serbocroation.pdf |journal=Calgary Working Papers in Linguistics |volume=18 |page=107 |year=1996 |issn=0823-0579 |accessdate=10 August 2014}}</ref> German,{{Sfn | Pohl | 1996 | p = 219}} Dutch,{{Sfn | Gröschel | 2003 | pp = 180–181}} and Hindi–Urdu.{{Sfn | Blum | 2002 | pp = 125–126}}

Among pluricentric languages,<ref>{{cite book |last=Brozović |first=Dalibor |authorlink=Dalibor Brozović |editor1-last=Clyne |editor1-first=Michael G |editor1-link=Michael Clyne |title=Pluricentric Languages: Differing Norms in Different Nations |publisher=Mouton de Gruyter |pages=347–380 |chapter=Serbo-Croatian as a pluricentric language |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wawGFWNuHiwC&q=serbo-croatian+pluricentric&pg=PA347 |series=Contributions to the sociology of language 62 |location=Berlin & New York |year=1992 |isbn=9783110128550 |oclc=24668375}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Kordić |first=Snježana |authorlink=Snježana Kordić |editor1-last=Badurina |editor1-first=Lada |editor2-last=Pranjković |editor2-first=Ivo |editor2-link=Ivo Pranjković |editor3-last=Silić |editor3-first=Josip |title=Jezični varijeteti i nacionalni identiteti |publisher=Disput |pages=85–89 |language=Serbo-Croatian |chapter=Policentrični standardni jezik |trans-chapter=Polycentric Standard Language |chapter-url=http://bib.irb.hr/datoteka/426269.POLICENTRICNI_STANDARDNI.PDF |series= |location=Zagreb |year=2009 |url-status=live |isbn=978-953-260-054-4 |oclc=437306433 |archivedate=4 August 2012 |archiveurl=https://www.webcitation.org/69f5Mtzox?url=http://bib.irb.hr/datoteka/426269.POLICENTRICNI_STANDARDNI.PDF |accessdate=3 May 2014 |df= }} [http://data.onb.ac.at/rec/AC07252152 (ÖNB)].</ref> Serbo-Croatian was the only one with a pluricentric standardisation within one state.{{Sfn | Ammon | 1995 | p = 46}}<ref>{{cite book |last=Kordić |first=Snježana |authorlink=Snježana Kordić |editor1-last=Krause |editor1-first=Marion |editor2-last=Sappok |editor2-first=Christian |title=Slavistische Linguistik 2002: Referate des XXVIII. Konstanzer Slavistischen Arbeitstreffens, Bochum 10.-12. September 2002 |series=Slavistishe Beiträge; vol. 434 |publisher=Otto Sagner |page=141 |language=German |chapter=Pro und kontra: "Serbokroatisch" heute |trans-chapter=Pro and con: "Serbo-Croatian" nowadays |chapter-url=http://bib.irb.hr/datoteka/430499.PRO_UND_KONTRA_SERBOKROATISCH.PDF |location=Munich |year=2004 |isbn=3-87690-885-X |oclc=56198470 |archivedate=4 August 2012 |url-status=live |archiveurl=https://www.webcitation.org/69f5n0ek4?url=http://bib.irb.hr/datoteka/430499.PRO_UND_KONTRA_SERBOKROATISCH.PDF |accessdate=9 February 2015 |df= }} [http://data.onb.ac.at/rec/AC05094207 (ÖNB)].</ref> The dissolution of Yugoslavia has made Serbo-Croatian even more of a typical pluricentric language, since the variants of other pluricentric languages are also spoken in different states.<ref>{{cite book |last=Kordić |first=Snježana |authorlink=Snježana Kordić |editor1-last=Golubović |editor1-first=Biljana |editor2-last=Raecke |editor2-first=Jochen |title=Bosnisch – Kroatisch – Serbisch als Fremdsprachen an den Universitäten der Welt |publisher=Otto Sagner |page=95 |language=German |chapter=Nationale Varietäten der serbokroatischen Sprache |trans-chapter=National Varieties of Serbo-Croatian |chapter-url=http://bib.irb.hr/datoteka/426566.NATIONALE_VARIETATEN_DER.PDF |series=Die Welt der Slaven, Sammelbände – Sborniki ; vol. 31 |location=Munich |year=2008 |url-status=live |isbn=978-3-86688-032-0 |oclc=244788988 |archivedate=4 August 2012 |archiveurl=https://www.webcitation.org/69f5TQvIk?url=http://bib.irb.hr/datoteka/426566.NATIONALE_VARIETATEN_DER.PDF |accessdate=7 October 2014 |df= }} [http://data.onb.ac.at/rec/AC07155292 (ÖNB)].</ref><ref>{{cite journal |author=Kordić, Snježana |authorlink=Snježana Kordić |title=Plurizentrische Sprachen, Ausbausprachen, Abstandsprachen und die Serbokroatistik |trans-title=Pluricentric languages, Ausbau languages, Abstand languages and Serbo-Croatian studies |url=http://www.zeitschrift-fuer-balkanologie.de/index.php/zfb/article/view/203/203 |language=German |journal=Zeitschrift für Balkanologie |volume=45 |issue=2 |pages=213–214 |year=2009 |issn=0044-2356 |oclc=680567046 |id={{ZDB|201058-6}} |archivedate=4 August 2012 |archiveurl=https://www.webcitation.org/69f5bCgpH?url=http://bib.irb.hr/datoteka/436361.AUSBAU-ABSTAND-PLURIZENTRISCH.PDF |accessdate=21 January 2013 |df= }}</ref>

{{See also|Differences between Serbo-Croatian standard varieties}}

=== Contemporary names ===
[[File:Serbo croatian languages2006 02.png|thumb|Ethno-political variants of Serbo-Croatian as of 2006.]]

The current Serbian constitution of 2006 refers to the official language as ''Serbian'',<ref>{{citation|url=http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Serbia#Language_and_script |title=2006 Constitution of Serbia |article=10}}</ref> while the Montenegrin constitution of 2007 proclaimed ''Montenegrin'' as the primary official language, but also grants other languages the right of official use.<ref>{{citation|url=http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Montenegro#Article_13_.28Language_and_alphabet.29 |title=Constitution of Montenegroquote=The official language in Montenegro shall be Montenegrin.[…]Serbian, Bosniac, Albanian and Croatian shall also be in the official use.|year=2007}}</ref>
* Most [[Bosniaks]] refer to their language as ''[[Bosnian language|Bosnian]]''.
* Most [[Croats]] refer to their language as ''[[Croatian language|Croatian]]''.
* Most [[Serbs]] refer to their language as ''[[Serbian language|Serbian]]''.
* [[Montenegrins (ethnic group)|Montenegrins]] refer to their language either as ''[[Serbian language|Serbian]]'' or ''[[Montenegrin language|Montenegrin]]''.
* Ethnic [[Bunjevci]] refer to their language as ''[[Bunjevac dialect|Bunjevac]]''.

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has specified different [[Universal Decimal Classification]] (UDC) numbers for Croatian ''(UDC 862,'' abbreviation '''hr''') and Serbian ''(UDC 861'', abbreviation '''sr'''), while the cover term ''Serbo-Croatian'' is used to refer to the combination of original signs (''UDC 861/862,'' abbreviation '''sh'''). Furthermore, the ''[[ISO 639]]'' standard designates the Bosnian language with the abbreviations '''bos''' and '''bs'''.

The [[International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia]] considers what it calls ''BCS'' (Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian) to be the main language of all Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian defendants. The indictments, documents, and verdicts of the ICTY are not written with any regard for consistently following the grammatical prescriptions of any of the three standards{{spaced ndash}}be they Serbian, Croatian, or Bosnian.

For utilitarian purposes, the Serbo-Croatian language is often called "''naš jezik''" ("our language") or "''naški''" (sic. "Ourish" or "Ourian") by native speakers. This [[political correctness|politically correct]] term is frequently used to describe the Serbo-Croatian language by those who wish to avoid nationalistic and linguistic discussions.<ref>{{cite book |last=Štiks |first=Igor |title=Brothers United: The Making of Yugoslavs. |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing |pages=27 |language=English |url=http://www.oapen.org/download?type=document&docid=642971 |year=2015 |isbn=9781474221542 |accessdate=1 May 2018}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |editor1-last=Roland |editor1-first=Vogt |last=Đorđe |first=Tomić | title=European National Identities: Elements, Transitions, Conflicts | chapter=From "Yugoslavism" to (Post-)Yugoslav Nationalisms: Understanding Yugoslav Identities |publisher=Routledge |pages=287 |language=English |year=2017 |isbn=9781351296465}}</ref>

=== Views of linguists in the former Yugoslavia ===

==== Serbian linguists ====
The majority of mainstream Serbian linguists consider Serbian and Croatian to be one language, that is called Serbo-Croatian (''srpskohrvatski'') or Croato-Serbian (''hrvatskosrpski'').{{Citation needed|date=August 2014}} A minority of Serbian linguists are of the opinion that Serbo-Croatian did exist, but has, in the meantime, dissolved.{{Citation needed|date=August 2014}}

==== Croatian linguists ====
The opinion of the majority of Croatian linguists{{citation needed|date=April 2015}} is that there has never been a Serbo-Croatian language, but two different standard languages that overlapped sometime in the course of history. However, Croatian linguist [[Snježana Kordić]] has been leading an academic discussion on this issue in the Croatian journal ''Književna republika''<ref>{{cite web|url=http://bib.irb.hr/lista-radova?autor=173535#zncasopis |title=Kordić's publications in ''Književna republika'' |publisher=Bib.irb.hr |accessdate=2013-09-01}} {{ZDB|2122129-7}}.</ref> from 2001 to 2010.<ref>{{cite news |first=Nikola |last=Petković |title=Mrsko zrcalo pred licima jezikoslovaca |trans-title=A nasty mirror reflects back at linguists |url=http://www.snjezana-kordic.de/Prikaz_Petkovic_tekst.doc |publisher=''[[Novi list]]'' |location=Rijeka |issn=1334-1545 |date=5 September 2010 |url-status=dead |page=7 in the arts section ''Mediteran'' |language=Serbo-Croatian |archivedate=5 July 2012 |archiveurl=https://www.webcitation.org/68vQ62W6U?url=http://www.snjezana-kordic.de/Prikaz_Petkovic_tekst.doc |accessdate=18 July 2012 |df= }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |first=Slobodan |last=Šnajder |authorlink=Slobodan Šnajder |title=Lingvistička bojna |trans-title=Linguistic battle |url=http://www.snjezana-kordic.de/Prikaz_Snajder.doc |publisher=''[[Novi list]]'' |location=Rijeka |issn=1334-1545 |date=10 October 2010 |url-status=dead |page=6 in the arts section ''Mediteran'' |language=Serbo-Croatian |archivedate=5 July 2012 |archiveurl=https://www.webcitation.org/68vxKkaex?url=http://www.snjezana-kordic.de/Prikaz_Snajder.doc |accessdate=6 July 2012 |df= }}</ref> In the discussion, she shows that linguistic criteria such as mutual intelligibility, the huge overlap in the linguistic system, and the same dialect basis of the standard language are evidence that Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian and Montenegrin are four national variants of the pluricentric Serbo-Croatian language.<ref>{{cite journal |author=Kordić, Snježana |authorlink=Snježana Kordić |title=Demagogija umjesto znanosti (odgovor Daliboru Brozoviću) |trans-title=Demagogy instead of science (response to Dalibor Brozović) |url=http://bib.irb.hr/datoteka/430252.DEMAGOGIJA_UMJESTO_ZNANOSTI.PDF |language=Serbo-Croatian |journal=Književna republika |volume=1 |issue=7–8 |pages=176–202 |year=2003 |url-status=live |issn=1334-1057 |archivedate=23 August 2012 |archiveurl=https://www.webcitation.org/6A7zQNqNr?url=http://bib.irb.hr/datoteka/430252.DEMAGOGIJA_UMJESTO_ZNANOSTI.PDF |accessdate=8 April 2014 |df= }} [http://opak.crolib.hr/cgi-bin/unicat.cgi?form=D1440910057 (CROLIB)].</ref><ref>{{cite journal |author=Kordić, Snježana |authorlink=Snježana Kordić |title=Autizam hrvatske filologije (odgovor Ivi Pranjkoviću) |trans-title=The autism of Croatian philology (response to Ivo Pranjković) |url=http://bib.irb.hr/datoteka/430121.AUTIZAM_HRVATSKE_FILOLOGIJE.PDF |language=Serbo-Croatian |journal=Književna republika |volume=2 |issue=7–8 |pages=254–280 |year=2004 |url-status=live |issn=1334-1057 |archivedate=4 August 2012 |archiveurl=https://www.webcitation.org/69f5u0YEK?url=http://bib.irb.hr/datoteka/430121.AUTIZAM_HRVATSKE_FILOLOGIJE.PDF |accessdate=1 March 2015 |df= }} [http://katalog.nsk.hr/F/?func=direct&doc_number=000572375 (NSK)].</ref> Igor Mandić states: "During the last ten years, it has been the longest, the most serious and most acrid discussion (…) in 21st-century Croatian culture".<ref>{{cite news |first=Igor |last=Mandić |authorlink=Igor Mandić |title=Svojom polemikom možda pokušava izbrisati naš identitet... Što, zapravo, hoće ta žena? |newspaper=Jutarnji List |trans-title=She is perhaps trying to destroy our identity by polemicising... What does that woman really want? |url=http://www.jutarnji.hr/igor-mandic--svojom-polemikom-mozda-pokusava-izbrisati-nas-identitet---sto--zapravo--hoce-ta-zena-/905607/ |publisher=''[[Jutarnji list]]'' |location=Zagreb |issn=1331-5692 |date=21 November 2010 |page=19 |language=Serbo-Croatian |archivedate=7 July 2012 |url-status=live |archiveurl=https://www.webcitation.org/68ySmIaKv?url=http://www.jutarnji.hr/igor-mandic--svojom-polemikom-mozda-pokusava-izbrisati-nas-identitet---sto--zapravo--hoce-ta-zena-/905607/ |accessdate=12 August 2013 |df= }}</ref> Inspired by that discussion, a [[Croatian language and nationalism|monograph on language and nationalism]] has been published.{{Sfn | Kordić | 2010}}

The view of the majority of Croatian linguists that there is no single Serbo-Croatian language but several different standard languages has been sharply criticized by German linguist [[Bernhard Gröschel]] in his monograph{{Sfn | Gröschel | 2009}} ''Serbo-Croatian Between Linguistics and Politics''.<ref>{{cite journal |author=Kordić, Snježana |authorlink=Snježana Kordić |title=Svijet o nama: Bernhard Gröschel, ''Das Serbokroatische zwischen Linguistik und Politik'' |trans-title=About us – World point of view: Bernhard Gröschel, ''Serbo-Croatian Between Linguistics and Politics'' |url=http://bib.irb.hr/datoteka/445818.rec_GROSCHEL_u_KR.PDF |language=Serbo-Croatian |journal=Književna republika |volume=7 |issue=10–12 |pages=316–330 |year=2009 |url-status=live |issn=1334-1057 |archivedate=23 August 2012 |archiveurl=https://www.webcitation.org/6A7zhZJ9N?url=http://bib.irb.hr/datoteka/445818.rec_GROSCHEL_u_KR.PDF |accessdate=6 October 2013 |df= }} [http://katalog.nsk.hr/F/?func=direct&doc_number=000742298 (NSK)].</ref>

A more detailed overview, incorporating arguments from Croatian philology and contemporary linguistics, would be as follows:

:''Serbo-Croatian is a language''
:One still finds many references to Serbo-Croatian, and proponents of Serbo-Croatian who deny that Croats, Serbs, Bosniaks and Montenegrins speak different languages. The usual argument generally goes along the following lines:
:*Standard Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin are completely mutually intelligible.<ref>{{cite book|last=Trudgill |first=Peter |year=2003 |title=A glossary of sociolinguistics |location=Oxford & New York |publisher=Oxford University Press |page=119 |oclc=50768041}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Kordić |first=Snježana |authorlink=Snježana Kordić |editor1-last=Madelain |editor1-first=Anne |title=Au sud de l'Est |series=vol. 3 |publisher=Non Lieu |page=74 |language=French |chapter=La langue croate, serbe, bosniaque et monténégrine |trans-chapter=The Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin Language |chapter-url=http://bib.irb.hr/datoteka/429734.LA_LANGUE_CROATE_SERBE.PDF |location=Paris |year=2007 |url-status=live |isbn=978-2-35270-036-4 |oclc=182916790 |archivedate=4 August 2012 |archiveurl=https://www.webcitation.org/69f5WqGAx?url=http://bib.irb.hr/datoteka/429734.LA_LANGUE_CROATE_SERBE.PDF |accessdate=3 February 2015 |df= }}</ref> In addition, they use two alphabets that perfectly match each other ([[Latin alphabet|Latin]] and [[Cyrillic]]), thanks to Ljudevit Gaj and Vuk Karadžić. Croats exclusively use Latin script and Serbs equally use both Cyrillic and Latin. Although Cyrillic is taught in Bosnia, most Bosnians, especially non-Serbs ([[Bosniaks]] and [[Croats of Bosnia and Herzegovina|Croats]]), favor Latin.
:*The list of 100 words of the basic Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin vocabulary, as set out by Morris Swadesh, shows that all 100 words are identical.<ref>{{cite journal|author=Brozović, Dalibor |authorlink=Dalibor Brozović |title=Europske integracije i hrvatski jezik |trans-title=European integration and the Croatian language|journal=Jezik |volume=49 |issue=4 |page=124 |year=2002 |language=Serbo-Croatian |issn=0021-6925}}</ref> According to Swadesh, 81 per cent are sufficient to be considered as a single language.<ref>{{cite book |last=Kloss |first=Heinz |authorlink=Heinz Kloss |editor1-last=Göschel |editor1-first=Joachim |editor2-last=Nail |editor2-first=Norbert |editor3-last=van der Els |editor3-first=Gaston |title=Zur Theorie des Dialekts: Aufsätze aus 100 Jahren Forschung |publisher=F. Steiner |page=303 |chapter=Abstandsprachen und Ausbausprachen |trans-chapter=Abstand-languages and Ausbau-languages |series=Zeitschrift für Dialektologie and Linguistik, Beihefte, n.F., Heft 16 |location=Wiesbaden |year=1976 |oclc=2598722}}</ref>
:*Typologically and structurally, these standard variants have virtually the same grammar, i.e. morphology and syntax.{{Sfn | Pohl | 1996 | p = 214}}<ref>{{cite journal |author=Kordić, Snježana |authorlink=Snježana Kordić |title=Le serbo-croate aujourd'hui: entre aspirations politiques et faits linguistiques |trans-title=Serbo-Croatian today: Between political aspirations and linguistic facts |url=http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/slave_0080-2557_2004_num_75_1_6860 |language=French |journal=Revue des études slaves |volume=75 |issue=1 |pages=34–36 |year=2004 |doi=10.3406/slave.2004.6860 |issn=0080-2557 |oclc=754207802 |id={{ZDB|208723-6}} |archivedate=4 August 2012 |archiveurl=https://www.webcitation.org/69f5exqeb?url=http://bib.irb.hr/datoteka/430127.LE_SERBO-CROATE_AUJOURDHUI.PDF |accessdate=2 April 2014 |df= }} [http://data.onb.ac.at/rec/AC07248653 (ÖNB)].</ref>
:*The Serbo-Croatian language was standardised in the mid-19th century, and all subsequent attempts to dissolve its basic unity have not succeeded.
:*The affirmation of distinct [[Croatian language|Croatian]], [[Serbian language|Serbian]], [[Bosnian language|Bosnian]], and [[Montenegrin language|Montenegrin]] languages is ''politically'' motivated.
:*According to [[phonology]], [[morphology (linguistics)|morphology]] and [[syntax]], these standard variants are essentially one language because they are based on the same, [[Shtokavian dialect|Štokavian dialect]].{{Sfn | Blum | 2002 | p = 134}}

:''Serbo-Croatian is not a language''
:Similar arguments are made for other official standards which are drawn from identical or nearly identical material bases and which therefore constitute pluricentric languages, such as [[Malaysian language|Malaysian]] (Malaysian Malay), and [[Indonesian language|Indonesian]] (together called [[Malay language|Malay]]),<ref>{{cite book|last=Haji Omar |first=Asmah |editor1-last=Clyne |editor1-first=Michael G |editor1-link=Michael Clyne|title=Pluricentric Languages: Differing Norms in Different Nations |publisher=Mouton de Gruyter |pages=401–419 |chapter=Malay as a pluricentric language |chapter-url=http://www.google.hr/books?hl=hr&lr=&id=wawGFWNuHiwC&oi=fnd&pg=PA401&dq=#v=onepage&q&f=false |series=Contributions to the sociology of language 62 |location=Berlin & New York |year=1992 |isbn=3-11-012855-1 |oclc=24668375 |accessdate=28 March 2015}}</ref> or [[Standard Hindi]] and [[Urdu]] (together called [[Hindi-Urdu|Hindustani or Hindi-Urdu]]).<ref>{{cite book|last= Dua |first=Hans Raj |editor1-last=Clyne |editor1-first=Michael G |editor1-link=Michael Clyne|title= Pluricentric Languages: Differing Norms in Different Nations |publisher=Mouton de Gruyter |pages=381–400 |chapter=Hindi-Urdu as a pluricentric language |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wawGFWNuHiwC&q=hindi+urdu+pluricentric&pg=PA381 |series=Contributions to the sociology of language 62 |location=Berlin & New York |year=1992 |isbn=3-11-012855-1 |oclc=24668375 |accessdate=11 January 2014}}</ref> However, some argue that these arguments have flaws:

:*Phonology, morphology, and syntax are not the only dimensions of a language: other fields (semantics, pragmatics, stylistics, [[lexicology]], etc.) also differ slightly. However, it is the case with other pluricentric languages.{{Sfn | Ammon | 1995 | pp = 154–174}} A comparison is made to the closely related [[North Germanic languages]] (or dialects, if one prefers), though these are not fully mutually intelligible as the Serbo-Croatian standards are. A closer comparison may be [[General American]] and [[Received Pronunciation]] in English, which are closer to each other than the latter is to other dialects which are subsumed under "British English".
:*Since the Croatian language as recorded in [[Marin Držić|Držić]] and [[Ivan Gundulić|Gundulić]]'s works (16th and 17th centuries) is virtually the same as the contemporary standard Croatian (understandable archaisms apart), it is evident that the 19th-century formal standardization was just the final touch in the process that, as far as the Croatian language is concerned, had lasted more than three centuries. The radical break with the past, characteristic of modern Serbian (whose vernacular was likely not as similar to Croatian as it is today), is a trait completely at variance with Croatian linguistic history. In short, formal standardization processes for Croatian and Serbian had coincided chronologically (and, one could add, ideologically), but they haven't produced a unified standard language. [[Ivan Gundulić|Gundulić]] did not write in "Serbo-Croatian", nor did [[August Šenoa]]. [[Marko Marulić]] and [[Marin Držić]] wrote in a sophisticated idiom of the Croatian language some 300–350 years before "Serbo-Croatian" ideology appeared. Marulić explicitly called his Čakavian-written ''Judita'' as ''u uerish haruacchi slosena'' ("arranged in Croatian stanzas") in 1501, and the Štokavian grammar and dictionary of [[Bartol Kašić]] written in 1604 unambiguously identifies the ethnonyms ''Slavic'' and ''Illyrian'' with ''Croatian''.

The linguistic debate in this region is more about politics than about linguistics per se.

The topic of language for writers from Dalmatia and Dubrovnik prior to the 19th century made a distinction only between speakers of Italian or Slavic, since those were the two main groups that inhabited Dalmatian city-states at that time. Whether someone spoke Croatian or Serbian was not an important distinction then, as the two languages were not distinguished by most speakers. This has been used as an argument to state that Croatian literature Croatian per se, but also includes Serbian and other languages that are part of Serbo-Croatian, These facts undermine the Croatian language proponents' argument that modern-day Croatian is based on a language called Old Croatian.

However, most intellectuals and writers from Dalmatia who used the Štokavian dialect and practiced the Catholic faith saw themselves as part of a Croatian nation as far back as the mid-16th to 17th centuries, some 300 years before Serbo-Croatian ideology appeared. Their loyalty was first and foremost to Catholic Christendom, but when they professed an ethnic identity, they referred to themselves as "Slovin" and "Illyrian" (a sort of forerunner of Catholic baroque [[pan-Slavism]]) '''and''' [[Croats|Croat]]{{spaced ndash}}these 30-odd writers over the span of c. 350 years always saw themselves as Croats first and never as part of a Serbian nation. It should also be noted that, in the pre-national era, Catholic religious orientation did not necessarily equate with Croat ethnic identity in Dalmatia. A Croatian follower of Vuk Karadžić, [[Ivan Broz]], noted that for a Dalmatian to identify oneself as a Serb was seen as foreign as identifying oneself as Macedonian or Greek. [[Vatroslav Jagić]] pointed out in 1864:

: "As I have mentioned in the preface, history knows only two national names in these parts—Croatian and Serbian. As far as Dubrovnik is concerned, the Serbian name was never in use; on the contrary, the Croatian name was frequently used and gladly referred to"
: "At the end of the 15th century [in Dubrovnik and Dalmatia], sermons and poems were exquisitely crafted in the Croatian language by those men whose names are widely renowned by deep learning and piety."

(From ''The History of the Croatian language'', [[Zagreb]], 1864.)

On the other hand, the opinion of Jagić from 1864 is argued not to have firm grounds. When Jagić says "Croatian", he refers to a few cases referring to the Dubrovnik vernacular as ''ilirski'' (Illyrian). This was a common name for all Slavic vernaculars in Dalmatian cities among the Roman inhabitants. In the meantime, other written monuments are found that mention ''srpski'', ''lingua serviana'' (= Serbian), and some that mention Croatian.<ref name="Mladenovic 2004">Mladenovic. Kratka istorija srpskog književnog jezika. Beograd 2004, 67</ref> By far the most competent Serbian scientist on the Dubrovnik language issue, [[Milan Rešetar]], who was born in Dubrovnik himself, wrote behalf of language characteristics: "The one who thinks that Croatian and Serbian are two separate languages must confess that Dubrovnik always (linguistically) used to be Serbian."<ref name="Mladenovic 2004" />

Finally, the former ''medieval'' texts from Dubrovnik and Montenegro dating before the 16th century were neither true Štokavian nor Serbian, but mostly specific a Jekavian-[[Chakavian dialect|Čakavian]] that was nearer to actual [[Adriatic Sea|Adriatic]] islanders in Croatia.<ref>S. Zekovic & B. Cimeša: Elementa montenegrina, Chrestomatia 1/90. CIP, Zagreb 1991</ref>

=== Political connotations ===
Nationalists have conflicting views about the language(s). The nationalists among the Croats conflictingly claim either that they speak an entirely separate language from Serbs and Bosniaks or that these two peoples have, due to the longer lexicographic tradition among Croats, somehow "borrowed" their standard languages from them.{{Citation needed|date=July 2010}} Bosniak nationalists claim that both Croats and Serbs have "appropriated" the [[Bosnian language]], since [[Ljudevit Gaj]] and [[Vuk Karadžić]] preferred the Neoštokavian-Ijekavian dialect, widely spoken in [[Bosnia and Herzegovina]], as the basis for language standardization, whereas the nationalists among the Serbs claim either that any divergence in the language is artificial, or claim that the [[Shtokavian dialect|Štokavian dialect]] is theirs and the [[Chakavian dialect|Čakavian]] Croats'— in more extreme formulations Croats have "taken" or "stolen" their language from the Serbs. {{Citation needed|date=July 2010}}

Proponents of unity among Southern Slavs claim that there is a single language with normal dialectal variations. The term "Serbo-Croatian" (or synonyms) is not officially used in any of the successor countries of former Yugoslavia.

In Serbia, the Serbian standard has an official status countrywide, while both Serbian and Croatian are official in the province of [[Vojvodina]]. A large Bosniak minority is present in the southwest region of [[Sandžak]], but the "official recognition" of Bosnian language is moot.<ref>Official communique, 27 December 2004, Serbian Ministry of Education {{in lang|sr}}</ref> Bosnian is an optional course in 1st and 2nd grade of the elementary school, while it is also in official use in the municipality of [[Novi Pazar]].<ref>{{cite web |url= http://www.novipazar.org.rs/sl/gl_06_2002.pdf |title= Opštinski službeni glasnik opštine Novi Pazar }}{{dead link|date=December 2017 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}&nbsp;{{small|(65.8&nbsp;KB)}}, 30 April 2002, page 1</ref> However, its nomenclature is controversial, as there is incentive that it is referred to as "Bosniak" (''bošnjački'') rather than "Bosnian" (''bosanski'') (see [[Bosnian language#Controversy and recognition]] for details).

Croatian is the official language of Croatia, while Serbian is also official in municipalities with significant Serb population.

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, all three standard languages are recorded as official but in practice and media, mostly Bosnian and Serbian are applied. Confrontations have on occasion been absurd. The academic [[Muhamed Filipović]], in an interview to Slovenian television, told of a local court in a Croatian district requesting a paid translator to translate from Bosnian to Croatian before the trial could proceed.{{Citation needed|date=December 2007}}

== Words of Serbo-Croatian origin ==
: ''See [[:wikt:Category:English terms derived from Serbo-Croatian|Category:English terms derived from Serbo-Croatian]] on Wiktionary''
*''[[Cravat]]'', from French ''cravate'' "Croat", by analogy with Flemish ''Krawaat'' and German ''Krabate'', from Serbo-Croatian ''Hrvat'',<ref>{{OED|cravat}}</ref> as cravats were characteristic of Croatian dress
*''[[Polje]]'', from Serbo-Croatian ''polje'' "field"<ref>{{OED|polje}}</ref>
*''[[Slivovitz]]'', from German ''Slibowitz'', from Bulgarian ''slivovitza'' or Serbo-Croatian ''šljivovica'' "plum brandy", from Old Slavic *sliva "plum" (cognate with English [[sloe]])<ref>{{OED|slovovitz}}</ref>
*''[[Tamburitza]]'', Serbo-Croatian diminutive of ''tambura'', from Turkish, from Persian ''ṭambūr'' "[[tanbur]]"<ref>{{OED|tamburitza}}</ref>
*''[[Uvala (landform)|Uvala]]'', from Serbo-Croatian ''uvala'' "hollow"<ref>{{OED|uvala}}</ref>

== See also ==
{{Portal|Language|Linguistics|Bosnia and Herzegovina|Croatia|Montenegro|Serbia}}
* [[Comparison of standard Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian]]
* [[Language secessionism#In Serbo-Croatian|Language secessionism in Serbo-Croatian]]
* [[Relative clause#Serbo-Croatian|Serbo-Croatian relative clauses]]
* [[Serbo-Croatian kinship]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}

== Bibliography ==
{{refbegin}}
* {{cite book|last=Ammon |first=Ulrich |year=1995 |language=German |title=Die deutsche Sprache in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz: das Problem der nationalen Varietäten |trans-title=German Language in Germany, Austria and Switzerland: The Problem of National Varieties |location=Berlin & New York |publisher=Walter de Gruyter |page=575 |oclc=33981055 }}
* {{cite book|last=Blum |first=Daniel |year=2002 |language=German |title=Sprache und Politik : Sprachpolitik und Sprachnationalismus in der Republik Indien und dem sozialistischen Jugoslawien (1945–1991) |trans-title=Language and Policy: Language Policy and Linguistic Nationalism in the Republic of India and the Socialist Yugoslavia (1945–1991) |series=Beiträge zur Südasienforschung ; vol. 192 |location=Würzburg |publisher=Ergon |page=200 |isbn=3-89913-253-X |oclc=51961066 }}
* {{cite book|editor1-last=Brown |editor1-first=Edward Keith |editor2-last=Anderson |editor2-first=Anne |title=Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics |publisher=Elsevier |location=Amsterdam |year=2006 |isbn=0-08-044299-4 |oclc=3945869 }}
* {{cite book|editor1-last=Bugarski |editor1-first=Ranko |editor1-link=Ranko Bugarski |editor2-last=Hawkesworth |editor2-first=Celia |title=Language in the Former Yugoslav Lands |publisher=Slavica Publishers |page=325 |location=Bloomington |year=2006 |isbn=0-89357-298-5|oclc=52858529 }}
* {{cite book|last=Greenberg |first=Robert David |year=2004 |title=Language and Identity in the Balkans: Serbo-Croatian and Its Disintegration |location=Oxford & New York |publisher=Oxford University Press |page=188 |isbn=0-19-925815-5 }}
* {{cite journal|last=Gröschel |first=Bernhard |authorlink=Bernhard Gröschel |title=Postjugoslavische Amtssprachenregelungen – Soziolinguistische Argumente gegen die Einheitlichkeit des Serbokroatischen? |trans-title=Post-Yugoslav Official Languages Regulations – Sociolinguistic Arguments Against Consistency of Serbo-Croatian? |url=https://archive.org/details/Postjugoslavische_Amtssprachenregelungen_Bernhard_Groeschel_2003 |language=German |journal=Srpski Jezik |volume=8 |issue=1–2 |pages=135–196 |year=2003 |issn=0354-9259 |accessdate=18 May 2015 }} <small>[http://www.vbs.rs/scripts/cobiss?command=DISPLAY&base=99999&rid=121971724&fmt=11&lani=sr (COBISS-Sr)]</small>.
* {{cite book|last=Gröschel |first=Bernhard |authormask=2 |year=2009 |language=German |title=Das Serbokroatische zwischen Linguistik und Politik: mit einer Bibliographie zum postjugoslavischen Sprachenstreit |trans-title=Serbo-Croatian Between Linguistics and Politics: With a Bibliography of the Post-Yugoslav Language Dispute |series=Lincom Studies in Slavic Linguistics ; vol 34 |location=Munich |publisher=Lincom Europa |page=451 |isbn=978-3-929075-79-3 |oclc=428012015 |lccn=2009473660 |ol=15295665W |id={{COBISS|43144034}} }}
* {{citation|last=Kordić |first=Snježana |authorlink=Snježana Kordić |title=Serbo-Croatian |year=2006 |series=Languages of the World/Materials; 148 |location=Munich & Newcastle |publisher=Lincom Europa |isbn=3-89586-161-8 |oclc=37959860 |ol=2863538W}}
* {{cite book |last=Kordić |first=Snježana |authormask=2 |year=2010 |language=Serbo-Croatian |title=Jezik i nacionalizam |trans-title=Language and Nationalism |url=http://bib.irb.hr/datoteka/475567.Jezik_i_nacionalizam.pdf |series=Rotulus Universitas |url-status=live |location=Zagreb |publisher=Durieux |page=430 |isbn=978-953-188-311-5 |lccn=2011520778 |oclc=729837512 |ol=15270636W |archivedate=8 July 2012 |archiveurl=https://www.webcitation.org/690BiBe4T?url=http://bib.irb.hr/datoteka/475567.Jezik_i_nacionalizam.pdf |accessdate=21 April 2015 |df= }}
* {{cite journal|last=Lencek |first=Rado |title=A few remarks for the history of the term 'Serbocroatian' language |journal=Zbornik za filologiju i lingvistiku |volume=19 |issue=1 |pages=45–53 |year=1976 |issn=0514-6143 }}
* {{cite book|last=Mappes-Niediek |first=Norbert |year=2005 |language=German |title=Die Ethno-Falle: der Balkan-Konflikt und was Europa daraus lernen kann |trans-title=The Ethnic Trap: the Balkan conflict and what Europe can learn from it |location=Berlin |publisher=Christoph Links Verlag |page=224 |isbn=978-3-86153-367-2 |oclc=61665869 }}
* {{cite book|last=Pohl |first=Hans-Dieter |editor1-last=Ohnheiser |editor1-first=Ingeborg |title=Wechselbeziehungen zwischen slawischen Sprachen, Literaturen und Kulturen in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart : Akten der Tagung aus Anlaß des 25jährigen Bestehens des Instituts für Slawistik an der Universität Innsbruck, Innsbruck, 25. – 27. Mai 1995 |series=Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft, Slavica aenipontana ; vol. 4 |publisher=Non Lieu |pages=205–219 |language=German |chapter=Serbokroatisch – Rückblick und Ausblick |trans-chapter=Serbo-Croatian – Looking backward and forward |location=Innsbruck |year=1996 |oclc=243829127 }}
* {{cite journal|last=Thomas |first=Paul-Louis |title=Le serbo-croate (bosniaque, croate, monténégrin, serbe): de l'étude d'une langue à l'identité des langues |trans-title=Serbo-Croatian (Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, Serbian): from the study of a language to the identity of languages |url=http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/slave_0080-2557_2002_num_74_2_6801 |language=French |journal=Revue des études slaves |volume=74 |issue=2–3 |pages=311–325 |year=2003 |doi=10.3406/slave.2002.6801 |issn=0080-2557 |oclc=754204160 |id= {{ZDB|208723-6}} |accessdate=17 August 2012 }}
{{refend}}

== Further reading ==
* Alexander, R., 2006. Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, a grammar: With sociolinguistic commentary. Univ of Wisconsin Press.
* Banac, Ivo: ''Main Trends in the Croatian Language Question''. Yale University Press, 1984.
* Franolić, Branko: ''A Historical Survey of Literary Croatian''. Nouvelles éditions Latines, Paris, 1984.
* {{cite book|last=Franolić |first=Branko |authormask=2 |year=1988 |title=Language Policy in Yugoslavia with special reference to Croatian |publisher=Nouvelles Editions Latines |location=Paris}}
* {{cite book|last1=Franolić |first1=Branko |authormask=2 |last2=Žagar |first2=Mateo |year=2008 |title=A Historical Outline of Literary Croatian & The Glagolitic Heritage of Croatian Culture |publisher=Erasmus & CSYPN |location=London & Zagreb |isbn=978-953-6132-80-5}}
* Ivić, Pavle: ''Die serbokroatischen Dialekte''. the Hague, 1958.
* {{cite book|last=Jakobsen |first=Per |editor1-last=Ostojić |editor1-first=Branislav |title=Jezička situacija u Crnoj Gori – norma i standardizacija |publisher=Crnogorska akademija nauka i umjetnosti |pages=25–34 |language=Serbo-Croatian |chapter=O strukturalno-lingvističkim konstantama srpskohrvatskog jezika (inventar fonema i fonotaktička struktura) |trans-chapter=Serbocroatian structural-linguistic constants (inventory of phonemes and phonotactic structure) |location=Podgorica |year=2008 |isbn=978-86-7215-207-4}} <small>[http://vbcg.vbcg.me/scripts/cobiss?ukaz=DISP&id=0446469545391868&rec=8&sid=9 (COBISS-CG)]</small>.
* {{cite journal|author=Kristophson, Jürgen |title=Vom Widersinn der Dialektologie: Gedanken zum Štokavischen |trans-title=Dialectological Nonsense: Thoughts on Shtokavian |language=German |journal=Zeitschrift für Balkanologie |volume=36 |issue=2 |pages=178–186 |year=2000 |issn=0044-2356}} {{ZDB|201058-6}}.
* Magner, Thomas F.: ''Zagreb Kajkavian dialect''. Pennsylvania State University, 1966.
* {{cite book|last=Magner |first=Thomas F.|authormask=2 |year=1991 |title=Introduction to the Croatian and Serbian Language (Revised ed.) |publisher=Pennsylvania State University}}
* {{cite book|last=Merk |first=Hening |editor1-last=Ostojić |editor1-first=Branislav |title=Jezička situacija u Crnoj Gori – norma i standardizacija |publisher=Crnogorska akademija nauka i umjetnosti |pages=295–299 |language=Serbo-Croatian |chapter=Neka pragmatična zapažanja o postojanju srpskohrvatskog jezika |location=Podgorica |year=2008 |isbn=978-86-7215-207-4}} <small>[http://vbcg.vbcg.me/scripts/cobiss?ukaz=DISP&id=0446469545391868&rec=2&sid=8 (COBISS-CG)]</small>.
* Murray Despalatović, Elinor: ''Ljudevit Gaj and the Illyrian Movement''. Columbia University Press, 1975.
* Zekovic, Sreten & Cimeša, Boro: ''Elementa montenegrina'', Chrestomatia 1/90. CIP, Zagreb 1991.
*Spalatin, C., 1966. Serbo-Croatian or Serbian and Croatian?: Considerations on the Croatian Declaration and Serbian Proposal of March 1967. Journal of Croatian Studies, 7, pp.3-13.
*Franolić, B., 1983. The development of literary Croatian and Serbian. Buske Verlag.
*Bunčić, D., 2016. Serbo-Croatian/Serbian: Cyrillic and Latin. Biscriptality: A Sociolinguistic Typology, pp.231-246.

== External links ==
{{interWiki|code=sh}}
{{Commons category|Serbo-Croatian language}}
* Ethnologue{{spaced ndash}}15th edition of the Ethnologue (released 2005) shows changes in this area:
** [https://web.archive.org/web/20131005004814/http://archive.ethnologue.com/14/show_language.asp?code=SRC Previous Ethnologue entry for Serbo-Croatian]
** [https://web.archive.org/web/20131005010950/http://archive.ethnologue.com/15/show_family.asp?subid=90675 Ethnologue 15th Edition report on western South Slavic languages].
* [http://hjp.srce.hr/index.php?show=povijest&chapter=28-novosadski_dogovor Integral text of Novi Sad Agreement] (In Serbo-Croatian).
* [http://www.omniglot.com/writing/serbo-croat.htm Serbian and Croatian alphabets] at Omniglot.
* [http://www.rferl.org/content/Serbian_Croatian_Bosnian_or_Montenegrin_Many_In_Balkans_Just_Call_It_Our_Language_/1497105.html Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, Or Montenegrin? Or Just 'Our Language'?], ''[[Radio Free Europe]]'', February 21, 2009
* {{Citation |last1=Browne |first1=Wayles |author1-link=Wayles Browne |last2=Alt |first2=Theresa |author2-link= |year=2004 |url=http://www.seelrc.org:8080/grammar/pdf/compgrammar_bcs.pdf |title=A Handbook of Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian |publisher=SEELRC}}

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