# Forum Other Languages Slavic languages Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian  Interested in the U.S.

## SashaT

Hi guys!  I was just scrolling through some of the other language forums on this site and I came across this.  I am interested.  Are Croation, Bosnian, and Serbian related?  Why are they grouped together? 
I guess really I'm just looking for some one to me give me an overview of these three languages. 
Where are they spoken?
How many people speak them? 
Do they use different alphabets?
Are there any good websites out there with a thourough evaluation of their grammar?   
As a lover of learning languages, I would deeply appreciate any goos information you could provide an interested American.  ::

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## Pravit

> Are Croation, Bosnian, and Serbian related? Why are they grouped together?

 They are very similar languages. I think some of them are actually supposed to be more or less the same language, with artificial differences being introduced(everyone cites the helicopter example for this one). 
Read more about the diffferences between these languages here: http://masterrussian.net/mforum/viewtop ... 60&start=0   

> Where are they spoken?

 Former Yugoslavia.   

> How many people speak them?

 Several million.   

> Do they use different alphabets?

 Sort of. I think some of those languages actually use two alphabets(Serbian being one of them).   

> Are there any good websites out there with a thourough evaluation of their grammar?

 Not that I know of. There are very few sites like that even for "popular" languages.

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## Stjepan

Pozdrav!  ::  
Croatian, Bosnian, and Serbian are spoken in Croatia, Bosnia and Hercegovina, and Serbia and Montenegro.  They were all part of Yugoslavia until the 1990's.  The three languages are very closely related and in Yugoslavia, they were referred to together as Serbo-Croatian.  There are differences though mostly in vocabulary, but also in accent, some conventions of speech, and pronunciation.  Croatian and Serbian have also had their own literary standards since the 19th century, and have also developed distinct slang in modern speech. 
For pronunciation differences, it gets confusing because all three language standards are based on the neoštokavski dialect, but the Croatian and Serbian standards pronounce the old slavic vowel "jat" differently.  The Croatian standard uses ije/je (ijekavski) and Serbian uses e (ekavski) (Croatian: Bijelo - Serbian: Belo).  Bosnian also uses ije/je. 
This is only partially useful for distinguishing beyond the standard languages though.  The vast majority of štokavski/ekavski speakers are Serbian but for the other subdialects there is much overlap.    This becomes even more complicated  as Croatian has two other major dialects apart from štokavski: čakavski and kajkavski. 
Croatian also tends to use more neologisms than Serbian or Bosnian.  New words have been created and old words reintroduced.  As Pravit wrote, there were political motives behind much of that. 
The languages are spoken by about 20 million people. 
For alphabets, Serbian uses a unique version of the cyrillic alphabet.  Very different from Russian/Bulgarian cyrillic and very interesting. 
Croatian uses a form of the latin alphabet which is very similar to the Czech alphabet.  Bosnian uses the same alphabet as Croatian. 
Unfortunately, I do not know of any comprehensive grammar for these languages on-line. 
Hope this was helpful.  ::

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