Serbian Cyrillic alphabet

Early Cyrillic

The Cyrillic script was likely developed by the disciples of Byzantine Christian missionaries Cyril and Methodius, possibly at the Preslav Literary School in the First Bulgarian Empire toward the end of the 9th century.^[10]

The earliest form of the Cyrillic script was known as ustav, a monumental script based on Greek uncial writing. It incorporated ligatures and additional letters adapted from the Glagolitic script to represent sounds not present in Greek. At this stage, there was no distinction between uppercase and lowercase letters. The literary language used was based on the Slavic dialect spoken in the region of Thessaloniki.^[10]

Medieval Serbian Cyrillic

Part of the Serbian medieval literary heritage includes important works such as the Miroslav Gospel, Vukan Gospels, St. Sava's Nomocanon, Dušan's Code, and the Munich Serbian Psalter, among others. The first printed book in Serbian was the Cetinje Octoechos, published in 1494. A notable feature of Serbian medieval writing, particularly associated with the Resava literary school, was the extensive use of diacritical signs and the use of the Djerv (Ꙉꙉ) to represent Serbian phonological reflexes of Proto-Slavic *tj and *dj — corresponding to the modern sounds [t͡ɕ], [d͡ʑ], and [d͡ʒ]. Over time, these sounds were more systematically represented by the modern Serbian Cyrillic letters Dje (Ђђ) and Tshe (Ћћ).

Karadžić's reform

During the Serbian Revolution, Vuk Stefanović Karadžić fled Serbia in 1813 and settled in Vienna, where he met Jernej Kopitar, a Slovene linguist and slavist. With the encouragement and support of Kopitar and Sava Mrkalj, Karadžić began reforming the Serbian language and its orthography. He finalized his reformed alphabet in 1818 with the publication of the Serbian Dictionary (Srpski rječnik). Karadžić reformed the standard Serbian language and standardized the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet based on the phonemic principle of "write as you speak and read as it is written" (piši kao što govoriš, čitaj kao što je napisano), following the model of Johann Christoph Adelung and the influence of Jan Hus’s reforms of the Czech alphabet. His reforms modernized Serbian and moved it away from the older Church Slavonic tradition (particularly the Serbian recension and Russian Church Slavonic), bringing the literary language closer to the vernacular of the common people—specifically, the Eastern Herzegovinian dialect, which he spoke natively.

Karadžić was, along with Đuro Daničić, the Serbian signator of the Vienna Literary Agreement in 1850. Encouraged by the Austrian authorities, this agreement laid the foundation for the modern standard literary language shared by Serbs and Croats, varieties of which are used in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Croatia today. Karadžić also translated the New Testament into Serbian, which was published posthumously in 1868. He authored several influential books during the reform process, including Mala prostonarodna slaveno-serbska pesnarica and Pismenica serbskoga jezika (1814), followed by additional works in 1815 and 1818, while the alphabet was still being developed. In his letters from 1815 to 1818, Karadžić occasionally used archaic letters such as Ю, Я, Ы, and Ѳ, though he had already dropped Ѣ by the time of his 1815 songbook.^{[11][author missing]} The reformed Serbian Cyrillic alphabet was officially adopted in 1868, four years after his death.^[12]

Vuk Karadžić retained the following 24 letters from the Old Church Slavonic script:

He adopted one letter from the Latin alphabet:

He also created or reintroduced five letters to represent specific Serbian phonemes:

The following archaic letters were removed from use:

The letter Ъ ъ (hard sign, jer debelo, before Vuk a common silent letter that was used mainly at the end of word after consonants) was conserved by Vuk for rare cases where a syllabic r precedes or follows a vowel, e. g. умръо, гръоце, заързати, поървати, заърђати.^[13][14] However, as it did not represent a phoneme, Stojan Novaković introduced the diaeresis over ⟨р⟩ instead.^[15] Spelling with the apostrophe, e. g. умр'о, was also in use.^[16] Nowadays, the syllabic character of r before or after vowels is not reflected in writing (the modern standard spelling is just умро, зарзати), but the diaeresis is occasionally used for linguistic purposes.^[17]

Vuk's Cyrillic in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro

In 1860s, Vuk's reformed Cyrillic entered usage among Muslims in Bosnia (then under Ottoman rule).^[18] In the same decade it started being regularly used in Montenegro as well.^[19][20]

Austria-Hungary

Orders issued on 3 and 13 October 1914 prohibited the use of the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet in the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia, restricting its use solely to religious instruction. A decree issued on 3 January 1915 extended the ban to all public use of Serbian Cyrillic. Furthermore, an imperial order dated 25 October 1915 banned the use of Serbian Cyrillic in the Condominium of Bosnia and Herzegovina, with the sole exception of usage "within the scope of Serbian Orthodox Church authorities."^[21][22]

World War II

In 1941, the Independent State of Croatia, a puppet state established by Nazi Germany, banned the use of the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet.^[23] The use of Cyrillic had already been restricted by regulations issued on 25 April 1941.^[24] In June 1941, the regime began purging so-called "Eastern" (i.e. Serbian) words from the Croatian language and closed Serbian schools.^[25][26] Islamic Amin al-Husseini, who was made chief architect of the Nazi German Genocide of Serbs and offensive in Bosnia, had Serbian Cyrillic banned and persecuted.^[27] In 1944, Milka Balvanlieva-Đorđević and Blaže Koneski advocated for the adoption of Serbian Cyrillic for the Macedonian language, however most members of the Commission for the Establishment of the Macedonian Language, Alphabet and Orthography advocated for a distinct Macedonian alphabet.^[28]

After Yugoslavia

Following the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, Serbian Cyrillic ceased to be used at the national level in Croatia.^{[clarification needed]} However, it has remained an official script in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro.^{[29][verification needed]}

According to the Constitution of Serbia adopted in 2006, the Cyrillic script is defined as the sole official script for use in government and official communication.^[30]

In 2013 in Croatia there were massive protests against official Cyrillic signs on local government buildings in Vukovar.^[31]