Serbian | |
---|---|
српски srpski | |
Pronunciation | [sr̩̂pskiː] |
Native to | Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Bosnia, and neighboring regions |
Native speakers |
8.7 million declared Serbian speakers in the former Yugoslavia (2006) and half a million abroad |
Language family |
Indo-European
|
Writing system |
Cyrillic (Serbian alphabet) Latin (Gaj's alphabet) Serbian Braille |
Official status | |
Official language in | 2 countries |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-1 | sr |
ISO 639-2 | srp |
ISO 639-3 | srp |
Serbian is a standardized register of the Serbo-Croatian language used by Serbs, mainly in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina (mostly Republika Srpska), Montenegro, Croatia, and Macedonia. It is official in Serbia and one of the official languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and is the principal language of the Serbs.
Standard Serbian is based on the most widespread dialect of Serbo-Croatian, Shtokavian, more specifically on the Eastern Herzegovinian, which is also the basis of Standard Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin, and Šumadija-Vojvodina subdialects. The other Serbo-Croatian dialect spoken by Serbs is Torlakian, which is spoken in southeast Serbia and transitional to Macedonian and Bulgarian.