Language Centre Resources

These languages are of Indo-European origin and are members of the South Slavic group of languages, spoken by c. 20 million people as a first or second language in several countries which formerly comprised Yugoslavia (notably in Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia, Slovenia) and a substantial number of immigrants in the United States, Canada, Australia, Germany, Sweden and other countries.

The earliest texts date form the 12th century, and the modern standard language is based on the central (also known as Shtokavian) dialect. The orthography tends to be phonemic, with rare exeptions.

Bosnian, Serbian, Montenegrin and Croatian are so closely inter-connected as to be mutually intelligible, distinguishable by certain colloquialisms and localised dialects only. Serbian and Montenegrin tend to be written more in the Cyrillic script (use both) and Bosnian and Croatian in Latin (exclusively).

Learners are encouraged to use resources from all language sections to maximise their learning potential and exposure to language from different areas.