Linguistic Facts in Balkan Region
By On July 28th, 2011Serbia and Montenegro became the official name of the country as of February 4, 2003, because of the evolution of restructuring the country previously known as The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Serbia and Montenegro is the biggest descendant of the dissolved Socialistic Federative Republic of Yugoslavia and made up of two states: Serbia and Montenegro.
Inside Serbia, there are two quasi-independent provinces, Vojvodina and Kosovo. Kosovo was under the supervision of the United Nations from 1999. Language politics and manipulations of the history, official status and names of various languages took a vital part in the number of intra-national unrests that broke out from 1990 to 1999 and it is still a very sensitive issue in the total area of the Balkans. Quality Italian translators
The official language of the Republic of Serbia is Serbian (with over 6 000 000 speakers in the territory of Serbia without Kosovo, or 88% of the inhabitants); the same judicial status is given to both the Cyrillic and the Roman alphabet, although the latest is favored by Serbian state administration. Less spread languages, that are also in official disposal in the regions where they are spoken, are Hungarian (according to the 2002 census data of the StatsOffice of the Republic of Serbia, estimated at 286 500 speakers), Bosnian (134 500 speakers), Romanian (82 000 speakers), Albanian (63 500 citizens), Slovakian (57 500 speakers), Valachian (55 000 speakers), Romanian (34 500 speakers), Croatian (27 500 speakers), Bulgarian (16 500 speakers), and Macedonian (14 500 speakers). Minority languages are used at every stages of upbringing: in early schools, high schools, and at technical schools and universities. One linguistic effect of the political and ethnic vulnerabilities of the 1990s is that the language that used to be officially named Serbo-Croat has received a number of new ethnically and politically grounded titles. Thus, the titles Serbo-Croat, Bosnianare governmentally determined and refer to the same tongue with acceptable few changes. The language has two general dialects, Ekavian and Ijekavian.
Although, in general, Ekavian is spread more in Serbia (and parts of Croatia), and Ijekavian is spoken more in Montenegro (and also in Bosnia, Herzegovina, and parts of Croatia), these dialects do not coincide with the nationally motivated titles.
The linguistic map in Kosovo is less clear at present, because about 300 000 refugees from this region, mostly Serbs, are still on the stage of returning to their places. This situation makes the numbers of speakers reported unpredictable. Today, by the Statistical Office of Kosovo, about 1 670 000, or 88% of the inhabitants of Kosovo, speak Albanian, and about 133 000, or 7%, are speakers of Serbian. The rest of the population (5%) speaks mostly Romanian, Bosnian, Greek. HQ-translate: translate into Greek
The official tongue of the Republic of Montenegro is Serbian, but there are modern developments to introduce the name Montenegrin, either parallel to or as a replacement to the name Serbian. Similar as with Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian, this term addresses the one language that used to be called Serbo-Croat, and is first of all a matter of governmental resolutions and convictions.
The Cyrillic and the Roman alphabet are officially in use. The 2003 census data from the StatOffice of the Republic of Montenegro demonstrate that about 401 500, or 60% of the citizens of Montenegro, recognize themselves as natives of Serbian, about 145 000 (22%) speak Montenegrin, some 49 500 (7%) speak Albanian, 29 000 (4%) are speakers of Bosnian, and about 3000 speak either Croatian or Romany.