181-576: Overseas The Serbs of Croatia ( Serbo-Croatian : Срби у Хрватској / Srbi u Hrvatskoj ) or Croatian Serbs ( Serbo-Croatian : Хрватски Срби / Hrvatski Srbi ) constitute the largest national minority in Croatia . The community is predominantly Eastern Orthodox Christian by religion, as opposed to the Croats who are Catholic . In some regions of modern-day Croatia, mainly in southern Dalmatia , ethnic Serbs possibly have been present from
362-623: 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
543-545: A "Serbian land", and the recognition of Serbia as an independent state at the 1878 Congress of Berlin , the differences between Croats and Serbs in Dalmatia increased. Following Croat enthusiasm with the successful 1878 Austro-Hungarian conquest of Bosnia and Herzegovina , during which many Croatian soldiers died, and them seeking unification of Dalmatia and the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia, the conflict between Croats and Serbs
724-646: A Croatian military success in Operation Storm in 1995 and subsequent peaceful reintegration of the remaining renegade territory in eastern Slavonia in 1998 as a result of the signed Erdut Agreement from 1995. Local Serbs, on the ground that Agreement, established the Serb National Council and gained the right to establish the Joint Council of Municipalities . During and in the aftermath of Operation Storm about 200,000 Serbs fled from
905-494: 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
1086-569: A buffer against Ottoman incursions. The Military frontiers had territory of modern Croatia, Serbia, Romania and Hungary. The colonists were granted small tracts of land, exempted from some obligations, and were to retain a share of all war booty. The Grenzers elected their own captains (vojvode) and magistrates (knezovi). All Orthodox settlers were promised freedom of worship. By 1538, the Croatian and Slavonian Military Frontier were established. Austrians offered land to Serbs and Vlachs which acted as
1267-612: 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
1448-598: A disruptive element and enemies of the Croatian people, and immediately started with their prosecution. One-third of Serbs were to be killed, one-third expelled and one-third forcibly converted to Catholicism, according to a formula devised by Ustaše ministers. Upon the establishment of the NDH, Ustaše officials immediately began making harsh statements against the Serbs. Although some of the prominent Serbs first offered cooperation to
1629-416: 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
1810-578: A few thousand Serbs moved to Croatian territory. During World War II , Serbs were targeted for extermination as part of genocide by the Ustashas in the Nazi German puppet state Independent State of Croatia (NDH). After the beginning of the breakup of Yugoslavia and Croatia's proclamation of independence , the Serbs living in Croatia rebelled against the Croatian government and proclaimed
1991-623: A fresco depicting him. Croatia entered union with Hungary in the beginning of the 12th century. Serbia also entered close relations with Hungary ( Béla II married a Serbian princess ). Beloš , a member of the Serbian royal family, became the "Ban of Croatia and Dalmatia" in 1142. By the early 13th century, the territory of Hum was under jurisdiction of the Western i.e. Roman Church, while the Serbian Orthodox Church established
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#17327723853622172-547: A joint struggle against the Partisans, in return, Serb villages would be protected by the NDH authorities together with the Chetniks from "attacks by communists, so-called Partisans". The goal of the Chetniks, based on a 1941 directive, was the creation of an ethnically homogeneous Greater Serbia . The largest Chetnik massacres took place in eastern Bosnia within the NDH where they preceded any significant Ustashe operations. In
2353-560: 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
2534-505: 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
2715-460: A letter which mentioned "Rascians, who live in our cities of Medvedgrad , Rakovac , both Kalinik and in Koprivnica ". Matthias Corvinus complained in a letter from 1462 that 200,000 peoples during the previous three years had been taken from his country by Turks, but this information was mistakenly used in Serbian and other historiographies as a reference for Serb migration to Hungary. After
2896-483: A majority choose to remain citizens of other countries in which they gained citizenship. However, Croatia also adopted discriminatory measures to prevent the return of Serbs after war, while the Croatian forces continued with abuses on a large scale for months afterward, which included destruction of Serb property. Also, Serbs are still face significant barriers to employment and to regain their property. Consequently, today Serbs constitute 4% of Croatian population, down from
3077-468: A meeting that supposedly showed Tuđman had "planned ethnic cleansing and other war crimes", including "Croatia’s final solution" of its Serbian problem. Under the influence of propaganda and with the support from Serbia as well as in response to actions by President Tudjman's administration, rebelled Serbs established an unrecognized state called Republic of Serbian Krajina (RSK) in hopes of achieving independence and complete self-governance from Croatia. As
3258-688: A new constitution in which Serbs were classified as a national minority . Previously Serbs were considered autochthonous constituent of Croatia. In the first paragraph of the Article 12, Croatian was specified as the official language and alphabet, and dual-language road signs were torn down even in Serb majority areas. Furthermore, a number of Serbs were removed from the bureaucracies and the police and replaced by ethnic Croats. Many Serbs in government lost their jobs, and HDZ made themselves target of Serbian propaganda by having party members attempting to rehabilitate
3439-523: 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
3620-618: 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
3801-612: A ravine close to the camp. Chetnik propaganda claimed that the Partisan resistance consisted of Jews. Some Jews who hid in the countryside were killed and robbed by Chetniks. As the Chetniks increased their cooperation with the Germans, their attitude toward the Jews in the areas under their control deteriorated, and they identified the Jews with the hated Communists. There were many instances of Chetniks murdering Jews or handing them over to
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#17327723853623982-403: A refugee column was shelled. Although it was very difficult to determine the number of properties destroyed during and after Operation Storm since a large number of houses sustained some degree of damage since the beginning of the war, Human Rights Watch (HRW) estimated that more than 5,000 houses were destroyed in the area during and after the battle. Out of the 122 Serbian Orthodox churches in
4163-500: 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
4344-424: 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
4525-524: A series of protests in late 2013 against the application of bilingualism in Vukovar , whereby Serbian and the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet were assigned co-official status due to the local minority population. In 2015 Amnesty International reported that Croatian Serbs continued to face discrimination in public sector employment and the restitution of tenancy rights to social housing vacated during
4706-474: 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
4887-475: 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
5068-405: 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
5249-537: 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 ,
5430-413: 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
5611-560: 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
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5792-521: 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
5973-406: 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
6154-483: 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
6335-525: 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
6516-562: 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
6697-643: 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
6878-455: 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)
7059-547: 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
7240-401: 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
7421-583: The cordon sanitaire together with Croats against Turkish incursions from the Ottoman Empire . The Military frontiers are virtually identical to the present Serbian settlements (war-time Republic of Serbian Krajina ). Colonization into Habsburg lands continued from 1526 to well into the seventeenth century. Serbian communities were dotted about until the twentieth century, preserving memories of their origin. In 1593, Provveditore Generale Cristoforo Valier mentions three nations constituting
Serbs of Croatia - Misplaced Pages Continue
7602-607: The 1913 parliamentary election , the Croatian Peasant Party received 12,917 votes and only 3 seats, while the Serb Independent Party received 11,704 votes and 17 seats. Serbs Mišćević, Pribićević, Krajnović, and Budisavljević received 1,062 votes, which was enough for all four of them to get elected, while Croat M. Uroić from the Party of Rights won 1,138 votes but hadn't been elected. According to
7783-730: The Early Middle Ages . Serbs from modern-day Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina started actively migrating to Croatia at a time the Habsburg monarchy was engaged in a series of wars against the Ottoman Empire . Several migration waves happened after 1538, when the Emperor Ferdinand I granted them the right to settle on the territory of the Military Frontier . In exchange for land and exemption from taxation, they had to conduct military service and participate in
7964-489: 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
8145-503: The Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia , at the time ruled by Károly Khuen-Héderváry , were extremely disadvantaged so intellectuals did not want to link themselves to them, while at the same time they found newly created Kingdoms of Serbia and Montenegro with their idea of unification of the South Slavs, appealing. With the creation of Yugoslavia , their political goals were achieved, and after that these "one-time Serbs" disappeared from
8326-463: The Liberation of Yugoslavia . According to the 2021 census there were 123,892 ethnic Serbs living in Croatia, 3.2% of the total population. Their number was reduced by more than two-thirds in the aftermath of the 1991–95 War in Croatia as the 1991 pre-war census had reported 581,663 Serbs living in Croatia, 12.2% of the total population. In the 10th-century De Administrando Imperio (DAI),
8507-747: The Metropolitanate of Karlovci who were educated in monasteries outside Croatia under the guidance of SPC clergy who came to the southwestern region of the Habsburg monarchy during the Great Migrations of the Serbs (1690–1739). In 1695, Serbian Patriarch Arsenije III Čarnojević organized the SPC's hierarchy in Croatia – the territory of the Military Frontier was 'subjugated' to the Eparchy of Gornji Karlovac , and Varaždin Generalate and
8688-813: The Orlović clan settled in Lika and Senj in 1432, later joining the Uskoks . In 1436 on the Cetina , Croats, Vlachs, and Serbs appeared at the same time living on the estate of Ivan Frankopan . Serbs are reported in Hungarian documents as living in Croatia in 1437 (three documents call the Serbs in Syrmia and Slavonia as Rascianos – Rascians ) and on 22 November 1447, the Hungarian King Ladislaus V wrote
8869-561: The Ottoman Empire to settle as free peasant soldiers, establishing the Military Frontiers ( Militärgrenze ) in 1522 (hence they were known as Grenzers , Krajišnici ). They were mostly of Orthodox faith, Serbs and Vlachs (Romance-speaking). Catholic Vlachs were assimilated into Croats, while the Orthodox, under the jurisdiction of the Serbian Orthodox Church , assimilated into Serbs. The militarized frontier would serve as
9050-406: 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
9231-809: The Republic of Serbian Krajina (RSK) on parts of Croatian territory, which led to the Croatian War of Independence (1991–1995). Several RSK leaders have been later convicted of war crimes by the ICTY . After the Croatian Army 's Operation Storm , the RSK ceased to exist, its territory was reincorporated into Croatia, and approximately 200,000 Serbs fled from the country. In the post-war period, Serbs were exposed to discriminatory measures and rhetoric , including barriers to employment and property rights, and use of
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#17327723853629412-602: The Serbian Bank in Zagreb , the Association of Serbian Agricultural Cooperatives and the Serbian Business Association 'Privrednik' . In 1894, Srbobran, a journal of Serbs in Croatia, which was funded by the Serbian government, published an article titled Our First Decennial in which the author described the awakening of Croatian national consciousness and aspirations to Western values among
9593-663: 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
9774-583: The Serbian royal family took refuge in Croatia amid dynastic rivalry and war with the First Bulgarian Empire in the 9th and 10th century. Stefan Vojislav (r. 1018–1043) ruled a territory that included the coastal region from Ston in the north down to Skadar by 1040 after his rebellion against Byzantine rule. Mihailo Vojislavljević (1050–1081) built the St. Michael's Church in Ston , which has
9955-581: The Uskoks : "natives of Senj, Croatians, and Morlachs from the Turkish parts". Many of the Uskoks, who fought a guerrilla war with the Ottoman Empire were Orthodox Christian Serbs, who fled from Ottoman Turkish rule and settled in White Carniola and Žumberak . The Vlachs from Glamoč , Srb and Una area move in among Orthodox Christians and settling in 1530 under protection of King Ferdinand I. on
10136-630: 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
10317-882: The Vukovar massacre , the Škabrnja massacre , the Tovarnik massacre , the Široka Kula massacre , Petrinja killings and the Zagreb rocket attacks . According to the Croatian Association of Prisoners in Serbian Concentration Camps , a total of 8,000 Croatian civilians and prisoners of war (a large number after the fall of Vukovar ) went through Serb prison camps such as Velepromet camp , Sremska Mitrovica camp , Stajićevo camp , Begejci camp and others where they were subjected to abuse and torture. A total of 300 people died in them. Meanwhile, Serbs living in Croatian towns, especially those near
10498-476: The breakup of Yugoslavia , on 8 July 1989 Serbs held a rally in Knin during which numerous Chetnik symbols were exhibited and a JNA military intervention against Croatia was invoked. With the introduction of the multiparty system, the first ethnic Serb parties were founded in Croatia, largest being Serb Democratic Party (SDS). Soon afterward, extremist leaders of the Serb movements in Lika, Northern Dalmatia, Kordun, and Podunavlje called for armed rebellion against
10679-474: 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
10860-499: The 1910 census, 644,955 Serbs lived on the territory of the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia, accounting for 24.5% of the population. In 1900, 95,000 Serbs, accounting for 16% of the population, lived in the Kingdom of Dalmatia. Immediately upon the outbreak of the World War I , all organizations that the government considered favored unification of South Slavs or Serbia, which was on the side of the Allied Powers , were banned. Josip Frank 's associates took advantage of some provocations and
11041-408: 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
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#173277238536211222-593: The 1991 pre-war census had reported 581,663 Serbs living in Croatia, 12.2% of the total population. Counties with significant Serb minority (7.50% or more): Cities with significant Serb minority (10% or more): 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 ) –
11403-428: The 1991–95 war together. The expelled Croatian Serbs were the largest refugee population in Europe prior to the 2022 Ukraine war. Many prominent Croatian Serbs have become internationally recognized in their fields, such as Nikola Tesla , Milutin Milanković , Sava Šumanović , Rade Šerbedžija , Siniša Mihajlović and Peja Stojaković . According to the 2021 census, there were 123,892 Serbs living in Croatia (3.2% of
11584-475: 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
11765-418: The Constantine VII's consideration about the regional population ethnic identity is based on Serbian political rule during the expansion of Časlav in the 10th century and does not indicate ethnic origin. John Van Antwerp Fine Jr. and Noel Malcolm believe that what is today western and proper Bosnia and Herzegovina was part of Croatia , while the rest was divided between Croatia and Serbia . Some members of
11946-437: 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
12127-401: 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
12308-408: The Croatian Parliament were Serbs, and Serbs occupied the highest ranks in the judiciary. The main goal of favoring the Serbs was to encourage inter-ethnic (Croat/Serb) conflicts which would lead to the preventing of Croatian resistance against the Austrian Empires' state policies. By the end of the 19th century, on the Vladimir Matijević 's initiative, Serbs established a number of institutions such as
12489-406: The Croatian government, violence against Croats and refused to recognize legally elected Croatian authorities. By this point, several opposition parties in Serbia, such as Vojislav Šešelj 's Serbian Radical Party , were openly calling for a Greater Serbia that would incorporate Serbs living in different regions of Yugoslavia into one state, rejecting the then existing boundaries of the republics as
12670-409: The Croatian government-controlled areas, like Milan Đukić , while others, like Veljko Džakula , unsuccessfully tried to organize the parties in the rebelled areas, but their work was prevented by Serb nationalists. On 17 August 1990, part of the Croatian Serbs, supported by Serbia, rebelled against Croatian government in the so-called Log Revolution . On 22 December 1990, Croatian Parliament ratified
12851-592: The Croatian lands and in the next stage conquer Serbia and penetrate across Macedonia to Thessaloniki . The idea was that it was easier to "govern Belgrade and Zagreb if the same language was spoken in them". Geostrategic position of Belgrade in relation to Zagreb further contributed to favoring the Serbs whom Austrians did not perceive as a danger, unlike Croats who had own language, politicians, national consciousness, laws, military tradition and prepared army, as well as international treaties which have affirmed their rights , so Austrians needed someone (Serbs) to discipline
13032-440: 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
13213-622: 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
13394-544: 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
13575-433: The Croats emphasize "Slovene, Yugoslavian, Slavic, Illyrian", which Mihovil Pavlinović considered destructive to Croatia so he used only attributes "Croatian" in his political program. Ban Ivan Mažuranić abolished Serbian education autonomy, which was carried out by the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC), as part of his educational reforms and liberal endeavors. Despite the interpretation of this move as anti-Serbian, some of
13756-474: The Croats. The same was done by Hungary which became a strong political factor after 1848 and that wished to expand into the Southeast Europe , which was particularly strong during the reign of Károly Khuen-Héderváry over Croatia. The revolutionary 1848 and the process of building a modern Croatian nation resulted in closer co-operation between Croats and Serbs and recognition of their equality in
13937-399: The Cyrillic script was prohibited. Ustaše were making lists of Serbs which they used for deportations to Serbia . About 175,000 Serbs were deported from NDH to Serbia during the first two years of NDH's existence. The regime systematically and brutally massacred Serbs in villages in the countryside, using a variety of tools. In addition, Nazi-style concentration camps were set up for enemies of
14118-808: 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,
14299-818: The Germans. A certain change in relations towards Serbs in NDH took place in the spring of 1942 on German demand, as the Germans realized that the Ustaše policy towards Serbs strengthened their rebellion, which was putting pressure on the German army that had to send more of its troops to the NDH territory. Afterwards, Ustaše founded the Croatian Orthodox Church and Serbs were recruited to the Croatian Home Guard units. Ustaše stopped with deportations of Serbs and their forced conversions to Catholicism. However, these measures did not significantly affect
14480-697: The ICTY), 250,000 (according to Human Rights Watch ) and 500,000 (according to the UNHCR ), and hundreds of Croat and other non-Serb civilians were killed. There were numerous instances of war crimes against Croat civilians and prisoners of war perpetrated by Serb and Yugoslav forces in Croatia. Among them, the Dalj massacre , the Lovas killings , the Baćin massacre , the Voćin massacre ,
14661-551: The Independent Democratic Serb Party, Milorad Pupovac and Deputy Prime Minister Milošević, attended a commemoration of the Grubori massacre , the mass murder of elderly Serbs civilians. According to the 2021 census, there were 123,892 ethnic Serbs living in Croatia, 3.20% of the total population. Their number was reduced by more than three-quarters in the aftermath of the 1991–95 War in Croatia as
14842-481: 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
15023-716: The Lika and Kordun districts with the Vrbas Banovina which had Serb majority. Following the Invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, the Axis powers occupied the entire territory of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and established a puppet state, the so-called Independent State of Croatia (NDH) on the territory of present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia . The Ustaše government saw Serbs, Jews, Romanis and antifascist Croats as
15204-529: 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
15385-565: The Operation Storm, were later acquitted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) of charges of committing war crimes and partaking in a joint criminal enterprise to force the Serb population out of Croatia. The ICTY stated that Croatian Army and Special Police committed a large number of crimes against the Serb population after the artillery assault, but that the state and military leadership
15566-580: The Orthodox Christians and the lack of indoctrination with Serbianism among the clergy; "In the Serbian church, we found many priests who didn't know who the Saint Sava was, let alone they wanted to be Sava's apostles, neither safeguard his behests, Orthodox faith and Serbian nationality, nor nourish their flock within them. Among them, we found "Orthodox Croats" who preached from the Serbian enlightener Sava's ambon Croatian thought, and Latin
15747-562: The Ottoman conquests of Serbia and capture of Smederevo fortress in 1459 and fall of Bosnia 1463 different populations of Orthodox Christians moved into Syrmia and by 1483 perhaps 200,000 Orthodox Christians moved into central Slavonia and Syrmia. The Turkish conquest of Bosnia also pushed refugees and migrants into eastern Croatia. As many former inhabitants of the Austrian-Ottoman borderland fled northwards or were captured by
15928-534: The Ottoman Empire to Venetian territories. Major population movements into Venetian Dalmatia occurred during the 1670s and 1680s. In the summer of 1685, Cosmi, the Archbishop of Split, wrote that Morlach leader Stojan Janković had brought 300 families with him to Dalmatia, and also that around Trogir and Split there were 5,000 refugees from Ottoman lands, without food; this was seen as a serious threat to
16109-586: The Ottoman Empire. They were of both Orthodox and Catholic faith, settled inland of the coastal cities of Dalmatia, and entered the military service of both Venice and Ottoman Empire. There was a population movement from the Ottoman territories into Venetian Dalmatia in this period. The Venetian government welcomed immigrants, as they protected possessions against the Ottomans. The Morlachs , former Ottoman subjects, helped Venice triple its size in Dalmatia. The bishop of Makarska described how many people migrated from
16290-554: The Ottoman invaders, they left unpopulated areas. At the beginning of the 16th century settlements of Orthodox Christians were also established in modern-day western Croatia. In the first half of the 16th century Serbs settled Ottoman part of Slavonia while in the second part of the 16th century they moved to Austrian part of Slavonia. In 1550 they established the Lepavina Monastery . As Vlach settlements by name and signature we find marked Mali i Veliki Poganac (Poganetz) which
16471-587: The RSK and hundreds of mainly elderly Serb civilians were killed in the aftermath. Over the course of the war, nearly 7,950 Serbs were killed including 2,344 civilians while almost 16,000 Croats were killed, of which 6,605 were civilians. The conflict led to the displacement of 250,000 Croats and between 250,000 and 300,000 Serbs. In February 2015, during the Croatia–Serbia genocide case , the International Court of Justice (ICJ) unanimously dismissed
16652-549: The Rights of Ethnic and National Communities or Minorities in the Republic of Croatia from 1992. Tension and violence between Serbs and Croats has reduced since 2000 and has remained low to this day, however, significant problems remain. The main issue is thought to be due to high-level official and social discrimination against the Serbs. In 2005, the Republic of Croatia ratified a bilateral agreement with Serbia and Montenegro on
16833-498: The Serb rebellion. The establishment of the Church was done in order to try and pacify the state as well as to Croatisize the remaining Serb population once the Ustaše realized that the complete eradication of Serbs in the NDH was unattainable. Persecution of Serbs continued however, but was less intense. At the beginning of 1942, NDH authorities started making agreements with the Chetniks to avoid conflicts and coordinate actions against
17014-515: The Serbian flag. In Đakovo and Slavonski Brod riots become so violent that the army intervention was requested. In addition, a curfew was imposed in the town of Petrinja . In Vukovar and Zemun police managed to prevent more clashes. Most Serbs in Croatia approved assassination. Cases of provocation, such as showing images of King Peter I of Serbia , joy, insults and celebrations, have been reported. 14 Serbs were arrested in Zadar for celebrating
17195-446: The Serbian lawsuit claim that Operation Storm constituted genocide, ruling that Croatia did not have the specific intent to exterminate the country's Serb minority, though it reaffirmed that serious crimes against Serb civilians had taken place. The judgment stated that it is not disputed that a substantial part of the Serb population fled that region as a direct consequence of the military actions. Although it has also been noted that there
17376-523: The Serbian thought began spreading among the Orthodox Christians in the Kingdom of Dalmatia . At first through the religious denomination, and by the time as a sign of national affiliation. There was also a brief occurrence when certain Catholic intellectuals, predominantly in Dubrovnik , were won over by the Serbian thought. They were known as " Serb Catholics ". The reason for this was that Dalmatia and
17557-655: 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
17738-684: The UN Human Rights Committee found a wartime termination of occupancy rights of a Serbian family to violate ICCPR . In 2010, the European Committee on Social Rights found the treatment of Serbs in Croatia in respect of housing to be discriminatory and too slow, thus in violation of Croatia's obligations under the European Social Charter . In 2013, the Anti-Cyrillic protests in Croatia were
17919-638: The Ustashe and Axis invaders would further push Croats towards the partisans. At the moment of the capitulation of Italy to the Allies the Serbs and Croats were participating equally according to their respective population sizes as it was in Yugoslavia as a whole. Eventually, Serbian percentage dropped in favor of Croats by the end of the war amounting to 28.6% in 1944 in Croatia. The Serb contribution to Croatian Partisans represented more than their proportion of
18100-472: The Ustaše state. The agreements did not stop crimes against Serbs by the Ustaše or against Muslims and Croats by the Chetniks. In early May 1945 Chetnik forces withdrew through Ustaše-held Zagreb; many of these were later killed, along with captured Ustaše, by the Partisans as part of the Bleiburg repatriations . On 8 May 1945, Yugoslav Partisans entered Zagreb, which marked the collapse of the Ustaše regime and
18281-651: The Vlachs in the Croatian Military Frontier there are some minor differences. Vlachs to western Slavonia or to the Varaždin Generalate of Slavonian Krajina are coming en masse and in a very short time: from yeare 1597 to 1600. To Croatian Krajina and Karlovac Generalate Vlachs arrive in smaller groups but throughout the whole XVII. century. Therefore, the Slavonian region was the first to open
18462-642: The WWII Croatian fascist movement Ustaše, or by saying that the numbers of people killed in Jasenovac , one of the largest extermination camp in Europe, were inflated. The proclamation of the new constitution was considered by Serbian leaders evidence of Croat hostility towards Serbs. Thus, SDS, which rejected the new constitution, began building its own national governmental entity in order to preserve rights that Serbs saw as being stripped away and to enhance
18643-539: The Yugoslav Partisans. In 1944 the Chetniks recognized the sovereignty of the Independent State of Croatia and became a legalized movement in it. The necessary ammunition and provisions were supplied to the Chetniks by the Ustaše military. Chetniks who were wounded in such operations would be cared for in NDH hospitals, while the orphans and widows of Chetniks killed in action would be supported by
18824-469: 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
19005-403: The anger of the people after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Serb Gavrilo Princip and organized anti-Serbian demonstrations. After a stone was thrown on a parade in which the image of Franz Ferdinand was carried through Zagreb, many cafés and gathering places of pro-Yugoslav politicians as well as Serb-owned shops were demolished. Croat-Serb Coalition MP's were also attacked. On
19186-490: The area of Syrmia and Lika-Krbava County , increased. Relative growth in the number of Serb citizens was recorded in Virovitica (35% increase), and Syrmia and Modruš-Rijeka counties, mainly due to the migration of Serbian war veterans who fought on Macedonian front to Slavonia during agrarian reform which was organized by the authorities. Thus, 25 settlements for volunteers were erected, and 8,000 families settled on
19367-610: The area, one was destroyed and 17 were damaged. HRW also reported that the vast majority of the abuses were committed by Croatian forces. These abuses, which continued on a large scale even months after Operation Storm, included summary executions of elderly and infirm Serbs who remained behind and the wholesale burning and destruction of Serbian villages and property. In the months following the August offensive, at least 150 Serb civilians were summarily executed and another 110 persons forcibly disappeared. Three Croatian generals , involved in
19548-524: The argument of nationality, and when that argument couldn't be applied, then it was necessary to "create" the Serbs among the target population, if not among all, then among the majority. The main target were Orthodox Christians in the neighboring, non-Serb countries. In 1848/50, Serbian government organized a secret network of agents who propagated the Serbian ideas. Those agents were concealed as cultural workers. The famous agents were Georgije Nikolajević and Stjepan Mitrov Ljubiša . The 'creation' of new Serbs
19729-488: The artificial creation of Tito's Partisans. The crisis in Yugoslavia was furthered fueled by Serbian President Slobodan Milošević , who supported these groups. Milošević "endorsed a Serbian nationalist agenda" and "exploited a growing wave of Serbian nationalism in order to strengthen centralised rule in the SFRY ". The republics of Croatia and Slovenia eventually sought to secede from Yugoslavia following disagreements between
19910-437: The assassination. Following the end of World War I, previously independent State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs and Kingdom of Serbia merged in 1918 into the Kingdom of Yugoslavia . The creation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia led to the formation of stronger ties between Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina with Serbia. Immediately after 1918, the influx of Serbs from Serbia into the territory of Croatia, in particular in
20091-591: The border of the Julian Alps (now Uskoks mountain) in Žumberak area. Tihomir Đorđević points to the already known fact that the name 'Vlach' didn't only refer to genuine Vlachs or Serbs but also to cattle breeders in general. In the Venetian documents from the late 16th and 17th centuries, the name " Morlachs " (another term of Vlachs, first mentioned in the 14th century) was used for immigrants from conquered territory previously of Croatian and Bosnian kingdoms by
20272-537: The borders of the Ottoman Empire and the Slavs in them, but they gradually expanded to the territory of present-day Croatia (including the Military Frointaire and Dalmatia). To accomplish this, the ground had to be prepared, so that diplomacy and the military would have a stronger base for taking action. The bases for this was the Serbian state law, and where it wasn't possible to appropriate the land with it,
20453-656: The defense of Dalmatia. Grain sent by the Pope proved insufficient, and these were forced to launch expeditions into Ottoman territory. Under Janković's leadership Serbs settled in Dalmatia in several waves. In July 1684. around 9000 Serbs settled around borders of Dalmatia. By the end of the same year 1500 Serb families moved from Zagora into Venice territory and the same migration happened in March 1685. when 600 families moved from Cetina under their chieftain Peraičić The military border
20634-623: The diocese of Hum in 1219, seated at Ston, that linked the Pelješac peninsula with Hum which lasted until 1321 when Serbian Orthodox bishop had to withdraw from Ston. Serbia continued to hold parts of southernmost Dalmatia into the 14th century. In 1333 King of Serbia Stefan Dušan sold the Pelješac peninsula and the coast land between Ston and Dubrovnik to the Republic of Ragusa, while Ragusa had to pay an annual tribute and also had to guarantee freedom of worship for Orthodox believers in this territory. Among
20815-576: The door to the Balkans Vlachs. Biggest number of Vlachs comes from Slavonian Turkish Sandžaks In the first half of the 16th century Serbs settled Ottoman part of Slavonia while in the second part of the 16th century they moved to Austrian part of Slavonia.Serbs were mentioned in the Slavonian area at the end of the 14th century where they along with the Turks plundered and burned villages (Turcos et Rascianos). The Habsburg Empire encouraged people from
20996-572: The equality of the Serbian and Croatian nations, as constituent nations of the federal unit of Croatia, was recognized in every aspect. Later, in 1963, the Croatian Constitution did not mention the Serbs in Croatia as a constituent nation of SR Croatia. Constitution of 1974 defined Croatia as a "national state of Croatian people, state of Serbian people in Croatia and state of other nationalities that live in it". Amid rising Serbian nationalism and tensions between Yugoslav republics during
21177-563: The events, and in particular at the beginning of his political career, he was strongly influenced and misled by Serbian propaganda". RSK President, Milan Martić , was also trialled by the ICTY for various Crimes against humanity and war crimes , including murder, persecution, inhumane treatment, forced displacement, plunder of public or private property, and wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, as well as ordering an indiscriminate rocket attack on Zagreb, in 1995. On 12 June 2007, Martić
21358-516: 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
21539-741: The front lines, were subjected to various forms of discrimination and harassment. Croatian Serbs in Eastern and Western Slavonia and parts of the Krajina, were also forced to flee or were expelled by Croatian forces, though on a restricted scale and in lesser numbers. The Croatian Government sought to stop such occurrences and were not a part of the Government's policy. War crimes were also committed by Croatian forces against Serb civilians. Serb prisoners were detained and tortured in camps such as Lora , Pakračka Poljana , and Marino Selo . The war ended with
21720-463: 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,
21901-512: The greatest obstacles to the return of thousands of Croatian Serbs has been the failure of the Croatian authorities to provide adequate housing solutions to Croatian Serbs who were stripped of their occupancy rights, including where possible by reinstating occupancy rights to those who had been affected by their discriminatory termination. The European Court of Human Rights decided against Croatian Serb Kristina Blečić, stripped her of occupancy rights after leaving her house in 1991 in Zadar. In 2009,
22082-399: 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
22263-410: 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
22444-425: The investigation ours or yours. One party must fall. Their geographical position, circumstances in which they live everywhere mixed with the Serbs, and the process of general evolution where the idea of Serbianism means progress, guarantees us that those [falling] will be Croats." Enraged crowds reacted by burning Serbian flags and attacking Serb-owned shops, and buildings used by the Serbian institutions. Formation of
22625-453: The land in the areas of agrarian offices in Osijek and Vukovar . Although most of the Serbian parties in Croatia have been co-operating with Croatian Peasant Party in the struggle against Serbian unitarism for years, following the creation of Banovina of Croatia in 1939, part of Serbs showed a lack of willingness to live in a country with Croat majority. There were also requests for joining
22806-509: The lands of Konavle , Zahumlje and Pagania (which included parts of southern Dalmatia now in Croatia) is described as inhabited by Serbs who immigrated there from an area near Thessaloniki previously arrived there from White Serbia . However, some scholars like Francis Dvornik , Tibor Živković , and Neven Budak doubt such a claim and consider that a closer reading of the DAI suggests that
22987-481: 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
23168-478: 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
23349-890: The liberation of Croatia from the Nazi occupation. Following the end of the war, Croatia entered union with Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia and formed the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia . During the Second World War, at the Second and Third sessions of the National Anti-Fascist Council of the Peoples Liberation of Croatia ( ZAVNOH ) held in October 1943 and May 1944 respectively,
23530-425: 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
23711-401: 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
23892-487: The local population. After the invasion of Yugoslavia by Axis forces, Serbian uprisings broke out under the Chetnik leadership in Gračac , Srb , Donji Lapac , Drvar and Bosansko Grahovo . The uprisings in the NDH were a reaction to the genocide policies of the Ustaše towards the Serbs. The policy of the Chetniks under the leadership of Draža Mihailović varied from the struggle with the Nazis to tactical or selective collaboration with them in different periods throughout
24073-406: The majority of Croat and other non-Serb populations from approximately the one-third of Croatia". In the spring of 1991, an open war broke out. Serb forces, in cooperation with the local Serb authorities, commenced persecutions to drive the Croat and other non-Serb populations from areas such as Krajina, controlled by rebelled Serbs. Nearly all non-Serbs were expelled; between 170,000 (according to
24254-418: The majority of Partisans in Croatia were Serbs, but by October 1943 the majority were Croats. This change was partly due to the decision of a key Croatian Peasant Party member, Božidar Magovac , to join the Partisans in June 1943, and partly due to the surrender of Italy in September 1943. Furthermore, Ustashe authorities ceding Northern Dalmatia to fascist Italy, Italian terror of the population and misrule of
24435-470: The majority of the pre-war Serb population from Croatia settled in Serbia and Republika Srpska . After Croatian and other Yugoslav Wars , Serbia became home to highest number of refugees (Serbs who fled from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia) in Europe. The percentage of those declaring themselves as Serbs, according to the 1991 census, was 12.2% (78.1% of the population declared itself to be Croat). Although today Serbs are formally able to return to Croatia,
24616-404: The minority languages . Denial of genocide in the NDH has also been a prominent issue at times. Following the 2020 elections , Boris Milošević , member of the Independent Democratic Serb Party (SDSS) and President of the Serb National Council , was elected one of the four Deputy Prime Ministers . Shortly afterward, the Croatian authorities and representatives of the Serbs marked the events of
24797-412: 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;
24978-498: The most senior governmental positions during Mažuranić's reign were held by the Serbs; Jovan Živković was Deputy Ban, Livije Radivojević president of the Table of Seven (Supreme Court), and Nikola Krestić President of the Croatian Parliament. During his 20-year-long reign, marked by violence and aggressive magyarization , Ban Károly Khuen-Héderváry encouraged ethnic conflicts between Croats and Serbs. He introduced Cyrillic in grammar school and equalized it with Latin, and allowed
25159-460: The new Ustaše government, Serbs were outlawed. During the first months of NDH's existence, numerous legal decisions were made against the Serbs: they had to leave the public service, had to move to the northern parts of Zagreb, could walk through Zagreb only during the day, had to wear a badge with the letter "P" (stood for "Pravoslavni", meaning Orthodox Christians), the name of their faith was changed from Serbian Orthodox to Greek-Eastern, and usage of
25340-413: 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
25521-416: The official state commemoration for the victims of the Jasenovac concentration camp because, as they said, Croatian authorities refused to denounce the Ustasha legacy explicitly and they downplayed and revitalized crimes committed by Ustashe. Following the 2020 Croatian parliamentary election , Boris Milošević , member of the Independent Democratic Serb Party and President of the Serb National Council ,
25702-437: The oldest Orthodox churches in Croatia are the monasteries of Krupa , Krka and Dragović , but their dating to the 14th century is controversial and improbable, as among other evidence and forgeries, have Romanesque and Gothic architectural characteristics uncommon for the style of Byzantine-Orthodox churches, showing instead 16th and later centuries foundation. According to Yugoslav ethnologist Jovan Erdeljanović , members of
25883-402: 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
26064-563: The other hand, members of the Social Democratic Party of Croatia and Slavonia held a rally in which they spoke against the violence. Simultaneously with the large anti-Serbian protests held in Vienna, Budapest and Bosnia and Herzegovina, in which there were wounded and dead, protests against pro-Yugoslav oriented citizens were held in many Croatian cities, including Dubrovnik , in which protesters attacked Serbian Society "Dušan Magnificant" Riots have been reported in Zadar , Metković , Bjelovar , Virovitica and Konavle where protesters burned
26245-635: The part of government. For example, lengthy and in some cases unfair proceedings, particularly in lower level courts, remain a major problem for Serbian returnees pursuing their rights in court. In addition, Serbs continue to be discriminated against in access to employment and in realizing other economic and social rights. Also some cases of violence and harassment against Croatian Serbs continue to be reported. The property laws allegedly favor Bosnian Croats refugees who took residence in houses that were left unoccupied and unguarded by Serbs after Operation Storm . Amnesty International 's 2005 report considers one of
26426-463: The political stage. Such developments in the spread of Serbian thought in the Croatian lands were the result of Serbian politicians' plans dating back to the first half of the 19th century when Serbia wasn't an independent country, but a province of the Ottoman Empire . According to the 1844 Ilija Garašanin 's Načertanije, they intended to establish a Serbian Empire on the territory of the collapsed Ottoman Empire. At first, its borders were supposed to be
26607-416: The popularity of the unification of RSK with Serbia into a Greater Serbia increased, the rebellion against Croatia became more intense. The RSK had de facto control over one-third of Croatian territory during its existence between 1991 and 1995 but failed to gain any international recognition. According to the ICTY , the RSK implemented policies "which advanced the objective to forcibly and permanently remove
26788-431: The population) which are recognized as a national minority by the Croatian Constitution and therefore have three permanent seats in the Croatian Parliament . Traditional elements of their identity are the Orthodox faith , Cyrillic script and military history, while modern elements are language and literature , civic, social and political values, concern for ethnic status and national organisation, and celebration of
26969-400: 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
27150-423: The prewar population of 12%. The majority of the remaining population is elderly, which indicates that the negative demographic trend will persist. Currently, the official status of "autochthonous national minority" for the Serbs of Croatia is recognized by the Croatian Constitutional Act on the Rights of National Minorities from 2002 which supplemented the Constitutional Act on the Human Rights and Freedoms and on
27331-444: The protection of the Serbian and Montenegrin minority in Croatia and the Croatian national minority in Serbia and Montenegro. Some Croats, including politicians, continue to deny and minimise the magnitude of the genocide perpetrated against Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia . At the highest levels of the Croatian government, new laws are continuously introduced in order to combat this discrimination, demonstrating an effort on
27512-460: The protection of the border. They populated the Dalmatian Hinterland , Lika , Kordun , Banovina , Slavonia , and western Syrmia . From the beginning of the 20th century, the Croat-Serb Coalition led by Croat Frano Supilo and Serb Svetozar Pribićević governed the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia until the dissolution of Austria-Hungary . After the creation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1918 (later renamed to Yugoslavia ),
27693-408: 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
27874-564: The republics regarding the structure of the federal government. Tension grew following the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) 's victory in the 1990 general election , led by Franjo Tudjman , since one of its political goals was Croatia's independence from Yugoslavia. Jovan Rašković , leader of SDS, refused to participate in the work of the Croatian Parliament in May 1990. Some prominent Serbian politicians and scientists, such as Simo Rajić and Jovan Bamburać , called for coexistence, de-escalation and peace, while others organized Serb parties in
28055-399: The rest of Croatia to the Eparchy of Pakrac (since 1705). The Serbianisation of the Vlachs in southern Croatia was the result of the hierarchical linkage of Orthodox Vlachs from southern Croatian territories, at the time ruled by the Venetians, with the SPC in northern Croatia, which strengthened the ritual and ecclesiastical connection of the Vlachs with the Serb immigrants. In the 1860s,
28236-457: 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
28417-555: The sense of Illyrian Movement (also known as the Croatian National Revival) and Yugoslavian ideas. In the 1830s, ideas of the Illyrian Movement spread to Dalmatia. In 1835, Božidar Petranović began publishing the Serbo-Dalmatian Magazine . In the following thirty years, Croats and Serbs worked together in the 'national movement' (by using this neutral name they avoided conflicts) against the Austro-Hungarian unitarism and Italian nationalists . However, since Vuk Karadžić , Ilija Garašanin and Jovan Subotić started writing of Dalmatia as
28598-426: The so-called New Course Policies in the first decade of the 20th century was a turning point for the resumption of cooperation between Croats and Serbs with a purpose of fighting for a common interests, as confirmed by the 1905 Zadar Resolution, when the Croats agreed on broad concessions regarding flags, education, language and equality of Serbs. This led to the creation of the Croat-Serb Coalition (HSK) whose policy
28779-510: The sovereignty of the Croatian Serbs. A Norwegian historian Øyvind Hvenekilde Seim stated that status of Serbs in Croatia, who made important contributions to Croatian cultural, scientific, and political history, was annulled by actions of president Franjo Tuđman during the 1990s. Sabrina P. Ramet wrote that Tuđman's regime "promoted a traditionalist and exclusive vision of Croatia" as a Croat state in which Serbs were "unwelcome", while journalist Chris Hedges claimed to have transcript documents of
28960-485: The state, the most notorious being Jasenovac where some 50,000 Serbs were killed. Sisak and Jastrebarsko concentration camp were specially formed for children . During the war, around 300,000 Serbs are estimated to have been murdered under the Ustashe regime as a result of their genocide campaign . Diana Budisavljević , a humanitarian of Austrian descent, carried out rescue operations and saved more than 15,000 children from Ustashe camps. Budisavljević and her team
29141-403: 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
29322-447: 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
29503-642: The territories they controlled, Chetniks committed genocide against the Croat and Muslim civilian populations. Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the Chetniks in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina range from 50,000 to 68,000. In April 1943, Đujić's Chetniks set up a prison and execution site in the village of Kosovo (today Biskupija ), near Knin. Thousands of local civilians, (both Croats and even Serb Anti-Fascists) including women and children, as well as captured Partisans, were held and mistreated at this prison, while hundreds of prisoners (as many as over 1,000) were tortured and killed at an execution site near
29684-501: The use of Serbian flags. He has changed the official language in the Kingdom from Croatian into "Croato-Serbian" and appointed Serb Vaso Đurđević to the position of the Speaker of the Croatian Parliament. In 1884, Parliament enacted the so-called "Serbian laws" by which SPC gained the right to independently conduct education on the Croatian territory. In addition, Khuen-Héderváry financially assisted Serbs. During his reign, four out of eight Croatian county prefects, Deputy Ban and Speaker of
29865-526: The war. In 2017 they again pointed out that Serbs faced significant barriers to employment and obstacles to regain their property. Amnesty International also said that the right to use minority languages and script continued to be politicized and unimplemented in some towns and that heightened nationalist rhetoric and hate speech contributed to growing ethnic intolerance and insecurity. Since 2016, anti-fascist groups, leaders of Croatia's Serb, Roma and Jewish communities and former top Croat officials have boycotted
30046-439: The war. The Chetnik movement operated as "legalised" auxiliary forces under Axis control. They had collaboration agreements with the Italians in occupied Dalmatia and, after the Italian capitulation in September 1943, with the Germans directly. They also collaborated with some of the Ustashe forces in northern Bosnia and they fought together against the Yugoslav Partisans during the Case White . Contracting parties obliged to
30227-416: 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
30408-541: Was an evacuation order given by the RSK's "Supreme Defence Council", based on the testimony by commander Mile Mrkšić at the ICTY. The Croatian authorities were aware that the operation would provoke a mass exodus; they even to some extent predicated their military planning on such an exodus, which they considered not only probable but desirable. Fleeing civilians and people remaining in United Nations protected areas were subject to various forms of harassment, including military assaults and acts by Croatian civilians. On 8 August,
30589-411: Was assisted by the Croatian Red Cross and the Zagreb Archdiocese branch of Caritas . Thousands of rescued Serb children were placed with ethnic Croat families from Zagreb and rural communities. The Ustasha policy towards Serbs further drove a number of them joined either Chetniks or the Yugoslav Partisans who were particularly strong in the regions of Lika , Kordun and Banovina . In 1941–42,
30770-427: Was based on cooperation with Hungary, the Italian parties in Dalmatia and the Serbs in Croatia and Slavonia, guaranteeing broad concessions regarding the Serb minority in Croatia. Serbs played a disproportionately large role in the political life of the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia. Electoral units were not created according to the population but were gerrymandered according to the Governments' interests so, for example, in
30951-438: Was carried out by identification of Orthodox Christianity in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina only with Serbs. Another argument used in the areas with no Orthodox Christians was identifying people who spoke Shtokavian with the Serbs. The idea "all Shtokavians are Serbs" was created by German Slavists in the 1850s, and was promoted by the Austrian government who wanted to equalize Croats and Serbs so that it could more easily rule
31132-465: Was elected one of the four Deputy Prime Ministers of Croatia in charge of social affairs and human and minority rights in the new cabinet of Andrej Plenković . On the 25th anniversary of the Operation Storm, the celebrations were attended for the first time ever by an ethnic Serb political representative, Boris Milošević. On 25 August 2020, Zoran Milanović ( President of Croatia ), Tomo Medved ( Minister of Croatian Veterans ), along with members of
31313-470: Was inevitable. In 1879, Serbs from Bukovica voted for the Italian candidate instead of Croat Miho Klaić . This event was called by People's Party's supporters Bukovica betrail . Shortly thereafter, separate Croatian and Serbian parties emerged, but Croatian parties managed to keep the majority in the Diet of Dalmatia while Serbs started cooperating with the Italian nationalists. Prior to this, Serbs in Dalmatia started emphasizing Serbianism more often, and for
31494-432: Was mentioned as Vlach settlement in 1610 and Lepavina (Lipavina) and Marča Monastery ( Eparchy of Marča ). The Habsburg Empire encouraged people from the Ottoman Empire to settle as free peasant soldiers, establishing the Military Frontiers ( Militärgrenze ) in 1522 (hence they were known as Grenzers , Krajišnici ). When it comes to the Austrian colonization of the Turkish Vlachs to Slavonian Military Frontier and
31675-461: Was more dear to them then Cyrlic." The Croatian-Serbian conflict culminated on 10 August 1902, when, after years of controversial writing, Srbobran published a text titled To Investigation Yours or Ours in which author Nikola Stojanović , President of the Serbian Academic Society Zora , denied the very existence of the Croatian nation and predicted the result of the conflict between Croats and Serbs, calling for destruction: "That struggle must lead to
31856-442: Was not responsible for their creation and organizing. Examples of crimes are massacres, most often elderly Serb villagers killed by the Croatian Army , such as the Varivode massacre , the Kijani massacre and the Golubić massacre . At the ICTY, Milan Babić was indicted, pleaded guilty and was convicted for "persecutions on political, racial and religious grounds, a crime against humanity". Babić stated during his trial that "during
32037-401: Was returned in 1881 to the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia . In 1918, it became part of the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs , which immediately joined the Kingdom of Serbia to form the Kingdom of Yugoslavia . The formation of the Serbian identity of Vlachs in Croatia began in the 18th century under the influence of the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC), and most of the local Orthodox priests of
32218-459: 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
32399-498: Was sentenced to 35 years in prison. His sentence of 35 years in prison was confirmed by ICTY appellate council on 8 October 2008. He was found to have been part of a "joint criminal enterprise" which included Blagoje Adžić , Milan Babić, Radmilo Bogdanović , Veljko Kadijević , Radovan Karadžić , Slobodan Milošević, Ratko Mladić , Vojislav Šešelj, Franko Simatović , Jovica Stanišić , and Dragan Vasiljković . A small minority of pre-war Serb population have returned to Croatia. Today,
32580-427: 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
32761-402: 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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