serbian

Serbian is a term used for several related things: the people known as Serbs, the South Slavic language they speak, and things associated with the country of Serbia. It designates an ethnic group primarily concentrated in Serbia and the western Balkans, as well as a standard literary language used by Serbs and by speakers of closely related varieties in neighboring regions and diaspora communities.

The Serbian language is a South Slavic language belonging to the Western subgroup of the Serbo-Croatian continuum. It is written in two scripts, Cyrillic and Latin, both of which have official status in Serbia. The standard form is based on the Štokavian dialect and most commonly uses the Ijekavian reflex of the proto-Slavic vowel system, though Ekavian variants appear in some regional speech. Serbian and its closely related varieties are mutually intelligible with Bosnian, Croatian, and Montenegrin, reflecting a shared linguistic heritage that has historically been described as Serbo-Croatian.

Historically, the modern literary form of Serbian was codified in the 19th century, notably through the efforts of Vuk Karadžić, who promoted vernacular spelling and grammar. The language was part of the Serbo-Croatian standard during much of the 20th century within Yugoslavia, and it remains a primary standard in Serbia and among Serbs in the region. The related varieties spoken in Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Croatia are often treated as distinct standard languages today (Montenegrin, Bosnian, and Croatian), but they share a common core and high degree of mutual intelligibility with Serbian.