The vocabulary has been affected by Turkish (especially in the East), and less so by Italian (in the Western dialects), but the efforts made during the last hundred years to expel foreign words have been largely successful.
It is usual to distinguish three dialects, according to the word used for the interrogative pronoun "what." That area which uses gto is by far the largest and embraces the dialects on which the literary language has been based. The kaj dialect is spoken in the north-western part of the kingdom, especially Croatia, and, in this and other respects, links up with Slovene. The Oa dialect is steadily losing ground and is now chiefly spoken in a small part of the Croatian littoral, along the Dalmatian coast and in some of the islands. Its interest for philologists lies in its having pre served with great fidelity the accent on that syllable which bore it in original Slavonic.
The treatment of original é forms another criterion of classi fication into dialects; e is the Eastern development, and (i)je the Western. The literary, gto, language uses both (i)je and e,(i)je prevailing in Bosnia, Hercegovina, Montenegro and Croatia, and e in Serbia. There are dialects which have i for original e, but they are not used for literary purposes.
The dialects spoken in Macedonia increasingly approximate to Bulgarian as the frontier is reached, but the study of their precise relationship to Serb and Bulgarian has been frequently impeded by the political bias of the investigators, and the interest they present is exclusively philological.
Until the 19th century there was no common literary language, most works being written in a form of Church Slavonic more or less tinctured, according to the education of the writers, by genuine Serb or Croat and, subsequently, also by the form of Church Slavonic used in Russia. The first works to be written in a language which faithfully mirrored a spoken dialect and was wholly uninfluenced by the Church language, belong to the end of the 15th century and are due to a band of Dalmatian poets, most of whom had been schooled in Italy and were familiar with Italian literature. Their activity covered a wide range and was almost wholly poetical in form. The influence of Italian models is every where obvious, and extends even to syntax, phraseology and style. Although the writers generally use their native dialect, it is possible to trace the beginnings of a literary language. The best work of this Dalmatian school belongs to the 16th century; it declined after wards, and by the end of the 18th century had become negligible.
In the meanwhile Serbia continued to use the mongrel literary language of the Church, which, in spite of the strenuous efforts made by some 18th century scholars to assert the claims of the popular idiom, continued to remain all-powerful until the reforms of Vuk Stefanovk Karadik (1787-1864). His great collection of songs, popular stories and proverbs, gathered throughout the length and breadth of his country, the magnificent and pure language of his own writings, and his amazing industry and linguistic sureness, have created a literary language of great flexibility and beauty.
- - - • As far as present knowledge goes, the origin of Yugoslav liter ature was in the 9th century, when the "Slav Apostles" Cyril and Methodius, with their disciples, translated church books from Greek into Old Slavonic. The earliest Yugoslav mss. are of Slo vene origin, the "Monuments" from the monastery of Freising (Brizinski Spomenici) in the 9th or loth century, consisting of a form of confession, a sermon and a prayer. A stone inscription in a church on the island of Krk, called Bageanska ploOa (Iloo), is the earliest known Croatian record. The first recorded Serbian mss. are the decree of the Ban of Bosnia (1189) and the Miro slavljevo jevangjelje, a gospel written in the i2th century for Miroslav, prince of Zahumlje.
Serbian translations from all branches of Byzantine literature, ecclesiastical and secular, are numerous. Of the early original works the most important are biographies and chronicles. It is known that four biographers wrote in the 13th century, the first being Archbishop Sava or St. Sava (d. 1236). Both Sava and his brother King Stephen wrote brief accounts of their father's life; the monks Domentian and Theodosius wrote longer works on the life of St. Sava. In the 14th century Archbishop Danilo (d. 1346) is the only known biographer. He wrote The Lives of Serbian Kings and Archbishops. To the 15th century belong Camblak and Constantine "the philosopher." The latter wrote The Life of Despot Stephen Lazarevio, under whose patronage the monas tery of Manasija became a literary centre. The chronicles may be divided into (I) letopisi, short works of Serbian history, (2) rodoslovi, largely dealing in genealogy and (3) hronografi, general writings on Roman, Byzantine and Hebrew history.