Lesson One, Norms
The most fundamental rule of Serbo-Croatian spelling is a 1:1 correspondence between the characters (or character sequences in the case of the Latin lj, nj and dž. One character is thus read in the same manner regardless of its position, and there is only one character (or character sequence) representing each sound. This is formulated by the following rule stated by the 19th century Serbian linguist Vuk Karadžić:
Read as it is written, write as you hear it.
This is quite different than the English situation, where characters assume different pronunciation depending on their context and even concrete lexical item. Compare the following examples where the same character has different sound values in English while it remains stable in its pronunciation in Serbo-Croatian:
| English | Serbo-Croatian |
| car c=[k] | car 'tsar' c=[tz] |
| cent c=[s] | cent 'cent' c=[tz] |
More information about Serbo-Croatian sounds as well as their sound clips are
available in the section
[SOUNDS].
In addition to this general difference, there are numerous other minor differences, in particular with regard to the spelling. Two of
these differences are present in this lesson:
- The pronoun ja 'I' is never capitalized unless it is at the
beginning of the sentence.
- The pronoun Vi is capitalized when it means 'you madam/sir/ladies/gentlemen', i.e., when it is a formal form of address for one or more persons. If it is informal way to address two or more persons (somewhat of an equivalent of the English substandard 'y'all', 'you guys', or 'yous'), one should not capitalize it, and the form of the pronoun is vi.
Proceed with further exploring the lesson by clicking the
[TEXT1] link on the left.