Lesson Two, Norms

Spelling of Ethnic and Religious Designations

Unlike in English, where ethnic and religious designations are commonly marked by an adjective (as in 'I am American'), Serbo-Croatian uses nouns, e.g., Ja sam Srbin 'literally: I am a Serb'. Using an adjective to refer to ethnic or religious background, as in *Ja sam srpski 'I am Serbian' is ungrammatical. The rule of Serbo-Croatian spelling is to capitalize nouns referring to ethnic and religious groups and not to capitalize adjectives and adverbs, as opposed to the English language which capitalizes both. For example:

Part of SpeechSerbo-CroatianEnglish
NounOn je Hrvat.He is a Croat/He is Croatian.
AdjectiveTo je srpska zastava.That is the Serbian flag.
AdverbOn govori srpski.He speaks Serbian.

Again, capitalize only the nouns denoting ethnic and religious background. Do not capitalize any other parts of speech derived from the noun.

Ekavian vs. Ijekavian Form

Some Serbo-Croatian words have two forms, where one form has e and the other je or ije in its stead, e.g., form 1: mleko 'milk' form 2: mlijeko 'milk', form 1: mesto 'place', form 2: mjesto 'place'. The first form is called Ekavian, the second Ijekavian. The first form is used in Serbia, the second form elsewhere. These two forms cannot be mixed in the same text. If you are using the Serbian variant, you can chose either the Ekavian or Ijekavian form, if you are using Croatian or Bosniac variant, you are obliged to use the Ijekavian form. Contrary to popular wisdom, these two forms are not divided along ethnic lines as Serbs use both the Ijekavian form (outside of Serbia) and Ekavian form (in Serbia).

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