Bosnian is a South-Slavic language, closely related to both Croatian and Serbian. It is spoken in the country of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as in parts of Serbia, Croatia, and Montenegro. Before the division of Yugoslavia, Bosnian was considered a dialect of Serbo-Croatian, but was declared a separate language by the Bosnian government when the country became independent.
The Bosnian language is written with a variation of the Latin alphabet, similar to the one used by English but with a few additional letters. The Bosnian alphabet has thirty letters, of which five are vowels and twenty-five are consonants. Two of the consonants are digraphs, meaning they are written with two characters but are considered to be a single letter. Some of the letters are pronounced much like their English counterparts, while other differ noticeably. English speakers learning to speak Bosnian should take note of these differences. For example, the letter
r can function as a vowel when it appears between two consonants in some Bosnian words, such as
mrkva "carrot" and
prtljag "luggage". It is a consonant when it appears in other positions in Bosnian words.
Bosnian spelling tends to be quite phonetic. Most letters represent only one sound, and all the written letters in a word are pronounced.
In the past, a version of the Cyrillic alphabet, similar but not identical to the one used by Russian, was used to write the Bosnian language. That Bosnian Cyrillic alphabet may still occasionally be seen and accepted today, but it is falling out of use.
Most Bosnian vocabulary words are also shared by Serbian and Croatian, although there may be minor differences in spelling or pronunciation. There are also cases where Bosnian speakers may prefer a different term than the one used in their neighboring languages, even if the alternative terms preferred in those languages are also understood. A few idioms, words, phrases are also unique to the Bosnian language.
Bosnian grammar differs from that of English in a number of ways. For example, Bosnian nouns have gender, meaning that each noun is considered to be either masculine, feminine, or neuter. Bosnian nouns also have case, meaning that they change form to indicate their role in a sentence. There are seven cases in the Bosnian language. Bosnian adjectives also change form to agree with the nouns that they modify. However, the Bosnian language does not use definite or indefinite articles with nouns. Bosnian verbs are conjugated to show tense. The word order of Bosnian sentences is subject-verb-object, just as in English.
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Before You Know It. We wish you the best of luck in your endeavors to learn Bosnian!
