User:Croquant/Archives/Swadesh lists/Serbian

Swadesh list of 207 words in English and Serbian.

Presentation

 * For further information, read the article: Swadesh list

The Swadesh word list, developed by the linguist Morris Swadesh, is used as a tool to study the evolution of languages. It contains a set of basic words which can be found in every language. Various versions have been created, in particular:
 * a complete 207 words version, in which some of the words are not found in every environment (it contains for instance snake and snow)
 * a reduced 100 words version.

List
The Ekavian variant (with /e/ superseding old vowel Jat) is used in most of Serbia. The Ijekavian (with /je/ or /ije/) is used by Serbs in Western Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro, and Croatia.

The Cyrillic alphabet is traditionally used by a majority of people in Montenegro. In Serbia, Latin script is used roughly by 40% of native speakers vs. 20% natives using Cyrrilic in non-official written communication. Another 30% use Latin script more often then Cyrrilic, and 10% use Cyrrilic reather then Latin alphabet. (Conducted: Serbia, 2003.)

When the words have various forms (verbs conjugation, gender and number agreement, declensions), the orthography is the following :
 * Orthography :
 * verbs : infinitive
 * adjectives : predicative form
 * other words : masculine, singular, nominative (subject)

For specific cases (no infinitive, feminine name, plural name for instance), the simplest form is used.