Lesson Nine, Norms
Remember the following fundamental norms of Serbo-Croatian standards:
- 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.
- Some words have two forms - Ekavian, as in mleko and Ijekavian, as in mlijeko. You are supposed to use the
Ijekavian form in the Bosniac and Croatian variant. In the Serbian variant you can use both
Ekavian and Ijekavian forms, but you are not supposed to use them interchangeably in the same text.
- 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
used as the 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.
- 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). Thus: Srbin 'Serb' but srpski 'Serbian; in a Serbian manner'.
- The days of the week, months, seasons, school subjects, and direction of the compass are not capitalized, for example: petak 'Friday', februar 'February', etc.
- In all compound names with the exception of the names of countries, only the first word is capitalized. Thus, Opštinski sud za maloljetnike 'County Juvenile Court',
and Strah od letenja 'Fear of Flying'.
- The negative particle ne is spelled separately from the verbs,
but together with the nouns and adjectives, as in: ne radim 'I do not work',
nerad 'lack of work', neradni 'free of work'. The particle is pronounced as
one word with the verb, yet it has to be spelled separately.
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