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{{Short description|Use of Latin in the Serbian language}}
[[File:Beograd in 25.jpg|thumb|300px|right|A road sign in Serbia using cyrillic and romanization - the towns are [[Šid]] (prounced "Shid"), [[Novi Sad]] and [[Belgrade]]]]
[[File: Beograd in 25.jpg|thumb|A road sign in Serbia using Cyrillic and Latin alphabets. The towns are [[Šid]] (pronounced [ʃiːd]), [[Novi Sad]] and [[Belgrade]].]]
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The romanization or latinization of Serbian is the representation of the Serbian language using Latin letters. Serbian is natively written in its own [[Serbian Cyrillic alphabet]], a variation of [[Cyrillic script|Cyrillic]].


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The '''romanization''' or '''Latinisation of Serbian''' is the representation of the [[Serbian language]] using Latin letters. Serbian is written in two alphabets, [[Serbian Cyrillic]], a variation of the [[Cyrillic alphabet]], and [[Gaj's Latin]], or ''latinica'', a variation of the [[Latin alphabet]]. Both are widely used in Serbia. The Serbian language is thus an example of [[digraphia]].
However, [[Gaj's Latin alphabet]] is also used in Serbia as the second official alphabet and the two are directly and completely interchangeable.
[[File: Scripts in Europe (1901).jpg|thumb|250px|Main alphabets used in Europe around 1900:

{{legend|#84CFEE|outline=#ccc|[[Latin script]]: [[Fraktur (script)|Fraktur]] variant}}
{{legend|#F8D2D1|outline=#ccc|Latin script: [[Antiqua (typeface class)|Antiqua]] variant}}
{{legend|#DAF6D0|outline=#ccc|[[Cyrillic script]]}}
{{legend|#D4CAA7|outline=#ccc|[[Greek alphabet]]}}
{{legend|#FEFF88|outline=#ccc|[[Arabic script]]}}
{{legend|#ffffff|outline=#ccc|[[Clear script|Kalmyk]]–[[Mongolian script|Mongolian]] script}}
]]

The two alphabets are almost directly and completely interchangeable. Romanization can be done with no errors, but, due to the use of [[digraph (orthography)|digraph]]s in the Latin script (due to letters "nj" (њ), "lj" (љ), and "dž" (џ)), knowledge of Serbian is sometimes required to do proper transliteration from Latin back to Cyrillic. Standard Serbian currently uses both alphabets. A survey from 2014 showed that 47% of the Serbian population favors the Latin alphabet whereas 36% favors Cyrillic; the remaining 17% preferred neither.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.b92.net/kultura/vesti.php?nav_category=1087&yyyy=2014&mm=12&dd=16&nav_id=936784|title=Ivan Klajn: Ćirilica će postati arhaično pismo|date=16 December 2014 }}</ref>


The Latin variation of the Serbian alphabet is identical to those used in [[Bosnian language|Bosnian]] and [[Croatian language|Croatian]] language.
==Use of romanization==
==Use of romanization==
{{Off topic|date=August 2018}}
[[Image:Djura danicic.jpg|180px|thumb|right|[[Đuro Daničić]] added Đ instead of Dj in 1882]]
[[Image:Naslovna_Blic.jpg|right|[[Blic]] is one of an increasing number of media titles in Latin-alphabet Serbian]]
[[Image: Djura danicic.jpg|thumb|[[Đuro Daničić]] added the letter "Đ" instead of "Dj" in ''Croatian Academy'' 1882.]]


[[Serbo-Croatian]] was regarded as a single language since the 1850 [[Vienna Literary Agreement]], to be written in two forms: one (Serb) in the adapted Serbian cyrillic alphabet; the other (Croat) in the adapted Croatian Latin alphabet,<ref>The World and Its Peoples 2009 - Page 1654 "Until modern times, Serbo-Croat was regarded as a single language, written in two forms: one (Serb) in the Cyrillic alphabet; the other (Croat) in ...</ref> that is to say [[Gaj's Latin alphabet]].
[[Serbo-Croatian]] was regarded as a single language since the 1850 [[Vienna Literary Agreement]], to be written in two forms: one ([[Serbs|Serb]]) in the adapted Serbian Cyrillic alphabet; the other ([[Croats|Croat]]) in the adapted Croatian Latin alphabet,<ref>The World and Its Peoples 2009 - Page 1654 "Until modern times, Serbo-Croat was regarded as a single language, written in two forms: one (Serb) in the Cyrillic alphabet; the other (Croat) in ...</ref> that is to say [[Gaj's Latin alphabet]].


The Latin alphabet was not initially taught in schools in Serbia when it became independent in the 19th century. After a series of efforts by Serbian writers [[Ljubomir Stojanović]] and [[Jovan Skerlić]], it became part of the school curriculum after 1914.<ref>{{cite book | title = Yugoslavia and Its Historians: Understanding the Balkan Wars of the 1990s | first1 = Norman M. | last1 = Naimark | first2 = Holly | last2 = Case | publisher = Stanford University Press | year = 2003 | isbn = 0804745943 | pages = 95&ndash;96 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=u5tUbUyXtToC&pg=PA95 | access-date = 2012-04-18}}</ref>
Đ was added to Gaj’s Latin alphabet by [[Đuro Daničić]] in the 19th century. The lexeme soon found its way into the Latinic transliterations firstly of [[Serbian language|Serbian]] (through the [[Serbian language|Serbian]] and [[Croatian language|Croatian]] historical chapters) and then [[Macedonian language|Macedonian]] (its Latinic transliterations heavily influenced by Serbo-Croat from the Yugoslav period) and [[Bosnian language|Bosnian]] to represent the [[affricate]] {{IPAblink|dʑ}}. Đ is considered a distinct letter, and placed between [[Dž]] and [[E]] in [[alphabetical order]]. Its [[Serbian Cyrillic alphabet|Cyrillic]] equivalent is [[Ђ|Ђ ђ]]. Its partial equivalent in [[Macedonian language|Macedonian]] is [[Ѓ|Ѓ ѓ]] (as only some regions contain the {{IPA|/dʑ/}} sound). When a true đ is not available or not desired, it is [[transcription (linguistics)|transcribed]] as ''dj'' in Serbo-Croatian, and as ''gj'' in Macedonian.


Latin was not initially taught in schools in Serbia when it became independent in the 19th century. After a series of efforts by Serbian writers [[Ljubomir Stojanović]] and [[Jovan Skerlić]], it became part of school curriculum after 1914.<ref>{{cite book | title = Yugoslavia and Its Historians: Understanding the Balkan Wars of the 1990s | first1 = Norman M. | last1 = Naimark | first2 = Holly | last2 = Case | publisher = Stanford University Press | year = 2003 | isbn = 0804745943 | pages = 95&ndash;96 | url = http://books.google.com/books?id=u5tUbUyXtToC&pg=PA95 | accessdate = 2012-04-18}}</ref> The government of [[socialist Yugoslavia]] made some initial effort to promote romanization, use of the Latin alphabet even in the Orthodox Serbian and Montenegran parts of Yugoslavia, but met with resistance.<ref>The Social construction of written communication Bennett A. Rafoth, Donald L. Rubin - 1988 "Yugoslavian efforts to romanize Serbian (Kalogjera, 1985) and Chinese efforts to romanize Mandarin (De Francis, 1977b, 1984; Seybolt & Chiang, 1979) reveal that even authoritarian regimes may have to accept only limited success when the"</ref> The use of Latin did however become common among Serbian speakers.
During World War I, [[Austria-Hungary]] banned the Cyrillic alphabet in Bosnia<ref name="Horne2010">{{cite book|author=John Horne|title=A Companion to World War I|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AGpUuWvQXkQC&pg=PA375|access-date=26 April 2013|date=16 March 2010|publisher=John Wiley & Sons|isbn=978-1-4443-2364-1|page=375}}</ref> and its use in occupied Serbia was banned in schools.<ref name="Serbia's Great War 1914-1918">{{cite book|title=Serbia's Great War 1914-1918|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=viqqqQ2KT7kC&pg=PA231|access-date=26 April 2013|year=2007|publisher=Purdue University Press|isbn=978-1-55753-477-4|page=231}}</ref> Cyrillic was banned in the [[Independent State of Croatia]] in World War II.<ref name="Copley1992">{{cite book|author=Gregory R. Copley|title=Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AFExAQAAIAAJ|access-date=26 April 2013|year=1992|publisher=Copley & Associates|page=17}}</ref> The government of [[socialist Yugoslavia]] made some initial effort to promote romanization, use of the Latin alphabet even in the Orthodox Serbian and Montenegrin parts of Yugoslavia, but met with resistance.<ref>The Social construction of written communication Bennett A. Rafoth, Donald L. Rubin - 1988 "Yugoslavian efforts to romanize Serbian (Kalogjera, 1985) and Chinese efforts to romanize Mandarin (De Francis, 1977b, 1984; Seybolt & Chiang, 1979) reveal that even authoritarian regimes may have to accept only limited success when the price of complete victory is too high."</ref> The use of ''latinica'' did however become more common among Serbian speakers.


In late 1980s, a number of articles had been published in Serbia about a danger of Cyrillic being fully replaced by Latin, thereby endangering what was deemed a Serbian national symbol.<ref>{{cite journal | url = https://hrcak.srce.hr/index.php?show=clanak&id_clanak_jezik=319260&lang=en | page = 51 | first = Artur | last = Bagdasarov | title = Ethnolinguistic policy in socialist Yugoslavia | journal = Filologija | issue = 71 | year = 2018 | publisher = [[Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts]] | doi = 10.21857/m8vqrtze29 | issn = 1848-8919 | access-date = 15 August 2021}}</ref>
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Later still, in 1993 the authorities of [[Republika Srpska]] under [[Radovan Karadžić]] and [[Momčilo Krajišnik]] decided to proclaim [[ekavian]] and [[Serbian Cyrillic]] to be official in [[Bosnia and Herzegovina]], which was considered grotesque both by native Bosnian Serb writers at the time and the general public, and that decision was rescinded in 1994.<ref>{{cite book | title = Language and Identity in the Balkans: Serbo-Croatian and Its Disintegration | first = Robert D. | last = Greenberg | publisher = Oxford University Press | year = 2004 | isbn = 0191514551 | pages = 78&ndash;79 | url = http://books.google.hr/books?id=_lNjHgr3QioC&pg=PA78 | accessdate = 2012-04-18}}</ref> Nevertheless, it was reinstated in a milder form in 1996, and today still the use of Serbian Latin is officially discouraged in Republika Srpska, in favor of Cyrillic.<ref>{{cite book | title = Language and Identity in the Balkans: Serbo-Croatian and Its Disintegration | first = Robert D. | last = Greenberg | publisher = Oxford University Press | year = 2004 | isbn = 0191514551 | pages = 82&ndash;83 | url = http://books.google.hr/books?id=_lNjHgr3QioC&pg=PA82 | accessdate = 2012-04-18}}</ref>


Following the [[breakup of Yugoslavia]], Gaj's Latin alphabet remained in use in [[Bosnian language|Bosnian]] and [[Croatian language|Croatian]] standards of [[Serbo-Croatian]]. Another standard of Serbo-Croatian, [[Montenegrin language|Montenegrin]], uses a slightly modified version of it.
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Today Serbian is more likely to be romanized in Montenegro than in Serbia,<ref>One thousand languages: living, endangered, and lost - Page 46 Peter Austin - 2008 "Croatian and Bosnian are written in the Latin alphabet; Serbian in both Serbia and Bosnia is written in the Cyrillic alphabet. Both scripts are used for Serbian in Montenegro."</ref> Exceptions to this include Serbian websites where use of Latin alphabet is often more convenient, and increasing use in tabloid and popular media such as ''[[Blic]]'' newspaper. More conservative newspaper, such as the formerly state-run ''[[Politika]],'' tend to use cyrillic script.<ref>Hitting the headlines in Europe: a country-by-country guide Page 166 Cathie Burton, Alun Drake - 2004 "The former state-run paper, Politika, which kept its retro style until very recently, using Serbian Cyrillic rather than the Latin alphabet, has been bought by a German company and is modernizing rapidly. There are a host of tabloids, .."</ref>

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In 1993, the authorities of [[Republika Srpska]] under [[Radovan Karadžić]] and [[Momčilo Krajišnik]] decided to proclaim [[Ekavian]] and [[Serbian Cyrillic]] to be official in [[Republika Srpska]], which was opposed both by native [[Serbs of Bosnia and Herzegovina|Bosnian Serb]] writers at the time and the general public, and that decision was rescinded in 1994.<ref>{{cite book | title = Language and Identity in the Balkans: Serbo-Croatian and Its Disintegration | first = Robert D. | last = Greenberg | publisher = Oxford University Press | year = 2004 | isbn = 0191514551 | pages = 78&ndash;79 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=_lNjHgr3QioC&pg=PA78 | access-date = 2012-04-18}}</ref> Nevertheless, it was reinstated in a milder form in 1996, and today still the use of Serbian Latin is officially discouraged in Republika Srpska, in favor of Cyrillic.<ref>{{cite book | title = Language and Identity in the Balkans: Serbo-Croatian and Its Disintegration | first = Robert D. | last = Greenberg | publisher = Oxford University Press | year = 2004 | isbn = 0191514551 | pages = 82&ndash;83 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=_lNjHgr3QioC&pg=PA82 | access-date = 2012-04-18}}</ref>

Article 10 of the [[Constitution of Serbia]]<ref>{{cite web | url = http://www.srbija.gov.rs/cinjenice_o_srbiji/ustav_odredbe.php?id=217 | access-date = 2013-04-26 | work = Constitution of the Republic of Serbia | title = Constitution Principles | publisher = [[Government of Serbia]] }}</ref> adopted by a referendum in 2006 defined Cyrillic as the official script in [[Serbia]], while Latin was given the status of "Script in official use".

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Today Serbian is more likely to be romanized in [[Montenegro]] than in Serbia.<ref>One thousand languages: living, endangered, and lost - Page 46 Peter Austin - 2008 "Croatian and Bosnian are written in the Latin alphabet; Serbian in both Serbia and Bosnia is written in the Cyrillic alphabet. Both scripts are used for Serbian in Montenegro."</ref> Exceptions to this include Serbian websites where use of Latin alphabet is often more convenient, and increasing use in tabloid and popular media such as ''[[Blic]]'', ''[[Danas (newspaper)|Danas]]'' and ''Svet''.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.svet.rs/ |title=Home |website=svet.rs}}</ref> More established media, such as the formerly state-run {{Lang|sr-latn|[[Politika]]}}, and [[Radio Television of Serbia]],<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.tanjug.rs/index1.aspx|title = ТАНЈУГ &#124; Новинска агенција}}</ref> or foreign [[Google News]],<ref>https://news.google.com/{{nonspecific|date=May 2022}}</ref> [[Voice of Russia]]<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://serbian.ruvr.ru/ |title=Глас Русије |access-date=2013-04-26 |archive-date=2013-04-24 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130424081834/http://serbian.ruvr.ru/ |url-status=dead }}</ref> and [[Facebook]] tend to use Cyrillic script.<ref>Hitting the headlines in Europe: a country-by-country guide Page 166 Cathie Burton, Alun Drake - 2004 "The former state-run paper, Politika, which kept its retro style until very recently, using Serbian Cyrillic rather than the Latin alphabet, has been bought by a German company and is modernizing rapidly. There are a host of tabloids, .."</ref> Some websites offer the content in both scripts, using Cyrillic as the source and auto generating Romanized version.

In 2013 in Croatia there were [[Anti-Cyrillic protests in Croatia|massive protests against official Cyrillic signs]] on local government buildings in [[Vukovar]].<ref>Agence France-Presse, April 7, 2013 [http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/afp/130407/croatians-protest-against-cyrillic-signs-vukovar] ''Croatians protest against Cyrillic signs in Vukovar''</ref>


==Romanization of names==
==Romanization of names==

===Serbian place names===
===Serbian place names===
Serbian place names are consistently spelled in Latin using the [[identity mapping]] that exists between the [[Serbian Cyrillic alphabet]] and [[Gaj's Latin alphabet]].
Serbian place names are consistently spelled in ''latinica'' using the mapping that exists between the [[Serbian Cyrillic alphabet]] and [[Gaj's Latin alphabet]].


===Serbian personal names===
===Serbian personal names===
Serbian personal names are usually romanized exactly the same way as place names. This is particularly the case with consonants which are common to other Slavic Latin alphabets - [[Č]] [[Ć]] [[Š]] [[Ž]] and [[Dž]].
Serbian personal names are usually romanized exactly the same way as place names. This is particularly the case with consonants which are common to other [[Slavic languages|Slavic]] Latin alphabets - [[Č]], [[Ć]], [[Š]], [[Ž]], [[Dž]] and [[Đ]].


A problem is presented by [[Đuro Daničić]]'s addition of [[Đ]]/[[đ]] (pronounced [dʑ], similar to the "dj" sound in "jam") which is still sometimes represented by "Dj" (as did the original Gaj's alphabet), so "Dj" is still sometimes encountered in rendering Serbian names into English, though strictly Đ should be used (as in Croatian).
A problem is presented by the letter [[Đ]]/[[đ]] that represents the [[affricate]] {{IPAblink|dʑ}} (the same sound written as <j> in most romanizations of [[Japanese language|Japanese]], similar, though not identical to english <j> as in "Jam"), which is still sometimes represented by "Dj". The letter Đ was not part of the original Gaj's alphabet, but was added by [[Đuro Daničić]] in the 19th century. A [[transcription (linguistics)|transcribed]] "Dj" is still sometimes encountered in rendering Serbian names into English (e.g. [[Novak Djokovic]]), though strictly Đ should be used (as in Croatian).


===Foreign names===
===Foreign names===
[[File:George Washington Street sign Belgrade.JPG|thumb|Sign of [[George Washington]] street in [[Belgrade]]]]
In Serbian, foreign names are slavicized and differ from the original in both Latin and Cyrillic, a change that does not happen in Croatian (also Latin). For example, in Serbian history books [[George Washington]] becomes "{{lang|sr|Džordž Vašington}}" or {{lang|sr-Cyrl|Џорџ Вашингтон}}, [[Winston Churchill]] becomes "{{lang|sr|Vinston Čerčil}}" or {{lang|sr-Cyrl|Винстон Черчил}} and [[Charles de Gaulle]] "{{lang|sr|Šarl de Gol}}" or {{lang|sr-Cyrl|Шарл де Гол}}.<ref>Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, a grammar: with sociolinguistic commentary - Page 3 Ronelle Alexander - 2006 -"... name in original Serbian (Cyrillic) Serbian (Latin) Croatian George Џорџ Džordž ; George Mary Мери Meri Mary ; Winston Churchill Винстон Черчил Vinston Čerčil Winston Churchill ; Charles de Gaulle Шарл де Гол Šarl de Gol Charles de Gaulle ;"</ref>
In Serbian, foreign names are phonetically [[transliterated]] into both Latin and Cyrillic, a change that does not happen in Croatian and Bosnian (also Latin). For example, in Serbian, [[George Washington]] becomes {{lang|sr-Latn|Džordž Vašington}} or {{lang|sr-Cyrl|Џорџ Вашингтон}}, [[Winston Churchill]] becomes {{lang|sr-Latn|Vinston Čerčil}} or {{lang|sr-Cyrl|Винстон Черчил}} and [[Charles de Gaulle]] {{lang|sr-Latn|Šarl de Gol}} or {{lang|sr-Cyrl|Шарл де Гол}}.<ref>Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, a grammar: with sociolinguistic commentary - Page 3 Ronelle Alexander - 2006 -"... name in original Serbian (Cyrillic) Serbian (Latin) Croatian George Џорџ Džordž; George Mary Мери Meri Mary; Winston Churchill Винстон Черчил Vinston Čerčil Winston Churchill; Charles de Gaulle Шарл де Гол Šarl de Gol Charles de Gaulle;"</ref> This change also happens in some European languages that use the Latin alphabet such as [[Latvian Language|Latvian]]. The name [[Catherine Ashton]] for instance gets transliterated into {{lang|sr-Latn|Ketrin Ešton}} or {{lang|sr-Cyrl|Кетрин Ештон}} in Serbian.
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An exception to this are place names which are so well known as to have their own form ([[exonym and endonym|exonym]]): just as English has ''[[Vienna]], [[Austria]]'' (and not [[German language|German]] ''Wien, Österreich'') so Croatian and Serbian have {{lang|sr-Latn|Beč, Austrija}} ({{lang-sr-Cyrl|Беч, Аустрија}}).


==Incomplete romanization==
⚫
An exception to this are place names which are so well known as to have their own form: just as English has "Vienna, Austria" (and not German "Wien, Österreich") so Croatian and romanization of Serbian have "Beč, Austrija."
The incomplete romanization of Serbian is written using the [[English alphabet]], also known as ASCII Serbian, by dropping diacritics. It is commonly used in SMS messages, comments on the Internet or e-mails, mainly because users do not have a Serbian keyboard installed. Serbian is a fully phonetic language with 30 sounds that can be represented with 30 Cyrillic letters, or with letters of 27 Gaj's Latin alphabet and three digraphs ("[[Nje|nj]]" for "[[њ]]", ”[[Lje|lj]]" for "[[љ]]", and "[[dž]]" for "[[џ]]"). In its ASCII form, the number of used letters drops down to 22, as the letters "q", "w", "x" and "y" are not used. This leads to some ambiguity due to [[homographs]], however context is usually sufficient to clarify these issues.

Using incomplete romanization does not allow for easy transliteration back to Cyrillic without significant manual work. Google tried using a machine learning approach to solving this problem and developed an interactive text input tool that enables typing Serbian in ASCII and auto-converting to Cyrillic.<ref>[https://www.google.com/intl/sr/inputtools/cloud/try/ Google input tools for Serbian]</ref> However, manual typing is still required with occasional disambiguation selection from the pop-up menu.

==Tools for romanization==
Serbian text can be converted from Cyrillic to Latin and vice versa automatically by computer. There are add-in tools available for [[Microsoft Word]]<ref>[http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=1438 Office 2003 Add-in: Latin and Cyrillic Transliteration]</ref> and [[OpenOffice.org]],<ref>[http://oootranslit.info/download/ OOoTranslit add-on for OpenOffice]</ref> as well as command line tools for Linux, MacOS and Windows.


==References==
==References==
{{reflist}}
{{reflist}}
== See also ==
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{{Romanization}}


⚫
{{Romanization}}
{{Linguistics-stub}}


[[Category:Romanization of Cyrillic|Serbian]]
[[Category:Serbian language]]
[[Category:Serbian language]]
[[Category:Cyrillic romanization]]

Latest revision as of 23:51, 4 January 2025

A road sign in Serbia using Cyrillic and Latin alphabets. The towns are Šid (pronounced [ʃiːd]), Novi Sad and Belgrade.

The romanization or Latinisation of Serbian is the representation of the Serbian language using Latin letters. Serbian is written in two alphabets, Serbian Cyrillic, a variation of the Cyrillic alphabet, and Gaj's Latin, or latinica, a variation of the Latin alphabet. Both are widely used in Serbia. The Serbian language is thus an example of digraphia.

Main alphabets used in Europe around 1900:
  Latin script: Fraktur variant
  Latin script: Antiqua variant
  Cyrillic script
  Greek alphabet
  Arabic script
  Kalmyk–Mongolian script

The two alphabets are almost directly and completely interchangeable. Romanization can be done with no errors, but, due to the use of digraphs in the Latin script (due to letters "nj" (њ), "lj" (љ), and "dž" (џ)), knowledge of Serbian is sometimes required to do proper transliteration from Latin back to Cyrillic. Standard Serbian currently uses both alphabets. A survey from 2014 showed that 47% of the Serbian population favors the Latin alphabet whereas 36% favors Cyrillic; the remaining 17% preferred neither.[1]

Use of romanization

[edit]
Đuro Daničić added the letter "Đ" instead of "Dj" in Croatian Academy 1882.

Serbo-Croatian was regarded as a single language since the 1850 Vienna Literary Agreement, to be written in two forms: one (Serb) in the adapted Serbian Cyrillic alphabet; the other (Croat) in the adapted Croatian Latin alphabet,[2] that is to say Gaj's Latin alphabet.

The Latin alphabet was not initially taught in schools in Serbia when it became independent in the 19th century. After a series of efforts by Serbian writers Ljubomir Stojanović and Jovan Skerlić, it became part of the school curriculum after 1914.[3]

During World War I, Austria-Hungary banned the Cyrillic alphabet in Bosnia[4] and its use in occupied Serbia was banned in schools.[5] Cyrillic was banned in the Independent State of Croatia in World War II.[6] The government of socialist Yugoslavia made some initial effort to promote romanization, use of the Latin alphabet even in the Orthodox Serbian and Montenegrin parts of Yugoslavia, but met with resistance.[7] The use of latinica did however become more common among Serbian speakers.

In late 1980s, a number of articles had been published in Serbia about a danger of Cyrillic being fully replaced by Latin, thereby endangering what was deemed a Serbian national symbol.[8]

Following the breakup of Yugoslavia, Gaj's Latin alphabet remained in use in Bosnian and Croatian standards of Serbo-Croatian. Another standard of Serbo-Croatian, Montenegrin, uses a slightly modified version of it.

In 1993, the authorities of Republika Srpska under Radovan Karadžić and Momčilo Krajišnik decided to proclaim Ekavian and Serbian Cyrillic to be official in Republika Srpska, which was opposed both by native Bosnian Serb writers at the time and the general public, and that decision was rescinded in 1994.[9] Nevertheless, it was reinstated in a milder form in 1996, and today still the use of Serbian Latin is officially discouraged in Republika Srpska, in favor of Cyrillic.[10]

Article 10 of the Constitution of Serbia[11] adopted by a referendum in 2006 defined Cyrillic as the official script in Serbia, while Latin was given the status of "Script in official use".

Today Serbian is more likely to be romanized in Montenegro than in Serbia.[12] Exceptions to this include Serbian websites where use of Latin alphabet is often more convenient, and increasing use in tabloid and popular media such as Blic, Danas and Svet.[13] More established media, such as the formerly state-run Politika, and Radio Television of Serbia,[14] or foreign Google News,[15] Voice of Russia[16] and Facebook tend to use Cyrillic script.[17] Some websites offer the content in both scripts, using Cyrillic as the source and auto generating Romanized version.

In 2013 in Croatia there were massive protests against official Cyrillic signs on local government buildings in Vukovar.[18]

Romanization of names

[edit]

Serbian place names

[edit]

Serbian place names are consistently spelled in latinica using the mapping that exists between the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet and Gaj's Latin alphabet.

Serbian personal names

[edit]

Serbian personal names are usually romanized exactly the same way as place names. This is particularly the case with consonants which are common to other Slavic Latin alphabets - Č, Ć, Š, Ž, Dž and Đ.

A problem is presented by the letter Đ/đ that represents the affricate [dʑ] (the same sound written as <j> in most romanizations of Japanese, similar, though not identical to english <j> as in "Jam"), which is still sometimes represented by "Dj". The letter Đ was not part of the original Gaj's alphabet, but was added by Đuro Daničić in the 19th century. A transcribed "Dj" is still sometimes encountered in rendering Serbian names into English (e.g. Novak Djokovic), though strictly Đ should be used (as in Croatian).

Foreign names

[edit]
Sign of George Washington street in Belgrade

In Serbian, foreign names are phonetically transliterated into both Latin and Cyrillic, a change that does not happen in Croatian and Bosnian (also Latin). For example, in Serbian, George Washington becomes Džordž Vašington or Џорџ Вашингтон, Winston Churchill becomes Vinston Čerčil or Винстон Черчил and Charles de Gaulle Šarl de Gol or Шарл де Гол.[19] This change also happens in some European languages that use the Latin alphabet such as Latvian. The name Catherine Ashton for instance gets transliterated into Ketrin Ešton or Кетрин Ештон in Serbian. An exception to this are place names which are so well known as to have their own form (exonym): just as English has Vienna, Austria (and not German Wien, Österreich) so Croatian and Serbian have Beč, Austrija (Serbian Cyrillic: Беч, Аустрија).

Incomplete romanization

[edit]

The incomplete romanization of Serbian is written using the English alphabet, also known as ASCII Serbian, by dropping diacritics. It is commonly used in SMS messages, comments on the Internet or e-mails, mainly because users do not have a Serbian keyboard installed. Serbian is a fully phonetic language with 30 sounds that can be represented with 30 Cyrillic letters, or with letters of 27 Gaj's Latin alphabet and three digraphs ("nj" for "њ", ”lj" for "љ", and "dž" for "џ"). In its ASCII form, the number of used letters drops down to 22, as the letters "q", "w", "x" and "y" are not used. This leads to some ambiguity due to homographs, however context is usually sufficient to clarify these issues.

Using incomplete romanization does not allow for easy transliteration back to Cyrillic without significant manual work. Google tried using a machine learning approach to solving this problem and developed an interactive text input tool that enables typing Serbian in ASCII and auto-converting to Cyrillic.[20] However, manual typing is still required with occasional disambiguation selection from the pop-up menu.

Tools for romanization

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Serbian text can be converted from Cyrillic to Latin and vice versa automatically by computer. There are add-in tools available for Microsoft Word[21] and OpenOffice.org,[22] as well as command line tools for Linux, MacOS and Windows.

References

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  1. ^ "Ivan Klajn: Ćirilica će postati arhaično pismo". 16 December 2014.
  2. ^ The World and Its Peoples 2009 - Page 1654 "Until modern times, Serbo-Croat was regarded as a single language, written in two forms: one (Serb) in the Cyrillic alphabet; the other (Croat) in ...
  3. ^ Naimark, Norman M.; Case, Holly (2003). Yugoslavia and Its Historians: Understanding the Balkan Wars of the 1990s. Stanford University Press. pp. 95–96. ISBN 0804745943. Retrieved 2012-04-18.
  4. ^ John Horne (16 March 2010). A Companion to World War I. John Wiley & Sons. p. 375. ISBN 978-1-4443-2364-1. Retrieved 26 April 2013.
  5. ^ Serbia's Great War 1914-1918. Purdue University Press. 2007. p. 231. ISBN 978-1-55753-477-4. Retrieved 26 April 2013.
  6. ^ Gregory R. Copley (1992). Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy. Copley & Associates. p. 17. Retrieved 26 April 2013.
  7. ^ The Social construction of written communication Bennett A. Rafoth, Donald L. Rubin - 1988 "Yugoslavian efforts to romanize Serbian (Kalogjera, 1985) and Chinese efforts to romanize Mandarin (De Francis, 1977b, 1984; Seybolt & Chiang, 1979) reveal that even authoritarian regimes may have to accept only limited success when the price of complete victory is too high."
  8. ^ Bagdasarov, Artur (2018). "Ethnolinguistic policy in socialist Yugoslavia". Filologija (71). Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts: 51. doi:10.21857/m8vqrtze29. ISSN 1848-8919. Retrieved 15 August 2021.
  9. ^ Greenberg, Robert D. (2004). Language and Identity in the Balkans: Serbo-Croatian and Its Disintegration. Oxford University Press. pp. 78–79. ISBN 0191514551. Retrieved 2012-04-18.
  10. ^ Greenberg, Robert D. (2004). Language and Identity in the Balkans: Serbo-Croatian and Its Disintegration. Oxford University Press. pp. 82–83. ISBN 0191514551. Retrieved 2012-04-18.
  11. ^ "Constitution Principles". Constitution of the Republic of Serbia. Government of Serbia. Retrieved 2013-04-26.
  12. ^ One thousand languages: living, endangered, and lost - Page 46 Peter Austin - 2008 "Croatian and Bosnian are written in the Latin alphabet; Serbian in both Serbia and Bosnia is written in the Cyrillic alphabet. Both scripts are used for Serbian in Montenegro."
  13. ^ "Home". svet.rs.
  14. ^ "ТАНЈУГ | Новинска агенција".
  15. ^ https://news.google.com/[not specific enough to verify]
  16. ^ "Глас Русије". Archived from the original on 2013-04-24. Retrieved 2013-04-26.
  17. ^ Hitting the headlines in Europe: a country-by-country guide Page 166 Cathie Burton, Alun Drake - 2004 "The former state-run paper, Politika, which kept its retro style until very recently, using Serbian Cyrillic rather than the Latin alphabet, has been bought by a German company and is modernizing rapidly. There are a host of tabloids, .."
  18. ^ Agence France-Presse, April 7, 2013 [1] Croatians protest against Cyrillic signs in Vukovar
  19. ^ Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, a grammar: with sociolinguistic commentary - Page 3 Ronelle Alexander - 2006 -"... name in original Serbian (Cyrillic) Serbian (Latin) Croatian George Џорџ Džordž; George Mary Мери Meri Mary; Winston Churchill Винстон Черчил Vinston Čerčil Winston Churchill; Charles de Gaulle Шарл де Гол Šarl de Gol Charles de Gaulle;"
  20. ^ Google input tools for Serbian
  21. ^ Office 2003 Add-in: Latin and Cyrillic Transliteration
  22. ^ OOoTranslit add-on for OpenOffice
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