Written by: Milica Bokšan
Serbian language, alongside Serbian history and culture, has a rich background.
Back in the day, it was one of the languages that you could learn at many world universities. Now it’s usually part of BCS(M), which stands for Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian-Montenegrin.
There’s a lot that could be told and learned about the Serbian language, but in this blog post, we will cover 6 most googled topics about Serbian!
The Short History of Serbian Language
To begin, we have to go back in time.
Like around 1200 years back!
The year 863 is considered to be the beginning of literacy among the Slavs.
The Moravian prince Rastislav asked to send him learned men from Thessaloniki who would spread Christianity and literacy among the Slavs.
The Byzantine Emperor Mihajlo (Michael) appoints Ćirilo (Cyril) and Metodije (Methodius) for this mission.
Cyril and Methodius created staroslovenski jezik (= the Old Slavic language).
It represents the first literary language of all Slavs.
Serbs belong to the Slavs and, therefore, Serbian belongs to the Slavic group of languages.
Srpskoslovenski jezik (= the Serbo-Slavic language) was created by introducing various elements of the national language with Old Slavic.
In 1180, the first document in the Serbo-Slavic language and Cyrillic was written – Miroslavljevo jevanđelje (= Miroslav’s Gospel).
The Serbo-Slavic language was used from the 12th to the first half of the 18th century.
Various historical pressures forced Serbs to replace Serbo-Slavic with a somewhat close Russo-Slavic language, which was also an Old Slavic language.
Then, with Serbian elements introduced into the Russo-Slavic language, Slavic-Serbian was created.
In the 19th century, after the reforms of Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, modern Serbian emerged, which is very close in form to the Serbian spoken today.
Vuk simplified the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet so that each letter corresponds to one sound.
What group of languages is Serbian?
Serbian is a Slavic language that belongs to the Indo-European language family. This language family is native to the biggest part of Europe.
All Slavic languages have the same root. They are all derived from praslovenski jezik.
It is assumed that praslovenski (= the Proto-Slavic language) originated between 1500 and 1000 BC.
Slavic languages split in three groups:
- južnoslovenski (= South Slavic)
- istočnoslovenski (= East Slavic)
- zapadnoslovenski (= West Slavic)
Serbian is a part of the South Slovenian language group, alongside Slovenian, Croatian, Bulgarian and Macedonian languages.
Today, Serbian is the official language in Serbia, one of the three official languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and a co-official language in Montenegro and Kosovo.
Which Language is Closest to Serbian?
Serbia was part of the country called Jugoslavija (= Yugoslavia). Many people still regret that Yugoslavia fell apart. It is so present that even a lexical coin was created – jugonostalgičari.
No, Jugoslavija (literally means The Land of South Slavs) consisted of six republics.
These are Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. Within Serbia, there were two autonomous provinces, Kosovo and Vojvodina.
So, the closest official language to Serbian is Croatian.
Back then, Serbian and Croatian were actually categorized as the same language – Serbo-Croatian. When you learn Serbian you will be able to easily communicate with Serbs, Croatians, Bosnians, Montenegrians, and sometimes even Macedonians.
Slovenian is also similar to Serbian, but it’s not mutually intelligible.
Outside the South Slovenian language group, the languages closest to Serbian are Slovak, Bulgarian, Czech, and Russian.
Russian or Serbian – Which is Harder to Learn?
While Serbian is a South Slavic language, Russian is East Slavic.
They have some common features but aren’t mutually intelligible. Despite that, if you know one of them you will be able to learn the other much easier.
All Slavic languages are similar when comes to grammar, vocabulary, and phonetics. Still, they can be difficult for English speakers.
But don’t worry – with the right resources, they become much easier to learn.
Now back to the question. 🙂
Here are a couple of key differences and similarities between Serbian and Russian:
- Letters
While Serbian has two official alphabets, ćirilica (= Cyrillic) and latinica (= Latin), Russian only uses ćirilica.
When it comes to reading and writing, Serbian has simpler rules because one letter always makes one sound, while in Russian this is not the case for every letter.
- Grammar
Serbian has seven grammatical cases, while Russian has six cases.
They both distinguish between three genders: male, female, and neuter.
- Vocabulary
Serbian has many Turkish, Greek, German and English loanwords, while Russian vocabulary is more rooted in Slavic.
Serbian and Russian share a lot of the same basic words with different writing but the same pronunciation.
For example:
Serbian: љубав / ljubav (= love)
Russian: любовь (lyubov’)
Serbian: девојка / devojka (= young woman)
Russian: девушка (dyevushka)
As you can see, it’s very difficult to decide which of these two languages is harder to learn. We’ll have to leave this question open. 🙂
Is Serbian a Pretty Language?
Since we are Serbian native speakers, we can say that Serbian is a pretty language indeed!
Jokes aside, of course, we love our language, so the answer to this question is quite subjective. 🙂
Serbian has a lot of beautiful words with even prettier meanings such as:
- ljubav (= love)
- dobrota (similar to English ‘kindness’)
- lepota (= beauty)
- porodica (= family)
- duša (= soul)
- praskozorje (= early dawn)
- nadahnuće (similar to English ‘inspiration’)
- čedo (the word Serbs use for their children, it has a connotation of love)
- blagodat (similar to English ‘blessing’)
Interesting fact: Serbs chose the word praskozorje as the most beautiful Serbian word for 2022.
When comes to the opinion of foreigners, many people think that Serbs are very expressive in communication and that Serbian language can sound pretty harsh. Especially when we use curse words! 🙂
In one funny research people should choose which Slavic language was the sexiest and the Serbian language won.
Conclusion
This is just a small part of a huge topic which is the Serbian language.
Many books and linguistic studies have been written about different aspects of Serbian.
Of course, we skipped that part in this blog post so you don’t get overwhelmed.
For start, if learning Serbian is on your wish list, you can schedule Serbian lessons for foreigners!
