Philological information on "Serbian" was prepared by the translation studies division of Dijital Tercüme.
Serbian belongs to the southern group of the Slavic Language Family. It is spoken by Serbs. As it existed in the same region with Croatian for many years, it can also be called the "Serbo-Croatian" language. Serbian is the official language of countries of Serbia and Montenegro. Serbia, or officially the Republic of Serbia, gained independence recently after separating itself from Montenegro. Hungary is in the north, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina are in the West, Macedonia and Kosovo are in the south and Romania and Bulgaria are in the east of the country, and as a result the country interacts with these languages frequently. Official authorities in Serbia use Serbian. However, minority languages are also spoken. These are primarily Hungarian, Macedonian, Bosnian, and Croatian, Serbo-Croatian and Montenegrin and other minority languages. However, the Serbian government has forbidden the use of other languages within the country. 82% of the Serbia population are Serbs, the remaining 18% are Hungarians, Bosniaks, Romani and other minorities. It gained its independence from the Ottoman State in the beginning of the last century, however, since it remained as an Ottoman land for more than 500 years, there are traces of Ottoman in the language. It has 17 different districts consisting of Zlatibor District, Belgrade, Macva District, Kolubara District, Moravica District, Poduravlje District, Branicevo District, Sumadija District, Pomoravlje District, Raska District, Rasina District, Bor District, Zajecar District, Ni'ava District, Pirot District and Pcinja District. The language shows slight differences in these districts. Another country, in which Serbian is used as an official language, is Montenegro. Montenegro is in southeastern Europe. Geographically, it is bordered by Albania in the south, and Kosovo in the east, Serbia in the north, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina in the west. Outside of these two countries, Serbian is closely related to all languages in other countries, where old Yugoslavia reigned. It has common words with other languages of the region, such as Macedonians, Bosnia, Croatian, Bulgarian and other Slavic languages. It can be written using both the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets. It is one of the official languages of Bosnia-Herzegovina and it is spoken by 10 million Serbs, who live in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia. In the 19th century when the Cyrillic alphabet was being adapted to Serbian, a letter was created for each sound. Therefore, Serbian is a language that is pronounced as it is written. An interesting feature of Serbian is that it can be written using both the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets. This is because the Yugoslavian regime preferred the Cyrillic alphabet, even though the Latin alphabet was used priorly in the Serbo-Croatian federation.
There are 8965 words in Serbian borrowed from Turkish due to many years of Ottoman reign. Börek/burek (pie), yastık/jastuk (pillow), kapı/kapija (door), badem/badem (almond), pamuk/pamuk (cotton), tepsi/tepsija (platter) are some examples.