(in English)
Serbian, српски srpski.
Spoken natively in Serbia,
Montenegro, Croatia, Bosnia, and neighbouring regions.
Native speakers 12 million
(2006).
Language family - Indo-European, Balto-Slavic, Slavic,
South Slavic, Western Serbo-Croatian, Serbian.
Writing system - Serbian Cyrillic alphabet/Gaj's Latin
alphabet.
Serbian (Serbian Cyrillic: српски , Latin: srpski,) is a standardized
register of the Serbo-Croatian language spoken by Serbs, mainly in Serbia,
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia, and Macedonia. It is official in
Serbia and one of the official languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and is the
principal language of the Serbs.
The dialect serving as the basis for the main literary and standard
language is Shtokavian, which is also the basis of standard Croatian, Bosnian,
and Montenegrin. In particular, Serbian is standardized around
Šumadija-Vojvodina and Eastern Herzegovinian subdialects of Shtokavian. The
Torlakian dialect of Serbian is spoken in southeast Serbia, and is not
standardized, as it represents transitional form to Macedonian and Bulgarian.