Talk:Serbian language/Archive 1

initial discussions
The phoptograph showing a table of different languages titled "Serbian Cyrillic" and "Serbian Latin" is a fraud. The original of this table calls the "Croatian Latin" column by the name "Illyr" which stood for Croatian (Illyrian Movement, a proto-Yugoslav movement, originated and is associated only with Croatia). The Serbian language and orthography reformer, Vuk Stefanovich Karadzhich, never intended Latin alphabet for Serbian. It was introducted in Serbia by Austrian and German occupiers in 1915, and forced in the communist dominated Yugoslavia between 1945 and 1991. There is no such thing as "Serbian Latin" alphabet. It is a reformed Croatian alphabet some Serbs choose to use. Kostadesu 04:10, 11 July 2007 (UTC) I'll put my article back where it belongs;there is,as you mentioned,sufficient information about grammar in serbo-croation page,so l did not display much interest in that subject;last paragraph is not history common,but history of language-l think everyone can see close links between language development and history of people who speak it;l also deleted few things that could have hurt the delicate eyes of some people here.thanx


 * croatian latin? well... i would say "serbo-croatian (or croatoserbian) latin". gaj's latin script design was made to serve both croats and serbs native tongue and fits both of them well. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.198.201.67 (talk) 00:44, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I have redone the history bit to make it factually correct and NPOV. But there is still a lot to say about history of the language, especially the "language deal" between Serbian and Croatian academics in late 19th century, but that belongs to the Serbo-Croatian page really. Maybe the whole history should be extensively explained on the Serbo-Croatian page, since most of it is either common or not easily ethnically attributable. Claiming that everything written in orthodox churches is serbian, and everything written in catholic churches is croatian, is a bit silly, right? Please bear in mind that this is an encyclopaedic article, not something you would put into a newspaper. A link to subjects discussed elsewhere is enough - no need to explain what slavic languages are on this page. Zocky 15:17 Feb 12, 2003 (UTC)

know enough about it to write a bit on Serbian grammar?

The currently accepted NPOV (on wikipedia) is that Serbian is a version of Serbo-Croatian, so most of the grammar should be in that article (there already is some info there), since duplicating it in Serbian, Croatian, Bosnia, Montenegrin and BCS is useless).

And the last paragraph is mostly about Serbian history, not the language, and is definitely not NPOV ("glorious", "beauty"...). I have reverted to my last version and moved the article to here. If anyone wants to make this article NPOV and on-topic, feel free to do it and move it back to the article. Zocky 12:21 Feb 6, 2003 (UTC)

Serbian gloriously emerged as a sophisticated language in XXII century,when a masterpiece of Serbian medieval literature "Miroslavljevo jevandjelje"(1192) was produced.Powerful Serbian Empire(which included modern Serbia,Albania,Macedonia and Greece)collapsed at the end of the XIV century,and undergone brutal Turkish oppresion for next 500 years,leaving language development on the shoulders of common folk.Modern Serbian is an offspring of those dialects,spoken by populace,and as such was promoted into the language of literature in XIX c.,after Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic had reformed an old,obsolete alphabet.The beauty of the language had been recognized by German poet Goethe,who learned Serbian for sole purpose of reading its' folk literature in original.

Although I'm not a Serb but a Croat- I've stumbled upon a rather good page on Serbian language history. Personally- I disagree with parts of the article that smack of Serbian exclusivist views on the language history (and are not generally supported by linguists around the world). But, since this is, overall, a good page, I've put it. If anyone disagrees-feel free to delete it.

Mir Harven (mharven@softhome.net)

I started to write formal description of standard Serbian language. As Serbian and Croatian standards are different (in the formal sense, of course), I don't want to make some bad generalizations...

If we want to be clear, we have to understand some facts:


 * 1) When we are talking about Serbian, Croatian, English, etc. language -- we are talking about some kind of political illusion. We can talk only about standard languages. Because, standard language is standardized dialcet (i.e. modification of some dialect). Definition like: Manchester dialect belongs to English language is not true. The only fact we can say is that Manchester dialct has very similar structure to standard English language. We can make some areal and ethnical definitions, too; but we can't incorporate one dialect into the standard language.
 * 2) Standard language exists while supporting political structure exists. It means that we can talk about English, German or any other (standard) language as "alive" only if supporting political structures exist. If there is no any kind of of political structures which support some (standard) language, that language is "dead".

Serbo-Croatian standard language existed in the time of political agreement between Serbian, Croatian and other political structures at Balkan. At the present moment such kind of agreement doesn't exist, as well as it didn't exist before 19th century. Conclusion is clear: Serbo-Croatian standard language existed between the first half of 19th century and the lat 20th century. I don't want to say that Serbo-Croatian standard language will not exist in the future...

So, we have to choices: (1) To talk about standard language or (2) to talk about linguistic geography, dialectorlogy or social linguistics. I think that Wikipedia language clasification talks about standard languages.

Milos Rancic (millosh at users.sourceforge.net)
 * Although I agree with you (except that I dont think that standard "Serbo-Croatian" ever existed)- looks like wiki "Moghuls" or general consent among non-speakers is to retain "Serbo-Croatian" entry. I'd delete it because it's superfluous and dated-but I'm in a minority.

Mir Harven 13:25, 10 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Avala, when I wrote 80-odd it didn't mean that something is odd as in peculiar, it's a way of saying around or circa or approximately, 80. :) --Shallot 16:09, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I know! And when I say you are odd I mean it :) 8-} By all means serbian and croatian are very very very similar almost the same. Dalamatian even though it has dozens of words not used in official Croatian it is still Croatian just like Vranjanski diajlekt in Serbia. So everyone who speaks Serbian speaks Croatian too which makes around 25mil people and 44th place of speaking. Avala 17:04, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)


 * Nevertheless for the three specific standard language pages it makes sense to quote first the specific number, and then the general number. The page Serbo-Croatian language has the general number only. I put the general number in parenthesis in the three pages, perhaps there's a better way to format it... --Shallot 18:53, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)

What about a better English- Serbian- Dictionary? The currently isn't not that good. I personally don't found a better, maybe anyone else? --ThomasK 13:32, Dec 4, 2004 (UTC)

Serbian native speaker here: Please contribute to this article: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Serbian ThomasK Dec 24 12:32 UTC

Related discussion at another Talk page
Interesting discussion about the history of the Serbian language appeared at Image_talk:Cpw10ct.gif. Feel free to check it out.

Western South Slavic?
What is a correct and neutral term I can use in English to refer to the continuum of languages that includes Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian? Southwestern Slavic? South-Western Slavic? Western South Slavic? West South Slavic? Or is it simply best to say Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian.--Sonjaaa 06:26, Mar 21, 2005 (UTC)


 * That's probably the only available compromise. We pondered this already at Talk:Serbo-Croatian language but nobody had any really better suggestions. --Joy &#91;shallot&#93;   12:32, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * I can tell you just South Slavic. technicly there would be one Slavic continuum except that this is interrupted in the where Austria shares her present border with Hungary. There you once had a group of people known as the White Horvaths (Biely Horvaty), not to be confused with modern Croatians even if the name is from the same source. Since these people assimilated the local Germanic/Magyar speaking races, you are left with a gap between the South Slavic speaking people and the North Slavic speaking people. Now north of this gap is Slovakian, Czech etc. which forms the beginning of a continuum with will incoroprate the Slavic languages of the former Soviet Union and Poland, better known as the east and west Slavic branches (there is no gap between them, west generally refers to the predominantly Catholic states Poland and Czechoslovakia which were not a part of the Soviet Union; and the predominantly Orthodox east Slavic languages of Moscow, Belarussia and the Ukraine etc). To the south of the gap you might begin in the north-western most corner which is somewhere between Italy and Austria. It's probably fair to say that the Slavs in this region (never to have become a part of Yugoslavia) speak something which is closest to Slovenian. For political reasons, Slovenia will call this people Slovenian but how they refer to themsevles is another issue, I won't go into it. Then accross the former Yugoslav republics AND the outisde countries to the east, Hungary and Romania, there are traditionally settled Slavic people who again, did not have their land controlled by Belgrade after the wars but rather by Budapest or Bucharest. Now head southwards into Macedonia and beyond its southern and western borders you have Slavic speaking mini-nations in Albania and Greece. Again, for the same reasons, the Skopje-based government in Macedonia will claim these people 'Macedonian' when in fact they are Slavic like anyone else. The country which I did not mention is Bulgaria and that is because she too is a part of the South Slavic continuum. As a state, Bulgaria is also based on Slavic identity and there is no language barrier between Bulgaria and the former Yugoslav border, ie. the spech of the people in Bregovo (Bulgaria) is closer to that of Davidovac (Serbia {and Montenegro}) and Kriva Palanka (Macedonia) than all three towns folk language is with respect to their standard languages; Bulgaria's language is based on the east-central county of Veliko Tǎrnovo. Now running south of Bulgaria and denying them access to the Aegian is the northern section of Greece. But Slavic speaking people have many enclaves stretching to the sea; these people claimed by both Bulgaria and Macedonia as their own nationals. Finally south-east of Bulgaria you have the part of Turkey within Europes traditional borders. In this region, again you have Slavic people, at this stage claimed entirely to be Bulgarians by Bulgaria. This is evident with town names having two known forms, Turkish Edirne is Lozengrad to Bulgarians and other Slavic people familiar with it. Either way it is here that the south Slavic continuum finishes (or starts, depends which way you look at it). Celtmist 9-10-05

SIL code SRP
According to the current Ethnologue, the SIL code should read srp, not src; src seems to refer to an Italian language called "Sardinian, Logudorese".

I'm refraining from editing the page on the theory that I may be misunderstanding the SIL coding here.

Reference: http://www.ethnologue.com/modes (LanguageCodes.tab)

Rare Features of Serbian?
"Serbian language has a rare feature, in that words are spelled as they are spoken, and every letter represents one sound."

How is this rare? How is this different from any other Slavic or Romance language (other than French)?? Pius Aeneas 21:53, 13 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I think that it is not the attribute of language, but the attribute of ortography... But, this was written in the sense of Adelung rule. Only Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, Finish and Estonian orthographies implemented such rule. In the sense of this rule, even classic Latin orthography doesn't have such feature: "ae" should be read as "ai". --millosh (talk (sr:)) 21:07, 14 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Finnish ortography does not always follow pronunciation. For example, nk is [ŋk], ng is [ŋː], np is [mp] and so on. --Fagyd 21:25, 23 December 2006 (UTC)


 * That doesn't disqualify it either; so is Serbian banka, mango. /ŋ/ is not phonemic neither in Finnish nor in Serbo-Croatian. As for /np/, Serbian does normally blend it into mp, but I don't think that any practical orthography can be 100% phonetic. Duja ► 09:13, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Usage of the two Alphabets
What is the current usage of the two alphabets? Is the Serbian government doing anything to promote one alphabet over another? Which alphabet is taught in schools? What is the percentage of usage of Cyrillic and Latin in newspapers, television, websites, books?--Amir E. Aharoni 07:42, 30 October 2005 (UTC)


 * 1) Usage is around 50/50, but depends of media. For example, ordinary Serbian prefers to use Cyrillics in hand writing, reads books which are maybe 60% in favour of Cyrillics, reads newspapers which are 60% in favour of Latin, looks television which is 60-70% in favour of Latin (radio is completely in Cyrillics ;) ), and uses Internet which is maybe 70-80% in favour of Latin. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 07:54, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
 * 2) In official usage government prefer Cyrillics. You can write official document only in Cyrillics, but if you want to write it in Latin, you have to write the document in Latin and Cyrillics, too (two versions). --millosh (talk (sr:)) 07:54, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
 * 3) Both alphabet is learned in schools. Cyrillics from the frist year of primary school, Latin from the second year of primary school. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 07:54, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much for the answer. It should really be incorporated into the article. I have a few more question if you don't mind ...

(Disclaimer: my mother tongue is Russian, so personally i'm a little sentimental about Cyrillic.)--Amir E. Aharoni 08:17, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
 * 1) How is the situation outside Srbia? I suppose that Croats use 100% Latin and don't even consider their language Serbian, but what about Crna Gora and Bosna?
 * 2) It's interesting that Serbians prefer Cyrillic in hand writing, but Latin on computers. Can you thing of a reason? Is it because Latin keyboards are easier to use? Or because they want to have easier communication with Bosniaks, Croats etc.? (Am i too optimistic about it :)?)
 * 3) Were there any attempts by any government to convert to 100% Cyrillic?
 * 4) Was the alphabet one of the issues in the Balkan wars?
 * Let me try to shed some light on it (it will be very verbose):
 * Croats use Latin, exclusivelly. It's not a matter of debate in Croatia. Situation in Montenegro is de facto similar to one in Serbia, while Bosnians are split. Serbian population does use both Cyrillic and Latin, while Muslims and Croats use latin. I'm not sure about how it's defined in Bosnian statutes.
 * Some Serbians use Latin when hand-writting too... I think it's just simpler and faster to write cursive Cyrillic on paper. As far as computers go, I think that finding a cyrillic keyboard in Serbia is next to impossible. The tradition dates back to ASCII time, when unicode was not available. Also, most people would need to switch to Latin layout sooner or later (e.g. if you wanted to use console, type in an address in a browser, etc.) Of course, if one wants to communicate with Croats or Bosniaks, it's a matter of common sense and good manners to use the common script.
 * This is a matter of debate. Many people are trying to push Cyrillic as the "true" Serbian alphabet, mostly nationalists etc. Nobody (serious) wants to root out Latin, but some organizations do want to see mostly Cyrillic. Our laws are open to interpretation and lean towards the use of Cyrillic, but it seems that both Latin and Cyrillic are de facto equal. A big chunk of the Serbian parliament is relatively close to the right and far-right orientations, and they are the ones pushing Cyrillic.
 * Alphabet was never really an issue, but it was a way to express your believes. The script one is using, especially after 1990 is often in connotation of owns beliefs, especially if used in an unlikely place. Of course, most of the time, choice of the script is rather arbitary.
 * Further reading: :) This is a website "promoting" Latin:, and this one "promotes" Cyrillic: . Do keep in mind that there is way more Cyrillic "promoters" than the ones of Latin. --Dejan &#268;abrilo 01:44, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

(I wrote the message before I saw Cabrilo's message... It can be said that we said almost the same ;) ) --millosh (talk (sr:)) 02:30, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Note that it is my approximation, and that I don't know for any good analisys of alphabet usage in Serbia. I would answer to your questions, first; then I would write some more notes: --millosh (talk (sr:)) 02:30, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
 * 1) Croats use 100% Latin now. In the past, some Croats used Cyrillics (in 1920s it was wider cultural movement, but also some of them used between 1945 and 1990.) In Bosnia Serbs are using Cyrillics in greater percentage then in Serbia (maybe 60%, maybe 80%, but in the similar way as it is used by Serbs in Serbia), Bosniaks prefer to use Latin (maybe 80%, but they are, unlikely Croats, well educated in Cyrillics; I think that they are learning Cyrillics in the primary school, Croats don't) and Croats use exclusevely Latin. In Montenegro usage is almost the similar as in Serbia, while independentists prefer Latin. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 02:30, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
 * 2) This is complex question:
 * 3) While I am using Cyrillics almost exclusevely, I am writing emails in ASCII because it is the part of Internet culture (usage of Unicode is not so old, and the only way to be sure that people would see your email is to write it in ASCII). So, a lot of Serbs use ASCII Latin in email corespodention. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 02:30, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
 * 4) Children learn Cyrillics as the primary alphabet. In this sense, Cyrillics is "ordinary alphabet" and Latin is "not so ordinary alphabet", but for a lot of people "fancy alphabet". This means that if someone uses just "ordinary alphabet" without needs to be "fancy" while (s)he is writing, (s)he would use Cyrillics in hand writing. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 02:30, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
 * 5) But, influence of Western culture through technology is very strong. Before wider usage of Unicode, a lot of people was not able to use Cyrillics in computers and even in printing newspapers. Much chepear new technology didn't have Cyrillics, but just Latin. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 02:30, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
 * 6) Communication between Serbs (from Serbia), Croats (from Croatia) and Bosniaks (from Bosnia) are very rare (of course, it is more often if we are talking about those ethnicities in Bosnia) and in general it is not important part of wider usage of Latin on the Internet. Of course, if I want to send an email to my friends from Croatia or I want to work on the site which should be read by Croats, I would use Latin. (In other words: yes, you are too optimistic ;) ) --millosh (talk (sr:)) 02:30, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
 * 7) From 1994, Cyrillics is prefered in government matters in such way that it is more easy to use Cyrillics then Latin and it can be said that 100% of official papers are in Cyrillics (of course, not in the parts of country where, for example, Magyars are majority or significant minority). --millosh (talk (sr:)) 02:30, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Yes, alphabet was one of the issues in Yugoslav wars. While Latin alphabet is strong part of Croatian national/ethnical/cultural identity, Cyrillics is (not so strong as the Croatian case is) the part of Serbian national/ethnical/cultural identity. So, other sides were looking into alphabets as the part of other's culture. Bosniaks were confrontated more with Serbs then with Croats and because of that they prefer Latin... (Note that this is very very simple presentation of relations.) --millosh (talk (sr:)) 02:30, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

And some more notes: --millosh (talk (sr:)) 02:30, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Even Serbs used Latin as their first known alphabet (between 6th and 9th centrury), from 10th to 19th century Serbian culture knows only for Cyrillics (some Serbs lived in Venician influential zone while Venice existed and used Latin alphabet, but it didn't have influence into the main part of Serbian culture). In the second half of 19th century Croats and Serbs made an agreemnt about the language and the most important Serbian philologist Đuro Daničić worked as secretary of Croatian Academy. It can be said that he introduced Latin into Serbian while Serbs didn't use widely Latin until 1945. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 02:30, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
 * During the existance of SFRY (1945-1990), there were strong intention by communist party to make "one super-national language", Serbo-Croatian. (Even philologists made agreement about Serbo-Croatian in 19th century and Serbo-Croatian was officially introduced during the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1918-1941).) Communist Party of Yugoslavia were trying to make one language where Latin alphabet is used (Croatian) as well as Ekavian pronounce (Serbian). Yugoslav People's Army used language with such attributes in communication, but it was not wider accepted. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 02:30, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
 * During 1990s Cyrillics was one of the national/cultural/ethnical identities of Serbs. And nationalists prefered to use Cyrillics, while people who was against the war prefered to use Latin. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 02:30, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Today, a lot of people are devided into pro-Cyrillics and pro-Latin groups. While people from the first group think that introducing of Latin is the part of Western conspiracy and that Cyrillics are "the only Serbian alphabet", people from the second group think that Cyrillic alphabet is "the alphabet of the past", "nationalist alphabet" etc. (While Latin is one of the parts of strong Western influence and Cyrillics is used by nationalists, I think that it is clear that both groups are deep in their own myths.) --millosh (talk (sr:)) 02:30, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
 * And, of course, someone who doesn't have such relation toward alphabets uses alphabets in the way as I described it to you first. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 02:30, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

The official alphabet being Cyrillic only means that constitutional documents are written such, it does not technicly speaking affect ordinary folk. My quarrel with the original text was the suggestion that Latinic came to be used in Serbia because of the population having lived under Austro-Hungary. That is totally wrong, the shape of Serbian is in no way influenced by any of its former overlords. No laws were in place in Austro-Hungary imposing that all languages be written in Latinic and during the 19th century, you never would have seen a Serb to use Latinic. On the whole, use of Latinic is used throughout Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia but the mentality has changed over the past century. Back then, with nationalism on the increase, people were more concerned with preserving tradition. Besides, just incase there was further quibble, I know for a fact that any peace of literature written by a Serb living in Austro-Hungary would only have been used in Cyrillic. Celtmist 12-11-05
 * Hungarian was for Hungarians, Serbian for Serbs, no matter who ruled. Switching alphabet would have been like switching syntax, totally irrelevant.
 * With the history of Serbian using Cyrillic and with all modernizations regarding the alphabet usage (the entire Vuk Karadzic episode) taking place on Austro-Hungarian territory, it is folly to suggest that people would privately switch alphabet.
 * Even so, it would have brought Serbs no closer to the overlords since Serbian Latinic is only a letter-for-letter transliteration of what was already being used in Croatia. Croatian in turn was inspired by Czech, which was the first Slavic language to employ the haček softeners (č, š and ž), introduced by Jan Hus.

...and of course it goes without saying that Karadzic's reforms caused outrage among Serbian communities, especially within Austrian/Hungarian domain from where it originated. It was here that he replaced the (i-short) with j, causing ordinary Serbs to accuse him of Latinizing Serbian. Hardly something one would do if he had been writing in Latinic himself now! Celtmist 12-11-05

Am I missing it, or there's no single mention of the fact that Serbian Latin is also widely used to write Serbian language in this article? --Bojan 27-01-09

Cyrillic in Wikipedia
Please see the new page at Naming conventions (Cyrillic), aimed at —Michael Z. 2005-12-9 20:36 Z 
 * 1)  Documenting the use of Cyrillic and its transliteration in Wikipedia
 * 2)  Discussing potential revision of current practices

tone
added a section on tone to Croatian. don't want to assume it's the same in serbian, but someone might want to use it. kwami 02:30, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Voting on closing down the serbocroatian Wikipedia
See: Glasovanje_o_zatvaranju_srpskohrvatske_Wikipedije Hope, many of you will contribute! :) --Neoneo13 13:37, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Reference for "injekcija"
In Serbian: --millosh (talk (sr:)) 21:04, 31 January 2006 (UTC)


 * "инјекција (не ињекција нити инекција)", Митар Пешикан, Јован Јерковић, Мато Пижурица, Правопис српскога језика - екавско издање, Завод за уџбенике и наставна средства - Матица српска, Београд - Нови Сад, 1994-2004, страна 389. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 21:04, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

In English: --millosh (talk (sr:)) 21:04, 31 January 2006 (UTC)


 * "инјекција (not ињекција nor инекција)", Mitar Pešikan, Jovan Jerković, Mato Pižurica, Orthography of Serbian language - Ekavian version, Zavod za udžbenike i nastavna sredstva - Matica srpska, Belgrade - Novi Sad, 1994-2004, page 389. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 21:04, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Aleksandar, if you have some more relevant reference, please write it here. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 21:04, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

No, I don't. I was actually trying to find a single word written the same way in latinic form but different in cyrillic. I know that "ињекција" is improper, but I've heard people say it (they iotate their "инјекција"). Since Serbian cyrillic can be used to record what people actually said, even when they said it improperly (common examples I heard include киндаповање, шангарепа, јогурат, ...) I originally used it to illustrate the difference between Cyrillic and Latin alphabets. Related examples I also came by are "дјеца" → "ђеца", but that does not illustrate the point as letter ђ/đ does exist in both alphabets. It would be nice to find a single example based on either љ (lj), њ (nj) or џ (dž).

I also remembered a counter-example. Although unofficial, the sound "dz" (not dž) does exist in very few, isolated, words. One can write it in latin, but there is no (official, Serbian) cyrillic equivalent. --Aleksandar Šušnjar 21:21, 31 January 2006 (UTC)


 * There are no two words written in the same way in Latin but not in Cyrillic, except in some weird cases. Combinations "дж", "лј" and "нј" are very rare (but, when we are talking about ordinary Serbian, combination "дж" iz more often then phoneme/letter "џ", but, there are no homonyms). I heard for example of personal name "Лјилјана" as well as transcription (not translation!) of the capitol of Slovenia is "Лјублјана" (this can be good example for what you need :) even we don't use transcription of Ljubljana often; i.e., this is just possible case in standard language). The main problem with automatic transliteration between Latin and Cyrillic are not homonyms (or homographs), but general rule: Engine 'nj->њ' will not work in all cases. Cases are very rare, but as bigger text is, probability for such cases is bigger. Especially for combination "dž", which is more often as "дж" then as "џ". --millosh (talk (sr:)) 22:55, 31 January 2006 (UTC)


 * It should be noted inside of text that there are Unicode characters for dž, Dž, DŽ, lj, Lj, LJ, nj, Nj and NJ -- and if people use it (there is Serbian Latin Unicode keymap for X Window!), we can have problems in other way: for example, "Dž" and "DŽ" are both "Џ" in Cyrillics :) --millosh (talk (sr:)) 22:55, 31 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Also, if you want to illustrate this with some colloquial example, make clear distinction that it is colloquial example. In this case you should write something like: "Standard writing and pronounce is инјекција, but colloquial pronounce is ињекција. This is not possible to describe using Latin alphabet." --millosh (talk (sr:)) 22:55, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Exactly... I did not mention homonyms, as they are not. While transliteration љ→lj њ→nj and џ→dž is always correct, lj→љ nj→њ and dž→џ not not need to be generally true. I deal with Unicode a lot and titlecase is generally not a problem and can be automated:


 * љ/њ/џ → lj/nj/dž
 * Љ/Њ/Џ followed by lowercase or at end following lowercase → Lj/Nj/Dž
 * Љ/Њ/Џ followed by uppercase or at end following uppercase → LJ/NJ/DŽ
 * Љ/Њ/Џ alone → LJ/NJ/DŽ or Lj/Nj/Dž based on suurounding text and default setting

--Aleksandar Šušnjar 23:50, 31 January 2006 (UTC)


 * But, abbervations without dots are the problem: for example, correct abbervation for Football Club Ljubovija in Serbian Latin is FKLj. BUT, raw capital letters are not correct style of computer writing. If someone needs heading in capital letters, (s)he should write it as usual text with style definition "all capital letters". So, it can be said that "Љ" is always "Lj" (etc.), as well as capital letter in the sense of text style is "LJ". --millosh (talk (sr:)) 00:03, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

That is true, but all-caps writing is also a fact of life. What Serbian really should be using is special Unicode provisions for this (single code points for lj, nj, dž - see : 01c7 - Ǉ, 01c8 - ǈ, 01c9 - ǉ, 01ca - Ǌ, 01cb - ǋ, 01cc - ǌ, 01c4 - ᱴ, 01c5 - ǅ and 01c6 - ǆ) ... but you probably won't see those correctly. --Aleksandar Šušnjar 01:00, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

It would be nice to write a few words about Serbian dialects.

two languages
ISO 639-2: 	scc (B) 	srp (T)

what does (B) and what does (T) stand for? --Abdull 09:33, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
 * ah:
 * a code for bibliographic use (ISO 639-2/B)
 * a code for terminological use (ISO 639-2/T).
 * --Abdull 09:41, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Schwa
OK... I am not exactly a linguist but I did a lot of research long time ago trying to make a computer listen/speak Serbian (not understand it, though). Serbian does not have a letter for "schwa" in any alphabet and commonly it does not appear in words either. But it is commonly pronounced in following cases:


 * When single consonants are pronounced they are typically followed by a schwa instead of other vowels. This applies to ALL consonants, even F, H, S, Š, Ž, R that can, but are most commonly not, pronounced otherwise.


 * Similar to above, when a words end in a consonant it may have a "schwa" appended to it by the speaker (although it is not written).


 * When a word/syllable having consecutive consonants can not be pronounced a such, "schwa sound" is inserted by the speaker. I do know examples with foreign words transcribed to Serbian, but not Serbian language words (that does not mean that they don't exist - its just that I don't have examples off top of my head). Can anyone shed bring light on this?


 * As you discovered in Epenthesis, that is all normal, and occurs in most languages. In normal speech one must compensate for consonant clusters difficult to pronounce (see also Phonotactics), and a schwa is a pretty natural candidate for insertion... Duja 18:59, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

--Aleksandar Šušnjar 17:45, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I was, at that time, surprised to discover from digital recordings of spoken Serbian words that consonats almost don't exist and can hardly be found. I explained it to myself by thinking of consonants as ways to modulate and connect vowels but don't exist by themselves in general (some can, especially S, Š, Z, Ž and R). This "modulation of vowels" frequently goes in-and-out of something that may be called "schwa", especially in case of consonants M and N.
 * Hmmm. Where did you discover that? Consonants normally have much shorter duration than vowels, but they can be pretty finely distinguished in spectral analysis of the speech. My ex-roommate even wrote a Ph.D. thesis about it, and he even developed a simple speech-recognition program for Serbian (distinguishing only numbers 1-10). I'd take such claims with a grain of salt.
 * ....however, schwa is not phonemic in Serbian language, as it does not make any minimal pairs, and wherever it occurs it's optional. So, it exists only on phonetic level but not on phonological one. Duja 18:59, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

I found a part of the answer in Epenthesis article. Maybe it should be mentioned in Serbian language article as well.

--Aleksandar Šušnjar 18:13, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Answer to Duja:

Do not confuse simple word recognition with what I was trying to do. My objective was to recognize what was said, if you wish for "dictation" purposes - recognizing all the sounds produced. Recognizing pre-trained words is *MUCH* easier.

I did not discover "anywhere" but myself as I was unfortunate to not have any relevant literature available although was begging around for it. It was ~1992 (definitely somewhere 1991-1993). I recorded sounds, syllables, words, sentences and first created a program that let me analyze those recordings. I did experiments that you can repeat, if you wish:


 * 1) Record a word with few consonants, say "Wikimedia" or "Vikimedija" (Serbian)
 * 2) Open the recording in some audio editor. Try to locate the part with the "m" sound (or other consonant)
 * 3) Now try to narrow that part down such that:
 * 4) it does not contain a vowel, schwa or some other sound immediatelly after (or before)
 * 5) that it is still recognizable by itself (maybe this one is too tough... let's skip it)
 * 6) that when you prepend that part to another sound (say a different vowel than originally following it) it sounds fluent and natural

You'll run into problems with many "normal" consonants. You can look at the spectrum (frequency domain) but you will find it too coarse to work with. In it you will be able to see something. If you look at waveforms you will see how they appear to gradually change from one vowel to another with some pauses in between, even in the middle of the words.

Having this change gradual means you won't be able to make a "clear cut" or "this is where it starts and this is where it ends". If you cut a piece too large, you will also hear the following vowel that you did not want. If you try to cut that vowel out, you'll be left with essentially nothing. This is why most text-to-speech software does not work by concatenating simple, singular, sounds (phonemes) one to another but instead work with larger recorded segments (I guess best explanation would be a subset of morphemes and some phonemes that can be combined into other morphemes more-or-less naturaly).

In essence, attempts to extract lone consonats such that they can be recombined and still recognized failed miserably. It also meant that trying to recognize those consonants by themselves was not really achievable that way and I had to resort to a different mechanism - essentially trying to recognize larger building blocks instead. Try it yourself. All the software you need is freely available and you don't really need to make speech recognition or generation software - you only need to have fun :)

--Aleksandar Šušnjar 04:20, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

What a mess...
Vincent, from the French wikipedia.

I am trying to understand what this language is all about, to understand how the SR version of Wikimedia works, to developp this article on the French wikipedia and even for my own web project (http://www.hr4europe.com). Which of the three variants is supposed to be the standard (+ cyrillic / latin problem)? And if there is no standard, what is the proportion of users of these three variants ?

Regards,

Vince Vberger 08:21, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

... :) I am not sure which category of "variants" are you exactly thinking of, but:


 * Cyrillic is considered standard and traditional alphabet and is officially preferred.


 * Latin alphabet is widely used but that depends on context. For example, e-mails are usually written in Latin, most people use Cyrillic for script (not print letters) writing such as their signatures, newspapers, magazines and TV are split, etc. My professional (computer software influence) has made me use Latin for print letters and Cyrillic for script.


 * Everybody reads and writes both alphabets. Cyrillic is studied in the first grade of elementary school (~ age 7) and children can start using it within weeks. Latin alphabet is studied in the second grade (~ age 8).


 * As for The Shtokavian yat reflexes, ekavian (ekavski) is most common but ijekavian is significantly present (and considered the nicest one by the creator of Serbian Cyrillic, Vuk Karadžić). I don't have exact breakdown but anyone will understand any variant of this kind - the differences are minimal and possibly analoguous to (maybe even lesser than) differences between British and U.S. pronounciation of English.


 * As for Bosniak, Croatian, Montenegrin, etc, whether or not they are considered the same language or not officially put it this way: people don't need any translation to understand each other just as well as they would understand someone speaking just like they are. There are, of course, cultural differences, local phrases, idioms, etc., but really nothing that would prevent understanding. Notable exceptions are few words that do differ, such as names of months in Croatian.

Did I guess right?

--Aleksandar Šušnjar 15:13, 28 April 2006 (UTC)


 * "Cyrillic is considered standard and traditional alphabet and is officially preferred."

both cyr and lat are considered standard alphabets in serbian (and you can find that in any of "matica srpska" grammar handbooks), however, cyr is official script, script of the administration which is understandable, because of:


 * cultural heritage and vuk's cyrilic was accepted a few decades before gaj's latin script and
 * because of the different ordering in alphabets: cyr: A B V G D Đ E Ž Z I J K L... lat: A B C Č Ć D Dž Đ E F G H I J K L..., so, it's important for administration to have documents and stuff sortable in one way or another. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.198.201.67 (talk) 01:10, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

dž/џ is NOT pronounced as 'dge' in dodge
There's actually no English vocal equivalent to the dž-sound. Paulus Caesar 01:28, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Oh sorry, it says approximation! >_<;; Paulus Caesar 01:29, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
 * My ears agree with yours, but the problem is that both English phonology and this article use the same IPA symbol whereas they shouldn't. The same also holds for Š, Č  and Ž . However, reference books we used don't go into fine details, so we're stuck with it. Serbian ones are more Retroflex and could be described as , , , and  instead. No references to support my claim though... Duja 07:31, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Late message here, I pronounce English Lodge, Italian Gelato, Turkish Cami and South Slavic Džandar all exactly the same way. It has never been commented by either language community that my respective pronunciation does not match eveyone elses, there may be a tendency for one form to develop in one language and another in the other but when the two forms are that close together, they don't qualify to be classed as different sounds. It is possible that languages with greater sound variations may distinguish the two, but whilst a language only has one, it isn't right to state that one language's phoneme is different from the other's, especially as each individual has his own speech system. A good example is R, originally trilled in English but rarely so now. It is still a rolling R in most European languages including ALL Slavic languages, but not everyone consistantly hits the target, particularly those who speak more rapidly. There are even those like Vojislav Šešelj who are unable to trill their Rs. Evlekis 15:56, 2 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Sort of dialectal issue: Macedonian [] is generally "softer" (and closer to English) than in Serbian/Montenegrin/Herzegovinian/Slavonian dialects; Bosnian and Dalmatian can be even "softer". Moren describes it as [], i.e. apical and labialized (although I don't get how the latter is applicable). Duja ► 09:35, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Voiceless velar fricative or voiceless glottal fricative?
Old version of the page says the latter, but it was changed some time ago to velar. I don't speak the language (I do read Cyrillic though :), but my Serbian GF seems to think it's glottal...er, well, she didn't say "glottal", but she claims to hear no difference between "Х" in Serbian and "H" in Engleski. My disclaimer is that she says her Serbian isn't as good as her English, so this could just be mistaken identity. Perhaps this is a dialect thing? Or am I crazy? -- Yossarian  04:59, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
 * It's a fairly moot point. Generally, as one would hear with e.g. TV speakers, it's velar (/x/) but probably not as "strong" (i.e. not so much friction between the tongue back and velum) as e.g. German Ich, Russian Kharkov or Spanish Jamon. "Light", English-like glottal variation is likely to be heard with some speakers or as an allophone. Further, some Shtokavian dialects don't/didn't even have it, (it isn't a very frequent sound, and it was possibly glottalized in history before it disappeared), but it reappeared due to influence of standard language. As a curiosity, letter Х was last added to Vuk Karadžić's alphabet&mdash;apparently, he didn't use it himself in his native dialect until he "discovered" it in speaches of Dubrovnik. Duja 07:14, 14 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Actually, that's a really cool factoid (I'm such a Slavophile). It doesn't surprise me. Most languages have a way of letting their consonants "slip". Thanks muchly for the clarification. Cheers! -- Yossarian [[Image:Soviet Canuckistan Flag.PNG|30px|]] 08:44, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I did a quick research&mdash;apart from loanwords and frequent "native" words hleb (bread) and hteti (want), its most frequent occurrence is in suffix -ih, occuring in genitive plural of adjectives (e.g. velikih – of large [ones]) and genitive & accusative of pronoun oni (->njih or ih – them). In such terminal position, it becomes very light or even silent by the natural laws of speech. Duja 11:42, 16 June 2006 (UTC)


 * In most vernaculars it totally disapeared. Exemples like hleb, or njih are all directed to standard. Old people still say sometimes in Belgrade leb 'hleb'. H was only preserved in some vernaculars in Montenegro and in Dubrovnik area, in all chakawian vernaculars as well. Also, most of Muslim vernaculars preserve H as it's very common in Turkish and Arabian. It's interesting that a special phon h was preserved in south Banat in examples like huliti, hajka etc. Luzzifer-- 00:34, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Serbian Alphabet.jpg Image
The picture shows some letters incorrectly. Please see Different Cyrillics at Serbian Wikipedia Challenges. It is also not necessary to print and then scan the printout to get this image - there are many better, lossless ways to achieve the same. PNG would be a better format for this.

--Aleksandar Šušnjar 21:02, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Italic Cyrillic п and т notwithstanding, I noticed the Latin C just now... LOL... Duja 07:17, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

To all interested: please have a look at the table I just made. Not sure we need it, but what the heck:


 * It shows Serbian Cyrillic vs. Russian Cyrillic vs. Serbian Latin and notes differences


 * The image contains proper lowercase italic cyrillic glyphs for both Serbian and Russian (glyphs are different for д, г, п and т, minor differences regarding 'б' and 'в' are ignored)


 * There may still be some fixes needed. Original is in Microsoft Word format - should anyone be interested in getting ig and fixing it personally, I will provide it.


 * The image is not printed and then scanned but rather directly converted into a PNG.

--Aleksandar Šušnjar 17:32, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Morphology
There is nothing primarily wrong with this chapter. The problem is that the whole case system is nothing unfamiliar to most languages and certainly nothing new to the English tongue. The article seems to pinpoint that this is a feature of Serbian, as if Croatian and Bosnian might actually be different. Even Latin was not different with the Filip voli Anu story. It needs only to be said that the former dialects of Serbo-Croat (or for those more sensitive), the modern languages of Serbia, Montenegro etc. uphold an inflectional case system using asides subjective/nominative, the accusitive, dative etc. As such, it is clear that you do not depend of syntax in the same manner as English or Italian which have mutated to the point that only the nominative is used for nouns in all cases. It is only for this reason that they need syntax. Anybody who can figure out cases will know this, anyone who doesn't will still be confused (ie. one only knows his own language uses the Nominative, sees the example and thinks that "Filipa" is just the Serbian for Philip, so when Filipa Ana Voli occurs, he will still be confused as to how Philip is the recipient of Anna's action. Ragusan 15 july 06
 * I agree in principle; however, the four articles (Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian and Serbo-Croatian) are generally in poor shape, and should really have a common sub-article (Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian grammar) which would merge all the aspects and cover entire stuff, currently inconsistently spread all over the place. Ana voli Filipa is certainly not unique, but it could make a good example if placed among many other good examples. I do agree that it kind of stands out of context, but I'm reluctant to remove it outright now, because it can be useful in the future. Duja 15:37, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

"Simple" vowels
There is absolutely nothing simple in Serbian phonology. To call a vocal system "simple" it should not have the absolute accentual circus that one encounters in Serbian (the word being used to illustrate how colorful to the point of ridiculousness this may be). There are no rules that are firm, and even if they exist, they are not the rules of language as such, but are rather standards set (such as not being to accentuate the last syllable, which is often the case, but has notable exceptions, etc.). Although rules do exist, and they are more complex than the more general ones, calling the vocals "simple" is truly incorrect.

--Ogidog
 * Let's separate two things: phonetics, dealing with individual sounds, and phonology, which deals with their interaction as phonemes, stress etc. Serbian phonetics IS fairly simple: only five vowels, no diphthongs, moderately complex affricate consonants. However, phonology (taking into account iotations, palatalizations, historic shifts, jat rendering), especially the accentuation, is terribly complicated, as you pointed out. Duja 09:39, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Young man, any phonetics is simple. Phonetics is physics. It's the frequencies and friction. Having 5 versus 12 vowels is not a measure of simplicity. Also, calling it simple is a value judgment. Phonology, though, is the exploration of how those phonemes function in context. That is the relevant part -- a machine can tell you about phonetics. Hence, the sound system (not the listing of vowels and consonants) IS a language's phonology. At least in the modern world. I must be condescending and add that what you have in your high school books is about everything Serbian phonology has achieved, so it's difficult to even discuss it.

Total speakers: 11,144,758 (exact?)
The fact-box states that there are 11,144,758 Serbian speakers and that's an awfully exact figure. Where does this number come from? Is this number continuously updated? And if not, I think that "11,1 million" would be more appropriate. --Saccharomyces 20:13, 6 August 2006 (UTC)


 * You are right :))) I put "around 11 millions". --millosh (talk (sr:)) 00:43, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Phonology section disputed
Mixing of diachronic and synchronic description... Also, it is not about phonology, but about morphophonology... When I would have some time, I'll fix it. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 00:41, 16 August 2006 (UTC)


 * You mean when you have some time, you'll fix it. Apparently Serbian syntax doesn't translate directly to English. (Or vice versa, I'm sure.) HTH. +ILike2BeAnonymous 08:01, 18 August 2006 (UTC)


 * :))) My English is has strong influence of my Serbian syntax --millosh (talk (sr:)) 21:24, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

But, of course, if there are some people who know Serbian phonology, let they do that instead of me. I'll add expert tag, too. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 21:29, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Torlakian
User Angr, wants to show, that Torlakian vernaculars are actually Bulgarian, or at least not a dialect but a language

"Torlakian is the name used for the Slavic dialects spoken in Southern and Eastern Serbia, Northwest Republic of Macedonia (Kratovo-Kumanovo) and Northwest Bulgaria (Vidin-Bregovo). Some linguists classified it as the fourth dialect of Serbo-Croatian language (with Shtokavian, Chakavian and Kaykavian) and today as the second Serbian language (with Shtokavian) dialect. In Bulgaria, these dialects are considered as western Bulgarian dialects. It is not standardized, and its subdialects significantly vary in some features.

Classification Some Croatian (like Milan Rešetar and Dalibor Brozović) and Serbian linguists (like Pavle Ivić) classify Torlakian as an old Shtokavian dialect, referring to it as "Prizren-Timok dialect"[1], because some subdialects use word što for "what" (but that is also a feature of Bulgarian and Macedonian). However, some subdialects use word kvo (same as Bulgarian kvo {or simply even just ko} (informal) and kakvo (formal). Some linguists in Bulgaria (Stoyko Stoykov, Rangel Bozhkov) classify Torlakian as a "Belogradchik-Trn" dialects of Bulgarian language and also claim that Torlakian should be classified outside of shtokavian area."

--Luzzifer 14:21, 21 August 2006 (UTC)


 * No, Angr doesn't want to show that Torlakian is Bulgarian. This is intention of Bulgarian linguists, like intention of Serbian linguists is to show Torlakian as Serbian. And different points of view should be explained inside of the article. (As well as the fact that maybe 90% of speakers of Torlakian are Serbs by ethnicity/nation.) --millosh (talk (sr:)) 21:47, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Dative and Locative
In the morphology part it says that traditionally the dative and locative case are seperated but that they are actually the same and that therefore morpohologically the number of cases is six. This is not quite correct. The written forms in the locative and dative case are always identical, but the accent is not always the same eg. sat (clock) is sâtu (long falling accent) in the dative and sátu (long rising accent) in the locative case or grad (city) is dative grâdu and locative grádu. So there is more than only a traditional reason why there still is both a dative and a locative case in the serbian language.

That is just plain untrue. The locative and dative have the same accent in those two words. Where did you pick up that distinction, it's completely incorrect. If the accents were different, then they would definitely be different cases, but that is just not the case.

It's true, cf. for instance, Josip Matešić, Der Wortakzent in serbokroatischer Schriftsprache, Wiesbaden 1970, and earlier monumental work of Daničić. I also chacked up by reviable native speakers. --Luzzifer 17:56, 20 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Just to verify Luzzifer's claims. Standard accents are different. However, the most of inhabitants of Belgrade don't recognize that distinction (locative accentuation won). --millosh (talk (sr:)) 17:13, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

That's true. :) --Luzzifer 17:19, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

I wrote that the accent of some words can be different in the locative and dative case (eg grâdu and grádu). I'm a native speaker of Serbian and study this language, so you don't have to be too sceptical. You asked where I picked it up? You can find it in every grammar book! But what Millosh said is also true that in many regions in Serbia there is no difference in colloquial speech. And one last thing. You wrote: "If the accents were different, then they would definitely be different cases, but that is just not the case." That makes no sense as there ARE different cases and I just wanted to explain why.

Accentuation
Without bothering to check edit history in detail, I assume that most of Accentuation section comes from User:Luzzifer and that disputed comes from User:Millosh (judging on their edit styles). I simplified and fixed some of it, but it needs more work.

Luzzifer, I urge you to provide references for the section; I think it's a mess of sourced material and your own perceptions and opinions, but I can't tell one from another. Accompanied with bad spelling (oh well, that's fixable), it gets fairly incomprehensible at times (I don't understand, frankly): "These are no accentuation rules. They can be very useful for insure native speakers when they have to mark the accent of some word, but thay cannot be of any help for a learner, since he/she does not how the word is pronounced (where the accent should be, and what kind of it)."

I also removed this, being a) unsourced b) barely intelligible c) what's the relevance in stressing out that one particular vernacula accent? d) really needs IPA notation: In Serbian language phonemes /č, ć, đ, dž/, in contrast to Croatian and Bosnian vernaculars, have in most vernaculars independet phonetic realization. It is interesting to be noticed, that in so called Old-Belgradians vernacular, the phonemic value is preservied, the phonetic realization twisted. /Č/ is more like [čj], /ć/ is more like [čh], /đ/ like [dž(h)] and /dž/ like [džj] (for instance in words: čaj, hoću, đubre, džemper). It's also intersting that Old-Belgradian, has (not so soft as at the seaside) for /l/, and a special pronaunciation of /r/. That explains the enormous number of kids mixing the /l/ and /lj/, /č/ and /ć/, /đ/ and /dž/ and having problems with pronaunciation of /r/ after the World War II when authentic vernacular was confronted with standart pronaunciation. Duja 09:24, 4 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Oh, sorry, I've made some changes, and now I see your post. Your are right! The second part (It is interesting...) is really not of notable relevance but it's very interesting, especially for alternative linguistic dicplines.

However, it has nothing to do with accents ("what's the relevance in stressing out that one particular vernacula accent?")!?

I agry that maybe we should leave the second part out.

References: I've already put Pavle Ivic and Ilse Lehiste. I also read other monographies and special studies on vernaculars, but I am sure that at least most of info is in Ivic's book as well.

--Luzzifer 18:49, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Phonetics *(e, o, u, r)
Are these really the values of e, o, u, r in Serbian STANDARD language? I don't think so. Maybe in some Vojvodina or eastern Serbian vernaculars.

Serbian /r/ is exactly like Spanish , not .


 * align="center" | r
 * align="center" | р
 * align="center" |
 * alveolar trill
 * rolled r as in Spanish carro
 * rolled r as in Spanish carro

Luzzifer --00:24, 6 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Reference duly added. Even the IPA Handbook, AFAIK, describes the vowels like that. FWIW, this is the same set of vowels as used & described Bulgarian and Croatian and I don't see what else could they be. As for the R, single Spanish r is alveolar tap, while rr is alveolar trill. Again, the same as for all Slavic languages (cf. Russian phonology). Duja 15:12, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, exactly that's the point. Croatian linguists give since 1990 different data, of to us all well known reasons. Standard Serbian and Serbo-Croatian E, O, A are not open.
 * Yes they are open. Please check the references. Note that "openness" of vowels varies, so I recall Serbian (or Croatian) E, O, A being described along the lines of "57% open" (i.e. not as open as "standard" sample whatever it is) (See User:Kwami's post in Talk:Serbo-Croatian). They're definitely not closed like Slovenian E (/ne ve:m/) or French O. The case of O is a bit moot, as it often is closed in many positions (a stricter IPA transcription would be probably or {{IPA|/ɔ̝/), but such phonetic details are generally not desirable or needed). Duja

Russian r is apsolutely not the same as Serbian. Russian r is very close to Spanish rr, Serbian r to Spanish r. I grew up in Russia.

-- 21:47, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Check the references, please. Also, I disagree with your assessment. If it were a flap, you couldn't pronounce /gr:mʎljɛ/ with the long r.

Dije, check up the Wiki SOUND EXAMPLES!!! And don't forget, we are talking here about standard language, not some Srem, Backa or Pomoravlje vernaculars. -- 22:09, 7 September 2006 (UTC) Now I remembered. It's always put out that we have similar phonetics to Japanese.


 * My name is Duja. Where it's always put out? Yes, I do find that sound examples don't always ideally match, but I don't intend to trump research of many people more competent than I am.
 * May I remind you that Wikipedia is not about truth, but about verifiability? You might disagree with linguists, but you cannot trump WP:V: see my numerous remarks on e.g. Talk:Serbo-Croatian where I also questioned some of phonetic descriptions, but I didn't feel inclined to put them into the article, as Original Research is not allowed. While I do appreciate your edits and I don't question your good faith, I must say that you ought to attribute your edits to relevant sources more and refrain from inserting your own observations, especially on more obscure cases. The bottom line is: the more contestable claims one puts in the article, the sources behind it have to be stronger (and the burden of proof is at the claiming editor). In other words, you don't have to cite the source for "the sky is blue", but you certainly do for "similar phonetics to Japanese" or "enormous number of kids mixing the /l/ and /lj/" Duja 08:56, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi Duja! You misunterstood me. Few months ago, there was a different vocal system om this site and someone changed it. Now, you are tryin' to do some comparations with CROATIAN and RUSSIAN and that's actually exactly original research. I was stunished by vocal system that is put up on this site. Stunished. In ALL publicitations you find "Serbian" vocal TRIANGLE. The system that stood on this site was exactly the one of Kajkavian vernaculars. Now, check up for instance the article I mentioned Razvoj vokalnkog sistema u srpskohrvatskom jeziku by Pavle Ivić (Iz istorije srpskohrv. jezika, Niš 1991).

pozz, --11:55, 8 September 2006 (UTC) --Luzzifer 12:02, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I am not trying comparations with Croatian and Russian (Bulgarian, actually, in the case of vowels) for the sake of original research, but as an argument that Serbian vowels cannot be suddenly closed in that dialect continuum. The reference for sound system is duly cited from Browne&Alt and Moren. I cannot find how you equate the Serbian vowels with Slovenian ones (/e/, /o/), which are clearly closed, as Kajkavian. Duja 12:43, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Duje, I think that we are mixing two things up. Serbian /o/ is in many cases of sam eorigin like Russian /o/. In some other cases same Proto-Slavic vowels gave different PHONEMES in Russian anfd Serbian. But that's not the point. We are talking here about phonetic realization of proto phonems. You may find in many Serbian vernaculars an opened e or o (in Vojvodihna for instance), these PHONs are PHONEMES /e/ and /o/ as well. But the stnadrad phonetivc realization of phonems /e/ and /o/ is not open. I'm not following you on kajkavian issue. It has got typical opened vowels. In some cases reflex of jat is closed e.

-- 16:59, 8 September 2006 (UTC) I've just looked up Croatian language Wikipage. Seems to me that they have changed something, too. A is central. And take a closer look of o and e.

--Luzzifer 21:34, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
 * The table is supposed to contain the (closest approximation of) phonetic realization of given phonemes. Those vary with dialect and speaker. The aim is to give the typical realization, e.g. one that could be heard with professional TV or radio speakers. As such, the given phones will not be perfect, and will often have a certain deviation from typical sound given by IPA symbol. If you wish, I can go one by one. First, a quote from User:Kwamikagami, who is a phonetician and has IPA handbook (I'm not sure if it's related with Serbo-Croatian or Croatian but you'd probably agree it's the same):

As for the mid vowels, they appear in the Handbook as mid vowels, not close-mid. The height of /o/ is 43% of the way between /a/ and /u/ on their chart (note that we don't know that /u/ is 100% close or that /a/ is 100% open - they're shown as something less than this on the chart, but of course the corner vowels on these charts are placed rather impressionistically). The height of /e/ is 47% the distance between /a/ and /i/. That is, both appear to be slightly on the open side of mid, but not really open-mid, assuming that /i u/ and /a/ are equally close to their cannonical values. kwami 19:48, 10 January 2006 (UTC) Duja 18:38, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
 * IPA vowel /e/ represents Close-mid front unrounded vowel. That sound is commonly encountered in French as in allez and Slovenian ne vem, and it is lot closer to /i/ than the Serbian sound. While Serbian normal sound is somewhat closer than open-mid /ɛ/, it's a far better approximation. As you pointed out, some dialects have pure open-mid /ɛ/, but I maintain that none has pure close-mid /e/.
 * Sound /o/ is close-mid back unrounded vowel. The situation is same as with E—while Serbian O is closer than pure open-mid /ɔ/, and gets real close to /o/ in words like bol, it's not the standard pronunciation. If your ears hurt as much as mine by e.g. speach of Nataša Mićić and other Užice speakers, that's because of their goddam closed /o/ everywhere.
 * Case of A is a bit moot; it's kind of central, i.e. halfway between /a/ and /ɑ/, but /a/ is normally taken as closer approximation.
 * I've just now checked Croatian language page, and I noted that the E and O are described just like I wrote above (twice) /ɛ̝/ and /ɔ̝/, i.e. raised, denoting slightly closer than "pure" open-mid.
 * You quoted a 1974 book—while I don't deny the reference, did it contain IPA at all at the time? It's quite possible that /e/ and /o/ were used liberally instead of IPA, like many English authors do.
 * R can be trill of tap allophonically (/krst/, /ʃa:ɾac/); since the /ɾ/ is used only in fast speech, and it cannot be used at all in proximity of consonants (which is the very frequent position in Serbian), the trill /r/ is taken for the "usual" phonemic value.

Ok, I will put the table from Wiki Croatian language. And as /r/ is concered I agry that it's [r] in krst, but it' because of s following (try to say [kɾst]- almost unposible). In most words there is [ɾ] (mrak, vrag, kreciti etc.). I cannot agry that it's only used in fast speech. It's commonly used and it's very clear when you try to say long /r/- you get [ɾəəə].

Luzzifer-- 20:24, 10 September 2006 (UTC)


 * All sources say it's a trill. That also corresponds to what I hear. That also corresponds to definitions in all neighboring and Slavic languages. When one tries to say long [r], you get /əːr/ or /ə˘rː/ -- the epenthetic schwa is normally preceding. Duja 15:05, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Reference was botched, may need more fixing
I was updating reference styles with the Ref converter and there was a reference within the Consonants table redirecting from the Approximates row, Labio-Dental column to a small paragraph immediately under the table.
 * ...as was intended...

This hiccoughed the converter so I removed the reference because it was not really a reference. If someone could double-check that it is still appropriately readable that would be grand. I will not be heading back through here.MrHen 23:24, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
 * ...i.e. don't fix if ain't broken. Duja 18:41, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

New constitution
There was a vote in Serbian parliament on either the 29th or 30th of October that resulted in the Cyrillic alphabet being proclaimed the only official alphabet of the Serbian language in the Republic of Serbia as being cyrillic. Someone should add this somewhere in the main article. I forgot where I found this article. Some newspaper somewhere - Vesti, Politika, maybe Nin, not sure. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.171.48.252 (talk)
 * That's not quite right. A new constitution has been proposed, which states that Cyrillic is official and Roman script is not. It's been voted through in parliament, but it still needs to be approved in a referendum. So, let's wait for that to actually happen, shall we? --estavisti 23:10, 30 September 2006 (UTC)


 * That's abslutly wrong. No law and no parliament can "state" or "proclaim" that Cyrillic alphabet is the only official alphabet of the Serbian language. The state can choose a language and alphabet which is gonna be used in oficcial metters, but Latin and Cyrillic alphabets (BOTH!) remain alphabets of Serbian language. However, this constitutional reform is not accepted yet, and, personally I hope that it will not be. -- 13:15, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Italics in Cyrillics
A guideline on whether or not to italicize Cyrillics (and all scripts other than Latin) is being debated at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (text formatting). - - Evv 16:04, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Cyrillic Only Alphabet
The constitution in Serbia passed this weekend affirmed this, there is only one alphabet for the Serbian langauge and that is the cyrillic alphabet. this should be changed within the text —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.99.160.151 (talk) 03:50, 3 November 2006


 * While I fully support this measure, the Serbian government is not a linguistic authority. --estavisti 04:28, 3 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I would like to see a quote from the constitution confirming this. I have heard conflicting reports ranging from "Cyrillic is the only alphabet in Serbian" (highly unlikely, since constitutions have nothing to do with standardisation of languages) and "Cyrillic is the only alphabet in official use in Serbia" to "Cyrillic is preferred script to be used by government offices in Central Serbia" (as opposed to Vojvodina). As I said, a quote from the constitution would be nice. I googled, but couldn't find a draft of constitution. --Dijxtra 11:26, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

First port of call: the Serbian government website's constitution page. --estavisti 11:38, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

"U Republici Srbiji u službenoj upotrebi su srpski jezik i ćiriličko pismo. Službena upotreba drugih jezika i pisama uređuje se zakonom, na osnovu Ustava." --estavisti 11:39, 3 November 2006 (UTC)


 * So, there's no "only one alphabet" clause. Just that Cyrillic is official, but other scripts could be official too, if regulated by law. --Dijxtra 12:38, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Yeah, but that's simply a phrasing that means Hungarians etc can write Hungarian or whatever in Latinica. --estavisti 12:43, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Ofcourse. But, the fact is that the constitution does not say that Cyrillic it the only one alphabet for the Serbian language, as 74.99.160.151 says. --Dijxtra 12:47, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

The people don't seem to comprehend that no constitution, law, order or hatisherif can define what language is or what is not. They can only regulate language use for official purposes, which have absolutely binding for how people use it. Duja► 12:01, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

It still cannot be said they are "equal" in any sense when the government refuses to use one of the scripts. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.99.160.151 (talk)

'''No law and no parliament can "state" or "proclaim" that Cyrillic alphabet is the only official alphabet of the Serbian language. The state can choose a language and alphabet which is gonna be used in oficcial metters, but Latin and Cyrillic alphabets (BOTH!) remain alphabets of Serbian language. ''' -22:03, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Well actually it can, in fact it is only an authoritative or administrative body which can do this. The question one needs to ask himself is "why is there an official alphabet in the first place?", and the answer is because the language is known to be or have recently been written down in more than one script. There are dozens of examples. The official language of Bulgaria according to its constitution (not some linguistic authority) is primarily Bulgarian, BUT Bulgarian has no official alphabet, should this mean that we can devise a Hebrew-based register for Bulgarian? Technicly, YES! But will we? Highly unlikely, and if we do, it will then come under attack from traditionalists and in the end, someone will lay down the law according to stature: an official alphabet will be implemented. As it happens, nobody would use anything other than Cyrillic to write Bulgarian (except modern texting etc. where Cyrill


 * Once again, NO. Serbian language has teo alphabets- cyrillic and latin. Serbian parliament has only chosen OFFICIAL LANGUAGE AND OFFICIAL ALPHABET. Official language is language that is used in formal correnspondance within administration and between administration and citizens. And according to new constitution, official language is Serbian, official alphabet is the cyrrilic alphabet of Serbian language, which has two alphabets: cyrillic and latin. Maybe it's different to understand, but that's how the things work. No parliament and no constitution can proclaim alphabets or even orthography of any language.-- 17:45, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Just to say that correlation between cultural and official usage of the scripts are well explained in this section. And anyone who still pushes POV related to theories that "government decides what is in cultural usage" should be treated at least as a troll. In other words: no, government may not decide that Cyrillic script is the only script in cultural usage. So, please, stop to bother other people. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 11:37, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I am certainly not trolling if that was what you meant, I just found half my text wiped out and replaced with something which I never argued with. My point was that administration declares what is official indeed, but this is not important in any sense; most languages don't have an official alphabet because there is one conventional form and some countries don't even have official languages! Nobody decides what is in "cultural usage" and even if they did, Serbs are not confined to Serbia (where the stature is effective), they live in every country of the world where there is nobody to stop them writing in any alphabet ever devised! The article need only mention it once (about being official) and even then, the reader from the side will still have forgotten five lines down. Evlekis 11:48, 18 November 2006 (UTC) Евлекис

Clean-up
I have done some minor grammar correction and addition of wiki links. Aleta 00:36, 28 November 2006 (UTC)Aleta
 * Thanks for your contributions Aleta. // Laughing Man 00:53, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Dative and Locative
The Morphology section argues that it is a mistake to assume that these are infact the same. Yet it totally fails to prove that they are not. Accent here is of no relevance and is used how the speaker wishes: ie.Slavic languages do not depend on tonal modulation as do Mandarin and Cantonese where-by the word for "mother" can mean "horse" if spoken differently. When I sat and learned the language from childhood, I noticed very quickly that Dative and Locative are very similar and for a while, I accepted that there were six cases. Now older, I know that they are not the same but they permanently take the same form, or I have been missing something. I admit that the two are rather unrelated and cannot really kriss-kross each other in the same sentence. But that paragraph needs to be rewritten with the misleading information about "different accent" removed; if someone can find a word which has one form in the dative and another in the locative (even an isolated irregular word which is accepted), then that will suffice for the example. Evlekis 09:05, 23 December 2006 (UTC) Евлекис

Perhaps you should do some work on your knowladge. First of all, the tonality (rise/fall) is the not only condicio of charging phonolocigal same words as one or two- there is also a long/short aspect. But let's leave that point out. You should be aware that: Serbian is a tonal language. It's the only slavic tonal language (together with Croatian ofcourse). It has four accents- long and short falling, and long and short rising (TONALItY!). Totally different words are päs and pâs, sèdeti and sédeti etc.--15:00, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I received this late so I respond late: You the unidentified are the one who needs to work on your knowledge. Serbian is as much a tonal language as is English when ending in a rising tone when presenting a statement which turns out to be a question (ie. It is -rising- = it is?). Serbian is not however, a language which depends (get that word in your head) on tonal modulation. Swedish is also tonal, but it is not essential, and this is evident in that neither written Swedish nor written Serbian/Croatian have symbols to reflect tone, they don't even have it for stress. Written languages which depend on tonal modulation cannot manage without the symbols: in Mandarin, the word for "mother" if wrongly pronounced can mean "horse". In Serbian, I can say "majka" rising, falling, shouting, even breaking wind and will still only ever mean "mother". I will apologise to you when you produce a Serbian word which means something like "airport" when rising and "cat food" when falling. Good luck going through your dictionary. In the mean time, you wanna be useful? Find a noun which has one form in the dative and another in the locative (eg. NOM. Mladost; GEN Mladosti), ie. containing different letters. If you read my passage, I never suggested that Locative & Dative meant the same thing, just as ACC and NOM don't either (doesn't stop NEUT and MASC taking the same forms). Evlekis 16:09, 28 December 2006 (UTC) Евлекис
 * Well, he did give some minimal pairs based on the accent distinction below. Similar ones do exist in non-tonal languages: English "Paul" and "poll" are also minimal pairs, distinguished by accent length, and similar phenomena exist in many languages. As I understand, not all Chinese tones necessarily produce a minimal pair (although the tone there is apparently a bigger deal than in Serbian, where the tone is apparently a bigger deal than in English). My point is: it's not all black and white. And, no, I'm not aware of any case where dative and locative in Serbo-Croatian have a different form. Duja ► 16:31, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Fair point Duja. I just get a little annoyed when unnamed users have a pop at someone, you know you'll never hear from them again. Nothing is black and white, there are preferences in pronunciation here and the old Serbo-Croat dialects and Slovenian, are to the best of my knowledge, tonal in practice. It is similar with stress, in my native Macedonian, traditional words are stressed on the third from last syllable. That way you can tell a foreign word even if it doesn't immediately strike because with non-Slavic words adopted more recently, the stress is long and on the penultimate. Like you once stressed that the Serbian 'Sh'/'CH' is harsher than the English, I just wanted to say in both these cases (sound of the letter and tone of the word) that the speaker does have a choice and can pass for sounding absolutely flawless and fluent if he deviates from the norms; pronounces 'Pes' as he chooses and makes the SH sound like in English, because there is no ambiguity. Sorry if I sounded abrupt. Evlekis 18:49, 28 December 2006 (UTC)


 * See above, it has been discussed before. The bottom line is: there might be few differences in accentuation, but those seem to be a) limited to monosyllabic words with long falling accent: sât -> dat. sâtu, loc. sátu; trûd -> dat. trûdu, loc. trúdu; exceptions (drûg->drûgu, drûgu). The differentiation (if it ever fully existed) seems to be fairly lost, and I admit that I barely differentiate it myself, going for the rising accent in most cases. Also, I find some falling accents noted above inacceptable, like grâd -> grâdu. Other than that, the preservation of two distinct cases seems to be historical and semantical, rather than phonetical. After all, we've all been taught in school that we have 7 cases. Duja ► 15:29, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Here some examples, "like in Mandarin", or Cantonese:) : Njegovi zubi su pravi: 1. NJegovi zubi su prävi "nisu krivi" 2. Njegovi zubi su prâvi "nisu vestacki"

To je bio sjajan pas. 1. Päs "kuce" 2. Pâs "dobacivanje" 3. Pâs "kais"

Radi! 1. Râdi! 'It works!' 2. Rádi! 'do it!'

... ... ...

(Maybe your native vernacular is Prizren-Timok dialect?). There are few good books on issue Serbo-Croatian accents in English as well. I must admit that locative/dative accent dinstiction is IN BELGRADE almost lost. However it's very alive in Valjevo, Cacak, Loznica, in Vojvodina as well. Duje, there are also polysyllabical words, as glava or strana, banda ('site') etc. --Luzzifer 15:38, 28 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Luzzifer, I'm from northern Bosnia, and I keep the 4-accent distinction as well as the unstressed length fairly well. But I have never heard the following accentuations in any dialect or context, locative or dative: glâvi, strâni, grâdu. On the other hand, I accept e.g. sâtu/sátu and trûdu/trúdu as valid dublets, but they work for me as dublets in both dative in locative; I find all of the following pronunciations acceptable:
 * Zahvaljujemo mu se na‿trûdu (locative)
 * Zahvaljujemo mu se na‿trúdu (locative)
 * Zahvaljujući njegovom trûdu (dative)
 * Zahvaljujemo njegovom trúdu (dative)
 * Frankly, it would surprise me if I'd find a dialect which still systematically applies the distinction. Duja ► 15:59, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

SOORY, EVLEKIS, BUT YOU OBVIOUSLY DON'T HAVE GOOD KNOWLEDGE OF SERBO-CROATIAN. ONCE AGAIN, CHECK OUT PAIRS SUCH AS PAS/PAS, PRAVI/PRAVI, DUGA/DUGA, MINA/MINA (CHECK OUT LUZZIFERS POST) ETC. aS WE BOTH KNOW, MANDARIAN DOS NOT HAVE LETTERS, BUT IDIOGRAMMS. SERBO-CROATIAN IS A TONAL LANGUAGE. --user:Luzzifer 22:08, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
 * can i stop you in your tracks annonymous person. Before you attack known users, read what they say instead of staring at the words. User:Evlekis was right in what he said and I understood it perfectly well. You didn't. He said that Serbian does not "depend" on tonal. It means that you cannot make a mistake by doing the "wrong one". And there is no "wrong one" because your examples are based on our own development from many years in speaking, and not rules from the book. "Radi", 'it works' and "Radi!" 'instruction' are slightly different because we get used to saying them different ways. In Spanish, "hAblo" is 'i speak' and "hablO" is one way of making past tense. in the end of the day Spanish's Hablo's and Serbian's Radi's are all polysyms. As for Chinese, you were completely wrong. First, there is a Latinic version called "Pinjin", second, where the idiograms represent different words using same sounds but different tone, they have seperate symbols, so there is no mistaking isolated words in Chinese. In Serbian we say "da" 'yes' and "da" before verb to make infinitive. They are probably homonyms like the Chinese examlples. But we dont have different tone for them and their place in the language is spoken short and fast and who can mistake them anyway? Can "moj kompjuter ne radi" mean (hey my computer, do NOT work)? Jordovan 29th December, 2006.


 * Duje, why don't you say something??? Jordovan, you are absolutly wrong. I see that you are from Leskovac, that means that your native language has only one expiratoric accent (Prizren-Timok dialect), so no wonder that you don't feal the differences. Serbian language is indeed a tonal language (so East-Herzegowinian, Sumadija-Vojvodina and some other dialects). HAVE YOU PEOPLE EVER SEEN A PROFESSIONAL DICTIONARY OF SERBIAN LANGUAGE? ALL ACCENTS ARE POINTED OUT AND THERE ARE FOUR OF THEM. I APPRIATIE THAT JORDAN UNDERSTANDS EVELIKES, BUT BOTH OF YOU ARE WRONG. AND FAR MORE, YOU HAVE A LACK OF ELEMENTARY KNOWLADGE OF SERBIAN LANGUAGE (CALL THAT AS YOU WISH). --Luzzifer 18:58, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Duje, my mother and grandmother, who are from Belgrade, have ka strâni but na stráni, also alternation ka selu/na selu. In Piva all mentioned examples exist, and heard many of them in Dubrovnik.-- 07:51, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Duje, why don't you say something??? Jordovan, you are absolutly wrong. I see that you are from Leskovac, that means that your native language has only one expiratoric accent (Prizren-Timok dialect), so no wonder that you don't feal the differences. Serbian language is indeed a tonal language (so East-Herzegowinian, Sumadija-Vojvodina and some other dialects). HAVE YOU PEOPLE EVER SEEN A PROFESSIONAL DICTIONARY OF SERBIAN LANGUAGE? ALL ACCENTS ARE POINTED OUT AND THERE ARE FOUR OF THEM. I APRIATIAN THAT JORDAN UNDERSTANDS EVELIKES, BUT BOTH OF YOU ARE WRONG. AND FAR MORE, YOU HAVE A LACK OF ELEMENTARY KNOWLADGE OF SERBIAN LANGUAGE (CALL THAT AS YOU WISH) --Luzzifer 18:58, 30 December 2006 (UTC)



I may be from leskovac but I speak the same Serbian as everyone else. There are just two things about those examples in the dictionary: 1- they appeal to the word in complete isolaton. 2- not adhering to them all of the time neither causes ambiguity nor can be said the person who speaks them is not speaking Serbian. I speak fast, we all speak fast, it is often impossible to excercise them the way dictionary says. Serbian is very easy to speak fast because it only has a few vowels, no crazy combinations. The language is partially tonal, only as far as maybe Scandinavian languages. My point was that it is not tonal in the Chinese sense. All of this words which are recommended to have a different tone and still homonyms. As I said, if I say to you "moj komjuter ne radi", the structure of the sentence can never suggest I mean "Radi!" instructions. That is why my language does not "depend" on tone, it is just recommended and practiced. Jordovan 14:11, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Evelekis, I'm really sorry, but if you are from Leskovac- you have only one accent- that's a linguist fact.--Luzzifer 07:57, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Confession
I havn't been here a while and I appear to have opened a can of worms so let me try to calm things down by stating the following. If it means anything to Luzifer, or Duja or the anon. I accept, yes, Serbian and Croat are tonal languages. Why? Simply because the term stretches to cover such languages as them, as well as Swedish and Lithuanian. The actual words which have a different meaning when uttered differently, "прави да нису криви, прави да нису вештачки итд" are still related in all cases. My only point was that this isn't as essential to the languages as it would be in the Chinese tongues where-by the words can be totally unrelated. And even if there is the odd example here and there, it's bound to be a coincidence, but never the less, the Wikipedia article states that they are tonal and the dictionary gives examples, so such they are. I learned Serbo-Croat from the age of 8. Living in England, tone was not properly explained to me but I developed it anyhow from listening to my teacher and all other speakers, I then spotted the dictionary and saw the examples. Now, one major difference between Serbian and Chinese is that the Serbian zone only occupies a small part of a prolonged proximity, and the word "Pravi" continues to mean all that it does even outside of the Serbian speech zone! In fact, you don't have to go out of it, you can hear that it already fades away in certain dialectal areas, and yet people still have no problems communicating. But, if anyone still believes that tone appeals to all standard languages, I'll prove that they are not, has anyone ever watched a session of Montenegrin parliament? When they've started shouting from one side of the assembly room to the other? When Krivokapic has had verbal bust-ups with speakers? On a speech delivered last summer just before the referendum, Djukanovic addressed a large crowd and I counted over 50 whole words in succession ALL spoken on a single tone - like a priest. Vuk Draskovic is another example of someone who can utter long fast sentences and not change tone, he does this in English too and he has been compared to Dracula for this detail. Just to say again, my original point regarded Dative and Locative, I didn't mean to cause unrest, and once again, yes, Serbian is tonal, so please don't any of you answer back by arguing with me. Evlekis 19:44, 9 January 2007 (UTC) (that is Èвлéкūc to some)

Actually, there are houndreds of tonal minimal pairs in Serbian (duga/duga/duga/duga- four words, four accents; mlada 'nestara'/mlada 'nevesta', or in at seacost karonja 'drcan covek'/ karonja 'lenstina'< Italian (Venetian) carogna). In one piont, Evlekias, you might be wright- Chinese tones might have be far more "hearable". You mentioned Vuk Draskovic, and I must say that his accents are almost perfect (ehich can't wonder- his perents are settlers from the same area where Vuka Karadzics family came from). If you cannot hear the difference when he is speaking, then try pay more attention, and- let me give you a tip- try first to make hear difference between long accents. I must also disagree that vernaculars don't have accents. The most Serbian verneculars have socalled new-shtokawian accentuation and all 4 accents. Some Serbian vernaculars have only 2 accents (old-shtokawian dilaelect), and finally, only one Serbian dialect- a so called Prizren-Timok dialect has only one expiratoric accent, as in Nis, or in Leskovac for instance (as a result of Balcan language union). It's the very dialect of Jordovan, so no wonder that he cannot hear or produce different sccent times, and that everything seem to him place-bound. For, start, try to listen to famous speaker of Radio Belgrade draga Jonas- I found a (not representative) mp3 file on google--Luzzifer 07:54, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I also must add that I fairly cannot see any difference between examples such as kàronja 'mudonja' (derived from kara 'penis') and käronja 'lenstina' (derivred from Venetian carogna), further pâs 1.'kajs' 2. dodavanje i päs 'kuce', dúga 'nebeska pojava' i düga 'daska', on one side and all mentioned Chinese examples on the other. Jordovan says that in Serbian it's always depends on contests (which is untrue), I must aks him, isn't the same in Chineese. If in some cases perhaps not that have nothing to do with tonality but with fundamental structere of Chineese sentence. --Luzzifer 10:26, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't actually speak Mandarin. I know a few words but that's about all. I was going to say: Vuk Drašković, he is indeed a very good speaker, he does sound educated, I didn't dispute that! What I meant was that when he has spoken on live television, and has lost himself in more rapid speech, he has for certain periods now and again produced full sentences all in one single tone. I suppose it is easy to miss sometimes when you get used to what he means to say. In normal speech, I'm sure he uses the tonal effects all the time. Evlekis 18:08, 12 January 2007 (UTC)


 * The major difference between Mandarin (as well as most other forms of Chinese) and languages like Serbian is that one could achieve pretty decent fluency in Serbian without ever really mastering the tones. The same isn't possible for Mandarin, because the tones aren't lexically predictable in the same way. The number of minimal pairs that are distinguished only by tone in Mandarin is staggering. Both languages are tonal, but Serbian is only marginally so when compared to languages like Mandarin.
 * Peter Isotalo 16:26, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Phoneme tables
I think it would improve the article if there were tables such as those found at Romanian phonology that have example words for each phoneme with orthographic representations and IPA transcription. Does anybody think they can do it? I'm good with tables but I don't know any Serbian and I can certainly work with someone who's in the opposite situation (good at Serbian and lousy at tables). Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 04:47, 12 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I don't think so; those tables are, in my opinion, overlong, and don't contribute much to the article, as the native speakers will already know the examples, and they won't tell much to the outsiders. Actually, the Romanian phonology is not the style commonly found in other phonology articles AFAICT. That is not to say that this article is OK (it's far from good I think), but I don't think that those tables would improve it in the right direction. Duja ► 09:01, 12 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Hmmm. I guess the main reason I'm interested in such a table is to help me in putting Serbian example words in various phone pages (such as close front unrounded vowel and voiceless postalveolar fricative.  Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 05:48, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Sounds/Phonology
I strongly recommend not to use terms that sound fancier than they actually are. It does not in the least make the article more difficult for hobby linguists like myself to understand and it makes it more comprehensible for the average reader for whom the article is intended for in the first place. I don't know how many times I've shown friends (this includes adults and university students) language articles only to have them ask "What does phonology mean?" The use of "Sounds" for the phonology sections is very common and is definitely not "false and far under wiki level". It's recommended in the language project template and is in widespread use in major language articles like Dutch language, Russian language (an FA) and Spanish language. It's up to each article author to decide whether to use either "Sounds" or "Phonology", but "Phonology and phonetics" is hyper-correct redundancy. The set of sounds used in a language is called "a phonology", and the section here is in effect a Serbian phonology, not a "Serbian phonetics". Even if we're talking about the academic disciplines, it's still phonology, not phonetics in general.

Something that is actually highly misleading, though, is to separate "Prosody" from the phonology-section. Prosody is just one of many aspects of phonetics, not a completely separate discipline.

I've also renamed a lot of sections that had extremely non-standard titles, like "Lexicography".

Peter Isotalo 20:25, 12 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks Peter, it actually does look better less bad now. Luzzifer, please have in mind that you don't WP:OWN this article and there's no need to be so passionate. Duja ► 16:19, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I tried to start the discussion on your wiki page. Here are my points: Please stop changing "phonology and phonetics" with "sounds", "lexicography" with "dictionary". Maybe it's common in Swedish culture, but vist the pages of othere languages (Englis, German) and you are not going to find mediocriteted lines, such as "sounds" etc.

I'm sorry that the educational system let you down (take this as joke, please), but there is a huge difference between phonology and phonetics, and "sounds" is proper only for one aspect of PHONETICS. For instance, phonologically, there is one /n/ in Serbian language (// is used for phonems), but phonetically there are at least two: [ɲ] (for instance in word banka) and [n] (for instance in novac) ([] is used for phons). You may say in casual style that phons are sounds, but phonems (and the table in the article is on phonems not phons) are not sounds! Also lexycography inclueds some basic infos on work on dictionaries, on methods etc., and not only a list of dictionaries. Be aware that Serbian hasn't got two "writing systems", but two alphabets, and both alphabets are representatives of the same writing system. Finally, "Geographic distribution" is a criteria of area, "demographics" of national identity of speakers.

Finally, if someone isn't sure about the meaning of phonology and phonetics, one click is enough to get very good informations on this very same Wiki. Your approach is wrong. If you just stop people on the street and just ask them what is phonology, yo should expect that nobody knows the answer cause nobody cares wether about phonology, neither about sounds (in linguistical sence). But somebody who is interested, probably knows what's phonology. In Serbia pupils learn that in elementary school.

Duje, I totally agree with you that I'm not a monopolist contributor on this topic. Nobody is. I think that Peter should have discussed this here before changing anythig.

'''Finally, on both of you, where have you read that Wikipedia should be a mediocriteted encylopedia? I mean, just take a look on Articles on natural sciencies, or medicine or techics- they are far more complicated than articles in Brittanica or Brockhaus for instance, or Eciclopedia Italiana, Larousse... and all of these encyclopedies use terms phonology and phonetics not sounds.'''

B.R.--Luzzifer 13:44, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Peter_Isotalo" Luzzifer


 * Did you actually take a look at German language and English language or the other examples I provided? Some do use "Phonology", but that's it. Otherwise they have the exact same structure as the one I changed to. The titles I changed to were not my idea either, but a general standard. Using "Sounds" instead of "Phonology" isn't a must, but your argument that the former title wouldn't represent the section in an accurate way doesn't hold up. The only difference is that it's not the preferred terminology among linguists. But then again, this isn't an article intended for linguists. I'll acquiesce about this one for the sake of compromise. However, there is no argument that would say that "sounds" is a bad section header other than if you want to avoid laymen people understanding the article. Trust me, not that many people, even of education, know what "phonology" really means. And why do you keep separating the prosody section? That simply doesn't make any sense, even according to your own reasoning. Prosody isn't a separate discipline.
 * Also, as pointed out, you should really calm down and stop being uncivil and stop speculating about how well-educated you think I (or other users) are. That includes calling me a vandal in the edit summaries. That's assuming bad faith.
 * Peter Isotalo 17:05, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

I said that I am sorry that the educational system let you down, and I POINTEND out in very next sentence that's it's a joke. It makes you actually uncivilized when you call somebody "to start being civil". I really don't consider you to be not educated, I even don't know you. I just said that people learn the meaning og phonology in Serbia in the 5th grade of elemenatary school. You see Peter, phonology is not = phonetics. You can read that on this very same Wikipedia in these articles. The science which exeminatet SOUNDS is called phonetics, not phonology. But phonetics also exeminate hearing methods, speech method etc. and all that stuff on Serbina is mentioned in "Phonology and phonetics part". So there is a double problem with changing "phonology" with sounds. First of all, sounds are not object of phonology, but phonetics, and second, even if you finally pay charge on that, it's also wrong to change phonetics with sounds, because sounds are only one (and the biggest one) aspect of phonetics. As far prosody is concered, prosody inclueds word prosody but also SENTENCE prosody! The words consist of "sounds", but the accent (prosody) of the words is something different than the sound themself. Because of those two reason, prosody does'nt belongs to the section "phonology and phonetics" (or "sounds").


 * Well, your sarcasm isn't appreciated. Calling someone a vandal in edit summaries isn't funny. Give it a rest.
 * Prosody isn't limited to words alone and the relevant aspect of phonetics in this article is in fact phonology, not the entire discipline. Perception and all the other aspects of phonetics are always assumed to be universal traits that aren't specific to individual languages. We have articles like speech perception for this purpose.
 * You've misunderstood a few rather important aspects of the discipline, and I think you need to apply less passion and a bit more intellectual scrutiny to your thinking here. Most of what you've said here are over-simplified, if not entirely baseless, derivations of what phonetics is all about.
 * Peter Isotalo 11:38, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

??? Perhaps you should learn to use words such as sarcasm, phonology, phonetics.. in a proper way? Anyway, believe me, theo only reason I simplified things is because I thought that you are not into linhguistics. But notthing I said is wrong. Peter, I know, the diffrence between phonology and phonetics is not simple. I kindly (KINDLY) ask you, to pay some attention on the article that you are changing. For instance, you missed that there s a sentence prosody section which is to be written down in the future. You are wright: phonetics has got many universal aspects, but so does every language discpipline; there is a general phonetics, and Serbian, German, English phonetics wich deals with the special aspect of that languages. I rally, can't forbid to anybody to call me "uncivilized", "passioned", or "simplyminded"... but it just proves that you are (perhaps not in Wiki language but in my language) a vandal. Luzzifer --17:52, 18 February 2007 (UTC)


 * No one has called you "uncivilized" ("(un)civil doesn't mean "(un)civilized)") or "simple-minded". "Passioned" was actually Duja's description, but it'd quite a stretch for anyone to refer to it as anything other than a very accurate and neutral comment on your debating style.
 * I already pointed out that prosody isn't limited to just single words. You can look this up in any book on basic phonetics. If you want to question such basic facts, you'd better provide a citation. And the application of phonetics in describing a single language is called "phonology". In this case it refers to a phonology, just like the grammar section refers to a grammar, in this case a Serbian one. For examples of phonologies (not "phonetics"), see English phonology, Irish phonology, Dutch phonology, etc.
 * I've now made a comment about this dispute at Requests for comment/Language and linguistics.
 * Peter Isotalo 08:05, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

My opinion is that you obviously don't understand the difference between phonology and phonetic. However, I'm glad that you see that it's something different and that the most of "Phonology and phonetics" part deals withs phonology, not "sounds" (= phonetics). However, there are some parts that cannnot be traeted as phonology, because they belong to phonetics. "Phonology" is not a single language representation of "phonetics"!

Phonology deals with phonems for instance /l/, that are smallest language units that can change the meaning. Phonetics deal with physical relaizations of phonems- so called phons (= sounds), for instance phonem /l/, has two phonetic relazations in English: sound [l] (like in let) and sound [ɫ] (for instance in pull).

Of course, we can alway discuss anything, but to say that I don't bring up any arguments is simple not true.--Luzzifer 18:17, 21 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Your opinion isn't really relevant, neither is mine. This would be so much easier if you paid attention to what you were saying. This is from the lead of our own article on phonology:
 * Phonology (Greek φωνή = voice/sound and λόγος = word, speech, subject of discussion), is a subfield of linguistics which studies the sound system of a specific language (or languages). Whereas phonetics is about the physical production and perception of the sounds of speech, phonology describes the way sounds function within a given language or across languages. 
 * And if you're really stubborn enough to question that as well, here's the definition of phonology given in The Penguin Dictionary of Language, written by David Crystal:
 * phonology The study of sound systems of languages, and of the general or universal properties displayed by these systems.
 * Now please stop arguing your own personal opinions and cite us some sources if you want to keep this up. And I should add that there's nothing to stop someone from descriping allophones as well as phonemes in a phonology. Just take a look at the articles in Category:Language phonologies.
 * Peter Isotalo 23:18, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

"Sound system"-- that's just the typical unprecise English/American way to say what I'm (and a stanrd French, German, Spanish textbook) is talking about. Nobody claims that "sounds" are irrelevant for phopnology. But they are studied by phonetics, and phonology is based on phonetics. Phonets is a "realle Wissenschaft", phonology a "ideele Wissenschaft." German Wiki: Die Phonologie als Teil der Lautlehre (hier spez. "Sprachgebilde-Lautlehre") ist ein Teilgebiet der Linguistik. Sie untersucht Systeme von Phonemen, den kleinsten bedeutungsunterscheidenden Elementen von Sprachen (die kleinsten bedeutungstragendenen Elemente einer Sprache werden Morpheme genannt und fallen vornehmlich in den Aufgabenbereich der Morphologie). Die Phonologie beschäftigt sich mit den Lauten als Einheiten im System einer Sprache, während sich die Phonetik ("Sprechakt-Lautlehre") mit der detaillierten Beschreibung dieser Laute (Phone) unabhängig von Systemüberlegungen befasst. Spanish Wiki: La fonología es un subcampo de la gramática y, por extensión, también de la lingüística. Mientras que la fonética estudia la naturaleza acústica y fisiológica de los sonidos o alófonos, la fonología describe el modo en que los sonidos funcionan (en una lengua o en lengua en general) en un nivel abstracto o mental. French Wiki: La phonologie, ou phonématique, est une branche de la linguistique qui étudie comment s'organisent les sons d'une langue afin de former des énoncés. Il ne faut pas la confondre avec la phonétique qui, elle, s'intéresse aux sons eux-mêmes, indépendamment de leur fonctionnement les uns avec les autres. En sorte, la phonétique s'intéresse aux sons en tant qu'unités physiologiques, la phonologie aux sons en tant que parties d'une structure. ...

Conclusion: The part of the "Serbian language" article, that you prefere to call "Phonology", deals also with phonetical aspects (in English, German, Spanish definition sence), so it's not proper to call it only "phonology". but certenly more proper than your first proposal to call it "sounds". As far I can see, you have also excepted that the difference between phonology and phonetics cannot be seen in universal/single language aspect. Luzzifer--19:34, 22 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Considering we have something like 50 phonology articles and about a zillion main language articles that clearly disprove this rather contrived interpretation of yours, I'd say this discussion serves no further purpose; stop reverting what you clearly don't understand. That includes your equally bogus claims about the nature of prosody, and above all, the insistence on including empty section headers that serve no useful purpose to readers.
 * Peter Isotalo 10:08, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

It's empty because it's a stub :).

dictionaries
I think the link to websters..should be deleted as it really is ver bad. this dictionary (I think) is very good http://www.slavicnet.com/ It contains alot of slang that others don't cover and if you mispell a word (which I manage even on Serbian!!!!!!) it gives you options. I don't know if you have enough dictionaries already there though ..so maybe you don't want to add. Kat-ica Kraljica 01:59, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Map
Please stop reverting the map. There is no other language that shows mutual intelligibility with other languages on its map. By the same reasoning you could colour every Slavic country with some shade. By the same reasoning the Slovak language map will have Czechia and parts of Germany and Poland coloured (due to Czech and Sorbian). To reiterate, mutual intelligibility is not grounds for inclusion. +Hexagon1 (t) 23:37, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Montenegro
I recently visited Montenegro and it seemed to me that the Latin alphabet has virtually taken over from Cyrillics there, at least in the region I visited on the coast. I saw only a handful of signs in Cyrillics and these all seemed to be quite old. Is this indicative of an official change of policy since independence or is it just because I was in a more "touristy" area? Perhaps someone with local knowledge could update this page? 143.252.80.100 17:35, 20 August 2007 (UTC)


 * It is a tendency since late 90s. —Preceding unsigned comment added by  10:51, 4 September 2007 (UTC)


 * As in Serbia, Cyrillic made a comeback in Montenegro during the 1990s, but, as the Montenegrin nationalism took over since 1990s, I guess that Cyrillic is (sub-consciously?) coming to be seen as "an attempt of Serbianization" and now there's a reverse trend; heck, Montenegrins are deeply divided and entrenched along the Serbian/Montenegrin ethnic line. If my memory serves me well, Montenegro national TV used Cyrillic in the 1990s and at some point switched (back?) to Latin. I guess Cyrillic has never (at least since 1945) been dominant in the coastal towns anyway. Perhaps someone from Montenegro could give a better first-hand information. Duja ► 15:06, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I spent very much time in Montenegro before 90s. All signs, documents, tv programs, shop names were EXCLUSEVELY Cyrillic (on Adria cost as well). Why do you have to say anything when you don't have a clue? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 15:29, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm from Montenegro, and, though Cyrillic is still equal in the Constitution, it's not used by younger population and in the capital city and coastal region (apart from Herceg-Novi with large Serbian population), but it is still present in some parts of the North, with larger Serbian population (although huge Bosniak population up there use Latinic alphabet). Trend of usage of Latinic letters started in late seventies, as Montenegrin national movement started to grow stronger, as University and Montenegrin Academy of Arts and Sciences and national television were founded (for example, I recall sign of national tv called at the time TV Titograd was written in Latinic). In the near future Cyrillic would be used probably exclusively by Serbian minority.

And one other thing-on the map, it is colored as in Montenegro Serbian is official language, which is not the case,only oficial language in MNE is Montenegrin, and some other languages (Croatian,Albanian,Bosnian,Serbian)are in official usage, which is a different thing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.222.19.172 (talk) 18:22, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Official?
The article should contain where the language is official, rather than just the table. --PaxEquilibrium 19:41, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

sr-Cyrl and sr-Latn
Should there be a mention of the use of these to differentiate translations using the two alphabets? I see this at http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/international/bylanguage/serbocroatian.html#encode but do not know if has been blessed by any standards body. Mike Linksvayer (talk) 15:07, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Found in http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4646.txt adding to article now. Mike Linksvayer (talk) 20:56, 22 December 2007 (UTC)
 * RFC 4646 just uses Serbian as an example, http://www.iana.org/assignments/language-subtag-registry may be the normative resource. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mike Linksvayer (talk • contribs) 21:09, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Etimoloski recnik.jpg
Image:Etimoloski recnik.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

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BetacommandBot (talk) 19:58, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Revert of the lead
Sorry, NeroN, but your version of the lead suffers from several problems, so much that I had to interrupt my wiki-vacation to return it back. First, it contains a lot of original research on how the language can be treated; I don't think that any language textbook contains anything like this. Further, it gives too much undue weight on Torlakian dialect, which is, for the good or the bad of it, ill-defined and of fairly marginal importance to deserve the lead paragraph. It certainly must be mentioned deeper in the text, but not in the third sentence. Sorry, but even mentioning of Kajkavian and Chakavian is fully misleading. Last but not the least, it fails to summarize the article per WP:LEAD.

I'm not particularly fond of the old lead either, but I think that at least it does mention the most important aspects of the language. Duja ► 12:26, 13 March 2008 (UTC)


 * P.S. also, I think that Luzzifer has a point regarding the map: it's a fairly strange mix of political borders (Republika Srpska included, but Kosovo excluded) and apparent spoken language borders—wha', Serbian is a dominant language in half of Romanian Banat? It's better moved out. Duja ► 12:31, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

And Serbian letters do not have names, at least not official ones. Especially not letters like "š", "ć"... — have you ever heard anyone saying "še", "će" or "đe"? Yes, we do use some names for purposes of pronunciation of abbreviations and in mathematics, but they're restricted to the 26-letter Latin alphabet and (as far as I can tell) they're imported from German. It's perhaps worth mentioning somewhere, but not as a full-blown table filled with inconsistencies. Duja ► 12:37, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Accent Section Comparing Tone to Non-Tonal English, Italian, German??
The Accents section is comparing Serbian pitch accents to English, Italian, and German -- which are not languages defined as having (phonemic) pitch accent.

This seems to be a problem. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.204.27.119 (talk) 03:15, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Official status in Kosovo
Serbian is constitutionally co-official with Albanian at the national level in Kosovo. Please note that some irresponsible users keep removing Kosovo from the list shortly after I put it on the article.--Getoar (talk) 08:32, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
 * That is because Kosovo is not a sovereign state. It is widely recognized as a province of Serbia and other provinces aren't listed (if they were then Vojvodina would be listed). --Tocino 01:45, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

This is your blatant Serbian POV. Kosovo has a government that functions independently. Taiwan has less international recognition and it is listed as one of the official Mandarin-speaking countries. Be considerate of the accuracy of the information that Wikipedia contains.--Getoar (talk) 09:07, 27 June 2008 (UTC)


 * That is your blatant Kosovo Albanian separatist POV. Kosovo is recognized as a Serbian province by 150 of 192 UN member states. --Tocino 21:13, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Tocino, please be quite and WP:Civil. Let's add Kosova on that list. Ari d'Kosova (talk) 14:06, 6 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Kosovo is not recognised as a Serbian province by 150 UN states. It is by 148. This is why i suggest we include the word "disputed" next to Kosovo, as this seems fair. As this is true. Ijanderson977 (talk) 19:51, 26 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I have moved Kosovo down to other instead of what it was before to make it more NPOV Ijanderson977 (talk) 07:02, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

I support Ijanderson's compromise. --Tocino 05:46, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

avlija
- The whole paragraph is already cited with the most comprehensive dictionary on Turkisms in Serbian. Trivial Google search on "avlija+turcizmi" should confirm that it is not some Hellenism mistaken for Turkism. If you want a reference for this particular lexeme, put a tag and it will be provided.

That the Ottoman Turkish avlı in fact originates from Byzantine Greek, Or Latin (< Ancient Greek) is hardly relevant for its Turkism status in Serbian, and mentioning it would just clutter this small paragraph, beside being a manifestation of Greek nationalism. There are lots of Turkisms that entered Serbian and that originate from Middle Greek (beside avlija, kutija, ćuprija and fenjer that I can think of; sometimes called "Balkanisms" because they've spread in lots of Balkan languages by trade routes set up by the Ottoman Turks), but that does not invalidate their status of Ottoman Turkish borrowings in Serbian. They're not "Greek words" in Serbian, because they were not borrowed from Greek directly; they're Turkish borrowings into Serbian. The fact that they ultimate originate from Greek, Latin or Klingon is completely orthogonal to this issue. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 10:34, 3 October 2008 (UTC)


 * A manifestation of Greek nationalism? You're joking, right? I cannot fathom why you would want to conceal the Greek etymology of the word, especially considering the reference to Persian earlier in the paragraph: "Most of these words are not Turkish in origin but Persian; they entered the Serbian language via Turkish." If we can include that, I don't see the problem with my proposed wording. Furthermore, I remain unconvinced that it really did enter the language via Turkish, and its existence in Turkish hardly constitutes conclusive proof of its purported Turkish origin. Besides, the Greek influence on the South Slavic languages predates the Ottoman period. · ΚΕΚΡΩΨ · 11:16, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm not trying to "conceal" some alleged "Greek etymology", it's just the fact that Ottoman Turkish avlı is itself derived from Middle Greek is largely irrelevant for that paragraph. Yes, > 80% of all Ottoman Turkish loanwords in Serbian are in fact from Persian, and that fact might be worth emphasizing. Middle Greek loanwords into Ottoman Turkish which ended up in Serbian constitute just a minority.
 * Trust me, every single etymological dictionary out there lists avlija as a borrowing from Ottoman Turkish avlı, and not being directly from Greek. Turkish source is furthermore corroborated by the suffix -ija which is very common for Turkish loanwords (but not for other ones). If you think that that etymology is doubtful, feel free to find a source that states otherwise. In that period, Greek influence was chiefly on religious and literary language (Church Slavonic tradition), not spoken vernacular. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 12:31, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Really? The only source I see for that entire paragraph is from a certain Škaljić, Abdulah. Allow me to question his impartiality. On the other hand, I have found this source which - surprise, surprise - states that it is fact an example of Greek influence. · ΚΕΚΡΩΨ · 13:10, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
 * It's ultimately Greek but mediated by Ottoman Turkish. There are Croat and Serb etymologists that date it to Ottoman Turkish too. Your insinuations of alleged "bias" of Abdulah Škaljić's work is not justified: that books is based on first-class scientific research and scholarship, and had you read it you'd have very little doubt on it ^_^ --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 11:24, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
 * So if you do not dispute the fact that it is ultimately Greek, what's wrong with mentioning it? If you think that the ten words ultimately a Greek word (αὐλή) that entered Serbian via Turkish clutter the paragraph, I'll make it more succinct for you. · ΚΕΚΡΩΨ · 11:56, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Because the fact that the Ottoman Turkish words itself is derived from a Greek word is totally irrelevant for the paragraph dealing with Turkish bororrowings in Serbian. I'll add it as a note. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 16:16, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Is it OK now. Can we agree on a footnote? --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 16:22, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

500 000 ppl speak/use/know Serbian in USA?!
there are only >150 000 Serbs in America, while 400 000 Croats. Isn't it mixed?

Need help at Diple
Need Serbian (Cyrillic) spelling at Diple. Badagnani (talk) 01:18, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Edits 15.08.2009
My edits today are mainly to make the article more pleasant to read. However:


 * I have removed the text "Only 15 years ago čaršav (чаршав) was usual for tablecloth, today it is stoljnjak (стољњак)" because the relative time will be so quickly out-of-date and the time-of-writing is not indicated.. Perhaps the author can substitute some absolute dates?


 * I have replaced "up to 40-50%" by "up to half". A limit cannot be a range:  if it's "up to somewhere between 40% and 50%" then it's up to 50%.

Mike Shepherd (talk) 11:44, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
 * The absurd metaphor "juxtaposed on" should perhaps be "juxtaposed with", but is, in any case, rather strained and poetic, so I have removed it.


 * Hi I see you've made a large edit, and I am sorry to have to have reverted all of it. But there were a lot of red links caused by converting US to British spelling. Kind regards, -- Île_flottante~Floating island   Talk  11:49, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Kosovo
Kosovo needs to be listed on the side one way or another. Serbian is an offical language there. Northern Cyprus is listed on the Turkish language page and only one country regonizes it. -- Al™ 11:47, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, but Northern Cyprus is a different territory from Turkey, and Kosovo is one province INSIDE Serbia (discutable, of course), but when you say "Serbia", you are already including Kosovo. When you say "Turkey" you are not including N.Cyprus, so that is why in this case isn´t necessary, and in Turkish is. Two different situations. For Spanish, you are not including Andalusia, becose it is already covered by "Spain" (it is Spanish province). If you say United Kingdom you can´t writte Scotland as well... It is already included. FkpCascais (talk) 05:32, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Northern Cyprus shouldn't be listed on the Turkish language page since it already includes Cyprus.--Pepsi Lite (talk) 07:25, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Some more examples: Abkhaz language lists Abkhazia, Ossetic language lists South Ossetia. Both of those are within Georgia, yet are listed separately. Good luck getting Northern Cyprus removed, by the way. -- Al™ 10:53, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
 * What are you talking about? I am not excluding nothing from anywhere. I am just saying. You can support the inclusion of Kosovo next to Serbia and other countries (giving them the "country" status that way) (hey, even I support a Kosovo independence but for some completely private reasons) but until the issue doesn´t resolve, the name Kosovo just can´t stand along with Serbia... I gave you other exemples (UK, Scotland or Wales...)(Spain and Basque Country)... The one automatically includes another one. When you say that Serbian is the official language in Serbia, you are already including Kosovo, just as the Central Serbia and Vojvodina... Its not that hard to understand. Look at the map! FkpCascais (talk) 22:30, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Not serbian
Croatia (Croatian language): region in Dalmatia, Istria, Dubrovnik area, including the islands of Mljet and Šipan ! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.168.101.249 (talk) 18:51, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Croatian academy (HAZU/JAZU) Zagreb
Croatian academy (HAZU/JAZU) Zagreb, is croatian academy = Croatian language ! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.168.101.249 (talk) 18:54, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Gajevica is Croatian latin script
Croatian Latin script Gajevica, which has reformed Croat Ljudevit Gaj ! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.168.101.249 (talk) 18:59, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Kosovo and Metohija is a part of Serbia
Kosovo and Metohija is a part of Serbia and there's no need to mention that Serbian is official in Kosovo. You have mention it is official in Serbia. If you want to separate it, then mention Republika Srpska and other parts of other states!


 * That is a POV that will not be clear to all readers. Some will understand "Serbia" to include Kosovo, others will not. Regardless, Serbian is official in Kosovo, not (only) because Belgrade says it is, but because Pristina says it is. If we omit Kosovo, the reader will be left wondering if Serbian is recognized as official by Kosovo. Therefore it is clearer for us to explicitly list Kosovo. Perhaps we could word it "Serbia, including Kosovo" if you wish, though I'm sure that will spark an edit war as well. — kwami (talk) 07:45, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Serbian language is older than Serbo-Croatian
As you know, Serbo-Croatian is communist construction. It is well known that Croats adopted Serbian as literal language in 1850. by Vienna's agreement, so you can not mention that Serbian is dialect of Serbo-Croatian. Shame!!! And I have gone to page Croatian language. Why then there you hadn't mentioned that Croatian is a dialect of Serbo-Croatian? What are you doing in wikipedia???


 * The only problem is, that the notion of Serbo-Croatian predates Communist Yugoslavia by a century or thereabouts. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 15:11, 16 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Serbian and Croatian language appears centuries before that. Serbo-Croatian has emerged as a fusion of existing language. As someone already said, why then there you hadn't mentioned that Croatian is a dialect of Serbo-Croatian? --Aca Srbin (talk) 21:13, 25 September 2010 (UTC+1)


 * We do. — kwami (talk) 19:49, 25 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Serbian and Croatian languages were created long before the Serbo-Croatian and silly to say that Serbian is a standardized form of the Shtokavian dialect of Serbo-Croatian! In the articles dedicated to Serbo-Croatian language says that it came in the 19th century, the Serbian and Croatian are much earlier. Practically, it should say that the Serbo-Croatian has emerged as a fusion of these two languages, but no the opposite, as you consistently write. --Aca Srbin (talk) 00:41, 26 September 2010 (UTC+1)


 * None of them were created. The only things that were created were the standard languages, but this article is not just about the standard language.
 * There is a single language, or rather a series of dialects, which Serbs call "Serbian" and Croats call "Croatian". We call that language "Serbo-Croatian". If you think it's a fusion, please review your history. This has been covered ad nauseum at Talk:Croatian language, as it's generally Croats who object to an objective description of their language. — kwami (talk) 23:18, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

It's really not fair!!! I see no reason for discrimination against the Serbian language in Wikipedia. :S I think it's best to write to the Serbian language is one of the South Slavic languages, and then based on Stokavian dialect of Serbo-Croatian. So it is in Croatian language. I do not think that this is true, but obviously to emphasize it here. Practically, I have not deleted the fact that the modified version of Serbo-Croat, but I first say that it is the language, and then the details about it.

Indeed, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, "Croatian", "Bosnian", and "Serbian" are considered to be three names for the same official language. Also, I think this sentence is unnecessary, because the already mentioned a similar story with the Croatian and Bosnian earlier. Only a real crowd.--Aca Srbin (talk) 22:02, 28 September 2010 (UTC+1)


 * There's continual pressure from Croatian, and to a lesser extent Serbian, editors to pretend that Croatian and Serbian are independent SS langs, no closer to each other than they are to Slovene. That, of course, is false, and given all the attempts to convince people of that falsehood, a good article will make it very clear that they are one and the same language dialectologically, and only differ ethnically, politically, and (barely) in their standard forms. This is much like "Hindi" and Urdu: "Hindi" is just Urdu as spoken by Hindus or written in the devanagari script, or at the official level, a different standard form of the same language as Urdu. We shouldn't pretend that those are independent languages either. — kwami (talk) 23:48, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Vocabulary section
Hi, I was just wondering if anyone could edit the section on the vocabulary section, in particular the reference to the word "avlija". This is NOT a turkish word, but a Greek one. It entered Turkish as "avlu" from Greek "AVLE" (the E being the long Heta) and at the time of transmission pronounced as "i" as the "upsilon" after the initial "a" was pronouced as a bilabial fricative "V" as per the great vowel and consonant changes in Greek (see the Hellenestic Greek sound changes). The etymology means "courtyard" and the online etymology dictionary reference is here: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=curtain

or pasted as:

"1300, from O.Fr. cortine "curtain, tapestry, drape, blanket," from L.L. cortina "curtain," but in classical Latin "round vessel, cauldron," from L. cortem (older cohortem) "enclosure, courtyard" (see cohort). The confusion apparently begins in using cortina as a loan-translation for Gk. aulaia ("curtain") in the Vulgate (to render Heb. yeriah in Exodus xxvi:1, etc.) because the Greek word was connected to aule "court," perhaps because the "door" of a Greek house that led out to the courtyard was a hung cloth. The fig. sense in curtain call is from 1884. Curtains "the end" is 1912, originally from stage plays." NB: aule = courtyard. Garden would be Kepos.

The equivalent word in turkish for garden is "Bahçe". Whether or not the term entered into Turkish and transmitted by them or by the Greeks is a different story. What is important is that the word is etymologically Greek, just like many Persian words and Arabic words were transmitted to some European languages by the Turks who absorbed many different vocabularies for their daily use.

Thanks, Etymon. 128.250.254.122 (talk) 06:14, 2 September 2010 (UTC)


 * This was discussed at Talk:Serbian language/Archive 1. The compromise was to put a footnote -- which is still there, see note (15), about the ultimate Greek origin of the word. There are many other Arabic and Persian -- and, in this case, Greek -- loanwords in Turkish, but from Serbian perspective, it does not matter, as Turkish was the mediator and apparent origin. No such user (talk) 06:29, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

I dont' agree with that perspective at all. Etymologically it is not turkic. You yourself said that "from Serbian perspective, it does not matter, as Turkish was the mediator and apparent origin (sic)". Two things are wrong with this sentence, 1.) that it doesn't matter i.e. if it didn't you should then revert to the correct etymology and 2.) the apparent origin? Are you kidding??? The only thing original is ... well I'm struggling to see anything original that came from the turkic language regarding this word's etymology as the -ia (in Serbian's case -ija) ending is a PIE feminine marker! So what you're saying that the turks were the mediators... have you a source for that? I think Greek peasants were using Avli before the Turks arrived (and no it's not from middle Greek but has been in existence for far far longer even with the sound change!) and if you can prove this happened at the time of the ottomans then by all means say they mediated it but for goodness' sake don't say they were the originators of that word. A footnote will NOT suffice and as a linguist I'm deeply offended... I would edit but I'm relying on good faith of more experienced editors! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.214.116.14 (talk) 10:49, 2 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, I fail to see the big deal, but here you go. All that the text says about the issue is, quote, "some 30–50 years ago avlija (авлија < Turkish avlı[15]) was a common word for courtyard or backyard in Belgrade[...]". Here's a reference for the origin: . So, BCS word is indeed a loan from Turkish word, and it is pretty much irrelevant (esp. for the considerations about Turkish loanwords) who Turks loaned it from. Despite that irrelevance, there's a footnote about the ultimate Greek origin. The suffix "-ija" is common BCS reflex for Turkish final "ı", compare e.g. čaršija < çarşı, which is of ultimately Persian origin, but I haven't seen many Iranians protest on the talk page. We also have a lot of Greek loans, especially in church and related terminology, but they were not the focus of the paragraph in question. So I don't see why would we enter into too much detail, except perhaps to select a different example to keep Greek editors happy. No such user (talk) 11:22, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

As per wikipedia (original research policy and sourcing non-primary sources or rather in this case nationalistic sources) - this pages you quoted is from Hrvstka i.e. a Croatian website. This does not qualify as sourceable material. If you can please find a better source of that transmission (not on a natinoalist website without accredited linguistic/sociologic or statistical data sets) then all I can say is you have to remove the entire word altogether. That way you're not offending linguists. Again, the transmission is not done by the turks given that they themselves utilise the word "Bahçe". You could say it was transmitted through Turkish speakers (this way they could have been Greek, Serbian-Slavic, Bulgarian, but I doubt very much so as Turkish).

Thanks again. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.137.0.57 (talk) 11:37, 2 September 2010 (UTC)


 * HJP is the only online scientific etymological dictionary of Serbo-Croatian (see translated credentials), so it is the most convenient online source to quote. As a linguist, you certainly know that Serbian and Croatian share a large point of vocabulary, and this word is no exception (though it's rather archaic by now, except partly in Bosnia). Most of the Turkish loanwords did not enter BCS through modern Turkish, but through Ottoman Turkish language, which is characterized (among other things) by a larger number of non-Turkic loans. Avlija is most probably one of those. I certainly expect some WP:AGF on your side: we did not borrow the word directly from Greeks, one indirect proof being that it is most frequently used among Muslim Bosniaks, who generally keep the largest share of Turkisms. No such user (talk) 11:53, 2 September 2010 (UTC)


 * See also quote: ‡ Od: I. avlija ‘1. dvor 2. ograda, yid okolu ku}ata’ od tur. avlı, avlu ‘dvor’ < gr~. aìl™ ‘dvor’;] or new Serbian Претраживач страних речи и изразa [авлија, -е ж, ген. мн. авлија [тур. avlı од нгрч. avlī од грч.  (limited preview). No such user (talk) 12:05, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Again not a valid source. Primary sources ONLY... this is conjecture and a Croatian site. The languages may be akin but Croatian and Serbian were different at that time (only under Tito did they merge to formulate one language). Different in the sense of who followed the Latinate or the Eastern/Greek rite. The fact that the Bosnians retained more foreign words lends credibility to the muli-ethnic nature of their words... Greek, Serbs, Croats and Turks all contributed. The point you are making is circular argumentation and not scholarly. I think you either state implicitly that it was inherited from Greek speech via the medium of Ottoman Turkish borderlessness thoughout the empire or you abrogate all ties to the etymology section. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.137.0.57 (talk) 12:18, 2 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Jesus Christ. I give up. Do you want me to perhaps perform a belly dance for you? No such user (talk) 13:53, 2 September 2010 (UTC)


 * It's borrowed from Ottoman Turkish per numerous etymological dictionaries of Serbo-Croatian (Skok, Škaljić, Gluhak..). Your "protest" is a result of nationalist frustration that there is a significant layer of Turkish borrowings in Serbo-Croatian (at least 8000 recorded lexical units) resulting from 5 centuries of political domination of Ottomans on the Balkans. Grow up. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 16:54, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Again this has nothing to do with nationalistic frustration other than the word's etymological rendering. Using circular argumentation from Serbo-Croatian (sic) sources of 30 years ago is not a credible source, given it's conjecture. Where is the reference that states implicitly the "turks" were the transmitors, and I don't mean a hypothetical rendering of the word "avlija" from "avlu" which is from the Greek speech in the region ("avli"). From a pure linguistic perspective, it's impossible for the term to have been inherited from Turkish given it's pronunciation was "avlu" and if so, it would have been rendered as "avluja" not "avlija". If it is "avli" the transmitors would have been Greek speaking. Non sequitur. You're also forgetting that the trashumant population of the Vlachs (heavily influenced by Greek speech) were prob also speaking Turkish, Greek and Aromanian Vlach and were prob more responsible in the word's transmission. Political dominance of the Ottomans is a separate issue and has nothing to do with the word itself, unless you can prove beyound any reasonable doubt the Ottomans used "avlu" in the Middle Eastern provinces of Syria/Damascus and the rest of the Levant.


 * Suggested reading: User:Jnc/Astronomer vs Amateur. You were given 3 reliable sources, got informed opinion of 2 educated native speakers, but you chose to believe your own fictive etymology. I doubt that you're an educated linguist at all, judging on your attitude and statements. Good bye. No such user (talk) 06:44, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

I can assure you that the etymology is anything but "fictive" (do you mean fictitious?). The -ija suffix is not productive in Turkish with words ending in -u! Two native speakers who are no doubt anything but linguists themselves. Serbian and slavic languages aside your "nativeness" does not promulgate your own beliefs of the origins of the word avlija and more importantly on who transmitted it. My point is thus: had the word been transmitted by the Turks the word would have been "avlu" not "avlija" (the Greek form Avli with the -ija suffix so prominent in many Serbo-Croatian words). The term would have also been promoted in the Levant had it been the Turks who transmitted it and yet it seems to be suspiciously retained in the Balkans around the Jirecek line of influence and hence the Greek speaking/influenced parts. My point is your sources suspect it was transmitted and there is no evidence of it! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.219.244.84 (talk) 10:06, 3 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Then, please do attempt to read properly the word that has been repeated at least 10 times in this discussion. The Turkish word ends in -ı, avlı. The BCS reflex of -ı is systematically -ija. I do not care which form was used in Levant, because it could not possibly influence BCS. I doubt that Ottoman Turkish was a monolythical language without significant regional variation. Now, if you have any reference that it was direct borrowing from Greek to BCS, please put it forward. I've had enough of your speculations. No such user (talk) 10:52, 3 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Who are you dude? Some IP frustrated that Turkish language has contributed thousands upon thousands of words to their mother language. This is your reasoning: "From a pure linguistic perspective, it's impossible for the term to have been inherited from Turkish given it's pronunciation was "avlu" and if so, it would have been rendered as "avluja" not "avlija"." - Except that Turkish word was not avlu but avlı as No Such User has stated. Epic fail dude. You were given 3 perfectly credible etymological dictionaries as sources for Turkish etymon, and the only evidence that you gave in response was your personal opinion based on fallacious logic. Dude, read this analysis of Rumelian Turkish dialects spoken at the Balkans and pay special attention to point 1.41. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 11:39, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

And yet I am yet to find a record pointing out "avli" as turkish. Here http://books.google.com/books?id=QiGy8n8dKlUC&pg=PA27&dq=the+turkish+word+avli&hl=en&ei=_P6ATP3nDYamvgPYt4CGBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CD4Q6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=the%20turkish%20word%20avli&f=false

and unless you meant "avli = stocked with game" and not "avlu = courtyard" then you're the one with an EPIC FAIL. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.219.244.84 (talk) 14:04, 3 September 2010 (UTC)


 * No avlı is (was) an alternative form of the "courtyard" word, attested at least since the 16th century in that spelling. But regardless, either avlu or avlı in Western Balkans Rumelian Ottoman Turkish was rendered as [avli]. Read the link I gave above, page 3 point 1.41. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 14:22, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Number of speakers
I really hate the trend of population inflation per one's favorite ethnic group/city/country, but the Ethnologue data about Serbian are bullshit, pardon my French. (Actually, I'd say that most of Ethnologue data are bullshit, but that's another issue). According to the Serbian census 2002, there are 6,212,838 ethnic Serbs in Serbia without Kosovo, which surpasses Ethnologue data for 1.7 million (and please don't tell me that not all of them declare that their mother tongue is Serbian). Add to that at least 1.5 million of Bosnian Serbs, some 500,000 of Croatian Serbs (200,000 still there+numerous refugees), and quite a few in USA, Germany, Austria and Australia, and you will easily get near the 10,000,000 mark. See. Ethnologue figure simply cannot be true, no matter how one analyses it. No such user (talk) 09:37, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
 * You mean 4.5M, not 1.7M.
 * Yeah, that figure doesn't seem credible. If you subtract all the minority langs E. lists for Serbia, you're left with 6.5M, incl. Kosovo, for 8-9M total.
 * Another oddity is Montenegro, which has 0.2M Serb out of a pop. of 0.6M, and they don't count Montenegrin as a language.
 * I have no prob using other sources. Ethnologue is our default because it's impossible to find data on a lot of obscure langs otherwise. Do you have s.t. that gives a citable total? — kwami (talk) 10:34, 28 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I found one, although I'm not so sure about reliability (it's UCLA, but not the peet-reviewed stuff). Lots of 11-12 millions figures on the web, but no WP:RS as far as I can tell.
 * Here's an interesting stuff (scroll to the bottom). Not a WP:RS, but it says: "Ethnologue estimates that there are over 11 million speakers of Serbian worldwide.". Apparently, Ethnologue "fixed" their entry at one point. I'm not sure if we can check what did it say in 2006, using Wayback machine or something? No such user (talk) 11:27, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
 * They don't update individual entries; the web version is a mirror of their print version. Their link to the 15th edition is here. Note the 11M figure is from 1981, though. They also count 4M for Bosnian, which is the entire population. I don't think that ref is much good either.
 * Ah, the UCLA fig is just taken from Ethnologue 15. We should be able to do better than that.
 * The ELL doesn't give pop figs. Do you have census data from Bosnia? We should be able to cobble s.t. together in the absence of a RS. — kwami (talk) 11:50, 28 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Census in Bosnia hasn't been held since 1981 (or maybe 1991); it's to be held in 2011. According to the CIA factbook, Serbs consist 37% of country's 4.6 milion ≅ 1.7 mil, which is probably overestimate; some 1.5 mil. would be more realistic.
 * There's a Google book search for "Serbian "12 million", of which the Lexicographica seems relevant; only snippet view though. No such user (talk) 12:13, 28 September 2010 (UTC)


 * ELL: 6.62M in Serbia sans Kosovo (88%). Bosnia: 37.1% of 4.01M estimate for 2004 = 1.49M (just what you thought). Croatia: 45k, not counting several 100k who've fled. Kosovo: 133k, not counting 300k "mostly" Serbs who've fled. (Are these being counted in the Serbian figure?) Montenegro: 400k (60%). Albania: few (< than other langs @ 50k). Macedonia: ? (E. says 33k). Romania: ? (E. says 27k.) So that would be what, about 9 million? (8.75M if all refugees were counted, maybe 9.25M if not.) — kwami (talk) 11:50, 28 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Plus the diaspora in the Western World, but it's difficult to count. See references at Serbs. The catch is, there's quite large diaspora in Western Europe, esp. Germany, Austria and France, though many of those are "guest workers", which occasionally visit, and/or plan to return to Serbia (eventually), and might have one or both citizenships (thus, might or might not be counted twice at Serbian and foreign censuses). For those in USA and Australia, it's fairly safe to assume that they're not counted in Serbian censuses. In total, all of that should be some 0.8-1.5 million, probably closer to the lower figure. No such user (talk) 12:55, 28 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Per Eth., 45k in the US, 50k in Canada, 39k Australia, not a huge difference. If Croatian and Kosovan refugees were counted in Serbia, and Euro guest workers as well, then we'd still be at 9M. For Euro, Eth. has 120k in Sweden, 142k Switzerland, but dn mention any in Germany, Austria, or France. Other countries @ < 10k. So maybe a max of 10M, if they weren't counted? Note the 21k Serbian speakers in Turkey (1980) are also called "Bosnians". — kwami (talk) 13:17, 28 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Yep, I think 10 M is a realistic estimation. I've just removed Turkey from Serbs, because it's everyone's pet "nation inflation tool". Well, many modern Turks have an origin from the Balkans, ergo they still can be safely counted as "Bosniaks" or "Serbs" or "Albanians" and whatnot. All based on references like this. No such user (talk) 14:51, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

From the Ethnologue Editor
FYI, Thank you for contacting the Ethnologue with your comments on Serbian [srp] in Serbia. Based on the census statistics for 2002, we will change the population number for speakers of Serbian. Please note that any changes will not be made on the Ethnologue website until the 17th edition is published. Sincerely, Managing Editor www.ethnologue.com

No such user (talk) 06:45, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

It is NOT official in Montenegro. Montenegrin Constitution emphasizes the difference between the language that is official (Montenegrin) and languages that are in official use (e.g. in areas where minorities are concentrated) like Albanian, Serbian or Croat. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.33.223.6 (talk) 17:20, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

1RR under WP:ARBMAC?
Should this article be placed under the 1RR restrictions of WP:ARBMAC? There's been a Croatian POV pusher changing "Serbo-Croatian" to "Croatian" the last 24 hours. --Taivo (talk) 17:36, 16 October 2010 (UTC)


 * IMO that's not necessary. We can block that editor if need be, but there hasn't been much of a problem with this article. — kwami (talk) 22:51, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

This article has been destroyed. What is happening ?--KudySk (talk) 14:28, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Ambiguous punctuation
The article states:

"Although Serbian language authorities recognize the official status for both scripts in contemporary standard Serbian language for more than half of a century now, due to historical reasons, Cyrillic was made the official script of Serbia's administration by the 2006 Constitution."

Which part of the sentence "due to historical reasons" refer to? Do both scripts have an official status for historical reasons, or was Cyrillic made the official script for historical reasons? (And what kind of historical reasons are these? "Historical reasons" sound very broad to me...)

--Image of me (talk) 06:44, 22 April 2011 (UTC)


 * The due to historical reasons is linked with the rest of the sentence, meaning that the authorities recognise both scrypts for more than half century now, but, Cyrillic was made the official script of Serbia's administration by the 2006 Constitution, trying to reinforce it as the traditional scrypt because historically Serbs used Cyrillic, but just recently, since 1945, have been using both. The sentence could possibly be expanded. FkpCascais (talk) 06:58, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Kosovo usage in Wikipedia
Throughout Wikipedia (see Albanian language, for example), we list Kosovo as a separate state although in italics with a note as to its disputed status. This is the NPOV way to indicate it so that those readers who expect it to be separate see it separately and those readers who expect it to be not separate see it in italics. This has been discussed and agreed to in multiple places in Wikipedia. --Taivo (talk) 10:23, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Agree completely.HammerFilmFan (talk) 00:10, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Serbo-Croatian
This whole issue of Serbian as part of Serbo-Croatian has been hashed out with verifiable, reliable sources over and over again here, at Serbo-Croatian language, at Croatian language, etc. --Taivo (talk) 19:46, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

It's really only one-Croatian language. No such as "serbian".
Look at the facts on wikipedia about Croatian written documents centuries before so called "serbian". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.253.200.160 (talk) 23:02, 22 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Nice to see that you know that Croatian is written with capital C, but you can´t even write Serbian with capital S... Is there anything to discuss here? Can we remove this thread? It is really about the most cruel nationalism... FkpCascais (talk) 03:23, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Mistakes in Serbian IPA
Given voices /ʒ ʃ tʃ dʒ/ don't exist in Serbian language and Serbian Ж, Ш, Ч, Џ (Ž, Š, Č, Dž) are /ʐ ʂ t͡ʂ d͡ʐ/. 79.101.199.185 (talk) 00:21, 17 December 2011 (UTC)


 * No, they're [ʃ ʒ tʃʷ dʒʷ]. — kwami (talk) 07:38, 8 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Actually, IP is right, and Móren is wrong. As I added to Serbo-Croatian phonology:
 * In particular, Keating cites the thorough phonology Miletić R., (1960) Osnovi fonetike srpskog jezika, Naučna Knjiga, Beograd, written by a native phonologist, so I'm inclined to trust that (as well as my native ear). Serbo-Croatian retroflexes are virtually identical to Polish, (and not very similar to Chinese or Tamil), as they're apical (please see Keating, p. 35, for quite detailed explanation), as any native speaker will confirm listening to or.
 * I think this has been discussed somewhere already; IIRC I talked about it with aeusoes1. No such user (talk) 08:58, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
 * In particular, Keating cites the thorough phonology Miletić R., (1960) Osnovi fonetike srpskog jezika, Naučna Knjiga, Beograd, written by a native phonologist, so I'm inclined to trust that (as well as my native ear). Serbo-Croatian retroflexes are virtually identical to Polish, (and not very similar to Chinese or Tamil), as they're apical (please see Keating, p. 35, for quite detailed explanation), as any native speaker will confirm listening to or.
 * I think this has been discussed somewhere already; IIRC I talked about it with aeusoes1. No such user (talk) 08:58, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Serbian: Official language in Croatia
It states in the head list of places that use serbian as an official language that serbian is an official language in croatia, but on the map,croatia is light green, meaning that serbian is a recignized language.

Which one is right??? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.229.82.211 (talk) 00:56, 21 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Serbian is an official minoritarian language in Croatia. Some municipalities in Croatia give equal status for Croatian and Serbian (ex.: administrative use, street names in both languages, etc.). However, it is only limited locally to those municipalities, which mostly correspond to the ones where there is a strong presence of Serbian minority. This official document lists all municipalities case-by-case. FkpCascais (talk) 03:19, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Number of speakers - Confusing
According to the article Serbs there are 10.5 million of Serbs, with an higher estimate available, how come that speakers of the Serbian language have only 9 millions of speaker? Should`t be something similar to the number of Serbs?Adrian (talk) 19:31, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Some Serbs may use English as their native language - immigrants and what not - and not be too familiar with Serbian.

-True- but ... there is also a larger number of serbs in the world and besides that there are also second language speakers eventhough they arent mentioned in this article (or. number) that i have posted (majority of slovenians, a singificant number of kosovar albanians and ofc. macedonians)

dont forget that a vast majority of montenegrins around the world also declare serbian as their native language. and its said here that there are 12 million serbian speakers around the world (number includes republic of serbia) - which means it includes aprox. 7,2 million speakers exc. kosovo (despite ca. 6,5 mil. native speakers in the country)and ofc most of serbian diaspora and nabering country serbs (dont foget the foreigners who have left serbia and went into diaspora). ... so ca. 12 million speakers

http://www.rts.rs/page/stories/sr/story/125/Dru%C5%A1tvo/45760/Srpski+jezik+govori+12+miliona+ljudi+.html

the source should be reliable ... as its from national serbian television news (RTS - Radio televizija Srbije) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Правичност (talk • contribs) 00:54, 12 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I think it should be divided to standart, all and L2 language, same as here: German language. This should resolve yours dispute. Jirka.h23 (talk) 08:39, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Hmm that seems like a good idea, but it would be more complicated ... maybe if we would divide to only Native Serbian speakers and L2 speakers i think that would be great. because there are alot of serbian dialects (Rep. of Serbia (inc. Kosovo) Serbian (ekavian dialect), Bosnian Serbian, Montenegrin Serbian and Croatian/Krajina Serbian (jekavian and ikavian dialects)... and besides these there are also other languages (Croatian, Bosnian and newly made Montenegrin) that are similar to almost identical, so if we would categorize serbian under "all" we would just be making smaller and smaller unneccesary groups, as Serbian is (eventough a predocisor and older than serbo-croatian) in modern times already considered under the group of Serbo-Croatian languages which counts about 21 million native speakers (Serbian native: about 12 million, Croatian native about 5,5 - 6 million, Bosnian up to max. 3 million and Montenegrin 200.000+ and probably another 3-4 million L2 speakers (in Kosovo, the Kosovar Albanians, in Slovenia and Macedonia and also other peoples living in former Yugo states or outside). ... but our subject here is only Serbian language, the most numerous language and probably the oldest among here. So if number altogether it shows 12 million speakers around the world ... then we gotta count first of all only serbs by ethnicity or Maternal Serbian language speakers (Serbia 6,4 - 6,5 mil. (not all citizens of serbia consider serbian as their maternal language), Kosovo Serbs- 140 000, (while Kosovo Albanians will be counted as L2 speakers), Bosnia and Herzegovina 1,5 mil., Croatia 200.000, Montenegro ~266.000, and Serbian diaspora around 2 million (out of 3,5 million+ Serbs in the world). So we get about 11,2 to 11,3 million maternal Serbian speakers by total, add another aprox. 700.000+ citizens of Serbia (these are other ethnicites (Hungarians, Slovaks, Roma etc.) in serbia who ofcorse must use and speak serbian from their birth or even many generations) (as Serbia has up to 7,2 million citizens and in first count ive counted only maternal serbian speakers which counted up to ~6.5 mil. out of 7,2 mil. serbia total) ..

so enough with the complications as now we get a total number ... we get over 12 million Total Native speakers of Serbian and this is the most important info.

Now lets estimate L2 Serbian speakers, surveys in Slovenia stated that over 63% of Slovennians can speak or understand Serbian or Croatian, we also know that a minority of younger population, while a vast majority of older and mid-aged Albanian population in Kosovo still speak Serbian (as they learned and spoke Serbian as children in schools, jobs in times of former Yugoslavia and Serbia and Montenegro), we also know that a good number of Macedonian citizens can speak or understand Serbian (those are moslty older and mid-aged people) as they also had to use serbo-croatian or serbian in times of former yugoslavia.

So id estimate that over 1,1 million of Slovenians, over 1 million Albanians and up to 1 million Macedonians can speak/understand Serbian, + unknown number of thousands of others (foreigners who have volunteerly learned Serbian or who have lived, worked, studied in Serbia, Bosnia(Republika Srpska) or Montenegro). The whole number of L2 speakers would be over 3 million (3 million +).

though we have an issue here, as i dont know if we should add Croats, Bosniaks and "Montenegrin speaking Montenegrins" (eventough vast majority of people declared as Montenegrin, consider their native language to be Serbian) to these numbers, coz they call and categorize their languages differently, however if we would, we would have much higher number of L2 speakers (another 12 million alltogether). But this would be an issue, because alot of people from these 3 natonailites i numbered wouldnt consider or admit they can speak serbian or even understand it (because of nationalism in balkans) but most would certainly agree if we would categorize their "other knowledge of langauges" under "other serbo-croatian languages".

conclusion: so i would recommend we just stick with Serbian language, as Serbian language is our subject here and state in info box that besides 12 million native Serbian speakers, there are 3 million+ L2 speakers - which would make out a total of 15 million speakers alltogether (native and 2nd language/ L2). Правичност (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 18:03, 12 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I don`t know what is L2 speakers but I see that the article contains 12 million number which is fine and according to the ref you provided. I have inserted that ref in the article also just in case. Adrian (talk) 19:37, 12 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Reverted because (a) the numbers don't add up, so we were misrepresenting the sources, (2) the ref does not specify native speakers, and (3) it's not a RS. (L2 BTW means 'second language' = not native. The ref says 12M total, and so presumably includes L2 speakers.) — kwami (talk) 22:57, 12 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I will answer by points. (a) I don`t know about the numbers because the first ref is not available online. (b) Agree, it doesn`t specify anything, it only states that there are 12 million of people using the Serbian language. Nothing about native or second language speakers. (3) I don`t agree here because RTS is a respectable media in Serbia. As far as I have seen, media, newspapers and similar are taken as RS. Thanks for the explanation about the L2. Greetings.Adrian (talk) 01:25, 13 December 2012 (UTC)


 * It may be fine. But newspapers are not generally reliable. They report claims, but often get them twisted. Also, people are constantly exaggerating the number of speakers of their languages; the fact that the article repeatedly emphasizes how admired the linguist they're citing is is a bit odd too - perhaps they do protest too much. Anyway, for linguistic claims we generally follow linguistic sources to hopefully avoid such problems. — kwami (talk) 03:37, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

My reply to this — Preceding unsigned comment added by Правичност (talk • contribs) 00:26, 13 December 2012 (UTC) Ty again adrian, btw... kwami i must say your wrong, i numbered only 9,3 million speakers in the balkans - wheres the rest of the world? theres a huge serbian diaspora out there, serbs are one of the most disperse european nations by settlement you should know that. The article really doesnt mention native speakers, but it probably included kosovar albanians (as their L2 language is definetly serbian), while slovenians and macedoninas cant specify which language they actually speak (serbian or croatian or any other9 they refer to it as serbo-croatian. while albanians in kosovo were studying serbian from their childhood, so they probably have about 1 million speakers excluding youth who didnt have to learn language or didnt have to learn much considering they divided from serbia recently.

i will post 2 more articles to prove that data about 9 million total is wrong and add my counts again:

http://www.ritell.org/Resources/Documents/language%20project/Serbian.pdf

http://books.google.si/books?id=7oVNbsmOqWwC&pg=PA441&lpg=PA441&dq=serbian+11+million+native+speakers&source=bl&ots=BhSxitqzkP&sig=r4ybryYBO9By4FCAELGpZ7EJLFo&hl=sl&sa=X&ei=ww_JUNz-KITl4QT1m4DoAQ&ved=0CF4Q6AEwBw#v=onepage&q&f=false

i hope you can see this second source, it shows slavonic langauges and numbers of native speakers its from some book (Page 441) "What are the language families of the world?" ... then it says Polish 43 million, Serbian 11 million, Croatian 6 million, Czech etc....

i hope its a ok link....

now let me do the numbers again ...

number of serbian speakers:

Serbia (excluding kosovo) - ca. 7,186.000 (all citizens of serbia speak the language like all citizens of france speak french for example .. or lets just say 95% of the people in every "normal" country like that... if you dont agree with me on this?) (out of these ~7,2 mil. about 6,5 mil. consider it as mother tounge according to 2002 census)

'''Bosnia & Herz. - ca. 1,5 - 1,7 million speakers'''

Montenegro - almost 266.000 (check out latest 2011 montenegro census on linguistics)

Croatia - 201.000 Serbs

Kosovo - 140 000 Serbs

'''Slovenia - almost 39.000, Macedonia over 35.000, Romania over 22.000, Albania 10 000, Hungary over 7 000 etc... = 110.000+'''

- count all of these numbers AGAIN and youll get almost 9,4 million serbian speakers just in balkans. and to make you feel better i didnt even use the highest estimate in bosnia 1,7 mil. , i used the llowest 1,5 mil. .... (and i ofcorse didnt count the L2 kosovar albanian speakers)

or to make you feel even better, at second counting i didnt count whole serbia, but just ethnic serbs or those who consider serbian as their maternal language 6.5 million according to census and added the smallest estimation again (bosnia 1,5) and i got 8.706 million ... so really you tell me now that everything related to serbian or serbs is overestimated, and that im wrong .. you know very well that serbia in total speaks serbian and all serbs in sorounding countries, and you know very well that 9 million is wrong....

and let me tell ya something more, i got family all over europe, i know 90% of serbs living in europe speak serbian, when you go to vienna for example you will hear sarcasticly said every second guy speak serbian there... soo many serbs live in vienna, im telling you that austria,germany and other european countries are swarming with serbs and all of them speak serbian. and that the number is believe me much higher, i jsut dont know why would it hurt so much to put the actual estimation on the infobox, not the smallest one when we are tlaking about serbs or serbian language...

there were 8.5 million serbs in former yugoslavia only AND dont forget that people in montenegro all had to declare as montenegrins (coz of unity and brotherhood for comunism times) so were talking about over 500 000 montenegrins  out of which 265 000 declare their language as serbian today and in 2002 census that number was close to 400 000.

AND dont forget there were 1.2 million ppl who declared as yugoslavs in yugoslavia ... out of those 1.2 million yugoslavs 75% were serbs or of serbian partial heritage - ofcorse you can check up these datas for yourselves i saw it on some documentary and no wonder, the only remaining yugoslavs today reside in serbia as serbs were always the biggest yugoslavists or yugoslav nostalgics (sadly) ....

so if we coutn those 8.5 and + those peope who declared differently in yugoslavia alone we would get over 9.5 million people who are serbs... and i didnt even count serbs from sorounding countries and diaspora in those times.... and your gonna tell me that there are altogether 9 million serbian native speakers all over the world today???? what the hell PLEASE... did we all vanish from earth? i really got frustrated from this unjustice. if it will make you feel better you can lower the number of serbian language speakers and people to 5 million in time and i bet someone will.... with an explanation that from 1991 till today about 8 million serbs vanished from earth misteriously or just stopped speaking serbian.... excuse me but i see this as an act of anti-serbism and nothing else. because it is very unlogical... very... i really had to protest, somebody had to finally — Preceding unsigned comment added by Правичност (talk • contribs) 00:24, 13 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Pravicnost a friendly advice. Please try to keep your posts concise and more right to the point. Simply state your sources and in one sentence(max two) explain what they represent. Anyone who is interested will easily check them. Like this, I doubt anyone will pay much notice. Adrian (talk) 01:28, 13 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes, see too long, didn't read. — kwami (talk) 03:37, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

data needs change
ok straight to the point then....

http://www.ritell.org/Resources/Documents/language%20project/Serbian.pdf

http://books.google.si/books?id=7oVNbsmOqWwC&pg=PA441&lpg=PA441&dq=serbian+11+million+native+speakers&source=bl&ots=BhSxitqzkP&sig=r4ybryYBO9By4FCAELGpZ7EJLFo&hl=sl&sa=X&ei=ww_JUNz-KITl4QT1m4DoAQ&ved=0CF4Q6AEwBw#v=onepage&q&f=false

number of serbian speakers in balkans alone(these numbers are correct check them up):

Serbia (excluding kosovo) - ca. 7,186.000 (all or over 95% of citizens of serbia speak the language like in every country people would speak the main and official language of the country. (out of these ~7,2 mil. about 6,5 mil. consider it as mother tounge according to 2002 census)

'''Bosnia & Herz. - ca. 1,5 - 1,7 million'''

Montenegro - almost 266.000 (check out latest 2011 montenegro census on linguistics)

Croatia - 201.000

Kosovo - 140 000 Serbs

'''Slovenia - almost 39.000, Macedonia over 35.000, Romania over 22.000, Albania 10 000, Hungary over 7 000 etc... = 110.000+'''

Only by counting these you get over 9,4 million (not including huge serbian diaspora) ... and even when you count the datas of serbian native speakers on the already existing wiki page article .... you will get far over 9 million speakers... try for yourselves... the data about 9 million is false. true data would be 11 million native speakers and an additional 1 million+ of L2 speakers (mostly of these kosovo albanians). while we can only neutraly categorize slovenians ,macedonians and others as L2 serbo-croatian speakers only.

Правичност (talk) 21:23, 13 December 2012 (UTC)


 * If your sources were not adequate the first couple times, what makes you think they'll be adequate now? The one introductory linguistic ref you provide might be acceptable if that's all we had to go on, but we have the ELL, which is a more respected source. Maybe they're wrong, but you'll need to do better than this to demonstrate it. — kwami (talk) 21:48, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

hahah--- actually, according to the numbers, the calculations i did... i only used your own sources from the already existing serbian language article... either you dont wanna admit the numbers are correct, iether you are an anti-serb, sorry, but thats the way you appeal to me.... if the number goes high over 9 million only in balkans, (and wheres diaspora to be coutned yet heh) ... then why you always wanna degrade that number back to ~9 million. obviously something wrong. btw check yugoslavia 1991 demographics there were 8.5 million declared serbs (not counting montenegrin serbs and yugoslavs who eclared as same) ... are you saying that back then serbs didnt have diaspora yet, and those that left it forgot their lang. and ethnicity after the 90s? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Правичност (talk • contribs) 22:31, 13 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Sources, please. That's all we ask. — kwami (talk) 23:29, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

http://www.rts.rs/page/stories/sr/story/125/Dru%C5%A1tvo/45760/Srpski+jezik+govori+12+miliona+ljudi+.html

But you got them — Preceding unsigned comment added by Правичност (talk • contribs) 01:39, 14 December 2012 (UTC)


 * If you're not going to read the responces we give, there's no point in us reading your claims. Goodbye. — kwami (talk) 07:37, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

I do read them, but i think your ignoring mines, well nevermind goodbye kwami Правичност (talk) 19:43, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

11 million speakers
your reference says this:

″Including, as of 2006, 6.62 million in Serbia sans Kosovo (88% of the population), 1.49 million in Bosnia (37.1%), 400,000 in Montenegro (60%), 133,000 in Kosovo and 45,000 in Croatia (not counting refugees), and perhaps a million in the diaspora. Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd ed.″

count all those numbers together and youll get around 9.688.000 ... so thats nearly 10 million, how does that make the number ~9 million then? ... - ive changed it to up to 11 million - eventough officials say there are 12 million, coz there are more speakers in diaspora also (and dont forget that not all speakers of serbia are counted in up to 600 000 more people, also in croatia (200 000 serbs)).. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Правичност (talk • contribs) 21:57, 19 December 2012 (UTC)


 * You used the old reference for new data. I don`t think that is valid. If you counted to the 9.688.000, why did`t you put aprox:9.688.000 and not 11 million. I am sorry, but I don`t see any valid reason for the 11 million number, nor more important the reference for it.Adrian (talk) 22:35, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

the data anyway is funny to me ... thats why i didnt wanna write nothing related to numbe r9, because i know its definetly over 10 ... i found a reference and will change it back again thank you Правичност (talk) 03:42, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

http://www.freelang.net/families/index.php

oh and btw sorry i mistakenly deleted the past source showing numbers of native speakers through balkan countries ... someone give that back, just dont change the number of total speakers please... as i added an adecvite soource showing the total number of speakers already... so no need to make any countings by country and to make estimations etc... as we know the last counting from that source was false by almost 700 000 and it was just an estimation not even including whole population of serbia but just ethnic serbs etc... so this is a reliable reference showin ga total numbe rof speakers (like many others show 11 mil.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Правичност (talk • contribs) 03:38, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
 * That website (freelang.net) is not a reliable source. On the one hand we have an authoritative linguistic encyclopedia, on the other a commercial non-linguistic website.  It's not contest really.  The published, scholarly, linguistic source wins.  --Taivo (talk) 10:37, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

ok then write 9.688.000 speakers or up to 10 million instead of 9 million in infobox. dont degrade numbers of an already existing source. if someone wrote 9 million, he was counting .... but he done counting wrong by mor ethan half million which is discraceful... unless he was coutning from some other source? .... id also like to know why arent other ethnic group serbian speakers counted into this, but only ethnic serbs... as well as french is native to a black , arab, asian etc.. frenchman ... so is serbian native to a hungarian, slovak, roma etc... in serbia - as all live there for ages and ages... only a small minor percentage of citizens of any european country dont speak the coutnries main language (immigrants etc..) ... so id like you to define what kind of speakrs are those 9 million people- are they maternal sepakers? only ethnic serbs? or are they native speakers? -to those whom serbia (or rep. srpska in BiH) is a home coutnry or birth country, also ethnic serbs among them... or are those 9 million speakers 2nd language speakers? .... id like someone to describe me what does a native speaker mean? and how are other ethnic groups (born/raised/or became old in serbia) not native to serbian language or the other way around? (7,126 million people ) Правичност (talk) 22:33, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
 * The infobox already has an about sign (~) before 9, but unless you have an actual reliable source, we go with the source we have which says 9 million. --Taivo (talk) 23:10, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

ACTUALLY i found more than enough sources where it says serbian is being spoken by 12 million people around the globe, would you be so kind and please check them up the data is from recent times its not dated:

http://ec.europa.eu/languages/euromosaic/hu5_en.htm (this one is most reliable i think)

http://www.alsintl.com/resources/languages/Serbian/

http://www.europe-cities.com/en/666/serbia/history/language/

http://www.rts.rs/page/stories/sr/story/125/Dru%C5%A1tvo/45760/Srpski+jezik+govori+12+miliona+ljudi+.html (serbian national television news- interview with a respected linguist from serbia)

Правичност (talk) 02:41, 21 December 2012 (UTC)


 * About the other refs I don`t know, but for the ref from RTS (Serbian national TV) we already talked about. The ref is ok but very vague. It doesn`t specify the L2 speakers and as such I don`t think it can be used in this context. Adrian (talk) 09:54, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes i know about RTS, ... but well, could you/we on this page, consult about adding/replacing some of these sources, they are from 2010 - 2012 .. while the already existing source on this article is from 2006 estimation by some author. Id like we to change this data, as 9 million is too low and unrealistic to me. this is why im trying so hard. if there are 12 million speakers of serbian - it can only reffer to native speakers from serbia (~7,19. mil.), serbian speakers from region (~2,12. mil.) and diaspora of serbs from whole region and also diaspora of serbia - country itself (~3-4 million)(http://www.novosti.rs/vesti/naslovna/aktuelno.239.html:377754-U-potrazi-za-poslom-i-u-najudaljenije-krajeve-sveta... as this source says) ---

so i recommend we input 12 million native speakers or just 12 million speakers ttp://ec.europa.eu/languages/euromosaic/hu5_en.htm as this eruopean comission sites says. (hardly anybody knows who can speak the L2 serbian trust me, atleast we cant find a source about that - and we cant classify anything serbian independently jsut as serbo-croatian reffering to those slovenians and macedonians who speak it, but we can the kosovo albanians only - as they were inside serbia till "yesterday" but they would only count up to 1 million l2 seerbian speakers more or less) Правичност (talk) 05:47, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
 * The problem with your sources is that none of them are specialized linguistic sources so it's hard to give them more weight that the source from 2006. It's also hard to imagine how 9 mill > 12 mill in just six years.  That's an unbelievable growth rate.  The 2006 source is not just "some author", it is one of the standard works in linguistics and is considered reliable in the field.  Too many of these web site sources are not reliable because they don't rely on legitimate linguistic surveys, but on simple population counts.  Until you can get a reliable linguistic source rather than just website estimates, I'm not in favor of making this change.  We have a reliable source that is scientific (not political), linguistic (not general knowledge), and produced by a named expert in the field (not an anonymous website creator).  Those are very strong endorsements for a piece of information.  --Taivo (talk) 12:47, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Would changing it to "~9.5 million" be in line with the source? At least it would be in line with the accompanying note. --JorisvS (talk) 15:14, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Taivo actually it is not fast growth rate.. there are older estimations than 2006 which count 11 million speakers (remember about 9.5 million serbs lived only in former yugoslavia before breakup) and even back then there was a huge serbian diaspora. . . so thats why i ask my self the other way around - how come a number can fall for 2 million in few years, as i remember that 11 million number from school books as a kid. .. and if you check data from 1997 about serbocroatian languages - you will see there were 19 million native speakers - please remember that montenegrin wasnt invented back then yet (eventough thats just ca. 150-300.000 speakers), so we just count serbian, croatian and bosnian for back then... and the datas would say ca. over 5,5 million croatian speakers, up to 3 million bosnian speakers, so serbian can be only left with 11 million to fill up the 19 million total number... right? and JorisvS if you really want to make an estimation in line with this source, as it is almost 9,7 when you count it ... i would recommend if we would input 9-10 million, or up to 10 million, or 9,5 - 10 million. that way we wouldnt downgrade the number, nor maximize, but just make a circulate estimate (not even the author cant be sure if its few hundered thosuand speakers more or less - eventough he ignored the rest of the rep. of serbia population in this count as he coutned only ethnic serbs or those who declared serbian as their maternal language, eventough other ethnic groups are also born and live and die in serbia (about up to 600.000 (out of nearly 7,2 mil. pop. of them not counted - vojvodina hungarians, slovaks, romani people, raška bosniaks etc..).. so do you agree with my recommendations? i think it would be most fair (p.s. do the count again pls). Правичност (talk) 18:04, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
 * We shouldn't be doing math here anyway. What we need is the precise number that the International Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics says.  Doing math here is improper WP:SYN if our reliable source says "9 million".  This reliable source has only 7 million, so we should use the precise number published in IELL, not an estimate based on our addition.  --Taivo (talk) 21:40, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

But the source isnt saying 9 million, sorry, the source itself makes you do the countings, and its almost 9,7 million - thats way over 9 million... and about that other reliable source you have posted... i am sorry but that one is just redicioulus, i must say, it says there are 4,5 mil. speakers in serbia- while official census in 2002 in serbia had revealed that out of 7,5 million population over 6,5 million people consider it as a maternal language/mother tounge if thats the right word... i also found on that page they say there are over 200.000 serbian speakers in albania - while we know only up to 10.000 serbs and montenegrins live in albania - or maximumly estimated up to 30.000 with those who have serbian ancestry. so that source is redicioulus sorry... according to the source that is posted on this page (and it counts nearly 9,7 mil.) i recommend to put it 9-10 or up to 10 million... because i see no text saying that exact number is 9 million in this source, just numbers for each country and an estimation for diaspora... Правичност (talk) 23:26, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Are you holding the International Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics in your hand? If not, then you don't know what it says.  You only know what some other editor wrote here in a footnote that may have been changed since it was originally written.  In this case, we need to go back to the original source of the information and get clarification on exactly what it says.  --Taivo (talk) 00:45, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

no im not, but id love to see if thats really written but i can believe you however... anyways, none of this still solves the problem ... but ok, oh well i guess they will keep systematically lowering number of serbs and serbian speakers year by year Правичност (talk) 01:02, 23 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Find a copy of the International Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics and look up the number. I won't be close to a copy for a couple of weeks.  Until then, we have to go with the reliable sources we have and none of your websites match the IELL for scientific accuracy or reliability.  Until we check the actual source, the world will not end over how many Serbian speakers Wikipedia lists, but until we have a reliable source, the one reliable source we have takes precedence.  There is, however, a fundamental problem in that many of these non-scientific websites simply take the population of Serbia and add a couple million.  That is not an accurate count.  The fact that Croatian, Serbian, and Bosnian are virtually the same language doesn't help the accuracy any.  --Taivo (talk) 02:57, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

anyway... what if we add 12 million speakers under "all speakers" ... the sources i posted (even the one from european comission official site) says serbian is spoken by 12 million people around the world. and we can add a text to that number - saying - "estimation" or estimated 12 million speakers alltogether, while we leave native speakers on 9 million - or 9,5 as that author counted or 9,7 however much it is.... what you say? we have good enough sources to post an official estimation of a total number of serbian speakers around the world. (Правичност (talk) 23:57, 23 December 2012 (UTC))
 * We rarely post L2 speakers for minor languages like this because the numbers are virtually always inaccurate. What is your agenda?  We have a very reliable source that we will check after the holidays to ensure that the 9 million is exactly what it says and that is the end of it.  We don't list L2 speakers, we list a number from the most reliable scientific linguistic source we have, which is the IELL.  --Taivo (talk) 04:14, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

http://ec.europa.eu/languages/euromosaic/hu5_en.htm

i believe you... but i cant calm down with that 9 million data... coz there are nearly 9 million speakers in balkans alone actually ... and i myself live in diaspora, got alot of family and friends in couple of countries, all of them speak serbian, and there are alot of serbs here too (im talkin about central europe) thats why i dont think only 500.000 people or 1 million only outside of balkans speak serbian ... i believe there are atleast 1,5 million - 2 million serbian speakers in diaspora... but anyway if you say you got most reliable source, then ok... but i also take a fact that all serbia speaks serbian not only 6,7 million people - 6,7 as maternal language yes, but serbias population is 7,2 million, so thats 0,5 mil speakers ignored, or atleast 95% of them (if you think they dont speak it)... however you hold the reliable sources in your hands. Правичност (talk) 19:57, 24 December 2012 (UTC)
 * You're going to have to "calm down". The world didn't end on the 21st and it's certainly not going to end before we can check the reliable source of the IELL.  Go eat your Christmas feast.  --Taivo (talk) 01:54, 25 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Heheh, oh well... ty, but my Christmas is on 7th january (julian calendar - orthodox christian) but i can wish you a marry christmas. (Правичност (talk) 02:06, 25 December 2012 (UTC))

http://www.alsintl.com/resources/languages/Serbian/ ... btw i found another reliable source just in case (Правичност (talk) 18:52, 26 December 2012 (UTC))
 * A language learning service is not a reliable source. That article looks more like it's a mirror from somewhere else anyway and there's no reference as to where they got that number from--a sociolinguistic survey, national propaganda, thin air....  --Taivo (talk) 19:54, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

newer and newer problems
i got warned for edit warring here... eventough i was editing the number of native speakers only accompying to the refference.... (9.7 million). now suddenly somebody made a new change... he used "the most reliable source" refference (as all agreed here) to count serbian speakers in former yugoslavia. but he ignored the same which says theres perhaps 1 million speakers in diaspora, thus he added a new refference to data about speakers abroad which says there are half of million speakers abroad .... and this refference is ethnologue - let me remind you that this same ethnologue says there are 4.5 mil serbian speakers in serbia (eventough official serbian census in 2002 revealed 6.7 mil.) and also mentioned there are almost 300 000 serbian speakers in albania (eventough all datas you check reveal there are 2.000 to max. 30.000 both serbs and montenegrins in albania) ... this proves ethnologue is really "funny" in reliability.

I in meanwhile found alot of sources (revealing 11-12 million speakers) which were more reliable than ethnologue but was told that the links werent as reliable as the already existing refference (the one from 2006). And now it is suddenly okay to add ethnologue refference to make counts for diaspora community of serbian speakers... and another different reference to make a count for balkans community of serbian speakers... eventough the first existing "most reliable" refference already shows data of serbian speakers about both diaspora and ex-yugoslavia...

i dont see the logic here, but i think somebody is being favoured when lowering the number - (from 10 to 9, from 9.7 to 8.7, from ~1 million in diaspora (best source we have) to half of million (another source with strange and drastically false datas about speakers in serbia and albania already). (Правичност (talk) 06:11, 10 January 2013 (UTC))
 * Why don't you do the math how you could get 11–12 million to show that that figure is even possible? --JorisvS (talk) 11:38, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
 * None of your sources were reliable linguistic sources, pravichnost, they were general audience or political sources, not linguistic sources. Ethnologue is at least a scientific linguistic source.  I'll try to get to the library today (no guarantees with a full teaching schedule) to take a look at the Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics.  --Taivo (talk) 11:46, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I've already scanned it. The reason I used E16 for the expat pop was that I couldn't find anything in ELL2. The only thing I changed was omitting the Muslims Serbs of Albania in E16. They're not mentioned in ELL2, and I assume would count as Bosnians today. — kwami (talk) 19:58, 10 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Joris let me tell you how... its a fact that 9.5 million Serbs (8.5 declared and more than a million back then declared as yugoslavs (1991: more than 1.2 mil declared as yugoslavs - estimates ~75% of these were Serbs) or montenegrins (1991: almost all citizens of montenegro declared as montenegrins) lived in former Yugoslavia alone, and even back then there was millions of Serbs in diaspora, that way my math is realistic, and out of estimated 3.5 - 4 millions Serbs in diaspora atleast 2 million can speak Serbian (mostly those living in Europe)for christ sake theres only 1 million Serbs in both Germany and Austria (serbian diaspora estimates about 800 000 in germany and 350 000 in austria), wheres the rest of europe and the rest of the world....


 * Taivo i realise that, but ethnologue is clearly unaccurate in numbers, thats clearly visual, you would agree if you check census datas, some numbers are "pumped up" while others are downgraded drastically. ... anyway that would be very nice and helpful if you could thank you. (Правичност (talk) 19:33, 10 January 2013 (UTC))
 * So is it only the number of speakers of Serbian in the diaspora that you are disputing, not the figures in the note itself? --JorisvS (talk) 20:50, 10 January 2013 (UTC)


 * ---Figures anyway depend on the number of speakers in diaspora, i dispute the figure of number of native speakers in diaspora ofcorse, half of million people is really funny and unrealistic. More than 100.000 people speak Serbian in the city of Vienna alone (since between 120 and 180.000 Serbs live in that city according to estimations). Not mentioning rest of the cities, countries, continets... But i also dispute the note which reffers to that figure (ethnologue), idk why was the first refference removed on diaspora serbian speakers figure (this one said "serbian is native to perhaps million ppl in diaspora" - still not accurate - but still more reliable and better than the second newly added note), but kept as a note for balkan native serbian speakers figure.

I recommend a more simple figure, instead of writing a novel of how many speak it in diaspora ... i recommend we put a figure accompying to the first refference (''which estimates ~9.7 million (eventough numbers of serbian refugees from Croatia and Kosovo(in 2002, 200.000+ kosovo serb refugees havent participated in serbia`s census) werent counted here and more than 600.000 serbian citizens and speakers of other nationalities/ethnicities were also not counted in; only ppl who chose serbian as maternal lang. on census in serbia were counted in'')).

So taking a notice of these facts and that figure of 9.7 mil that the first refference (most reliable source here) pointed out - we should put a figure of ~10 million+ native serbian speakers. While total number of Serbian speakers around the world would be more than 12 million probably (including also L2 speakers etc.)

(Правичност (talk) 22:58, 10 January 2013 (UTC))


 * You're falsifying sources again. It's very very simple: Do you have a WP:Reliable source for these figures? If you do, provide it, and we'll change the box. If you do not, you're wasting everyone's time. — kwami (talk) 02:53, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Kwami is quite right. Without a reliable source, not a political source or a non-linguistic census, adding numbers together and guessing is pointless and a waste of time.  --Taivo (talk) 05:48, 11 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Falsifying? Kwami, Thats interesting.. but you have degraded the number like you always do, despite the original source od encylopedia that was here. Idk maybe it was you who deleted that part of text where it said "45.000 in croatia (not counting refugees)" and left it only with 45.000 ... and also replaced the text of "perhaps a million in the diaspora" with half a million in diaspora (useless data from ethnologue added into encyclopedia source). So youre proabably the one falsifying the sources. Im just trying to get the realistic numbers back as they were.

The source from encyclopedia itself says refugees arent counted (note Croatia), but i have also added Kosovo Serb refugees - displaced persons from Kosovo actually. The encyclopeida source reveals the figure of 6.6 m. serbian speakers in Serbia according to the 2002 census in serbia (6.6 million declared serbian as native out of 7.5 mil. populat.), while displaced persons from mainly Kosovo werent conducted in that census ad they count more than 200.000 as i said ... check this source (its reliable) http://www.pregled-rs.rs/article.php?pid=203&id=19215&lang=en&name=Refugees so yes im trying to put things together as they are. your encyclopeida source reveals estimated 9.7 million native speakers and it says it self (not counting refugees) .. so wheres the problem if its 9.7 not counting hundereds of thousand refugees, and if theres more speakers in diaspora than figured here... we get a circa 10 million easily... and btw Taivo, you had to put the numbers together anyway (that 8.7 million in balkans didnt come from the sky) had to be figured with maths ... only then interestingly- figure of 1 mil. speakers in diaspora was ignored from same source (encyclopedia) and replaced by a different source of ethnologue 8useless and fictional numbers as i said before)- probably to purposly downgrade the number- because thats whats always happening here, somebody ignores even already existing refference facts and downgrades numbers. (Правичност (talk) 21:05, 11 January 2013 (UTC))
 * You still have not presented a single, solitary linguistic survey or reliable source that is scientific and not just "counting Serbs". You can't count "Serbs" and call it "Serbian speakers".  Life and linguistics don't work that way.  They are two different things that are being counted.  I went to college with several Croatians, but not a one of them spoke Croatian.  Again, you need a reliable linguistic source.  We've told you that time and time again, but you don't seem to understand the message.  At this point, the only reliable linguistic source that has been presented is Ethnologue.  And "reliable" doesn't mean you have to like the number.  "Reliable" in Wikipedia means that it is academic in origin and recognized as a linguistic source based on linguistic science, not counting ethnic noses.  --Taivo (talk) 21:22, 11 January 2013 (UTC))

I know what your trying to say, but i was talking about refugees living in Serbia, are you sure those Serbs dont speak it? But anyway i didnt even wanna ask that... But whatever i say here you also dont seem to understand. Do you think this one is academic? - http://www.ritell.org/Resources/Documents/language%20project/Serbian.pdf - probably not, coz its from some university... anyways... i found alot of stuff mentioned by respected linguists about 11 and 12 million serbian speakers on net... but its all in books, and unfortunately i didnt find ones that are downloadable etc....  but im not gonna protest here anymore.... keep lowering the figures ... someone is clearly anti serb on this article - or if not, then i am santa claus and further more in past 15 years, 4 million serbs mustve died or forgot to speak their native language in the balkans and another 2 million worldwide according to ethnologue...  - btw if we already use ethnologue then we gotta point out these datas that only 7 million native serbian speakers exist on this planet (4,5m in serbia, 300 000 in albania- 290.000 probably immigrated there in past years) while serbian diaspora doesnt exist at all - and after all i as a santa claus return to north pole after christmas for a cheesecake and beer with elfs... (im just being sarcastic (ethnologue) :D)... my ambitions here are done... unless i really find some source by accident coz i wont be searching for any. (Правичност (talk) 00:17, 12 January 2013 (UTC))
 * You clearly haven't read a single, solitary word of Wikipedia's reliable source policy. That link is nothing more than class notes for a lecture, not a reliable published source.  --Taivo (talk) 01:05, 12 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I know about reliable sources i took a peak ofcorse. Its credibility of these sources posted i cared about more, reality is far away from it. Not to mention falsifying datas from Enyclopedia source and downgrading numbers even more (i call that tactical work). (Правичност (talk) 23:36, 15 January 2013 (UTC))


 * No, you do not: You just falsified the population ref at Serbo-Croatian. It would be nice if you could contribute something worthwhile, but if you keep doing this, you'll be blocked, and then you won't get any of the changes you want. — kwami (talk) 02:42, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

I thought it was over 19 million so i just added a "plus" (+), didnt know that was so wrong, but okay. Anyway why dont you tell me who falsifed the refference from Encyclopedia on Serbian language? Overwriting text "perhaps one million in diaspora" with "half million abroad" and deleted text about "not counting refugees" at Croatia ... ? How can one part of figure be taken from encyclopedia, while another replaced with one from Ethnologue? Isnt that also free will editing? (Правичност (talk) 05:48, 16 January 2013 (UTC))


 * We report what the sources say. We don't change it to what we want them to say. Doing so is considered fraud.
 * The encyclopedia doesn't say how many speakers there are abroad. If you like, we can use Ethnologue for everything. That will mean reducing the total number of speakers to 7 million Serbian (6.7 million if you don't count Muslims in Albania) and 15 million Serbo-Croatian. — kwami (talk) 05:54, 16 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I know what it used to say earlier though. But yes if you want to you can reduce it to 7 million as ethnologue says, it already got reduced from 12,11 to 9, now 8,7, why not reduce it to 7 and then in time to 4 or 5 million. Ive watched documentaries and read about Serbs in Albania alot and they never putted a figure larger than 10 - 30,000 Serbs and Montenegrins there, so that number of 300.000 is rediciolus even if you check census datas. There used to be numerous historical Serbian community in Shkoder(Skadar or Scutari) city area and in some northern parts in Albania, but they have been albanized through out hundereds of years till today, therefore, not more than 30.000 both serbs and montenegrins there today (you can check about my figures on google) im not saying propaganda, but i seriously take ethnologue as somekind of propaganda, 7 million speakers in world total heh funny (8.5 - 9.5 million serbs mustve dissapeared from balkans and another 3-4 million in diaspora throughout years back if that figure is 7 million). (Правичност (talk) 21:47, 16 January 2013 (UTC))


 * We've spend 20 pages indulging you, because you can't be bothered to learn how to use sources. I take it from this last comment that you aren't serious about doing any actual work, so talking with you is a complete waste of time. Goodbye. — kwami (talk) 02:07, 19 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I just wanted to state, that eventough these seem to be reliable sources to use for figures, they are not close to reality, not only by my personal opinion, but if you compare figures from ethnologue with dozens of others historical, scientific etc. figures, it is clear, that the figures are "funny". Thats what ive been trying to say and recommend that you use a better source for this rather than ethnologue. There is no way theres 300 000 speakers in albania (maybe 15 000 max.) and 500.000 in diaspora - coz theres probably more than 500.000 speakers only in germany alone. I agree we should stop indulging, but it would be alot better for this page to get a better and realistic source. Thats all. (Правичност (talk) 18:10, 19 January 2013 (UTC))
 * What we keep telling you is that you have presented no better source. You have presented political sources which are worthless linguistically.  You have presented websites of questionable reliability.  You have confused ethnicity with linguistic usage.  You have done your own math.  You have presented no reliable scientific linguistic sources.  That's your problem--you don't understand what a reliable linguistic source is.  In the absence of anything else, Ethnologue is still the only reliable scientific linguistic source, whether you like it or not.  --Taivo (talk) 20:18, 19 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, i was trying hard though, only because i dont see this source as justable and its not just a matter of personal point of view its a matter of knowledgement overview, if you are actually into this sort of knowledge then you know something is wrong with this data. And yes i didnt find and present reliable one enough, but this is why i recommend you try to find some other source if you can and have will to. If (FOR EXAMPLE) a respected linguist prof. Bugarski says there are more than 12 million serbian speakers worldwide including whole nowadays serbia population, then im sure he means/and that there is theres more than 11 million (or 10-11) native serbian speakers with perhaps ca. 1 million "others" inside(about 700.000) and outside of serbia speaking the language (Hungarian, Slovak, Albanian etc.. minorities). So is it possible that you find another reliable source (or "better" source)? (Правичност (talk) 14:46, 25 January 2013 (UTC))

page protection required to stop IP vandalizing number or speakers?
Both are from Belgrade. Considering the recent problems with WP:RS above ... ? Do the editors feel they can handle the current level of vandalism w/o an administrator protecting the page for a while? HammerFilmFan (talk) 02:45, 13 February 2013 (UTC)


 * I believe there is a mistake with the number of speakers. I can`t check this references that are now present (not available online) but there is a source stating that there are 12 million of speakers . Adrian (talk) 20:48, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Recent edit about the total number of speakers
I know this was discussed several times but in the light of a new source, where it states that there are 12 million of speakers I will make the change at the article. I see that it is not specified the L2 speakers, but I believe it can be used as a higher estimate. If there is any problem, please discuss it. Adrian (talk) 22:13, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
 * The EU commission on languages is not generally a reliable source for accurate linguistic surveys. It relies not on actual scientific surveys, but on numbers that are provided by the member states and that have serious political undertones.  Until a neutral, non-political, scientific survey is done, Ethnologue remains the primary source.  --Taivo (talk) 23:31, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Ok. I understand that in this case the European Commission source is not very adequate for this usage, but nor do I think we should dismiss it totally. But ok. If there is a source by an linguistic survey I will change the data. Greetings. Adrian (talk) 11:09, 27 April 2013 (UTC)
 * WRONG. The EU Commission is completely unscientific and must be dismissed with utter contempt. HammerFilmFan (talk) 06:10, 12 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Saying that the EU commission is "completely unscientific and must be dismissed" without any arguments isn`t really an argument. If you believe this is the case, please present some valid arguments why with evidence. Adrian (talk) 14:04, 15 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Here is another source saying 12 million http://www.rts.rs/page/stories/sr/story/125/Dru%C5%A1tvo/45760/Srpski+jezik+govori+12+miliona+ljudi+.html - even tough its not linguistic, but its a statement from one of wide known linguists... i think there should be a higher estimation. I highly disagree with ethnologue "scientific studies" - it shows 4,5 million serbian speakers in Serbia - which is 2 million less than the previous censuses shown (and im not talking about whole of Serbia). then it states almost 300,000 speakers in Albania... how is that possible when there are probably only 2-4000 serbs and montenegrins left there? Did they count maybe Kosovo under Albania? Is that how they got 300,000 speakers? ... this source is very weird... also its weird that out of 2,5 - 3,5 million serbian diaspora only 500.000 speak the language... really weird studies... (Правичност (talk) 16:25, 14 May 2013 (UTC))
 * Actually, there is a number of Albanians (not Serbs/Montenegrins in Albania which are hardly any there) that speak Serbian, specially in the north and around Skadar. They don´t speak Serbian as mother tongue, but they know it. FkpCascais (talk) 13:46, 15 May 2013 (UTC)
 * "even tough its not linguistic". That says it all.  It's not a reliable source for linguistic information.  It doesn't matter whether your addition matches Ethnologue or not, Ethnologue is a reliable source for scientifically based linguistic information and you are not.  Neither is a news article which quotes a guy.  Has that specialist actually done a valid scientific linguistic survey of Serbian speakers?  Or is he just talking off the top of his head?  Either way, Ethnologue is still the only reliable linguistic source we have.  --Taivo (talk) 18:19, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
 * you are mainly concentrating on the link i posted instead of what my opinion is; you cant missout 2 million people from serbian speakers, and ethnologue does that. If im not right, check serbia census... and you will find for example 127,000 macedonian speakers in serbia nowhere - instead of that there are something about 10-20,000. Hope a reliable source will appear soon somewhere on google. (Правичност (talk) 21:21, 14 May 2013 (UTC))
 * But I did, indeed, say what I thought of your opinion--it doesn't count. The Serbian census isn't a reliable source because it is not a scientific census focused on linguistics.  Many people will say "I speak Serbian" because 1) they don't trust census takers to keep their information confidential, 2) they think there will some kind of reprisal if they say something besides Serbian, 3) they don't know that there's a choice.  Linguists know how to get around these issues when they do a survey based solely on scientific linguistic methodology.  --Taivo (talk) 06:38, 15 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Hold on Taivo. Since we all agreed that "Serbian" is a socio-political, not a linguistic construct, then the Serbian census is perfectly reliable source how many people (in Serbia) consider their language "Serbian". How else could you estimate number of "Serbian" speakers? And this is a perfectly normal census, people have the liberty to answer whatever they want, do not additionally speculate about their choices. You're making a moving target out of this. As for Ethnologue "reliability", please just check the thread above, from three years ago. Do you really believe they cross-check 50 sources and conduct surveys for each and every of ~5000 languages on their list? I mean, I don't give a damn about the issue, but let us not pretend that estimating number of speakers is an exact science, where thousands of them (abroad) only speak a few words, other thousands don't have an attitude if it's "Serbian", "Bosnian", "Serbo-Croatian" or just "mine", for many others it is actually a second language, etc. Let us not mystify this whole "science" business. No such user (talk) 13:38, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

Since I see this discussion is reopened, I invite the users to check this source also, where it states that there are 12 million of speakers. As I said before, it is not the best scientific source but it is the EU commission after all and as such they write this reports based on facts not on peanuts. It is not some backwater village organization. It has credibility after all. Maybe this source can be used as a higher estimate? Adrian (talk) 14:04, 15 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Its true the Serbian census gave people free will to declare whatever language, ethnicity, religion they "feel like" or a will to not declare at all. Some numbers of Ethnologue are just redicilous, they count 1,6 million albanian speakers in serbia and about 300,000 serbian speakers in albania... so on one hand they recognized kosovo, but on the other they havent? or how they even came up with those numbers... god knows... i recently did a study of serbian declared speakers overseas: In Usa (187k), Can(73k) and Aus(69k) --- up to 330.000 people declared as Serbs (not counting Yugoslavs (cca. 400,000), out of which --- (Usa-47k, Can-55k, Aus 39k) about 140,000 declared they speak Serbian so thats roughly 50% of Serbs living in those 3 countries; thus it is far away from their homelands and culture in Europe. Now what would be the number if we counted Serbian speakers in Europe (outside of Balkans) where number of Serbs vary from 1,5 - 2 million and they are much closer to their homeland, culture and stronger serbian communities?... this all tells us that 500k speakers abroad is way degraded... Please also include that a significant percentage of Serbs declare their mother-tounge as Serbo-Croatian (for example in Slovenia rouglhly 10k out of 40k Serbs declared serbo-croatian, while the remaining 30k declared serbian as their maternal lang.). - I also think European Comission cant report their studies based on nothing or no research at all, they have huge credibility, i also propose this number to be used instead of ethnologue figures... or as a higher estimate simply... it could be 9-12 million based on both estimates for example. (Правичност (talk) 15:35, 15 May 2013 (UTC))

The topic of this article
Although we've been over this before (see Talk:Croatian language/Archive 10), I'll bring up again the topic of this article, and that of the parallel ones, at Talk:Croatian language). --JorisvS (talk) 09:33, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

The external link to Serbian Language and Culture Workshop
Dear editors, until some time ago, there was a link from this page to Serbian Language and Culture Workshop (www.srpskijezik.edu.rs). It is important to keep this link mainly because Serbian (Serbo-Croatian) is a less commonly taught language, the resources on learning it are very important, and Serbian Language and Culture Workshop is the only highly specialized institute in Serbia of that kind (not a language school that teaches English, French, etc, and some Serbian aside, nor a big faculty or university which runs only semesterial bachelor, master and PhD programs). Second, Serbian Language and Culture Workshop is not really a profitable organization - even though we charge for our programs, we have shared many scholarships and we have been supporting Serbian and Slavic studies in many universities around the world. Currently you have some strange external links, like learn-serbian.com - a totally commercial on-line language school from NY city. Now I don't have anything against these guys, but the question is how relevant is this link. Also some of those web sites which you linked with your article have not been updated for more than 5 years, or. I would like to recommend you to divide external links in couple of categories, like "on history of the language", "learning resources", "on-line dictionaries and libraries", etc. And please return the link to www.srpskijezik.edu.rs Best regards! SLCW team — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.148.165.244 (talk) 12:51, 1 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Your issue has not been addressed yet - I don't know if the link you wish to restore is valid or some crackpot nationalistic site not supported by valid linguists or not. One of them needs to step in to answer you. It looks "okay" to me but it may have been deleted due to promoting a commercial website, which is not allowed on Wiki. HammerFilmFan (talk) 13:45, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the effort to reply! You have to agree that there is no language school in the world which is not commercial and yet http://www.srpskijezik.edu.rs/ is the only school in the world registered and specialized only for Serbian for foreigners. Currently you have a link to http://www.serbianschool.com/ which doesn't work at all, and you also have a link to http://www.learn-serbian.com/ which is based in New York and is 100% commercial (they even take credit cards). Common guys, give us back the link to http://www.srpskijezik.edu.rs/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.86.250.218 (talk) 09:00, 14 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Did you mean to say "Come on, guys" above? :-) Anway, commercial sites aren't allowed to be RS's on Wiki. The Wikipedia Foundation made the rules. It is your job to abide by them as if they were spoken to you in a voice from the sky, lest the ground is cursed under your footies. 50.111.62.84 (talk) 01:12, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Map of Serbian language - Kosovo
I have noticed someone painted land of Kosovo in light blue on a map showing countries where Serbian language is official or recognized as minority. This would mean Serbian is recognized as minority language in Kosovo - which is not the case in reality; eventough you are recognizing Kosovos self-proclaimed independence; you are providing false info about language statuses there. Serbian and Albanian are both official languages in their self proclaimed Rep. of Kosovo. This is why it should be painted dark blue; regardless wheter you want to show your compassion with their independece proclamation or wheter you arent. (Правичност (talk) 19:06, 18 December 2013 (UTC))
 * Do you have a Reliable Source to back up your claim? If you don't you are just wasting time here. HammerFilmFan (talk) 22:28, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Ofcourse i do have a claim. This map must be changed, here is the constitution of Rep. of Kosovo.( http://www.kryeministri-ks.net/repository/docs/Constitution1Kosovo.pdf ). Same is written on Rep. of Kos. wiki artlice. (Правичност (talk) 18:28, 21 December 2013 (UTC))

Inaccurate tagging of the talk page
Hi all. In an unrelated matter I ran a search of English-language book results of Serbo-Croatian language, Croatian language and Serbian language phrase search and came up with this:

Right now, there are 18,600 Google books search results containing phrase "Serbo Croatian language" and 13,000 results containing phrase "Serbo Croat language", contrasted by 19,700 results containing phrase "Serbian language" and 21,300 results containing phrase "Croatian language" while simultaneously excluding phrase "Serbo Croatian language", making a roughly 4 to 3 preference against "Serbo Croat(ian) language" being a WP:COMMONNAME in English language books. (All four searches exclude results linked to Wikipedia and Books LLC to avoid mirroring wiki per WP:CIRCULAR.) Granted, there are 1,140 results among above ones containing both "Croatian language" and "Serbian language" phrases (i.e. duplicating results in the two groups), but they are quite offset by 1,310 results for "Serb language" phrase search.

Given these results, I wonder if the notice at the top of this talk page saying: "Serbian is a standardized register of a language which is also spoken by Croats, Bosniaks, and Montenegrins. In English, this language is generally called "Serbo-Croat(ian)". Use of that term in English, which dates back at least to 1864 and was modeled on both Croatian and Serbian nationalists of the time, is not a political endorsement of Yugoslavia, but is simply a label. As long as it remains the common name of the language in English, it will continue to be used here on Wikipedia." is accurate or not in terms of Serbo-Croatian being the common name of "the language in English" as the note says. It is quite possible that the notice was well intended (and based in facts) when it was devised and likely the number books published in English noting one term instead of the other simply changed over time. There's a near identical notice at the top of Talk:Croatian language too. Regards.--Tomobe03 (talk) 15:38, 21 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I propose to centralize the discussion at Talk:Croatian language.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 15:57, 21 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Number of results is really not relevant - what matter is what the linguists say. HammerFilmFan (talk) 23:50, 21 December 2013 (UTC)
 * No, HammerFilmFan, that's your arbitrary position, WP:COMMONNAME says something else explicitly. Ad, that's probably a good idea.--Tomobe03 (talk) 13:33, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
 * No, they were correct and you were not - as the TP notice here and on S-C and Croatian language has remained solid and in-line with the linguistic sources, not some "common name" mumbo-jumbo. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.111.42.136 (talk) 02:07, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Number of native speakers per country
@Kwamikagami:

Don't really get it why you changed my edit on number of speakers as I was reffering on the official figures from censuse held in 2011 in most of the respective countries (with exemption of Macedonia from which language data are derived from 2002 census, last one held there; and Bosnia and Herzegovina which is reffered by their census held in 1991). The official data is as follows:

Serbia (excluding Kosovo): 6,330,919 native Serbian speakers (88% of population) see--http://pod2.stat.gov.rs/ObjavljenePublikacije/Popis2011/Knjiga4_Veroispovest.pdf Bosnia and Herzegovina: 1,366,104 (31.2%) (data from 1991 census, data from 2013 census is yet to be published) Montenegro: 265,895 (42.8%) see--http://www.monstat.org/eng/page.php?id=393&pageid=57 Croatia: 52,879 (1.23%) see--http://www.dzs.hr/Hrv/censuses/census2011/results/htm/usp_05_HR.htm Slovenia: 31,329 (1.6%) see--http://www.stat.si/popis2002/gradivo/2-169.pdf Macedonia: 24,773 (1.22%) Romania: 16,805 (0.08%) see--http://www.recensamantromania.ro/rezultate-2/ Hungary: 9,465 (0.09%) see--http://www.ksh.hu/docs/hun/xftp/idoszaki/nepsz2011/nepsz_03_00_2011.pdf TOTAL: 8,098,169 (+ cca 100.000 speakers in Kosovo)

So there's no way that there are more than 8.2 million native Serbian speakers not only in former Yugoslavia but also taking into account neighboring countries of Romania and Hungary as well. So that figure of 8.7 million in former Yugoslavia is overestimation not to mention the previous one which putted some ridiculously high figure of 13.7 million speakers of Serbian in former Yugosalvia!? User:Klačko


 * I think it's fine to change the figures with some discussion, but because of the bad history of this article, I revert anyone who changes things unilaterally. Also, your figure is not from 2011, as you claim in the info box.
 * What does everyone think about the new figure? — kwami (talk) 19:02, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Those are OFFICIAL figures from national censuses, most of which were held in 2011 (with exception of Macedonia in 2002 and Bosnia in 1991). Since Wikipedia is all about sources, for each and every one of these figures I provided most credible sources that one can think of (those from respective national statistics offices). I really can't see any problem with this, neither did you since your rationale for undoing that edit was some ambiguous argument about "need for discussion" for which I really don't see any reason since those data are, as I said, official data and therefore presumably correct only if someone prove those figures incorrect.

On the other side, figures that you are keeping reverting back are ones like those found in the section "Geographical distribution" where figures are total bullshit and gross overestimations, not to mention that none of those haven't been supported by any source whatsoever.

Therefore, I kindly ask you to stop reverting those changes.

Regards, Klačko (talk) 20:33, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

If the date is the only problem you have with that edit than propose date that could synthetize 4 census data from 2011, one from 2002, and one from 1991, rather than undoing the whole edit with all those official census figures. Regards, Klačko (talk) 20:38, 3 January 2014 (UTC)


 * First, get consensus when you're challenged. Read WP:BOLD. You're making the change, so it's up to you to get consensus, not to the ones reverting you.
 * Date: 1991–2011 would work. But we already have a figure from 2006. — kwami (talk) 20:46, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for suggestion to read WP:BOLD, but I would kindly ask you to read the following article: Don't revert due solely to "no consensus". I will excerpt the first two paragraphs for you:

'Sometimes editors will undo a change, justifying their revert merely by saying that there is "no consensus" for the change, or by simply asking the original editor to "first discuss". This is not very helpful or informative, and, except possibly on pages that describe long-standing Wikipedia policy, should probably be avoided.''' After all, that you reverted the edit already shows that there is no consensus. But you neglected to explain why you personally disagree with the edit, so you haven't given people a handle on how to build the consensus with you that you desire.''

Next to that, the behaviour discourages bold contributions, which are essential to building Wikipedia. 'Moreover, if you can't point out an underlying problem with an edit, there is no good reason to immediately revert it. Finally, there may in fact exist silent consensus to keep the change. Consensus is not unanimity, and is thus not canceled by one editor's objection.'

These two quoted paragraphs discredits your stance here. They are Wikipedia policy, after all. Regards, Klačko (talk) 20:57, 3 January 2014 (UTC)


 * They are not policy, and they do not discredit my stance. I'm asking for discussion, and I don't understand why you're so opposed to working with others.  You're mixing dates and combining sources, which is arguably WP:SYNTH.  That may all be fine, but it's worth discussing before you try forcing it through.  — kwami (talk) 21:39, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
 * But old version is from 2006, that is quite old. What is wrong with that 2011 version? -- Ąnαșταη  ( ταlκ )  23:18, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
 * The 2011 version dates back to 1991, which is even older. — kwami (talk) 07:34, 4 January 2014 (UTC)
 * As I said, of 7 countries concerned, 5 have data from 2011, one from 2002 (Macedonia), and one (Bosnia) from 1991. Those are all oficcial census data. Since the last held census in Bosnia was in 1991 and in Macedonia in 2002 we don't have more recent official data but only estimates. Neither the actual source in infobox (that from 2006) that Kwami defends, has actual number on speakers of Serbian in Bosnia, but only estimations, which accuracy can be argued about since the last official data are from 1991. If that year of 1991 is that much of a problem, well, we can find credible estimation for current number of speakers in Bosnia instead, but let the other official census figures from 2011 be included in the infobox data on native speakers.


 * Not even to mention that list in the "Geogrpahical section" also needs to be changed since those figures are non-verifiable because of a complete lack of any sources whatsoever putted for respective countries in that list that would back those figures. Common sense would say that those should be replaced with official census data.


 * Regards, Klačko (talk) 11:54, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Full protection
User:Adjwilley has fully protected this article. Semi-protection suffices, because the unsourced content was added by anons. --JorisvS (talk) 13:11, 25 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Sorry, that was an error on my part. ~Adjwilley (talk) 18:13, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Requested edit
Dear Editor(s), I found on Wikipedia Interaction page that this is the best way to contact you. I would kindly like to ask if it is possible for other websites to be adder to this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbian_language, section: External links. These are the websites: https://www.facebook.com/groups/SerbianLanguage/ http://serbian-language.blogspot.com/ http://e-word.co/en Thank you, Ivana Marinkovic


 * ❌. Wikipedia is not for such a random collection of links. The external links section is specifically for links to information that adds something above and beyond what is already in the article. --JorisvS (talk) 15:56, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 25 April 2014
Serbian language template needs to be added. Within, one would be able to find direct links to various subjects to do with the Serbian language, such as the features of the language, dialects, names, history and literature in the Serbian language, and other related topics. I feel that this is a necessary addition. Many other pages to do with language have this template, such as Croatian language. The question here isn't why, but rather, why not. It's a very useful addition. I have used the Croatian template as the framework to make the Serbian language template. This will, naturally, change with time. For now, it is suitable. Below I have added the template.

Kukulj (talk) 06:47, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

papar and paprika
There's a wrong statement in the text that the word paprika origins from Serbian word papar. There's no such word (papar) in Serbian, Bosnian or Montenegrin language. Black pepper (Piper nigrum) is called papar only in Croatia and only in Croatian language. In Slovenian language they call it poper (very similar to papar). In all other Southern Slavic languages they use word biber to refer to black pepper. So black peper is papar in Croatian and biber in Serbian, Bosnian and Montenegrin, hence the word paprika might only be a derivation of Croatian word papar. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Peregrin Falcon (talk • contribs) 16:14, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
 * The problem is that the statement is sourced. You need sources for your statements here. FkpCascais (talk) 16:44, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Serbo-Croatian is the same language . . . and the more complete explanations are listed below. But Croatian and Serbian are interchangeable 99% of the time.  68.19.5.179 (talk) 00:48, 15 May 2016 (UTC)


 * "Paprika" is of course Hungarian, as the -ka is a diminutive suffix in that language. The OED says it's from SC pàpar.  Whether you want to call that "Serbian" or "Croatian" is about as meaningful as arguing over whether an English word is "Protestant" or "Catholic".  It's true that today papar is used in the Croatian standard, and biber in the Serbian standard, but "paprika" in English dates to at least 1896, and in Hungarian it is of course even older, so what you're claiming is that papar was not used by Serbs in the 19th century.  That would require some referencing.  "Vampire" is another Hungarian/German word of Slavic origin, but to claim it's Serbian is rather silly, as it has the same form in Croatian.  The word was first used in English in reference to the Kingdom of Serbia, but it appears even earlier in French, at a time when there was no distinction between "Serbian" and "Croatian".  When languages borrow the word "radio", do we argue over whether it was an American or British loan?  In any case, "paprika" itself is not a Serbian or Croatian word. — kwami (talk) 18:54, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I left "vampire", since it is associated with Serbia. The other words were either SC or not Serbian at all, so I placed a link to the section on SC words in English.  — kwami (talk) 20:21, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
 * The 'modern' idea of a vampire more or less originated in Serbia, but that modification of the vampire myth was done to an idea that dates back clear to the old Hebrew tale of Lilith, and the Greeks and Romans were familiar with the idea of "vampires" - for the Euro variants; Asia also has its own vampiric mythologies. The toothsome ones have been around quite a while. 50.111.50.240 (talk) 23:36, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
 * A Magyar Nyelv Történeti-Etimológiai Szótára (Historical-Etymological Dictionary of the Hungarian Language) (1976, Budapest, Akadémiai Kiadó), 3:93. "paprika 1748...Szerb-horvát eredetű...Ez a szb.-hv. pàpar 'bors'..."  (paprika 1748...Serbo-Croatian originally...This is the Serbo-Croatian pàpar 'pepper'...[followed by an explanation of the Hungarian suffix -ka]).  --Taivo (talk) 16:42, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Edit request
The Czech Republic does not recognise Serbian as a minority language, and that fact is nowhere in the citation given. Could the Czech Republic be removed both from the article lede, the infobar, and the map? Thanks.
 * according to Act No. 273/2001 (About The Rights of Members of Minorities) paragraph 9 (The right to use language of a national minority in dealing with authorities and in front of the courts of law). The list of approved languages is at which includes Belarussian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Hungarian, German, Polish, Roma, Ruthenian, Russian, Greek, Slovak, Serbian, Ukrainian and Vietnamese - Arjayay (talk) 16:52, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Neither the source in the article, nor the one you provide, support that claim. The link you give merely discusses the composition of an "advisory" body on minorities in the Czech Republic. Can you provide a better reference?
 * Better reference provided. No such user (talk) 14:57, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the template. — &#123;&#123;U&#124;Technical 13&#125;&#125; (t • e • c) 11:46, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 18 August 2014
Could you put "...used by Serbs." just like it is case with other variants? It's not "chiefly". --164.40.230.72 (talk) 14:52, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

164.40.230.72 (talk) 14:52, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: Don't see a problem with this. Saying it is "used chiefly" means that the language is mostly used by Serbs in the areas described Cannolis (talk) 09:05, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
 * The comment for change was to make this article more like Croatian language, Bosnian language and Montenegrin language. To make them look more same, but this article stands out from those three (because of "chiefly"). It probably shoud be just: "used by Serbs." Regards. --164.40.228.247 (talk) 00:54, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: Agree with Cannolis. "used by Serbs" suggests that it is exclusively used by Serbs, while chiefly indicates that it's mostly (or primarily) used by Serbs. The four articles do not need to be exactly the same, and it could be argued that the other three should adopt similar text. -- ferret (talk) 19:03, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 22 August 2014
Please add to the external links. It will add a link to the phrasebook for the language at Wikivoyage. Thanks.

130.88.141.34 (talk) 09:12, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done for now: Not sure why this phrasebook should be linked to versus any of the ones already there. any wiki content is always more susceptible to error Cannolis (talk) 09:08, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

the insistence that "Serbian" only applies to the modern-day Serbian standard
Please see Talk:Croatian language. --Joy &#91;shallot&#93; (talk) 19:28, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Joy, speaking as a historian, this is a dead-end argument - you are a bright person and have been a good administrator, but as such, you must know you have to yield to the overwhelming academic majority of linguists that have set these standards - which are taught at any non-nationalistic-controlled university or K-12 school. HammerFilmFan (talk) 15:17, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 26 December 2014
Dear Madam,Sir, I would like to ask you to add an external link to srpskijezik.edu.rs which is the website of the Serbian Language and Culture Workshop, an institute for Serbian as a second language. We used to have such link before somebody erased us. We provide Serbian courses in Serbia and on-line, and conduct research in the field of Serbian as a second language. Some of our programs are commercial, but some are sponsored by various donors or the scholarships have been offered for them - currently there are about 80 scholarships offered. Please check out the website and you will see that it is a valuable resource for Wikipedia users. Best regards! Predrag Obućina, MPhil, Project Director.

109.93.120.195 (talk) 10:44, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Not done: The reason it was removed is because Wiki does not allow commercial promotional website links. HammerFilmFan (talk) 13:59, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

still needs referencing ...
A couple of sections were cited over a year ago - surely there are strong linguistic RS's to put these to bed? 50.111.211.140 (talk) 04:21, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 5 October 2017
I request the removal of српски as its Russian and not Serbian 72.73.104.239 (talk) 22:49, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Then how do you write it in Serbian Cyrillic? Rua (mew) 22:50, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: Nope. српски is indeed Serbian. Sparkling Pessimist   Scream at me!  23:05, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20071130221600/http://ec.europa.eu/education/policies/lang/languages/langmin/euromosaic/hu_de.pdf to http://ec.europa.eu/education/policies/lang/languages/langmin/euromosaic/hu_de.pdf
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In Popular Culture
Could a "In Popular Culture" section be added? In Santa Clarita Diet, the disease is from Serbia, the book about the disease is in Serbian, the clams are from Serbia... A lot of the stuff is from Serbia and/or Serbian descent. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jmaxx37 (talk • contribs) 18:49, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
 * This article is about the language, not Serbia - or Serbs. 50.111.62.84 (talk) 01:24, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Missing history section?
Aren´t we missing a history section in this article? I made some recent aditions dealing with the fact that Serbian language became dominant in Republic of Ragusa in early 14th century, and I wasn´t sure where to add it... FkpCascais (talk) 02:08, 22 November 2018 (UTC)


 * diff which modern sources? FkpCascais (talk) 02:46, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

Our article on Ragusa speaks of "Croatian". Anyway, given that there wasn't actually any difference between 'Croatian' and 'Serbian' at the time, except dialectally, saying the official language was 'Serbian' is like saying the official people were Serbs. Given all the nonsense claims like this tend to stir up, better to have a historical linguistic source that the language actually was somehow Serbian and not Croatian. — kwami (talk) 02:51, 22 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Can you provide a contradicting source please? FkpCascais (talk) 02:52, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
 * In the 14th century the nationalistic nonsense of standardizing a "Serbian," "Bosnian" and "Croatian" language had not happened - everyone, just like today, spoke Serbo-Croatian.104.169.29.171 (talk) 02:13, 21 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Another issue is that if you take a look at the geographical situation of Middle Ages, you can see that Ragusa was surrounded by Serbia and Serbian vassal states for centuries between 900s till 1400s, with Croatia quite distanced away, so current claims of Croatian being spoken there a are more based on nowoadays biases than on historical accuracy. See this. FkpCascais (talk) 02:56, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

It's not up to me to contradict it -- I really have no idea. It's up to you as the claimant to demonstrate it. That means reliable sources, which among other things would mean we need to know that the meaning of the word "Serbian" in the source is the meaning we use in this article. If it's just a bunch of Serbian refugees, is their language significantly different that the "Croatian" that already existed there? Does the author make such a distinction? If not, then in modern parlance the language would be "Serbo-Croatian". — kwami (talk) 03:06, 22 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Kwamikagam don´t joke with me. The source clearly says Serbian was "igorously proscribed by earlier local lows" (I made a typing mistake, it should be "laws") and became dominant by early 14th century when actually Ragusa became Serbian vassal state for a period. So help me adding that info in a proper place. FkpCascais (talk) 03:10, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
 * What refugees? Don´t you read the source? Leave out your bias please, there are no refugees in 14th century. FkpCascais (talk) 03:12, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Serbs were no poor neither hadf refugees in 14th century when they actully had an empire. FkpCascais (talk) 03:14, 22 November 2018 (UTC)


 * The source says "Her welthy citizens, though they spoke the Serbian dialect of Dubrovnik in their family circles, sent their children to the Florentine schools (to learn Italian). Wealthy citizens, not refugees, where did you get the idea of refugees? It is 14th century, period of Serbian Empire. FkpCascais (talk) 03:26, 22 November 2018 (UTC)


 * "Its just a bunch of Serbian refugees"... for God´s sake... FkpCascais (talk) 03:39, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

You clearly have a stick up your butt. Of course there were refugees in the 14th century, just as in every other century. The source you used speaks of Serbian refugees in Ragusa! (And Serbian fugatives.) Anyway, our Dubrovnik article claims that it was Croatian that was proscribed. Fix that article first, with RELIABLE SOURCES. Modern sources, so we know the words mean the same thing they do today. If that works, come back here and do the same here.

I have no idea if it was Serbian, Croatian, or generic Shtokavian. But the fact that you think anyone who disagrees with you is part of some conspiracy suggests that you do not have the facts on your side -- if you did, you would not need to be so defensive. — kwami (talk) 04:08, 22 November 2018 (UTC)


 * I will ignore your povocation. Stop removing sourced material. I will bring more sourced content don´t warry. FkpCascais (talk) 08:10, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Here is second one to start: This clearly indicates one Serbian notary office existed in Dubrovnik during medieval period. It conducted official correspondence with surrounding Serbian states and lords, in Serbian language and Cyrillic alphabet, plainly indicating identity of those with whom they corresponded and negotiated merchant contracts. FkpCascais (talk) 08:15, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Here is third one: Dubrovnik gained great respect with the Porte so that the representatives used their own Serbian language when they... FkpCascais (talk) 08:36, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

As a regular, how can you not know what a RS is? Especially with s.t. as fraught as Serb/Croat issues.

You should fix the Dubrovnik article so it doesn't contradict your edits here. — kwami (talk) 09:08, 22 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Yes, I did some work already Kwami, and I hope, despite some limited time I am having these days, to further improve the issues I am expanding. I apologise if my reaction was a bit too harsh. Be sure I consider you a highly regarded editor who´s work and dedication to this project I appreciate very much. But the issue is the following: the articles Dubrovnik, Republic of Ragusa and Dalmatia, were basically "cleaned" from any mentions of Serbia or Serbs. Sources seem to say otherwise. Ever since Croatia lost its independence and fall under Hungarian rule in 1102, it is Serbia that expands its influence in the region and uses Ragusa and other coastal towns as their commercial outposts. Besides that, local Slavic population contibutes sigificantly to Serbian culture and literature. Any mention of this seems to have been removed from the articles, and all I want is to properly reinsert it, with sources obviously, and in a neutral balanced manner. As you can see I avoided using local sources. FkpCascais (talk) 18:44, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

Croats around Dubrovnik in historical records, so maybe this helps someone in discussion.

John the Deacon (Italian: Giovanni Diacono or Giovanni da Venezia;. (940- 1018) "Qui (Petrus) dum Chroatorum fines rediens transire vellet, a Michahele Sclavorum duce fraude deceptus... [While he (Peter) was returning from Croatian territory he was deceived through fraud by Michael, duke of the Slavs...] Michael of Zahumlje (eastern Herzegovina)(913 – 926),

Nikita Honijat (Greek Νικήτας ὁ Χωνιάτης, c. 1155-1217), also known as Nikita Akominat ..- speaking of Stefan Nemanja and his activity between 1160 and 1173, says for him: "Without knowing the right thing, he began to conquer Croatia and take over the power of Kotor"(Montenegro)

John Skylitzes, Latinized as Ioannes Scylitzes (1040-1101) Bulgarian leaders requested from Mihajlo, who is then rulers of those who are called Croats, who lived in Kotor and Prapratnica(Montenegro)," "Mihailo Vojislavljević (fl. 1050–d. 1081) was the ruler of Duklja(Montenegro), from 1050 to 1081"

George Kedrenos or Cedrenus (Greek: Γεώργιος Κεδρηνός, fl. 11th century) After defeating Bulgaria, neighboring(Bulgaria) Croatian people become subjected to Byzant.(probably a border on Drina river, northwest Montenegro?)

1154 g. - Arabic geographer, cartographer and travel writer Muhammad Al-Idrisi (1099-1164), describing Croatia (Bilad Garwasi), writes in his work "Kitab al Rudjar" "Ragusa, Ragusah(Dubrovnik) is away from Ston 30 miles. (Residents) are Dalmatians who have many boats for long sailing. This is the last town in Croatia (Garwasijah)

Red Croatia The term was first used in one version of the Chronicle of the Priest of Dioclea, which is as a whole dated to have been written in 1298–1300. Describing Red Croatia, Dukljanin says that these cities are in Red Croatia: Kotor, Budva, Bar, Ulcinj, Skadar, Trebinje, Pilot etc. and also in these areas: Hum(Zahumlje), Trebinje, Podgorje and Zeta (eastern Herzegovina, Montenegro)

1433 g. - Participants of the Parliament in the Swiss town of Basel, native Czechs ( "GESTIS Bohemorum"), say for cardinal Ivan Stojkovic from  from Ragusa(Dubrovnik), which is a city in Croatia: "Johannes de Ragusia, (quae est civitas in Carvatia)"

1486-1487 - German nobleman and pilgrim Conrad von Grünenberg. He did a picture of Dubrovnik, with a fuzzy red inscription in the upper left corner, saying: "Ragusa hobstat in kunglich Croatie" or "Dubrovnik is the capital of the Kingdom of Croatia". Also states that Dubrovnik "ist die kunglich hobstat in Croattyen" (1) or "the royal cape in Croatia" and "Erizbistum, und hat das gantz kungrich croatyen" (2) or "archbishopric, whose jurisdiction encompasses the entire Croatian kingdom.

1506 g - English traveler and pilgrim Richard Guylford describing Dubrovnik (in Old English): "In Dubrovnik they were most impressed by the fortresses of the city, which is the most powerful and strongest city in the country of Slavonia or Dalmatia and in the province of the Croatian kingdom (" the moste stronge and myghty Towne [...] in the Coutre of Slauanye or Dalmacie and in the Prouynce of the Royalme of Croacie ")

The Senate of the Republic of Dubrovnik rebuilt the old ban and made even a decision by 1745 forbidding the stay of Orthodox priests in the city for more than eight days. His commissar in Vienna on May 9, 1618 in connection with the Barabants was reported as follows (in the translation of V. Košćak): "Let us know also whether we can get the barbarbants and in what number, but that they are Croats, our tongue and the Catholics [Crouati de nostra lingua e cattolici]

Register of Bosnian army before Battle of Mohač from 1526. (Turkish administration) Croats are mentioned in the sandžak (southern Serbia), Nikšić (central Montenegro)

Derviş Mehmed Zillî (25 March 1611 – 1682), known as Evliya Çelebi Mentione Croats in eastern Herzegovina, Bay of Kotor(Montenegro) Nikšić (central Montenegro)

Mehmed-paša Sokolovic, the great vizier of the Ottoman Empire, issued in 1566 an order saying: "Sultan give commandment that priests in Budim, Timisoara and Dubrovnik and all Croatian people do not ask for charity if this people belong to the Greek patriarch (orthodoxy)

Peter Tolstoy is in his Travel Guide to Italy and to the island of Malta 1697-1698 He mentione Croatians in the Bay of Kotor(Montenegro). Around this monastery by the towns live Ragusans(residents of Dubrovnik) - naval captains, sailors and astronomers (...) they speak all Slavic languages, and Italian know and all are called Hervati(Croats), they are Catholics."

In Dubrovnik, the personal name Hrvatin(Croatin) is mentioned at least in 1281 and somewhat later mentioned in Pelješac (1301) and in Konavle (1397) Personal names Hrvatin(Croatin) (since 1301), Hrvajin (from 1475), Hrvo (from 1475), Hrvoje (from 1475) and Hrvat (Croat) (from 1475), in the Middle Ages we find ourselves, all over Eastern Herzegovina: from Bisce to Mostar through Zažablja, Popova, Trebinje to Biograd near Nevesinje (eastern Herzegovina), and Plane by Bileća. In Boka Kotorska, Paštrović and Bar, Croat ethnonym surnames, Hrvatić / Hrvetić, Hrvojević, Hrvović and Hrvatić recorded from Stoliva in Boka Kotorska(Montenegro) to Bar(Montenegro) at least from XV. century. The last name Rvat(Croat) was recorded at Nikšić(central Montenegro).

Istanbul... We should mention an interesting fact that the name "Croat" sometimes were used and members of other nations, primarily Montenegrins. Their representative to the authorities in the Ottoman sources until the 1870s called the "chief of Croats", or Hırvat Başı ("Hrvat-baša"), in the Italian and French variants of "capo croato" or "chef des Croates" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.217.36.106 (talk) 12:41, 19 December 2018 (UTC)