Serbian language Totally Explained

Everything about Serbian Language totally explained

Serbian (; ) is a South Slavic language, spoken chiefly in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, and in the Serbian diaspora. Standard Serbian is based on Shtokavian dialect, like Croatian and Bosnian, with which it's mutually intelligible, and was previously unified with under the standard known as Serbo-Croatian. It counts among official (and minority) languages of Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia, Kosovo, Romania, Republic of Macedonia and Hungary.
Two alphabets are used to write the Serbian language: a variation on the Cyrillic alphabet, devised by Vuk Karadžić, and a variation on the Latin alphabet, devised by Ljudevit Gaj. The characters of the two alphabets map to each other one-to-one.
Serbian orthography is very consistent: approximation of the principle "one letter per sound". This principle is represented by Adelung's saying, "Write as you speak and read as it's written", the principle used by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić when reforming the Cyrillic orthography of Serbian in the 19th century.

Writing systems

Serbian language can be written in two different alphabets: Serbian Cyrillic script (ћирилица) and the Serbian Latin (latinica).

Table

Cyrillic	Latin	Cyrillic	Latin
А	A	Н	N
Б	B	Њ	Nj
В	V	О	O
Г	G	П	P
Д	D	Р	R
Ђ	Đ	С	S
Е	E	Т	T
Ж	Ž	Ћ	Ć
З	Z	У	U
И	I	Ф	F
Ј	J	Х	H
К	K	Ц	C
Л	L	Ч	Č
Љ	Lj	Џ	Dž
М	M	Ш	Š

Alphabetic order

The sort order of the two alphabets is different.

Cyrillic order (called Azbuka (азбука): А Б В Г Д Ђ Е Ж З И Ј К Л Љ М Н Њ О П Р С Т Ћ У Ф Х Ц Ч Џ Ш
Latin order (called abeceda): A B C Č Ć D Dž Đ E F G H I J K L Lj M N Nj O P R S Š T U V Z Ž

Use of scripts

Cyrillic alphabet was in exclusive use in Serbia before the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was formed (1918), but Latin was used by Serbs in the coastal area of modern Montenegro as well as in Croatia (Dubrovnik-Neretva County), and Bosnia and Herzegovina (mainly Herzegovina which adjoins the latter two areas). Some famous literary historians and critics from Belgrade, as Jovan Skerlić, proposed to abolish literary chaos and end arguments by accepting Latin as the only alphabet. Especially during the socialist era, Latin has made a major breakthrough even in Serbia proper. Since the constitutional reforms in the early 1970s, most documents were published in "Serbo-Croatian" Cyrillic and "Croato-Serbian" (sometimes Serbo-Croatian) Latin. Enciklopedija Jugoslavije was published in Zagreb in "Croatian or Serbian" (the way Croats referred to Serbo-Croatian language) Latin, "Serbo-Croat" (the way Serbs and all other nations in Yugoslavia referred to Serbo-Croatian language) Cyrillic, Slovenian, Macedonian, Albanian and Hungarian. The only Yugoslav (not traditionally Serbian, Croatian nor Bosnian) newspaper Borba was printed in both alphabets: one page in Cyrillic, the following page in Latin and so on all through the journal, with the script of the front page alternating between the two every day. Whilst Serbo-Croat was widely accepted (before the Yugoslav Wars), the Cyrillic alphabet was used predominantly in central Serbia and in Montenegro (until the late 1990s). The Latin alphabet was preferred in Croatia and the only one used by the Croats. In Belgrade, the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina and in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in the larger more vibrant towns of Serbia, Latin alphabet would be used much more than Cyrillic.
The exact percentage of use of alphabets is difficult to assess today. Of the major newspapers, Politika, Večernje Novosti, Glas Javnosti, and Dnevnik are printed in Cyrillic, while Blic, Kurir, Danas and Press use Latin. Of the major TV outlets, only the public service Radio Television of Serbia uses primarily Cyrillic (as well as former BK TV), while Pink, B92 and most others use Latin. An informal poll on the Internet forum SerbianCafe.com showed no apparent preference. According to the data collected by Association for Protection of Cyrillic, over 80% of public inscriptions in Novi Sad is in Latin, and over 60% in Belgrade; 5/6 of (randomly sampled) magazines is in Latin, as well as vast majority of university textbooks (however, the proportion is the opposite for high-school ones).
Many e-mail and even web documents written in Serbian use basic ASCII, where Serbian Latin letters that use diacritics (Ž Ć Č Š) are either replaced with the base forms without diacritics (Z C C S) or with two letter combinations that are pronounced similarly (Zh, Tj, Ch, Sh), letter Đ is replaced with Dj, and Dž with Dz. The original words are then recognized from the context. This isn't an official alphabet, and is considered bad practice, but there are some documents in Serbian that use this simplified alphabet. This is common practice in other languages that use letters with diacritics. IETF language tags sr-Cryl and sr-Latn disambiguate use of the two scripts.

Equivalence of scripts

The Cyrillic letters <Љ>, <Њ> and <Џ> are represented by digraphs in the Latin alphabet. In digraphs, letters are always written together - even in top-down text - and are also sorted as one letter (for example ljubav, 'love', comes after lopta, 'ball'). The present Cyrillic script, having been devised for the language itself, is precise because there's no ambiguity involved in reading Lj, Nj and Dž: for example, both Cyrillic инјекција (mathematical injection or medical injection) and његов ('his') are written with in Latin form. Thus, automatic transliteration of Cyrillic text to Latin is straightforward, but automatic transliteration of Latin text to Cyrillic requires additional heuristic rules.

Phonology

Vowels

The Serbian vowel system is simple, with only five vowels. All vowels are monophthongs. The oral vowels are as follows:

Latin script	Cyrillic script	IPA	Description	English approximation
i	и	/i/	close front unrounded	seek
e	е	/e/	(open-)mid front unrounded	ten
a	а	/a/	open central unrounded	father
o	о	/o/	(open-)mid back rounded	caught (British)
u	у	/u/	closed back rounded	boom

Consonants

The consonant system is more complicated, and its characteristic features are series of affricate and palatal consonants. Voicing is phonemic, but aspiration is not. The consonant phoneme table for Serbian is as follows (corresponding Latin letters are below the IPA symbols)

Consonant Phonemes of Serbian
	Bilabial		Labio- Dental		Dental		Alveolar	Post- Alveolar		Palatal		Velar
Nasal	/m/ M						/n/ N			/ɲ/ Nj
Plosive	/p/ P	/b/ B			/t/ T	/d/ D						/k/ K	/g/ G
Affricate					/ts/ C			/tʃ/ Č	/dʒ/ Dž	/tɕ/ Ć	/dʑ/ Đ
Fricative			/f/ F		/s/ S	/z/ Z		/ʃ/ Š	/ʒ/ Ž			/x/ H
Approximant				/ʋ/ V						/j/ J
Trill					/r/ R
Lateral					/l/ L					/ʎ/ Lj

V is often also described as a (lowered) fricative ([v̞]), which is phonetically closer. However, on phonological level, it doesn't interact with unvoiced consonants as a fricative normally would, but as an approximant.

/r/ can be syllabic, playing the role of a vowel in certain words (it can even have a long accent). For example, the tongue-twister na vrh brda vrba mrda involves four words with syllabic /r̩/. A similar feature exists in Czech, Slovak, Macedonian and many other languages. In some vernaculars /l/ can be syllabic as well. However, in the standard language, it appears only in loanwords as in the name for the Czech river Vltava for instance, or debakl (дебакл), monokl (монокл) and bicikl (бицикл).
In Serbian, the phonemes /tʃ/, /tɕ/, /dʒ/, and /dʑ/ (in contrast to Croatian and Bosnian vernaculars) have an independent phonetic realization in most vernaculars.

Phonetic interactions

While the basic sound system is fairly simple, Serbian phonology is very complicated: there are numerous interactions (sandhi rules) between voices at morpheme boundaries which cause sound changes, with numerous exceptions. The changes include:

Two types of Iotation

So called older, reflected in all Slavic languages
So called newer: d, t, l, n + j > đ, ć, lj, nj.

Three types of palatalization, reflected in all Slavic languages:

First, involving shift of velar consonants k, g and h into postalveolar č, ž and š in front of front vowels e and i,
Second (also known as "sibilarization"), involving shift of k, g and h into alveolar c, z and s in front of e and i
Little-known third, involving shift of k, g, h into c, z, s after e, i and a.

Voicing and Devoicing assimilation

Assimilation by place of articulation

Elision in complex consonant clusters

L→O shift, where final and pre-consonant *l was changed into an /o/

"Labile A", referring to sound a occurring only in nominative and genitive plural of nouns with several suffixes (most commonly -ak and -ac): točak ('wheel') (N) → točka (G) → točku (D) etc.

Voicing and devoicing

In consonant clusters all consonants are either voiced or voiceless. All the consonants are voiced (if the last consonant is normally voiced) or voiceless (if the last consonant is normally voiceless). This rule doesn't apply to approximants — a consonant cluster may contain voiced approximants and voiceless consonants; as well as to foreign words ("Washington" would be transcribed as VašinGton/ВашинГтон), personal names and when consonants are not inside of one syllable.

Prosody

Accents

Serbian has an extended system of accentuation. From the phonological point of view it has four accents which are divided into two groups according to their quality:

there are two accents with falling intonation ("old accents")- the short one and the long one

there are two accents with rise in intonation ("new accents")- the short one and the long one However, their realization varies according to vernacular. That is why Daničić, Budmani, Matešić and other scientists have given different descriptions of the four Serbian accents. The old accents are rather close to Italian and English accent types, and the new ones to German (this can be easily seen through loanwords).
Here is one possibility of phonetic realization of 4 Serbian accents:

Short falling (kratkosilazni; symbol `` – double grave) as in Mïlica (PNfem). Pronunciation: /ˈmilitsa/ ('i' is stressed and short, as in English thick,cut).

Long falling (dugosilazni; symbol ^) as in pîvo ('beer'). Pronunciation: /piːvo/ ('i' is stressed, first low, then high and then again low, as in English seek, Italian Gino, Marco).

Short rising (kratkouzlazni; symbol ` – grave)as in màskara ('eye makeup'). Pronunciation: /ˈmaskara/ (the first 'a' is slightly stressed, the second 'a' is higher than the first one, and the third 'a' is even higher than the second one, as in German Arbeiter, Matratze).

Long rising (dugouzlazni; symbol ´) as in čokoláda ('chocolate'). Pronunciation: /tʃɔkɔˈlaːda/ ('a' is stressed, longer than the other vowels, and the intonation is slightly rising, as in German Balade or Schokolade). The "finest" realization—the differences between the accents are relatively small, words are pronounced without any special effort—can be found in the most respectable vernaculars of Piva and Drobnjak and in Belgrade and partly in familiar vernaculars in Kolubara district and south-western Banat. These two groups of vernaculars gave the base for Belgrade old speaker school. Already in surrounding Nikšić (Montenegro), Dubrovnik (Croatia), Užice (Serbia) area stress is more intensive. Modern surveys have shown for instance, that there's a minimal difference in Piva and Drobnjak (where the family of Vuk Stefanović Karadžić had come from) between the syllables that carry short-stressed accent with fall intonation and the short-stressed with rise intonation. In the first edition of Vuk's dictionary (1818), Vuk even marked these two accents as one and the same accent. The difference between the short-stressed accent with falling acentuation and the short-stressed with rise accent is almost lost in two-syllable words (cf. the surveys of Pavle Ivić on Serbian prosody). The informal speech- slang in Belgrade has very special, neutralized accentuation (the oppositions falling/rising, short/long is only partly based on genuine word accents, far more on phonetic letter structure of the word).

Unstressed lengths

Not only the stressed syllables can be short or long. Other syllables have that feature as well. In neo-shtokavian vernaculars, the unstressed long syllable (unstressed length) can occur only after the accented syllable (these lengths are usually called postaccent lengths. Their symbol is macron (-): dèvōjka ('girl'), Jugòslāvīja (Yugoslavia).
The phonetic realization of postaccent lengths is different. In vernaculars of Piva and Drobnjak they're rather very short, without any stress components. In some other East-Herzegowinian vernaculars, they're almost stressed (of course, less intense than the really stressed syllable). In many vernaculars—for instance in Belgrade, and in many places in Vojvodina—postaccents lengths are almost lost. That's why foreign students are not expected to pay much attention to them.

History

Before 1400, most Serbian vernaculars had two accents, both with fall intonation—the short one and the long one. That is why they're called "old accents". By 1500, the old accents moved by one syllable towards the beginning of the word, changing their quality to rising accents. For instance junâk (hero) became jùnāk. The old accents, logically remained only when they were on first syllable. Not all dialects had that evolution; those who had it are called neo-shtokavian. The irradiation point was in east Herzegovina, between Prokletije mountains and town of Trebinje. Since the 1500s people had been emigrating from this area. The biggest migrations were to the north, then toward Military Krajina and to the seaside (Dubrovnik area, including islands of Mljet and Šipan). In 1920s and 1930s royal government tried to settle people from this poor mountainous area to Kosovo basin. Vojvodina was settled with inhabitants from this area after the WW II.
When all old accents had moved to the beginning of the word for one syllable, this was the result:

In words with two or more syllables the last syllable can't be stressed

One-syllable words can have only falling accents

In polysyllabic words, if an inner syllable is stressed, then it can have only a rising accent (there are exceptions- in standard and in many vernaculars, for instance when there's a ` - - combination)

In a word with two or more syllables, if the first syllable is stressed, than it can have any of the four accents.

Grammar

Morphology

Declension

There are seven cases in Serbian: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, instrumental and locative. It is commonly mistaken, that locative and dative have the same form, and that morphologically the number of cases is six. The accent is in many examples different in dative and locative: cf. strâni ('to the site' dative)/ (na) stráni ('on the site' locative) or (ka) sâtu ('to the clock tower')/ (na) sátu ('on the clock').
The number of cases, in concert with a non-fixed word-order, can make Serbian difficult to learn for speakers of languages without a strong case system. Declension of proper name ‘Larisa” (feminine noun) Larisa je dobra nastavnica. = Larisa is a good teacher (subject; Larisa = nominative case) Vidim Larisu. = I see Larisa. (Larisu = ‘direct’ object; Larisu = accusative case) On daje knjigu Larisi. = He is giving a book to Larisa. (Larisi = ‘indirect’ object; Larisi = dative case) Idem sa Larisom. = I'm going with Larisa. (Larisom = object of preposition ‘sa’; Larisom = instrumental case) Idem kod Larise. = I’m going to Larisa’s house. (Larise = object of preposition ‘kod’; Larise = genitive case)

SINGULAR	Class I - Masculine window	Class I - Neuter village	Class II - Feminine I woman	Class III - Feminine II love
Nominative	prozor	selo	žena	ljubav
Accusative	prozor	selo	ženu	ljubav
Genitive	prozora	sela	žene	ljubavi
Dative/Locative	prozoru	selu	ženi	ljubavi
Instrumental	prozorom	selom	ženom	ljubavi (or -ju)
Vocative	prozore	selo	ženo	ljubavi
PLURAL	windows	villages	women	love
Nominative	prozori	sela	žene	ljubavi
Accusative	prozore	sela	žene	ljubavi
Genitive	prozora	sela	žena	ljubavi
Dative/Locative	prozorima	selima	ženama	ljubavima
Instrumental	prozorima	selima	ženama	ljubavima
Vocative	prozori	sela	žene	ljubavi

Conjugation

Further in Serbian conjugation Serbian verbs are conjugated in 4 past tenses - perfect, aorist, imperfect, and pluperfect, of which the last two have a very limited use (imperfect is still used in some dialects, but majority of native Serbian speakers consider it archaic); 1 future tense (aka 1st future tense - as opposed to the 2nd future tense or the future exact, which is considered a tense of the conditional mood by some contemporary linguists), and 1 present tense. These are the tenses of the indicative mood. Apart from the indicative mood, there's also the imperative mood. The conditional mood has two more tenses, the 1st conditional (commonly used in conditional clauses, both for possible and impossible conditional clauses), and the 2nd conditional (without use in spoken language - it should be used for impossible conditional clauses). Serbian language has active and passive voice.
As for the non-finite verb forms, Serbian language has 1 infinitive, 2 adjectival participles (the active and the passive), and 2 adverbial participles (the present and the past).

Syntax

The default word order is Subject-Verb-Object. However, since inflection in most cases uniquely determines the role within the sentence, Serbian is mostly a free word order language, and as such it's often cited by Noam Chomsky and other generative syntacticians.
In Serbian, the sentence "Grandfather is making brandy" can therefore be expressed in the following ways:

Deda peče rakiju. (SVO - Grandfather.NOM make.PRES.IMPF brandy.ACC)

Deda rakiju peče. (SOV - Grandfather.NOM brandy.ACC make.PRES.IMPF)

Peče deda rakiju. (VSO - Make.PRES.IMPF grandfather.NOM brandy.ACC)

Peče rakiju deda. (VOS - Make.PRES.IMPF brandy.ACC grandfather.NOM)

Rakiju deda peče. (OSV - Brandy.ACC grandfather.NOM make.PRES.IMPF)

Rakiju peče deda. (OVS - Brandy.ACC make.PRES.IMPF grandfather.NOM) (Note that although in Serbian the verb also agrees with the subject in person and number, it's irrelevant in these examples since both the subject and the object are third person, singular.)
All six orders can be stressed in three ways - the first option stressing either WHO is making brandy (grandfather), WHAT is being made by grandfather (brandy), or WHAT is grandfather doing with/to the brandy (making it). However, although possible, some word orders may appear unnatural out of context.

Vocabulary

Most of the words in Serbian are of Slavic origin. That means that their roots continue some words reconstructed for Proto-Slavic language. For instance, srce ('heart'), plav ('blue').

There are many loanwords from different languages:

There are plenty of loanwords from German. The great number of them are specific for vernaculars which were situated in Austrian monarchy (Vojvodina, Slavonija, Lika and partly Bosnia). Most cultural words attested before World War II, were borrowed from (or via) German, even when they're of French or English origin (šorc, boks). The accent is an excellent indicator for that, since German loanwords in Serbian have rising accents.

Italian words in standard language were often borrowed via German (makarone). If they were taken directly from Italian, they show specific, not regular adaptations. For instance špagète for Italian spaghetti rather than the "expected" špàgete.

On the other hand, as in Croatian, there are plenty of Italian loanwords in the coastal vernaculars (in Spič, Paštrovići, Boka Kotorska, Dubrovnik area and at Kvarner coast), as well as in the vernaculars near the coаst. In some Croatian vernaculars, Italian loanwords made up to 40-50% of the vernacular vocabulary in the 1930s. Most common are words borrowed from Venetian (brancin, altroke, ardura, karonja ('lazy man'), pršut(a)). Some toponyms such as Budva and Boka Kotorska ('bay of Kotor') are borrowed from Venetian.
In the coastal area, many words were borrowed from the Dalmatian language (murina, imbut), a Romance language, that was extinct by 1900. Many toponyms were also borrowed from Dalmatian (Kakrc, Luštica, Lovćen, Sutomore< Sancta Maria).

The number of Turkish loanwords is also significant There are according to Abdulah Skaljic, ("Turcizmi u srpskohrvatskom jeziku" - "Svjetlost" Sarajevo), 8.742 Turkish words, but much less of that number is today in use. Most of these words are not Turkish in original but Persian. They came through Turkish into Serbian language. However, these words are disappearing from the standard language at a faster rate than any other language's contributions. In Belgrade, for instance,čakšire (чакшире) was the only word for trousers before World War II, today pantalone (панталоне) is current; some 30-50 years ago avlija (авлија) was a common word for courtyard or backyard in Belgrade, today it's dvorište (двориште); only 15 years ago čaršav (чаршав) was usual for tablecloth, today it's stoljnjak (стољњак). The greatest number of Turkish loanwords had and have vernaculars of south Serbia (including Kosovo), followed by those of Bosnia and Herzegovina and central Serbia. Many Turkish loanwords are usual in the vernaculars of Vojvodina, Slavonija, Montenegro and Lika as well.

Greek loanwords were very common in Old Serbian (Serbian-Slavonic). Some words are present and common in modern vernaculars in central Serbia (and also in other areas) and in the standard language: hiljada (хиљада), tiganj (тигањ), patos (патос), Ɖak (ђaк), livada (ливада), miris (мириc), svirati (cвиpaти). Almost every word of the Serbian Orthodox ceremonies are in Greek language (parastos (парастос)).

The number of Hungarian loanwords in the standard language is small: bitanga (битанга), alas (алас), ašov (ашов)). However, they're present in some vernaculars of Vojvodina and Slavonia and also in historical documents, local literature. Some place names in northern central Serbia as Barajevo, are probably of Hungarian origin.

Classical international words (words mainly with Latin or Greek roots) are adapted in Serbian like in most European languages, not translated as in Croatian. For instance Serbian atmosfera, Croatian ozracje, S telefon, C brzojav, S avion, C zrakoplov.

Two Serbian words that are used in many of the world's languages are vampire and paprika. Slivovitz and ćevapčići are Serbian words which have spread together with the Serbian food/drink they refer to. Paprika and slivovitz are borrowed via German; paprika itself entered German via Hungarian. Vampire entered most West European languages through German-language texts in the early 18th century and has since spread widely in the world.

Serbian literature

Serbian literature emerged in the Middle Ages, and included such works as Miroslavljevo jevanđelje (Miroslav's Gospel) in 1192 and Dušanov zakonik (Dušan's Code) in 1349. Little secular medieval literature has been preserved, but what there's shows that it was in accord with its time; for example, Serbian Alexandride, a book about Alexander the Great, and a translation of Tristan and Iseult into Serbian. Although not belonging to the literature proper, the corpus of Serbian literacy in the 1300s and 1400s contains numerous legal, commercial and administrative texts with marked presence of Serbian vernacular juxtaposed on the matrix of Serbian Church Slavonic.
In the mid-15th century, Serbia was conquered by the Ottoman Empire and, for the next 400 years there was no opportunity for the creation of secular written literature. However, some of the greatest literary works in Serbian come from this time, in the form of oral literature, the most notable form being Serbian epic poetry. The epic poems were mainly written down in the 19th century, and preserved in oral tradition up to 1950s, that's few centuries or even a millennium longer then by most other "epic folks". Goethe and Jacob Grimm learned Serbian language in order to read Serbian epic poetry in original. By the end of the 18th century, the written literature had become estranged from the spoken language. In the second half of the 18th century, the new language appeared, called Slavonic-Serbian. This artificial idiom superseded works of poets and historians like Gavrilo Stefanović Venclović, who wrote in essentially modern Serbian in 1720s- just, these vernacular compositions have remained cloistered from the general public and received due attention only with the advent of modern literary historians and writers like Milorad Pavić. In the early 19th century, Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, promoted the spoken language of the people as a literary norm.

Dictionaries

Serious Serbian and Croatian dictionaries regularly include Croatian only, and Serbian only words. Three Serbian words that are used in many of the world's languages are vampire, paprika (borrowed via Hungarian), and slivovitz. The English word nightmare is also most probably of Serbian origin. It originated from the name of a demon in Serbian folklore - Mora, which denotes a female demon that comes at night and sits upon its sleeping victims, giving them bad dreams.

Standard dictionaries

Rečnik sprkohrvatskog književnog i narodnog jezika (Dictionary of Serbian standard language and vernaculars) is the biggest dictionary of Serbian language and still unfinished. Starting with 1959, 16 volumes were published, about 40 are expected. Works of Croatian authors are excerpted, if published before 1991.

Rečnik srpskohrvatskoga književnog jezika in 6 volumes, started as a common project of Matica srpska and Matica hrvatska, but only the first three volumes were also published in Croato-Serbian (hrvatskosrpski).

There are no high-standard volume dictionaries whether of Serbian nor of Croatian language. Matica srpska is preparing one. Several volume dictionaries were published in Croatia (for Croatian language) during the 90s and till today (Anić, Enciklopedijski rječnik, Hrvatski rječnik). .

Bilingual dictionaries

Standard dictionaries

Specialized dictionaries

Phraseological dictionaries

Historical dictionaries

The Rječnik hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika (I-XXIII), published by Yugoslav academy of sciencies and arts (JAZU) from 1880 to 1976 is the only general historical dictionary of Serbian language. His first editor was Đuro Daničić, followed by Pero Budmani and famous "vukovac" Toma Maretić. The sources are, especially in first volumes, mainly shtokavian.

Etymological dictionaries

The standard and the only completed etymological dictionary of Serbian language is so-called "Skok":
Petar Skok. Etimologijski rječnik hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika. I-IV. Zagreb 1971-1974.
There is also a new monumental Etimološki rečnik srpskog jezika (Etymological dictionary of Serbian language). Up to now, two volumes were published: I (with words on A-), and II (Ba-Bd).
There are specialized etymological dictionaries for German, Italian, Dalmatian, Turkish, Greek, Hungarian, Russian, English and other loanwords (cf. chapter word origin).

Dialect dictionaries

Kosovsko-resavski dialect dictionaries: � Gliša Elezović, Rečnik kosovsko-metohiskog dijalekta I-II. 1932/1935.

Prizren-Timok (Torlakian) dialect dictionaries: � Brana Mitrović, Rečnik leskovačkog govora. Leskovac 1984.

Nikola Živković, Rečnik pirotskog govora. Pirot, 1987. � Miodrag Marković, Rečnik crnorečkog govora I-II. 1986/1993.

Jakša Dinić, Rečnik timočkog govora I-III.1988-1992. � Momčilo Zlatanović, Rečnik govora južne Srbije. Vranje, 1998, 1–491.

East-Herzegowinian dialect dictionaries: � Milija Stanić, Uskočki rečnik I–II. Beograd 1990/1991.

Miloš Vujičić, Rečnik govora Prošćenja kod Mojkovca. Podgorica, 1995. � Srđan Musić, Romanizmi u severozapadnoj Boki Kotorskoj. 1972.

Mihailo Bojanić/ Rastislava Trivunac, Rječnik dubrovačkog govora. Beograd 2003. � Svetozar Gagović, Iz leksike Pive. Beograd 2004.

Zeta-Pester dialect: � Rada Stijović, Iz leksike Vasojevića. 1990.

Drago Ćupić — Željko Ćupić, Rečnik govora Zagarača. 1997. � Vesna Lipovac-Radulović, Romanizmi u Crnoj Gori — jugoistočni dio Boke Kotorske. Cetinje — Titograd, 1981.

Vesna Lipovac-Radulović, Romanizmi u Budvi i Paštrovićima. Novi Sad 1997.

Others: � Rečnik sprskih govora Vojvodine. Novi Sad.

M. Peić — G. Bačlija, Rečnik bačkih Bunjevaca. Novi Sad 1990. � Mile Tomić, Rečnik radimskog govora — dijaspora, Rumunija. 1989.

Geographic distribution

Figures of speakers according to countries:

Serbia: 6,540,699

Montenegro: 401,382 (2003)

Bosnia-Herzegovina: 1,600,000

Germany: around 507,000

USA: around 500,000

Canada: 55,545 (2001 census

, 40,580 of that in Ontario)

Croatia: 44,629 (2001)

Republic of Macedonia: 33,315 (2001)

Romania: 20,377 (2001)

Australia: 50,000 (2001)

Differences among similar languages

Further Information

Get more info on 'Serbian Language'.

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