Today, the International Mother Language Day is celebrated in the world, aiming to highlight the importance of the mother language, nurturing linguistic and cultural diversity.
In 1999, UNESCO declared February 21 as the International Mother Language Day, at the suggestion of Bangladesh.
The languages of the Serbs, Slovenes, Croats, Montenegrins, Bosniaks, Bulgarians, Macedonians and former Slavic languages belong to the group of South Slavic languages.
The Serbian standard language is based on the Stokavian dialect, which distinguishes two pronunciations: Ekavian and Ijekavian.
A larger number of Serbs speak Ekavian, while Ijekavian speaks in the far southwest of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro.
Attempts have been made, but without a proper linguistic basis, to associate the Ijekavian pronunciation with the languages of Croats, Bosniaks and Montenegrins, the RTS reported.
The Serbian cultural reformer, the creator of the contemporary Serbian alphabet, literary language and spelling, is Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, who gave shape to a traditional script in the Serbian language – Cyrillic.
The Cyrillic alphabet has 30 letters in alphabetical order, originating from Church Slavonic, and in further perspective from Greek.
In the Cyrillic alphabet, Vuk’s principle is fully implemented: one voice – one letter.
The phonological principle has not been implemented in Latin either, for some characters, two-letter combinations have been used.
TST
