92-679: The Corfu Declaration ( Serbo-Croatian : Krfska deklaracija , Крфска декларација ) was an agreement between the prime minister of Serbia , Nikola Pašić , and the president of the Yugoslav Committee , Ante Trumbić , concluded on the Greek island of Corfu on 20 July 1917. Its purpose was to establish the method of unifying a future common state of the South Slavs living in Serbia, Montenegro and Austria-Hungary after
184-434: A federal state , leaving significant powers to federal units and safeguarding national rights. The resulting declaration glossed over the matter of the system of government. As a compromise, it specified only that the common Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes would be a constitutional monarchy ruled by the currently reigning Serbian Karađorđević dynasty , deferring most questions to a future Constitutional Assembly. During
276-605: A federation consisting of Serbia (including Vojvodina), Croatia (encompassing Croatia-Slavonia and Dalmatia), Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia and Montenegro . On 30 May 1917, South Slavic members of the Vienna Imperial Council established the Yugoslav Club chaired by Slovene People's Party president Anton Korošec . The Yugoslav Club presented the council with the May Declaration –
368-570: A second language . Bosnian is spoken by 2.7 million people worldwide, chiefly Bosniaks , including 2.0 million in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 200,000 in Serbia and 40,000 in Montenegro. Montenegrin is spoken by 300,000 people globally. The notion of Montenegrin as a separate standard from Serbian is relatively recent. In the 2011 census, around 229,251 Montenegrins, of the country's 620,000, declared Montenegrin as their native language. That figure
460-494: A Yugoslav state was established. From the very beginning, there were slightly different literary Serbian and Croatian standards, although both were based on the same dialect of Shtokavian, Eastern Herzegovinian . In the 20th century, Serbo-Croatian served as the lingua franca of the country of Yugoslavia , being the sole official language in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (when it was called "Serbo-Croato-Slovenian"), and afterwards
552-521: A degree of autonomy to local governments but advocated the abolition of historical lands in favour of new administrative units. Pašić let it be known that Croatian federalists may only exert some influence in Zagreb and its immediate surroundings and on the Adriatic islands largely claimed by Italy. The Declaration avoided most of these issues but referred to "counties and other administrative units". That
644-612: A dictionary, and a committee of Serbian and Croatian linguists was asked to prepare a pravopis . During the sixties both books were published simultaneously in Ijekavian Latin in Zagreb and Ekavian Cyrillic in Novi Sad. Yet Croatian linguists claim that it was an act of unitarianism. The evidence supporting this claim is patchy: Croatian linguist Stjepan Babić complained that the television transmission from Belgrade always used
736-416: A distinction between the two, and again in independent Bosnia and Herzegovina , "Bosnian", "Croatian", and "Serbian" were considered to be three names of a single official language. Croatian linguist Dalibor Brozović advocated the term Serbo-Croatian as late as 1988, claiming that in an analogy with Indo-European, Serbo-Croatian does not only name the two components of the same language, but simply charts
828-560: A language law that promulgated Croatian linguistic purism as a policy that tried to implement a complete elimination of Serbisms and internationalisms. On January 15, 1944, the Anti-Fascist Council of the People's Liberation of Yugoslavia ( AVNOJ ) declared Croatian, Serbian, Slovene, and Macedonian to be equal in the entire territory of Yugoslavia. In 1945 the decision to recognize Croatian and Serbian as separate languages
920-505: A large part of the nations have lived side by side under foreign overlords. During that period, the language was referred to under a variety of names, such as "Slavic" in general or "Serbian", "Croatian" or "Bosnian" in particular. In a classicizing manner, it was also referred to as " Illyrian ". The process of linguistic standardization of Serbo-Croatian was originally initiated in the mid-19th-century Vienna Literary Agreement by Croatian and Serbian writers and philologists, decades before
1012-534: A manifesto demanding the unification of Habsburg land inhabited by Croats, Slovenes, and Serbs into a democratic, free and independent state under Habsburg dynastic rule. The demand was made with reference to the principles of national self-determination and Croatian state right . The May Declaration was issued while the Triple Entente was still looking for ways to achieve a separate peace with Austria-Hungary and thereby detach it from Germany. This presented
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#17327733622461104-523: A number of writing systems: The oldest texts since the 11th century are in Glagolitic , and the oldest preserved text written completely in the Latin alphabet is Red i zakon sestara reda Svetog Dominika , from 1345. The Arabic alphabet had been used by Bosniaks ; Greek writing is out of use there, and Arabic and Glagolitic persisted so far partly in religious liturgies. The Serbian Cyrillic alphabet
1196-618: A part of the Glagolitic service as late as the middle of the 19th century. The earliest known Croatian Church Slavonic Glagolitic manuscripts are the Glagolita Clozianus and the Vienna Folia from the 11th century. The beginning of written Serbo-Croatian can be traced from the tenth century and on when Serbo-Croatian medieval texts were written in four scripts: Latin , Glagolitic , Early Cyrillic , and Bosnian Cyrillic ( bosančica/bosanica ). Serbo-Croatian competed with
1288-709: A problem for the Serbian government exiled on Corfu. It increased the risk of a trialist solution for the Habsburg South Slavs if a separate peace treaty materialised, preventing the fulfillment of Serbia's war objectives. Lacking strong Russian diplomatic backing since the February Revolution , Serbian prime minister Nikola Pašić therefore felt compelled to come to an arrangement with the Yugoslav Committee. The Yugoslav Committee
1380-500: A result of interaction between words: Also, there are some exceptions, mostly applied to foreign words and compounds, that favor morphological/etymological over phonetic spelling: One systemic exception is that the consonant clusters ds and dš are not respelled as ts and tš (although d tends to be unvoiced in normal speech in such clusters): Only a few words are intentionally "misspelled", mostly in order to resolve ambiguity: Through history, this language has been written in
1472-424: A separate Montenegrin standard. Like other South Slavic languages, Serbo-Croatian has a simple phonology , with the common five-vowel system and twenty-five consonants. Its grammar evolved from Common Slavic , with complex inflection , preserving seven grammatical cases in nouns, pronouns, and adjectives. Verbs exhibit imperfective or perfective aspect , with a moderately complex tense system. Serbo-Croatian
1564-474: A short tonic e, or leave vs. leaving? for a long tonic i, due to the prosody of final stressed syllables in English. General accent rules in the standard language: There are no other rules for accent placement, thus the accent of every word must be learned individually; furthermore, in inflection, accent shifts are common, both in type and position (the so-called " mobile paradigms "). The second rule
1656-475: A single language with two equal variants that have developed around Zagreb (western) and Belgrade (eastern)". The agreement insisted on the equal status of Cyrillic and Latin scripts, and of Ekavian and Ijekavian pronunciations. It also specified that Serbo-Croatian should be the name of the language in official contexts, while in unofficial use the traditional Serbian and Croatian were to be retained. Matica hrvatska and Matica srpska were to work together on
1748-405: A stem change. The imperfective aspect typically indicates that the action is unfinished, in progress, or repetitive; while the perfective aspect typically denotes that the action was completed, instantaneous, or of limited duration. Some Štokavian tenses (namely, aorist and imperfect) favor a particular aspect (but they are rarer or absent in Čakavian and Kajkavian). Actually, aspects "compensate" for
1840-537: A vote of the members of the parliament; "Yugoslavian" was opted for by the majority and legislated as the official language of the Triune Kingdom . The Austrian Empire , suppressing Pan-Slavism at the time, did not confirm this decision and legally rejected the legislation, but in 1867 finally settled on "Croatian or Serbian" instead. During the Austro-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina ,
1932-413: Is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia , Croatia , Bosnia and Herzegovina , and Montenegro . It is a pluricentric language with four mutually intelligible standard varieties , namely Serbian , Croatian , Bosnian , and Montenegrin . South Slavic languages historically formed a dialect continuum . The turbulent history of the area, particularly due to the expansion of
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#17327733622462024-560: Is a pro-drop language with flexible word order, subject–verb–object being the default. It can be written in either localized variants of Latin ( Gaj's Latin alphabet , Montenegrin Latin ) or Cyrillic ( Serbian Cyrillic , Montenegrin Cyrillic ), and the orthography is highly phonemic in all standards. Despite many linguistical similarities, the traits that separate all standardized varieties are clearly identifiable, although these differences are considered minimal. Serbo-Croatian
2116-521: Is likely to increase, due to the country's independence and strong institutional backing of the Montenegrin language. Serbo-Croatian is also a second language of many Slovenians and Macedonians , especially those born during the time of Yugoslavia. According to the 2002 census, Serbo-Croatian and its variants have the largest number of speakers of the minority languages in Slovenia. Outside
2208-406: Is normally voiced or voiceless if the last consonant is normally voiceless. This rule does not apply to approximants – a consonant cluster may contain voiced approximants and voiceless consonants; as well as to foreign words ( Washington would be transcribed as VašinGton ), personal names and when consonants are not inside of one syllable. /r/ can be syllabic, playing the role of
2300-483: Is not different from other armies of multilingual states, or in other specific institutions, such as international air traffic control where English is used worldwide. All variants of Serbo-Croatian were used in state administration and republican and federal institutions. Both Serbian and Croatian variants were represented in respectively different grammar books, dictionaries, school textbooks and in books known as pravopis (which detail spelling rules). Serbo-Croatian
2392-525: Is not strictly obeyed, especially in borrowed words. Comparative and historical linguistics offers some clues for memorising the accent position: If one compares many standard Serbo-Croatian words to e.g. cognate Russian words, the accent in the Serbo-Croatian word will be one syllable before the one in the Russian word, with the rising tone. Historically, the rising tone appeared when the place of
2484-562: Is spoken by 10 million people around the world, mostly in Serbia (7.8 million), Bosnia and Herzegovina (1.2 million), and Montenegro (300,000). Besides these, Serbian minorities are found in Kosovo , North Macedonia and in Romania . In Serbia, there are about 760,000 second-language speakers of Serbian, including Hungarians in Vojvodina and the 400,000 estimated Roma. In Kosovo , Serbian
2576-698: Is spoken by the members of the Serbian minority which approximates between 70,000 and 100,000. Familiarity of Kosovar Albanians with Serbian varies depending on age and education, and exact numbers are not available. Croatian is spoken by 6.8 million people in the world, including 4.1 million in Croatia and 600,000 in Bosnia and Herzegovina. A small Croatian minority that lives in Italy, known as Molise Croats , have somewhat preserved traces of Croatian. In Croatia, 170,000, mostly Italians and Hungarians , use it as
2668-455: Is still present even in the plural (unlike Russian and, in part, the Čakavian dialect ). They also have two numbers : singular and plural. However, some consider there to be three numbers ( paucal or dual, too), since (still preserved in closely related Slovene ) after two ( dva , dvije / dve ), three ( tri ) and four ( četiri ), and all numbers ending in them (e.g. twenty-two, ninety-three, one hundred four, but not twelve through fourteen)
2760-547: Is the only Slavic language with a pitch accent (simple tone ) system. This feature is present in some other Indo-European languages , such as Norwegian , Ancient Greek , and Punjabi . Neo-Shtokavian Serbo-Croatian, which is used as the basis for standard Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian, has four "accents", which involve either a rising or falling tone on either long or short vowels, with optional post-tonic lengths: The tone stressed vowels can be approximated in English with set vs. setting? said in isolation for
2852-401: Is typically referred to by names of its standardized varieties: Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin; it is rarely referred to by names of its sub-dialects, such as Bunjevac . In the language itself, it is typically known as srpskohrvatski / српскохрватски "Serbo-Croatian", hrvatskosrpski / хрватскoсрпски "Croato-Serbian", or informally naški / нашки "ours". Throughout
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2944-538: The First World War . Russia 's decision to withdraw diplomatic support for Serbia following the February Revolution , as well as the Yugoslav Committee's sidelining by the trialist reform initiatives launched in Austria-Hungary, motivated both sides to attempt to reach an agreement. Pašić and Trumbić's positions were disparate. Pašić advocated for a centralist government , while Trumbić argued for
3036-545: The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia . In the 9th century , Old Church Slavonic was adopted as the language of the liturgy in churches serving various Slavic nations. This language was gradually adapted to non-liturgical purposes and became known as the Croatian version of Old Slavonic. The two variants of the language, liturgical and non-liturgical, continued to be
3128-469: The Ottoman Empire , resulted in a patchwork of dialectal and religious differences. Due to population migrations, Shtokavian became the most widespread supradialect in the western Balkans, intruding westwards into the area previously occupied by Chakavian and Kajkavian . Bosniaks , Croats , and Serbs differ in religion and were historically often part of different cultural circles, although
3220-715: The Serbian Cyrillic alphabet , and Gaj and Daničić standardized the Croatian Latin alphabet , on the basis of vernacular speech phonemes and the principle of phonological spelling. In 1850 Serbian and Croatian writers and linguists signed the Vienna Literary Agreement , declaring their intention to create a unified standard. Thus a complex bi-variant language appeared, which the Serbs officially called "Serbo-Croatian" or "Serbian or Croatian" and
3312-527: The Serbian king . According to the scholar Dejan Medaković , Trumbić claimed he had to sign the Declaration as the only way for his people to be on the war's winning side. The Declaration stated that Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes were one "tri-named" people, and that the Karađorđević dynasty would reign in the new unified state, which would be organised as a parliamentary, constitutional monarchy. Finally,
3404-521: The Slovenes , and the Muslim Slavs ( Bosniaks ) – in support of trialist reform , or the establishment of a common South Slavic state independent of the empire. This common state was meant to be achieved through the realisation of Yugoslavist ideas and unification with the Kingdom of Serbia . Serbia considered the war an opportunity for territorial expansion. A committee tasked with determining
3496-762: The Treaty of London , the Triple Entente had promised Italy parts of Austria-Hungary's territory – sections of the Slovene Lands, Istria , and Dalmatia – to entice Italy to join the Entente. Most of the Committee members were from Dalmatia and saw the Treaty of London as a threat that could only be checked with Serbia's support, prompting them to accept Pašić's invitation to Corfu. In protest, Supilo resigned his committee membership. Despite radically different views on
3588-630: The Valun tablet , dated to the 11th century, written in Glagolitic and Latin; and the Inscription of Župa Dubrovačka , a Glagolitic tablet dated to the 11th century. The Baška tablet from the late 11th century was written in Glagolitic. It is a large stone tablet found in the small Church of St. Lucy, Jurandvor on the Croatian island of Krk that contains text written mostly in Chakavian in
3680-613: The " Vinodol Codex " of 1288, both written in the Chakavian dialect. The Shtokavian dialect literature, based almost exclusively on Chakavian original texts of religious provenance ( missals , breviaries , prayer books ) appeared almost a century later. The most important purely Shtokavian vernacular text is the Vatican Croatian Prayer Book ( c. 1400 ). Both the language used in legal texts and that used in Glagolitic literature gradually came under
3772-467: The "enemy" (meaning Austria-Hungary). On the other hand, Pašić touted universal suffrage and simple parliamentary democracy , interpreted by Trumbić as a way to ensure the rule of the Serbs as the most populous ethnic group in the proposed state. In response to Trumbić's demands, Pašić said that if the Croats insisted on a federation, the Serbian government would abandon the unification project in favour of
Corfu Declaration - Misplaced Pages Continue
3864-417: The "tribal" names, three flags and religions, and two "alphabets". At the same time, the Declaration limited the powers of the future Constituent Assembly by deciding on the monarchy and the specific ruling dynasty. It also decided the name of the future state as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes – following Serbian objections against the name of "Yugoslavia" as a Western invention designed to stamp out
3956-459: The 1921 constitution. In 1929, the constitution was suspended, and the country was renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia , while the official language of Serbo-Croato-Slovene was reinstated in the 1931 constitution. In June 1941, the Nazi puppet Independent State of Croatia began to rid the language of "Eastern" (Serbian) words, and shut down Serbian schools. The totalitarian dictatorship introduced
4048-593: The Balkans, there are over two million native speakers of the language(s), especially in countries which are frequent targets of immigration, such as Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Sweden, and the United States. Serbo-Croatian is a highly inflected language . Traditional grammars list seven cases for nouns and adjectives : nominative , genitive , dative , accusative , vocative , locative , and instrumental , reflecting
4140-563: The Constitution and law." In 2017, the " Declaration on the Common Language " ( Deklaracija o zajedničkom jeziku ) was signed by a group of NGOs and linguists from former Yugoslavia . It states that all standardized variants belong to a common polycentric language with equal status. About 18 million people declare their native language as either 'Bosnian', 'Croatian', 'Serbian', 'Montenegrin', or 'Serbo-Croatian'. Serbian
4232-468: The Croatian angular Glagolitic script. The Charter of Ban Kulin of 1189, written by Ban Kulin of Bosnia, was an early Shtokavian text, written in Bosnian Cyrillic. The luxurious and ornate representative texts of Serbo-Croatian Church Slavonic belong to the later era, when they coexisted with the Serbo-Croatian vernacular literature. The most notable are the " Missal of Duke Novak" from
4324-440: The Croatian variant because their languages are also Ekavian. This is a common situation in other pluricentric languages, e.g. the variants of German differ according to their prestige, the variants of Portuguese too. Moreover, all languages differ in terms of prestige: "the fact is that languages (in terms of prestige, learnability etc.) are not equal, and the law cannot make them equal". The 1946, 1953, and 1974 constitutions of
4416-562: The Croatian weekly journal Forum published the Declaration again in 2012, accompanied by a critical analysis. West European scientists judge the Yugoslav language policy as an exemplary one: although three-quarters of the population spoke one language, no single language was official on a federal level. Official languages were declared only at the level of constituent republics and provinces, and very generously: Vojvodina had five (among them Slovak and Romanian, spoken by 0.5 per cent of
4508-491: The Croats "Croato-Serbian", or "Croatian or Serbian". Yet, in practice, the variants of the conceived common literary language served as different literary variants, chiefly differing in lexical inventory and stylistic devices. The common phrase describing this situation was that Serbo-Croatian or "Croatian or Serbian" was a single language. In 1861, after a long debate, the Croatian Sabor put up several proposed names to
4600-479: The Declaration stated that the new government would respect the equality of "religion and alphabets", voting rights, and so forth. Trumbić proposed to establish a provisional government of the new state, but Pašić declined in order to avoid undermining the inherent diplomatic advantage Serbia enjoyed as an already-recognised state. In essence, the Corfu Declaration was a political manifesto disregarded by
4692-808: The Dictionary for being unitaristic that were written by Croatian linguists. And finally, Croatian linguists ignored the fact that the material for the Pravopisni rječnik came from the Croatian Philological Society. Regardless of these facts, Croatian intellectuals brought the Declaration on the Status and Name of the Croatian Literary Language in 1967. On occasion of the publication's 45th anniversary,
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#17327733622464784-525: The Italian contribution to the war effort. This view was specifically advocated by Fasces of Revolutionary Action Benito Mussolini . Nationalists sought to capitalise on identifying with nationalistic positions towards the Adriatic Question by presenting the Treaty of London (with addition of Fiume (Rijeka) to Italy) as a fair territorial compromise threatened by the imperialistic thinking of
4876-481: The Latin alphabet — which was true, but was not proof of unequal rights, but of frequency of use and prestige. Babić further complained that the Novi Sad Dictionary (1967) listed side by side words from both the Croatian and Serbian variants wherever they differed, which one can view as proof of careful respect for both variants, and not of unitarism. Moreover, Croatian linguists criticized those parts of
4968-636: The Lika region in northwestern Croatia (1368), "Evangel from Reims" (1395, named after the town of its final destination), Hrvoje's Missal from Bosnia and Split in Dalmatia (1404), and the first printed book in Serbo-Croatian, the Glagolitic Missale Romanum Glagolitice (1483). During the 13th century Serbo-Croatian vernacular texts began to appear, the most important among them being the "Istrian land survey" of 1275 and
5060-470: The Serbian government with respect to the qualified majority needed to adopt a constitution, but upheld when its provisions coincided with Serbian interests. Conversely, Croatian autonomist politicians deemed the provisions on the qualified majority as a binding agreement. The Declaration was a compromise by the Yugoslav Committee and the Pašić government. It was hailed as a South Slavic Magna Carta for recognising
5152-638: The Serbian government, the Yugoslav Committee disagreed with it on the method of unification and the system of government. This conflict resulted from a disagreement between Pašić and Supilo. Pašić advocated a centralised government based in Belgrade, while Supilo wanted a federation and accused Pašić of championing a Greater Serbian agenda. When Pašić invited the Yugoslav Committee for talks in May 1917, Supilo warned against discussions without determining Serbian intentions first. Committee members learned that, under
5244-710: The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia did not name specific official languages at the federal level. The 1992 constitution of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia , in 2003 renamed Serbia and Montenegro , stated in Article 15: "In the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the Serbian language in its ekavian and ijekavian dialects and the Cyrillic script shall be official, while the Latin script shall be in official use as provided for by
5336-478: The Yugoslav Committee. International support only gradually began shifting away from the preservation of Austria-Hungary in 1917. That year, Russia sued for peace following the Russian Revolution while the United States, whose president , Woodrow Wilson , advocated the principle of self-determination , entered the war . Nonetheless, in his Fourteen Points speech, Wilson only promised autonomy for
5428-469: The accent shifted to the preceding syllable (the so-called "Neo-Shtokavian retraction"), but the quality of this new accent was different – its melody still "gravitated" towards the original syllable. Most Shtokavian (Neo-Shtokavian) dialects underwent this shift, but Chakavian, Kajkavian and the Old-Shtokavian dialects did not. Accent diacritics are not used in the ordinary orthography, but only in
5520-650: The address to Alexander from specifying a federalist system of government based on the Corfu Declaration to a display of loyalty and expression of wishes. On 1 December, Prince Regent Alexander accepted the offer to proclaim unification with no constraints imposed. Serbo-Croatian language Serbo-Croatian ( / ˌ s ɜːr b oʊ k r oʊ ˈ eɪ ʃ ən / SUR -boh-kroh- AY -shən ) – also called Serbo-Croat ( / ˌ s ɜːr b oʊ ˈ k r oʊ æ t / SUR -boh- KROH -at ), Serbo-Croat-Bosnian ( SCB ), Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian ( BCS ), and Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian ( BCMS ) –
5612-532: The circumstances of Italian armed incursion, the National Council drew up instructions for its delegation to the Serbian prince regent Alexander , offering to proclaim the unification of the South Slavs and the creation of a new state. The instructions were drawn up by relying on the Corfu Declaration and the National Council's federalist ideas. The delegation ignored their instructions and changed
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#17327733622465704-632: The country's war aims produced a programme to establish a wider South Slavic state by adding the South Slav-inhabited parts of the Habsburg lands – Croatia-Slavonia , Slovene Lands , Vojvodina , Bosnia and Herzegovina , and Dalmatia – to Serbia. In its December 1914 Niš Declaration , the National Assembly of Serbia announced the struggle to liberate and unify "unliberated brothers" as its national war aim. This contravened
5796-412: The creation of Greater Serbia. After twenty-eight plenary meetings over the course of thirty-five days, differences of opinion became apparent, and no agreement on the system of government was reached. The resulting Corfu Declaration glossed over this, leaving it to the future Constituent Assembly to decide by an unspecified qualified majority – i.e. not by a simple majority vote – before being approved by
5888-409: The discussions, which lasted 35 days, Trumbić had little support for his view from the other members of the Yugoslav Committee, who were preoccupied with the threat posed by Italy , which had been promised territory under the 1915 Treaty of London . During the First World War , pressure developed in the parts of Austria-Hungary inhabited by its South Slavic population – the Croats , the Serbs ,
5980-462: The following decades, and accepted by Croatian Zagreb grammarians in 1854 and 1859. At that time, Serb and Croat lands were still part of the Ottoman and Austrian Empires . Officially, the language was called variously Serbo-Croat, Croato-Serbian, Serbian and Croatian, Croatian and Serbian, Serbian or Croatian, Croatian or Serbian. Unofficially, Serbs and Croats typically called the language "Serbian" or "Croatian", respectively, without implying
6072-463: The genitive singular is used, and after all other numbers five ( pet ) and up, the genitive plural is used. (The number one [ jedan ] is treated as an adjective.) Adjectives are placed in front of the noun they modify and must agree in both case and number with it. There are seven tenses for verbs: past , present , future , exact future, aorist , imperfect , and pluperfect ; and three moods : indicative , imperative , and conditional . However,
6164-399: The history of the South Slavs, the vernacular, literary, and written languages (e.g. Chakavian, Kajkavian, Shtokavian) of the various regions and ethnicities developed and diverged independently. Prior to the 19th century, they were collectively called "Illyria", "Slavic", "Slavonian", "Bosnian", "Dalmatian", "Serbian" or "Croatian". Since the nineteenth century, the term Illyrian or Illyric
6256-410: The influence of the vernacular, which considerably affected its phonological , morphological , and lexical systems. From the 14th and the 15th centuries, both secular and religious songs at church festivals were composed in the vernacular. Writers of early Serbo-Croatian religious poetry ( začinjavci ) gradually introduced the vernacular into their works. These začinjavci were the forerunners of
6348-421: The interests of the Triple Entente , which favoured the continued existence of Austria-Hungary as a counterweight to the influence of the German Empire . In late 1915, combined Austro-Hungarian, German and Bulgarian forces defeated and occupied Serbia, forcing its government and remaining troops to withdraw across Albania and seek refuge on the Greek island of Corfu . In April 1915, the Yugoslav Committee
6440-424: The language of all three nations in this territory was declared "Bosnian" until the death of administrator von Kállay in 1907, at which point the name was changed to "Serbo-Croatian". With unification of the first the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes – the approach of Karadžić and the Illyrians became dominant. The official language was called "Serbo-Croato-Slovenian" ( srpsko-hrvatsko-slovenački ) in
6532-419: The latter three tenses are typically used only in Shtokavian writing, and the time sequence of the exact future is more commonly formed through an alternative construction. In addition, like most Slavic languages, the Shtokavian verb also has one of two aspects : perfective or imperfective . Most verbs come in pairs, with the perfective verb being created out of the imperfective by adding a prefix or making
6624-425: The limits of the region in which it is spoken and includes everything between the limits ('Bosnian' and 'Montenegrin'). Today, use of the term "Serbo-Croatian" is controversial due to the prejudice that nation and language must match. It is still used for lack of a succinct alternative, though alternative names have emerged, such as Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (BCS), which is often seen in political contexts such as
6716-401: The linguistic or language-learning literature (e.g. dictionaries, orthography and grammar books). However, there are very few minimal pairs where an error in accent can lead to misunderstanding. Serbo-Croatian orthography is almost entirely phonetic. Thus, most words should be spelled as they are pronounced. In practice, the writing system does not take into account allophones which occur as
6808-515: The more established literary languages of Latin and Old Slavonic. Old Slavonic developed into the Serbo-Croatian variant of Church Slavonic between the 12th and 16th centuries. Among the earliest attestations of Serbo-Croatian are: the Humac tablet , dating from the 10th or 11th century, written in Bosnian Cyrillic and Glagolitic; the Plomin tablet , dating from the same era, written in Glagolitic;
6900-587: The name "Serbia". Trumbić was largely isolated in his opposition to the centralism championed by Pašić; most of the Yugoslav Committee sided with Pašić on the issue. While Trumbić insisted on leaving the internal affairs, education, judiciary, and economy (other than customs, currency, credit and management of state property) to federal units and asked for veto powers for the "tribes" in the Constitutional Assembly to ensure decision-making by consensus, Pašić rejected his ideas. Pašić favoured granting
6992-529: The newly proclaimed State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs in the former Habsburg lands, met for another round of negotiations in Geneva on 6–9 November 1918. At the conference, the Yugoslav Committee and the National Council persuaded Pašić to sign the Geneva Declaration renouncing the unitarist concept of the future union. However, the Serbian government quickly repudiated the Declaration. Pressed by
7084-492: The official language of four out of six republics of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia . The breakup of Yugoslavia affected language attitudes, so that social conceptions of the language separated along ethnic and political lines. Since the breakup of Yugoslavia, Bosnian has likewise been established as an official standard in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and there is an ongoing movement to codify
7176-402: The original seven cases of Proto-Slavic , and indeed older forms of Serbo-Croatian itself. However, in modern Shtokavian the locative has almost merged into dative (the only difference is based on accent in some cases), and the other cases can be shown declining; namely: Like most Slavic languages, there are mostly three genders for nouns: masculine, feminine, and neuter, a distinction which
7268-508: The peoples of Austria-Hungary. Preservation of the dual monarchy was not abandoned before the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918. By then, the Allies became convinced that they could not resist a Communist revolution . As Austria-Hungary disintegrated, representatives of the Serbian government and opposition, the Yugoslav Committee, and representatives of the National Council of
7360-464: The population), and Kosovo four (Albanian, Turkish, Romany and Serbo-Croatian). Newspapers, radio and television studios used sixteen languages, fourteen were used as languages of tuition in schools, and nine at universities. Only the Yugoslav People's Army used Serbo-Croatian as the sole language of command, with all other languages represented in the army's other activities—however, this
7452-467: The relative lack of tenses, because verbal aspect determines whether the act is completed or in progress in the referred time. The Serbo-Croatian vowel system is simple, with only five vowels in Shtokavian. All vowels are monophthongs . The oral vowels are as follows: The vowels can be short or long, but the phonetic quality does not change depending on the length. In a word, vowels can be long in
7544-578: The rich literary production of the 16th-century literature, which, depending on the area, was Chakavian-, Kajkavian-, or Shtokavian-based. The language of religious poems, translations, miracle and morality plays contributed to the popular character of medieval Serbo-Croatian literature. One of the earliest dictionaries, also in the Slavic languages as a whole, was the Bosnian–Turkish Dictionary of 1631 authored by Muhamed Hevaji Uskufi and
7636-403: The stressed syllable and the syllables following it, never in the ones preceding it. The consonant system is more complicated, and its characteristic features are series of affricate and palatal consonants. As in English, voice is phonemic , but aspiration is not. In consonant clusters all consonants are either voiced or voiceless. All the consonants are voiced if the last consonant
7728-498: The syllable nucleus in certain words (occasionally, it can even have a long accent). For example, the tongue-twister navrh brda vrba mrda involves four words with syllabic /r/ . A similar feature exists in Czech , Slovak , and Macedonian . Very rarely other sonorants can be syllabic, like /l/ (in bicikl ), /ʎ/ (surname Štarklj ), /n/ (unit njutn ), as well as /m/ and /ɲ/ in slang . Apart from Slovene , Serbo-Croatian
7820-411: The system of government in the proposed common state, a series of meetings were held from 15 June to 20 July in order to reach a consensus. The negotiating parties mistrusted each other. The Yugoslav Committee based their positions on local autonomies, legal institutions, federalism and the Croatian state right, but the Serbian government considered those positions vestiges of the struggle against
7912-416: Was a kind of soft standardisation. However, legal equality could not dampen the prestige Serbo-Croatian had: since it was the language of three quarters of the population, it functioned as an unofficial lingua franca. And within Serbo-Croatian, the Serbian variant, with twice as many speakers as the Croatian, enjoyed greater prestige, reinforced by the fact that Slovene and Macedonian speakers preferred it to
8004-549: Was also placed under pressure. It claimed to speak on behalf of South Slavs within Austria-Hungary, but was also openly looking after its own interests. The May Declaration presented a challenge to the Yugoslav Committee and the government of Serbia by depriving them of initiative in the South Slavic unification process. This led them both to prioritise drafting a unification programme for the South Slavic lands inside and outside Austria-Hungary. Despite being partially funded by
8096-486: Was established as an ad hoc group with no official capacity. Partially funded by the Serbian government, it consisted of intellectuals and politicians from Austria-Hungary claiming to represent the interests of South Slavs. Ante Trumbić was the Committee's president, but Frano Supilo , the co-founder of the ruling Croat-Serb Coalition in Croatia-Slavonia, was its most prominent member. Supilo advocated for
8188-495: Was later interpreted as a break with the historical rights of the historical provinces. Similarly, the Croatian Sabor was given no role in the Declaration. The Corfu Declaration contained no institutional safeguards of national rights. According to Ivo Banac , the Yugoslav Committee chose not to insist on those matters as it was preoccupied with the Italian threat. In Italy, the Declaration was portrayed as anti-Italian in spirit, aimed at splitting Italy from its allies and diminishing
8280-583: Was reversed in favor of a single Serbo-Croatian or Croato-Serbian language. In the Communist -dominated second Yugoslavia , ethnic issues eased to an extent, but the matter of language remained blurred and unresolved. In 1954, major Serbian and Croatian writers, linguists and literary critics, backed by Matica srpska and Matica hrvatska signed the Novi Sad Agreement , which in its first conclusion stated: "Serbs, Croats and Montenegrins share
8372-538: Was used quite often (thus creating confusion with the Illyrian language ). Although the word Illyrian was used on a few occasions before , its widespread usage began after Ljudevit Gaj and several other prominent linguists met at Ljudevit Vukotinović 's house to discuss the issue in 1832. The term Serbo-Croatian was first used by Jacob Grimm in 1824, popularized by the Viennese philologist Jernej Kopitar in
8464-456: Was written in the Arebica script. In the mid-19th century, Serbian (led by self-taught writer and folklorist Vuk Stefanović Karadžić ) and most Croatian writers and linguists (represented by the Illyrian movement and led by Ljudevit Gaj and Đuro Daničić ), proposed the use of the most widespread dialect, Shtokavian , as the base for their common standard language. Karadžić standardised
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