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Serbo-Croatian

Serbo-Croatian

Summary

Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian (otherwise known as one language: Serbo-Croatian) are natively spoken by about 13 million people combined, primarily in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and among Serbian and Montenegrin communities worldwide. They are integral to the cultural identities of their respective countries, known for their literature, traditional music, and shared history in the former Yugoslavia. Written in the Cyrillic alphabet or Latin alphabet, their grammar features a subject-verb-object (SVO) word order, a system of noun cases, and verb conjugations that indicate tense, aspect, and mood.

Stats

  • Language Family: Indo-European

  • Writing System: Cyrillic, Latin

  • Writing System Type: Alphabet

  • Writing Direction: L to R

  • Tones / Pitch Accent: 4

  • Morphology: Fusional

  • Cases: 7

  • Grammatical Gender / Noun Class: 3

  • Number of Verb Tenses: 7

  • Word Order: SVO

  • Number of Vowels (Monophthongs): 10

  • Number of Consonants: 25

Areas Where Spoken

  • Bosnia and Herzegovina (official) (84.1%) (2.89 mil)

  • Croatia (official) (96.1%) (3.71 mil)

  • Kosovo (official) (3.3%) (58 k)

  • Montenegro (official) (85.3%) (526 k)

  • Serbia (official) (90.2%) (6.00 mil)

Resources

Books


Websites

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