- Serbian Cyrillic alphabet
The Serbian Cyrillic alphabet ( _sr. српска/Вукова ћирилица, "srpska/Vukova ćirilica", literally "Serbian/Vuk's Cyrillic alphabet") is the official and traditional alphabet used to write the
Serbian language . It is an adaptation of theCyrillic alphabet for the Serbian language, and was developed in 1818 by Serbian linguist Vuk Karadžić. The alphabet was officially adopted in 1868Fact|date=March 2007. It should be noted that a corresponding Serbian Latin script (Serbian: латиница, "latinica") is also used to write the language, although it lacks certain phonetic properties, namely the "one sound, one letter" system.Karadžić based his alphabet on the Cyrillic alphabet, on the simple principle of "write as you speak and read as it is written" ( _sr. Пиши као што говориш и читај како је написано, "Piši kao što govoriš i čitaj kako je napisano"). The Cyrillic and Latin alphabets are almost entirely interchangeable, with the Latin digraphs Lj, Nj, and Dž counting as single letters.
The Cyrillic alphabet is seen as being more traditional, and has official status in
Serbia ,Bosnia and Herzegovina andMontenegro . During the course of the 20th century the Latin alphabet has become more frequently used, especially inMontenegro , where it is now used almost exclusively. The Cyrillic script also has official and equal status in Bosnia and Herzegovina (at the Federal level), in theBrčko District and in theFederation of Bosnia and Herzegovina .The Serbian Cyrillic alphabet was also one of the two official scripts used to write the
Serbo-Croatian language inYugoslavia since its inception in 1918, despite attempts by King Alexander I to abolish the Cyrillic version. With the collapse of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, Serbo-Croatian is no longer used officially.The Serbian Cyrillic alphabet, together with the works of
Krste Misirkov andVenko Markovski , was used as a basis for theMacedonian alphabet .The Alphabet
The following table provides the upper and lower case forms of the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet, along with the Serbian Latin equivalent and the IPA value for each letter:
The handwritten Serbian Cyrillic alphabet is depicted below (the letter order corresponds to the table above):
Unique letters
The ligatures <Љ> and <Њ>, together with <Џ>, <Ђ> and <Ћ> were developed uniquely for the Serbian alphabet.
*Karadžić based the letters <Љ> and <Њ> on a design by
Sava Mrkalj , combining the letters <Л> (L) and <Н> (N) with thesoft sign (Ь).*Karadžić based <Џ> on a letter in the
Romanian Cyrillic alphabet .*<Ћ> was adopted by Karadžić to represent the
voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate (: IPA|/tɕ/). The letter was based on and adapted from the letter Djerv, which is the 12th letter of theGlagolitic alphabet . The letter had been used in written Serbian since the 12th century, to represent IPA|/gʲ/, IPA|dʲ/ and IPA|/dʑ/.*Karadžić adopted a design by
Lukijan Mušicki for the letter <Ђ>. It was based on the letter <Ћ>, as adapted by Karadžić.*<Ј> was adopted from the
Latin alphabet .<Љ>, <Њ> and <Џ> were later adopted for use in the
Macedonian alphabet .Differences with the Russian/East Slavic and Bulgarian versions
*Serbian Cyrillic alphabet does not use either the Russian hard sign/Bulgarian ŭ (ъ) nor the soft sign (ь), but uses the aforementioned soft-sign ligatures instead.
*Does not have Russian/Belorussian Э, the semi-vowels Й or ў, nor the iotated letters Я, Є (Ukrainian ye), Ї (yi), Ё (Russian yo) or Ю (yu), and are instead written as two separates letters: Ja, Je, Jи, Jo, Jy. J can also be used as a semi-vowel.
* The letter Щ is not used. When necessary, it is transliterated as either ШЧ (East Slavic words) or ШT (Bulgarian words).Serbian and Macedonian italic andcursive forms of lowercase lettersб ,п ,г ,д , andт differ from those used in other Cyrillic alphabets. That presents an obstacle inUNICODE modeling, as the glyphs differ only in italic versions, and historically non-italic letters have been used in the same code positions. Serbian professional typography uses fonts specially crafted for the language to overcome the problem, but texts printed from common computers (containing East Slavic rather than Serbian italic glyphs) pose a problem [cite web|url=http://jankojs.tripod.com/SerbianCyr.htm|title=Serbian Cyrillic Letters BE, GHE, DE, PE, TE* (collection of related items from Unicode mailing list)|author=Janko Stamenović|accessdate=2008-06-30]
Adobe Cyrillic fonts and the new Microsoft Windows Vista font family include the Serbian variations (both regular and italic) as well as a few other font houses. The letters can easily be implemented using Adobe Illustrator, for example.References
* [http://www.omniglot.com/writing/serbo-croat.htm Omniglot - Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian]
* [http://home.unilang.org/wiki3/index.php/Serbian_alphabet Serbian Alphabet]
* [http://www.writingsystems.net/languages/serbocroatian/serbocroatiancyrillic.htm Serbian Cyrillic] Dead link|date=September 2008
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