Serbs - Language

Language

Serbs speak the Serbian language, a member of the South Slavic group of languages, specifically in the Southwestern Slavic group, with the Southeastern group containing Bulgarian and Macedonian. It is considered a standardized register of Serbo-Croatian, as mutually intelligible with the standard Croatian and Bosnian languages (see Differences in standard Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian) which are all standardized on the Shtokavian dialect.

Serbian is an official language in Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro, and is a minority language in Croatia, Macedonia, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia.

Older forms of Serbian are Old Serbian, the redaction of Old Church Slavonic, and the Russo-Serbian variant, a version of the Church Slavonic language.

Serbian is the only European language with active digraphia, using both Cyrillic and Latin alphabets. Serbian Cyrillic was devised in 1814 by Serbian linguist Vuk Karadžić, who created the alphabet on phonemic principles, the Cyrillic itself has its origins in Cyril and Methodius' transformation of the Greek script in the 9th century.

Loanwords in the Serbian language besides common internationalisms are mostly from Turkish, German and Italian, words of Hungarian origin are present mostly in the north and Greek words are predominant in the liturgy.

Two Serbian words that are used in many of the world's languages are "vampire" and "paprika". The English term vampire was derived (possibly via French vampyre) from the German Vampir, which was in turn derived in the early 18th century from the Serbian language word вампир/vampir, when Arnold Paole, a purported vampire in Serbia was described as wreaking havoc in Serbian villages during the time that Serbia was incorporated into the Austrian Empire. Common words of Serbian cuisine are "Slivovitz" and "ćevapčići". Paprika and Slivovitz are borrowed via German; paprika itself entered German via Hungarian.