SERBO-CROAT LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE.
Apart from the occasional differences that are to be found in vocabulary and also, to a slight extent, in grammatical usage, the Serb and Croat literary languages are identical, although the former is written in the Cyrillic and the latter in the Latin alphabet. The spoken dialects represent, in general, a transition from Slovene in the West to Bulgarian in the East. The uni formity of the literary language, which is based on the central dialects, is so complete that books with precisely the same text are frequently published in both characters, and it is therefore usual in scientific, and not uncommon in popular, works to speak of the Serbo-Croat language, a term which has quite ousted that prevalent in the first half of the 19th century, namely Illyrian. The names Serb and Croat were borne in the 9th century by some of the tribes which, about two centuries earlier, penetrated into the North-Western parts of the Balkan peninsula. The other tribal names, including Slovinski, i.e., Slavonic, which was used to designate the Western form of the language as late as the i8th century, have now been absorbed by Serb and Croat or replaced by modern territorial names, such as Bosnian, Dalmatian, etc.
Together with Slovene and Bulgarian, which however is some times grouped apart, Serbo-Croat forms the Southern branch of the Slavonic group of languages in the Indo-European family. The vowel system is simple, and the clarity with which all vowels, long or short, accented or unaccented, are pronounced, is reminis cent of Czech. A specifically Serbo-Croat characteristic is the passage of both u and i, in circumstances when a full vowel was developed, into a. On the other hand, neither the replacement of the back vowel y by i, nor the loss of nasality by e and , nor the development of a vowel r is peculiar to Serbo-Croat.
The consonants have undergone comparatively few changes since the Common Slav period, the most notable being that of tj to e (a sound not unlike that in English tune) and of dj to d (also written dj, gj, and resembling English dune). The difficult
consonantal groups which have arisen in some of the Slavonic languages after the abandonment of the old rule which tolerated only open syllables, are rare in Serbo-Croat, as the vowel a has been frequently developed from the earlier semi-vowels, and this has facilitated pronunciation. Moreover, with the exception of /j and nj (pronounced like Italian gl and gn), there are no such palatal or palatalised consonants as occur in West Slavonic or Russian.
The morphological and syntactical peculiarities of the language present no special points of interest : the case system of the noun has been well preserved in the singular, but there has been a generalization of one case (in origin a dual) to express three in the plural. The dual has only survived in traces. In the verb, the use of the infinitive and, in quite recent times, of the aorist and imperfect also is declining, the language following in this latter respect the lines struck out at a much earlier date by the Eastern and Western branches of the family. One interesting characteristic of Serbo-Croat is the enclitic use of pronouns and unaccented forms of the copula, which are put, contrary to the usage of most modern languages, as early as possible in the sentence, but always after the first word.
Serbo-Croat has retained a free accentuation, with the exception that in the literary language a polysyllable may not be accented on the last syllable ; all vowels, whether long or short, may have a rising or a falling intonation.
This musical intonation and the clarity of the vowels, together with the absence of difficult consonant sounds, have combined to make Serbo-Croat (which has often been compared with Italian) the most melodious of all the Slavonic languages. It is easier for a foreigner to acquire with approximate accuracy than the sister languages.