Comparison of standard Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian


Standard Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian are different national variants and official registers of the pluricentric Serbo-Croatian language.

History

In socialist Yugoslavia, the language was approached as a pluricentric language with two regional normative varieties—Eastern and Western. However, due to discontent in Croatian intellectual circles, beginning in the late 1960s Croatian cultural workers started to refer to the language exclusively as 'the Croatian literary language', or sometimes 'the Croatian or Serbian language', as was common before Yugoslavia. The language was regarded as one common language with different variants and dialects. The unity of the language was emphasized, making the differences not an indicator of linguistic divisions, but rather factors enriching the 'common language' diversity. In addition, Yugoslavia had two other official languages on the federal level, Slovenian and Macedonian, reflecting Yugoslavia's acceptance of diversity with regards to language use. No attempts were made to assimilate those languages into the Serbo-Croatian language.
With the breakup of the Federation, in search of additional indicators of independent and separate national identities, language became a political instrument in virtually all of the new republics. With a boom of neologisms in Croatia, an additional emphasis on Turkisms in the Muslim parts of Bosnia and a privileged position of the Cyrillic script in Serb-inhabited parts of the new states, every state and entity showed a 'nationalization' of the language. The language in Bosnia started developing independently after Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence in 1992. The independent development of the language in Montenegro became a topic among some Montenegrin academics in the 1990s.
Serbian and Bosnian standards varieties tend to be inclusive, i.e. to accept a wider range of idioms and to use loanwords, whereas the Croatian language policy is more purist and prefers neologisms to loan-words, as well as the re-use of neglected older words. Yet there is criticism of the puristic language policy even in Croatia, as exemplified by linguist Snježana Kordić. In 2017, numerous prominent writers, scientists, journalists, activists and other public figures from Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia signed the Declaration on the Common Language, faced with "the negative social, cultural and economic consequences of political manipulations of language in the current language policies of the four countries", which "include using language as an argument justifying the segregation of schoolchildren in some multiethnic environments, unnecessary „translation“ in administration or the media, inventing differences where they do not exist, bureaucratic coercion, as well as censorship, where linguistic expression is imposed as a criterion of ethnonational affiliation and a means of affirming political loyalty".
Despite the 'nationalization' of the language in the four countries, "lexical differences between the ethnic variants are extremely limited, even when compared with those between closely related Slavic languages, and grammatical differences are even less pronounced. More importantly, complete understanding between the ethnic variants of the standard language makes translation and second language teaching impossible", which all means that it is still a pluricentric language. "An examination of all the major 'levels' of language show that BCS is clearly a single language with a single grammatical system."

Writing

Script

Though all of the language variants could theoretically use either, the scripts differ:
All standard variants have the same set of 30 regular phonemes, so the Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian Latin and Serbian Cyrillic alphabets map one to one with one another and with the phoneme inventory.
Some linguists analyze the yat reflexes and, commonly realized as in Croatian and Bosnian dialects, as a separate phoneme – "jat diphthong" – or even two phonemes, one short and one long. There are even several proposals by Croatian linguists for an orthography reform concerning these two diphthongs, but they have not been seriously considered for implementation.
The ongoing standardization of Montenegrin has introduced two new letters, and, for the sounds and respectively. These are optional spellings of the digraphs and. Critics note that and are merely allophones of and in Herzegovinian dialects such as Montenegrin, so the new letters are not required for an adequate orthography.
Most dialects of Serbia originally lack the phoneme, instead having,, or nothing. was introduced with language unification, and the Serbian standard allows for some doublets such as snaja–snaha and hajde–ajde. However, in other words, especially those of foreign origin, is mandatory.
In some regions of Croatia and Bosnia, sounds for letters and merged or nearly merged, usually into. The same happened with their voiced counterparts, i.e. and merged into. As result, speakers of those dialects often have difficulties distinguishing these sounds.

Orthography

The Serbian variety usually phonetically transcribes foreign names and words, whereas the Croatian standard usually transliterates. Bosnian accepts both models, but transliteration is often preferred.
Also, when the subject of the future tense is omitted, producing a reversal of the infinitive and auxiliary "ću", only the final "i" of the infinitive is orthographically elided in Croatian and Bosnian, whereas in Serbian the two have merged into a single word:

Accentuation

In general, the Shtokavian dialects that represent the foundation of the four standard varieties have four pitch accents on stressed syllables: falling tone on a short vowel, written e.g. in dictionaries; rising tone on a short vowel, written e.g. ; falling tone on a long vowel, written e.g. ; and rising tone on a long vowel, written e.g.. In addition, the following unstressed vowel may be either short,, or long,. In declension and verb conjugation, accent shifts, both by type and position, are very frequent.
The distinction between four accents and preservation of post accent lengths is common in vernaculars of western Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, in parts of Serbia, as well as in parts of Croatia with strong Serb presence. In addition, a distinct characteristics of some vernaculars is stress shift to proclitics, e.g. phrase u Bosni will be pronounced instead of as in northern parts of Serbia.
The northern vernaculars in Serbia also preserve the four-accent system, but the unstressed lengths have been shortened or disappeared in some positions. However, the shortening of post-accent lengths is in progress in all Shtokavian vernaculars, even in those most conservative in Montenegro. Stress shift to enclitics is, however, in northern Serbia rare and mostly limited to negative verb constructs.
The situation in Croatia, is however, different. A large proportion of speakers of Croatian, especially those coming from Zagreb, do not distinguish between rising and falling accents. This is considered to be a feature of the Zagreb dialect, which has strong Kajkavian influence, rather than standard Croatian.
Regardless of vernacular differences, all three standard varieties exclusively promote the Neo-Shtokavian four-accentual system. Both dialects that are considered to be the basis of standard Serbian have four accents.

Phonetics

Morphology

There are three principal "pronunciations" of the Štokavian dialect that differ in their reflexes of the proto-Slavic vowel jat. Illustrated by the Common Slavic word for "child", dětę, they are:
The Serbian language recognizes Ekavian and Ijekavian as equally valid pronunciations, whereas Croatian and Bosnian accept only the Ijekavian pronunciation. In Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Montenegro, the Ijekavian pronunciation is used almost exclusively.
Ikavian pronunciation is nonstandard, and is limited to dialectal use in Dalmatia, Lika, Istria, central Bosnia, Western Herzegovina, Bosanska Krajina, Slavonia and northern Bačka. So, for example:
A few Croatian linguists have tried to explain the following differences in morphological structure for some words, with the introduction of a new vowel, "jat diphthong". This is not the opinion of most linguists.
Sometimes this leads to confusion: Serbian poticati is in Croatian and Bosnian "to encourage". Croatian and Bosnian "to stem from" is potjecati, whereas Serbian for "encourage" is podsticati.
Standard Bosnian allows both variants, and ambiguities are resolved by preferring the Croatian variant; this is a general practice for Serbian–Croatian ambiguities.
The phoneme /x/ has been volatile in eastern South Slavic dialects. In Serbian and some Croatian dialects, it has been replaced with /j/, /v/, or elided, and subsequent standardization sanctioned those forms:
However, /x/ and /f/ have been kept in many words as a distinct feature of Bosnian speech and language tradition, particularly under influence of Turkish and Arabic, and even introduced in some places where it etymologically did not exist. Those forms were in the mid 1990s also accepted in the orthography of the Bosnian language. However, 2018, in the new issue of the Orthography of the Bosnian language, words without the phoneme /x/  are accepted due to their prevalence in language practice.
Because the Ijekavian pronunciation is common to all official standards, it will be used for examples on this page. Other than this, examples of different morphology are:

Internationalisms

Also many internationalisms and transliterations are different:
Historically, modern-age internationalisms entered Bosnian and Croatian mostly through German and Italian, whereas they entered Serbian through French and Russian, so different localization patterns were established based on those languages. Also, Greek borrowings came to Serbian directly, but through Latin into Croatian:
Most of terms for chemical elements are different: for international names, Bosnian and Croatian use -ij where Serbian has -ijum. In some native names, Croatian have -ik where Serbian has -nik and Bosnian accepts all variants. Yet others are totally different. Some element names are the same: srebro, zlato, bakar.
Some other imported words differ by grammatical gender, feminine words having an -a suffix and masculine words having a zero-suffix:

Pronouns

In Serbian and Bosnian, the pronoun what is što when used as a relative, but šta when used as an interrogative; the latter applies also to relative sentences with interrogative meaning. Croatian uses što in all contexts.
This is applicable only to the nominative and the accusative – in all other cases, the standards have the same forms: čega, čemu etc. for što.
In Croatian, the pronoun who has the form tko, whereas in Serbian, Bosnian and Montenegrin it has ko, but again, in colloquial speech, the initial "t" is usually omitted. The declension is the same: kome, koga, etc. In addition, Croatian uses komu as an alternative form in the dative case.
The locative pronoun kamo is only used in Croatian:

Syntax

Infinitive versus subjunctive

With modal verbs such as hteti or moći, the infinitive is prescribed in Croatian, whereas the construction da + present tense is preferred in Serbian. This subjunctive of sorts is possibly an influence of the Balkan sprachbund. Again, both alternatives are present and allowed in Bosnian.
The sentence "I want to do that" could be translated with any of
This difference partly extends to the future tense, which in Serbo-Croatian is formed in a similar manner to English, using present of verb "hteti" → "hoću"/"hoćeš"/... > "ću"/"ćeš"/... as auxiliary verb. Here, the infinitive is formally required in both variants:
However, when da+present is used instead, it can additionally express the subject's will or intention to perform the action:
This form is more frequently used in Serbia and Bosnia. The nuances in meaning between the two constructs can be slight or even lost, in similar manner as the shall/will distinction varies across English dialects. Overuse of da+present is regarded as Germanism in Serbian linguistic circles, and it can occasionally lead to awkward sentences.
However, Croatians seldom naturally use da+present form. Instead, a different form can be used to express will:
.

Interrogative constructs

In interrogative and relative constructs, standard Croatian prescribes using the interrogative participle li after the verb, whereas standard Serbian also allows forms with da li. :
In addition, non-standard je li, usually elided to je l' , is vernacular for forming all kinds of questions, e.g. Je l' možeš?. In standard language, it is used only in questions involving auxiliary verb je :
In summary, the English sentence "I want to know whether I'll start working" would typically read:
although many in-between combinations could be met in vernacular speech, depending on speaker's dialect, idiolect, or even mood.
The Croatian avoidance of da li is largely an expression of prescriptivism. In everyday speech in Croatia, da li is used, in fact, extensively, but avoided in written language.

Trebati

In formal Croatian, verb trebati is transitive, as in English. In Serbian and Bosnian, it is impersonal, like the French il faut, or the English construct is necessary ; the grammatical subject is either omitted :
Serbian and BosnianEnglish CroatianEnglish
Petru treba novac.To Peter is necessary money.Petar treba novac.Peter needs money.
Ne trebam ti.I am not necessary to you.Ne trebam te.I do not need you.
Ne trebaš mi.You are not necessary to me.Ne trebaš me.You do not need me.
Treba da radim.It is necessary that I work.Trebam raditi.I need to work.

Vocabulary

Examples

The greatest differences between the standards is in vocabulary. However, most words are well understood, and even occasionally used, in the other standards. In most cases, common usage favors one variant and the other are regarded as "imported", archaic, dialectal, or simply more rarely used.
1 Bosnian linguists claim that word "nogomet" is widely used in Bosnian ; still, the form "fudbal" is in majority use among Bosnians.
Note that there are only a few differences that can cause confusion, for example the verb "ličiti" means "to look like" in Serbian and Bosnian, but in Croatian it is "sličiti"; "ličiti" means "to paint ". However, "ličiti" is often used Croatian in the meaning of "to look like".
The word "bilo" means "white" in the Ikavian accent, "pulse" in official Croatian, and "was" in all official languages, although it is not so confusing when pronounced because of different accentuation.
In Serbian and Bosnian, the word izvanredan has only the positive meaning, vanredan being used for "unusual" or "out of order"; however, only izvanredan is used in Croatian in both contexts.
Also note that in most cases Bosnian officially allows almost all of the listed variants in the name of "language richness", and ambiguities are resolved by preferring the Croatian variant. Bosnian vocabulary writers based their decisions on usage of certain words in literary works by Bosnian authors.

Names of the months

The months have Slavic-derived names in Croatian, wheres Serbian and Bosnian have almost the same set of Latin-derived names as English. The Slavic-derived names may also be used in Bosnian, but the Latinate names are preferred.
The Latin-derived names of the months are well understood in Croatia and are used in several fixed expressions such as Prvi Maj, Prvi April or Oktobarska revolucija.
In spoken Croatian and in western Bosnia it is common to refer to a month by its number. Therefore, many speakers refer to the month of May as peti mjesec. Saying sedmi peti would be the equivalent of May 7.

Miscellaneous

The following samples, taken from article 1 to 6 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, are "synonymous texts, translated as literally as possible" in the sense of Ammon designed to demonstrate the differences between the standard varieties treated in this article in a continuous text.
CroatianBosnianSerbianEnglish
Opća deklaracija o pravima čovjekaOpća deklaracija o pravima čovjekaOpšta deklaracija o pravima čovekaUniversal Declaration of Human Rights
Članak 1. Sva ljudska bića rađaju se slobodna i jednaka u dostojanstvu i pravima. Ona su obdarena razumom i sviješću i treba da jedno prema drugome postupaju u duhu bratstva.Član 1. Sva ljudska bića rađaju se slobodna i jednaka u dostojanstvu i pravima. Ona su obdarena razumom i sviješću i treba da jedno prema drugome postupaju u duhu bratstva.Član 1. Sva ljudska bića rađaju se slobodna i jednaka u dostojanstvu i pravima. Ona su obdarena razumom i svešću i treba da jedno prema drugome postupaju u duhu bratstva.Article 1. All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Članak 2. Svakome su dostupna sva prava i slobode navedene u ovoj Deklaraciji bez razlike bilo koje vrste, kao što su rasa, boja, spol, jezik, vjera, političko ili drugo mišljenje, nacionalno ili društveno porijeklo, imovina, rođenje ili drugi pravni položaj.
Nadalje, ne smije se činiti bilo kakva razlika na osnovi političkog, pravnog ili međunarodnog položaja zemlje ili područja kojima neka osoba pripada, bilo da je to područje neovisno, pod starateljstvom, nesamoupravno, ili da se nalazi ma pod kojima drugim ograničenjima suverenosti.		Član 2. Svakome su dostupna sva prava i slobode navedene u ovoj Deklaraciji bez razlike bilo koje vrste, kao što su rasa, boja, spol, jezik, vjera, političko ili drugo mišljenje, narodnosno ili društveno porijeklo, imovina, rođenje ili drugi pravni položaj.
Nadalje, ne smije se činiti bilo kakva razlika na osnovu političkog, pravnog ili međunarodnog položaja zemlje ili područja kojima neka osoba pripada, bilo da je ovo područje nezavisno, pod starateljstvom, nesamoupravno, ili da se nalazi ma pod kojim drugim ograničenjima suverenosti.		Član 2. Svakome su dostupna sva prava i slobode navedene u ovoj Deklaraciji bez razlike bilo koje vrste, kao što su rasa, boja, pol, jezik, vera, političko ili drugo mišljenje, narodnosno ili društveno poreklo, imovina, rođenje ili drugi pravni položaj.
Nadalje, ne sme da se čini bilo kakva razlika na osnovu političkog, pravnog ili međunarodnog položaja zemlje ili područja kojima neko lice pripada, bilo da je ovo područje nezavisno, pod starateljstvom, nesamoupravno, ili da se nalazi ma pod kojim drugim ograničenjima suverenosti.		Article 2. Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.
Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.
Članak 3. Svatko ima pravo na život, slobodu i osobnu sigurnost.Član 3. Svako ima pravo na život, slobodu i osobnu sigurnost.Član 3. Svako ima pravo na život, slobodu i ličnu bezbednost.Article 3. Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
Članak 4. Nitko ne smije biti držan u ropstvu ili ropskom odnosu; ropstvo i trgovina robljem zabranjuju se u svim svojim oblicima.Član 4. Niko ne smije biti držan u ropstvu ili ropskom odnosu; ropstvo i trgovina robljem zabranjuje se u svim njihovim oblicima.Član 4. Niko ne sme da bude držan u ropstvu ili ropskom odnosu; ropstvo i trgovina robljem zabranjuje se u svim njihovim formama.Article 4. No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.
Članak 5. Nitko ne smije biti podvrgnut mučenju ili okrutnom, nečovječnom ili ponižavajućem postupku ili kažnjavanju.Član 5. Niko ne smije biti podvrgnut mučenju ili okrutnom, nečovječnom ili ponižavajućem postupku ili kažnjavanju.Član 5. Niko ne sme da bude podvrgnut mučenju ili okrutnom, nečovečnom ili ponižavajućem postupku ili kažnjavanju.Article 5. No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Članak 6. Svatko ima pravo da se svagdje pred zakonom priznaje kao osoba.Član 6. Svako ima pravo da se svagdje pred zakonom priznaje kao osoba.Član 6. Svako ima pravo da svuda bude priznat kao pravni subjekt.Article 6. Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

Standard CroatianMontenegrinEnglish
Opća deklaracija o ljudskim pravimaUniverzalna deklaracija o ljudskim pravimaUniversal Declaration of Human Rights
Članak 1. Sva ljudska bića rađaju se slobodna i jednaka u dostojanstvu i pravima. Ona su obdarena razumom i sviješću te trebaju jedna prema drugima postupati u duhu bratstva.Član 1. Sva ljudska bića rađaju se slobodna i jednaka u dostojanstvu i pravima. Ona su obdarena razumom i svešću i treba da jedni prema drugima da postupaju u duhu bratstva.Article 1. All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Članak 2. Svakome pripadaju sva prava i slobode utvrđene u ovoj Deklaraciji bez razlike bilo koje vrste, kao što je rasa, boja kože, političko ili drugo mišljenje, nacionalno ili društveno podrijetlo, imovina, rođenje ili drugi status.
Nadalje, ne smije se praviti nikakva razlika na osnovu političkog, pravnog ili međunarodnog statusa zemlje ili područja kojemu neka osoba pripada, bilo da je to područje neovisno, pod starateljstvom, nesamoupravno, ili mu je na neki drugi način ograničen suverenitet.		Član 2. Svakom pripadaju sva prava i slobode proglašene u ovoj Deklaraciji bez ikakvih razlika u pogledu rase, boje, pol, jezika, vjeroispovijesti, političkog ili drugog mišljenja, nacionalnog ili društvenog porijekla, imovine, rođenja ili drugih okolnosti.
Dalje, neće se praviti nikakva razlika na osnovu političkog, pravnog ili međunarodnog statusa zemlje ili teritorije kojoj neko lice pripada, bilo da je ona nezavisna, pod starateljstvom, nesamoupravna, ili da joj je suverenost na ma koji drugi način ograničena.		Article 2. Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.
Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.
Članak 3. Svatko ima pravo na život, slobodu i osobnu sigurnost.Član 3. Svako ima pravo na život, slobodu i bezbijednost ličnosti.Article 3. Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
Članak 4. Nitko se ne smije držati u ropstvu ili ropstvu sličnom odnosu; ropstvo i trgovina robljem zabranjuju se u svim svojim oblicima.Član 4. Niko se ne smije držati u ropstvu ili potčinjenosti: ropstvo i trgovina robljem zabranjeni su u svim svojim oblicima.Article 4. No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.
Članak 5. Nitko se ne smije podvrgnuti mučenju ili okrutnom, nečovječnom ili ponižavajućem postupku ili kazni.Član 5. Niko se ne smije podvrgnuti mučenju ili svirepom, nečovječnom ili ponižavajućem postupku ili kažnjavanju.Article 5. No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Članak 6. Svatko ima pravo da ga se svugdje pred zakonom priznaje kao osobu.Član 6. Svako ima pravo da svuda bude priznat kao pravni subjekt'''.Article 6. Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.