Are Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian the Same Language?

If there is a controversial topic in linguistics, it is answering this question: Are Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian the same language? From a linguistic point of view, the answer is very simple: Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian are very closely related standard varieties of the same South Slavic language, traditionally known as Serbo-Croatian. But then why is it controversial and polemical? Well, the problem is political, as often happens in the Balkans.

Due to the complex history of the region over the past century, each country developed a strong sense of nationalism, which became much stronger after the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991. Today, everyone considers their way of speaking a language of its own, and not just a dialect. People can get really mad about this. For example, one Serbian woman once told me, "You don't understand anything about linguistics," just because I used the word Serbo-Croatian.

Anyway, they are not exactly the same. There are some differences between the three varieties (four if you consider Montenegrin), and in this post we are going to look at each of them. But keep in mind that despite the differences, all of them can understand each other without any problem. They watch and listen to media from other countries.

So what are the differences?

Serbian uses a different alphabet

One of the most noticeable differences is the writing system. Serbian uses both the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets. Cyrillic has an important place in Serbian culture and is officially recognized, while the Latin alphabet is also extremely common in everyday life, especially online. For example:

Serbian Cyrillic: Србија

Serbian Latin: Srbija

Both mean Serbia.

Croatian and Bosnian are normally written using the Latin alphabet, while Montenegrin can also be written using both Latin and Cyrillic.

Interestingly, the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet was specifically adapted to represent the sounds of Serbian very closely, so there is a fairly direct relationship between letters and pronunciation.

Montenegrin also has two additional letters, Ś and Ź, which can be used to represent sounds that are traditionally written as sj and zj. Their use is not universal.

Ekavian and Ijekavian pronunciation

A historical Slavic vowel known as the jat developed differently in different parts of the Balkans. So this sound can be pronounced and written in different ways, the most important of which are called Ekavian and Ijekavian. In Ekavian, it is written as e, while in Ijekavian, it is written as ije. For example, the word for milk can appear as:

Serbian mleko — Ekavian

Croatian mlijeko — Ijekavian

Bosnian mlijeko — Ijekavian

Standard Serbian allows both systems in the broader linguistic tradition, but Ekavian is dominant in Serbia, while Ijekavian is used in many other Serbian-speaking areas and is also the standard form used in Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin.

There is also a third pattern, Ikavian, which is less commonly used and is found in some regional dialects, particularly in parts of coastal Croatia and Herzegovina. The same historical vowel may therefore appear in forms such as:

Mleko — Ekavian

Mlijeko — Ijekavian

Mliko — Ikavian

Different vocabulary

Of course, there are also differences in vocabulary, and each country uses different words. This is more or less like the differences between American English and British English, or the differences between the varieties spoken in the Spanish-speaking world.

Diferent Names of Months

Also, the names of the months of the year are different. Serbian normally uses international or Latin-derived month names, while Croatian traditionally uses Slavic month names:

Grammar is mostly the same

The grammatical systems of Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin are extremely similar. All have grammatical gender, cases, verb aspect, similar tense systems, and very similar sentence structures. A speaker who knows one standard does not have to learn an entirely new grammar to understand another.

There are, however, some differences in preferred constructions. One example concerns the future tense. In Serbian, the future auxiliary can be written together with the infinitive in certain forms, while in Croatian, the corresponding construction is normally written separately:

Serbian: Čitaću — I will read.

Croatian and Bosnian: Čitat ću.

This is mainly a difference in standard orthography and usage rather than a completely different grammatical system.

Another difference can be seen after modal verbs. Serbian and Montenegrin commonly use da followed by the present tense after verbs such as morati (must), while Croatian more commonly uses the infinitive:

Serbian: Moram da radim. — I have to work.

Croatian: Moram raditi.

Again, the difference is small. The underlying meaning and grammatical relationship are the same.

Slang is also similar

Slang is also pretty much the same, even if young people in Belgrade, Zagreb, Sarajevo, or Podgorica may use different expressions, borrow words from different languages, or develop their own local slang. These differences can sometimes be more noticeable than differences in formal grammar.

However, popular culture also works in the opposite direction. Music, television, films, YouTube, social media, and online communities regularly cross national borders.

There Are Also Many Dialects

Another important point is that Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian are not internally uniform languages, and there are many dialects within each country. For example, someone from the Croatian coast may speak quite differently from someone from Slavonia in eastern Croatia.

The same is true in Serbia, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. All of these countries have considerable regional variation. This means that the differences between two regional dialects can sometimes be more noticeable than the differences between the standardized languages themselves.

So are they the same?

The situation is therefore more complicated than a simple division between one language and four languages.

Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin are distinct standardized varieties with a very high degree of linguistic similarity and a shared historical foundation. Whether we call them one language or several languages depends partly on whether we are discussing linguistic structure, official standards, or national identity.