An Italian cellist’s journey into Serbian Language — Lesson 2

Brief overview of the Serbian language

Up to the 1990s, the language spoken in the area of the ex-Yugoslavia was known as Serbo-Croatian. It was based on the štokavski dialect (što means “che cosa”, “what”), and on its two spoken variants, called ekavski and ijekavski. A third, rarer variant, called ikavski, survives in few places, such as on certain Croatian islands. Other dialects are the kajkavski and the čakavski, all based on how they pronounce “what” (respectively kaj and ča instead of što).

The dissolution of Yugoslavia at the end of the 90s wars deepened the differences between the variants spoken by each people. A rough, and not exhaustive, summary may be:

Dialect	Spoken by
Ecavski	Serbs (Serbia), Croats (certain areas in Croatia)
Ijekavski	Croats (Croatia), Serbs (Bosnia & Montenegro)
Ikavski	Croats (certain areas in Croatia)

Official language & alphabet vary by state according to their constitution:

Country	Language	Alphabet
Serbia	Serbian	Cyrillic
Croatia	Croatian	Latin
Montenegro	Montenegrin	Cyrillic or Latin
Bosnia	not stated	not stated
Serbian Republic of Bosnia	Serbian, Croatian & Bosnian	Cyrillic & Latin
Croatian-Muslim Federation	Bosnian & Croatian	Latin

* ethnic minorities are allowed the usage of Cyrillic

Despite all these differences, the basic grammar is common between all of them, and all these people still understand each other despite all what has been done to try to tear them apart.

Main differences between ekavski and ijekavski

After specifying what alphabet is in use in each country of the old Yugoslavia, we can look at some differences between the two variants. We should familiarise ourselves with the concept of long and short vowels—something I can’t say to be totally comfortable with even in Italian¹—. Serbian has four accents (which will be analysed thoroughly later on in the course), two ascendant (long and short) and two descendant (long and short). There, where the ekavski has a short e, the ijekavski has je (pronounce j as “Juventus”). Where the first has a long e, the second has ije.

For example:

• child / bambino is déte in ecavski and dijete in ijekavski
• song / canzone is pesma (short e) and pjesma

Regardless of the differences between these spoken variants, the morphology is common to all of them, with a few important exceptions:

• Verbs and predicates that do not have a final meaning by themselves behave differently: I want to work / voglio lavorare uses the infinite želim raditi in Croatian and the construction da + present tense in Serbia, Bosnia & Montenegro (želim da radim).
• The negative form of the verb to be / essere is nisam is all languages except for Montenegrin, where it is nijesam².

Finally, let’s look at some words that are different between the two variants. While they’ve always been there and, thanks to TV, known to everybody, nationalistic currents following the wars have dug a deep furrow between the languages.

Among ordinary words, we find some interesting differences:

English	Italian	Serbian	Croatian	Comments
Music	Musica	Muzika	Glazba	“Glas” means voice
Theatre (for movies)	Cinema	Bioskop	Kino	—
Pharmacy	Farmacia	Apoteka	Ljekarnica	“Apoteka” is reminiscent of the Greek word, and is also used in German; “Lek/Ljek” means “medicine”

The months’ names are wholly different between Serbian and Croatian, and I believe I will never learn the second one. Serbian ones are very similar to English and Italian ones:

English	Italian	Serbian
January	Gennaio	Januar
February	Febbraio	Februar
March	Marzo	Mart
April	Aprile	April
May	Maggio	Mai
June	Giugno	Juni
July	Luglio	Juli
August	Agosto	Avgust
September	Settembre	Septembar
October	Ottobre	Oktobar
November	Novembre	Novembar
December	Dicembre	Decembar

Finally, Bosnian introduces several Turkish words. We will see how the Ottoman rule, which lasted more than five centuries, left a deep mark on the evolution of Serbian culture. Belgrade, for example, is cut in two by the Danube: one side belonged to the Ottoman Empire, the other to the Austro-Hungarian one. It is still possible to see the difference in architecture. If you visit northern Serbia, it is entirely different from southern Serbia, personally on a much deeper level than the differences we can find in Italy.

English	Italian	Serbian	Bosnian
Window	Finestra	Prozor	Pendžer
Wall	Muro	Zid	Duvar
Paper	Carta	Papir	Ćahat

Bottom Line

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1. Take, for example, the word “pesca” in Italian: according to how you pronounce the vowel ‘e’ it can mean “peach” (the fruit) or the act of “fishing”. ↩
2. jesam is the short form of answering “Yes, I am” in all these languages, so it makes sense that “No, I’m not” would be nijesam (ni + jesam). ↩