The Serbo-Croatian Language

Serbo-Croatian belongs to the Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family—more specifically, the group of South Slavic languages which includes Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Slovenian. As such it actually shares a few words which are recognizably related to English, for example:

S-C sin = English 'son'

S-C sestra = English 'sister'

Written in either the Cyrillic or the Latin alphabets, Serbo-Croatian is a language rich in loan words, not only from other European languages and (lately) English, but also from Turkish, Arabic, and Persian.

In the 19th century, Serbo-Croatian underwent standardization in both Serbia and Croatia by folklorists and linguists to regularize spelling and the phonetic correspondence between spelling and pronunciation. "Write as you speak and speak as you write" was the slogan of this movement. Thus, there are no silent letters, like the k in the English knife, nor are there diphthongs.

Pronunciation

Letters are generally pronounced as they are in English with certain exceptions:

Consonants.

Vowels. Vowel pronunciation varies not only by length but also by tonal accent or pitch. A change in vowel length or pitch (long rising or falling, short rising or falling), then, can change the meaning of a word. In general, this feature of the language is most noticeable in speakers of the Serbian variant of Serbo-Croatian. Among many speakers, use is diminishing or disappearing.

Articles

There is no direct correspondence between English and Serbo-Croatian when it comes to definite and indefinite articles. Serbo-Croatian sometimes indicates definiteness or indefiniteness by changing the ending of an adjective. Otherwise, there is no separate word corresponding to English a or the.

Nouns

Every noun has gender (male, female, neuter), number (singular or plural), and case. Unlike English, which uses the placement of words next to each other to indicate grammatical relationships, Serbo-Croatian indicates grammatical relationships primarily through cases—word endings or inflections. Thus, Serbo-Croatian is an inflected language, with very flexible word order rules, in contrast to English, in which word order is critical. The cases (inflections) used are: the nominative, the accusative, the genitive, the vocative, the dative/locative, and the instrumental. If you remember any Latin, you will find some very clear similarities between Latin and Serbo-Croatian.

Prepositions

Each preposition in Serbo-Croatian requires a corresponding case ending for the noun it modifies. Speakers can tell from a case ending when a preposition indicates, for example, motion towards rather than location.

Implications for ESL Study

Speakers of Serbo-Croatian generally have few pronunciation difficulties with English, although the "th" and "w" sounds may give them some trouble. However, when it comes to grammar, they may find English verbs very hard to understand. The use of auxiliary verbs in English—do, be, and the modal verbs might, could, should, would—present real hurdles. Serbo-Croatian uses only the verbs biti (to be) and hteti (to want) as auxiliaries, e.g., ona je igrala (she was playing) ona ce igrati (she will/wants to play). Particular difficulty arises with English question formation, where the auxiliary verb precedes the subject pronoun, e.g., "Was she playing?" or "Will she play?" It is also worth noting that speakers of Serbo-Croatian have difficulty recognizing American names as typical of a man or woman. Lack of a sex-specific name ending (such as the ica ending for women's names) is confusing.

Speakers of Serbo-Croatian may also have difficulty with English prepositions of location and motion and agency, e.g., in, on, to, at, by, with, or from, since they will look for case endings, which English does not have.

Some Basic Serbo-Croatian Vocabulary

Language Resources

Benson, Morton. An English-Serbocroatian Dictionary. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1979.

Benson, Morton. Serbocroatian-English Dictionary. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971. Also published as Srpskohrvatsko-Engleski Rec"nik. Prosveta, 1974.

Berlitz. Serbo-Croatian for Travellers. (any edition)

Harrap's Serbo-Croatian Phrase Book. London: Harrap, 1989

Hawkesworth, Celia. Colloquial Serbo-Croatian. London: Routledge, 1986.

Mihailovic;, Vasa. Say It in Serbo-Croatian. New York: Dover, 1987.

Norris, David. Teach Yourself Serbo-Croat. Chicago: NTC, 1993.

The Oxford-Duden Pictorial Serbo-Croat & English Dictionary. Imprint of OUP. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

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