Differences in standard Serbian Croatian and Bosnian: Encyclopedia II - Differences in standard Serbian Croatian and Bosnian - Speaking

Differences in standard Serbian Croatian and Bosnian - Speaking

Differences in standard Serbian Croatian and Bosnian - Accentuation

Accentuation of the official languages is different.

However, accentuation is different within Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia themselves, see below for full explanation.

Differences in standard Serbian Croatian and Bosnian - Morphology

There are three variants of the Štokavian dialect that stem from different reflex of proto-Slavic vowel Jat. The jat appears in modern dialects in the following way: the Church Slavonic word for child, děte, is:

• dete in Ekavian
• dite in Ikavian
• dijete in Ijekavian

Serbian language recognizes ekavian and ijekavian as equal variants, while the Croatian and Bosnian uses only ijekavian. In Bosnia and Herzegovina (regardless of the official language) and in Montenegro, ijekavian is used almost exclusively. Ikavian is limited to dialectal use in Dalmatia, Istria, Western Herzegovina and northern Bačka (Vojvodina). So, for example:

A few Croatian linguists have tried to explain the following differences in morphological structure for some words with introduction of a new vowel, "jat diphthong". This is not the opinion of most linguists.

Sometimes this leads to confusion: Serbian poticati (to stem from) is in Croatian "to encourage". Croatian "to stem from" is potjecati, while Serbian for "encourage" is podsticati.

Bosnian official language allows both variants, and ambiguities are solved by preferring the Croatian variant, which is a general practice for Serbian-Croatian ambiguities.

Another example for phonetical differences is words which have h in Croatian and Bosnian, but v in Serbian:

Phonetically and phonologically, the phoneme "h" is reinstated in many words as a distinct feature of Bosnian speech and language tradition. However, there are many people who do not speak this way. It is a regional or colloquial way of speaking.

As ijekavian is the common dialect of all official languages, it will be used for examples on this page. Other than this, examples of different morphology are:

Also many internationalisms are different:

This is because, historically, internationalisms entered Bosnian and Croatian mostly through German, while Serbian received them through French and Russian, so different localization patterns were established based on those languages.

Notes: the term "ostvariti" is preferred over "realizovati/realizirati"; here the word has been used as it is an internationalism. In the Bosnian language, the variant in braces is also allowed, but the other variant is preferred.

Some other imported words are of masculine gender in Serbian and Bosnian, but feminine gender in Croatian:

Differences in standard Serbian Croatian and Bosnian - Pronouns

In Serbian and Bosnian, pronoun what has form što when used as relative, but šta when used as interrogative; the latter applies also to relative sentences with interrogative meaning. Croatian uses što in all contexts.

This is applicable only to nominative case – in all other cases, all languages have the same declension – čega, čemu etc. for što.

In Croatian, pronoun who has form tko, while Serbian and Bosnian use ko. The declension is same, kome, koga, etc. In addition, Croatian uses komu as an alternative form in dative case.

In Serbian, clitic form si (to (one)self) of reflexive pronoun in dative is frowned upon and regarded as a croatism; only the long form, sebi is used. Oddly, si is a characteristic feature of south Serbian Torlakian dialect.

Differences in standard Serbian Croatian and Bosnian - Syntax

With modal verbs such as ht(j)eti (want) or moći (can), the infinitive is prescribed in Croatian, while the construction da (that/to) + present tense is preferred in Serbian. This is a remnant of subjunctive, and possibly an influence of Balkan linguistic union. Again, both alternatives are present and allowed in Bosnian.

The sentence "I want to do that" could be translated with any of

• Hoću to da uradim
• Hoću to uraditi

This difference partly extends to future tense, which in Serbo-Croatian is formed in a similar manner as in English, using (elided) present of verb "ht(j)eti" -> "hoću"/"hoćeš"/... -> "ću"/"ćeš"/... as auxiliary verb. Here, the infinitive is formally required in both variants:

• Ja ću to uraditi. (I shall do that.)

However, when da+present is used instead, in it can additionally express the subject's will or intention to perform the action:

• Ja ću to da uradim. (I will do that.)

This form is more frequently used in Serbia and Bosnia. The nuances in meaning between two constructs can be slight or even lost (especially in Serbian dialects), in similar manner as the shall/will distinction varies across English dialects. Overuse of da+present is regarded as Germanism in Serbian linguistic circles, and it can occasionally lead to awkward sentences.

However, Croatians seldom naturally use da+present form. Instead, a different form can be used to express will:

• Ja hoću to uraditi. (I want to do that.)

In interrogative and relative constructs, Croatian uses inversion, while Serbian also allows forms with da li. (A similar situation exists in French, where a question can be formed either by inversion or using est-ce que, and can be stretched in English with modal verbs):

• Možeš li? (Can you?) (Croatian and Serbian)
• Da li možeš? (Do you can?) (Serbian)

In addition, non-grammatical je li ("Is it?"), usually elided to jel', is vernacular for forming all kinds of questions, e.g. Jel' možeš?. In official language, it is used only in questions involving auxiliary verb je (="is"):

• Je li moguće? (Is it possible?) (Croatian and Serbian)
• Da li je moguće? (Serbian)

As a summary, English sentence "I want to know whether I'll start working" would typically read:

• Želim da znam da li ću da počnem da radim. (spoken Serbian)
• Želim znati hoću li početi raditi (spoken Croatian)

although many in-between combinations could be met in vernacular speech, depending on speaker's dialect, idiolect, or even mood.

In Croatian, verb trebati (need or should) is transitive, as in English. In Serbian and Bosnian, it is impersonal, (as French il faut, or English construct is necessary (to)); the grammatical subject is either omitted (it), or presents the object of needing; the person that needs someting is an indirect grammatical object, in dative case:

Differences in standard Serbian Croatian and Bosnian - Vocabulary

Vocabulary is different to some extent. Examples:

¹⁾ All month names are different. See below for full table
²⁾ This is an excellent example of foreign influences. "Put" and "cesta" are Slavic, "drum" is Greek and "džada" is Turkish. Moreover, the central difference lies in the fact that Croatian is, unlike Serbian or Bosnian, a purist language.

Note that there are only a few differences that can cause confusion, for example the verb "ličiti" means "to look like" in Serbian and Bosnian, but in Croatian it is "sličiti"; "ličiti" means "to paint". The word "bilo" means "white" in ikavian, "pulse" in official Croatian and "was" in all official languages, although it's not so confusing when pronounced because of different accentuation.

Also note that in most cases Bosnian officially allows all of the listed variants in the name of "language richness" (or lack thereof), and ambiguities are resolved by preferring the Croatian variant. Generally, no rule for the vocabulary treatment in Bosnian language can be deduced. Bosnian vocabulary writers based their decisions on usage of certain words in literary works by Bosnian authors.

In Croatian language months have Slavic names, while Serbian and Bosnian use the same set of international Latin-derived names as English.

International names of months are well understood in Croatia and several names of internationally important events are still commonly known using the international name of the month: "1. maj", "1. april", "oktobarska revolucija". In spoken Croatian it is common to refer to a month by its number, in order to be understood by e.g. Bosniaks or Serbs. Croats therefore often say "peti mjesec" ("the fifth month") for May if they speak to people from other cultures.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Speaking", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki