Mutual intelligibilityIn linguistics, mutual intelligibility is a relationship between languages or dialects in which speakers of different but related varieties can readily understand each other without prior familiarity or special effort. It is sometimes used as an important criterion for distinguishing languages from dialects, although sociolinguistic factors are often also used. Intelligibility between languages can be asymmetric, with speakers of one understanding more of the other than speakers of the other understanding the first.
Serbian Cyrillic alphabetThe Serbian Cyrillic alphabet (Српска ћирилица / Srpska ćirilica, sr̩̂pskaː tɕirǐlitsa) is a variation of the Cyrillic script used to write the Serbian language, adapted in 1818 by the Serbian philologist and linguist Vuk Karadžić. It is one of the two alphabets used to write modern standard Serbian, the other being Gaj's Latin alphabet. Karadžić based his alphabet on the previous Slavonic-Serbian script, following the principle of "write as you speak and read as it is written", removing obsolete letters and letters representing iotated vowels, introducing from the Latin alphabet instead, and adding several consonant letters for sounds specific to Serbian phonology.
Slavic languagesThe Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic, spoken during the Early Middle Ages, which in turn is thought to have descended from the earlier Proto-Balto-Slavic language, linking the Slavic languages to the Baltic languages in a Balto-Slavic group within the Indo-European family.
Official languageAn official language is a language having certain rights to be used in defined situations. These rights can be created in written form or by historic usage. 178 countries recognize an official language, 101 of them recognizing more than one. The government of Italy made Italian official only in 1999, and some nations (such as the United States, Mexico and Australia) have never declared de jure official languages at the national level. Other nations have declared non-indigenous official languages.
ChakavianChakavian or Čakavian (tʃæˈkɑːviən, tʃə-, -ˈkæv-, čakavski tʃǎːkaʋskiː proper name: čakavica or čakavština tʃakǎːʋʃtina own name: čokovski, čakavski, čekavski) is a South Slavic supradialect or language spoken by Croats along the Adriatic coast, in the historical regions of Dalmatia, Istria, Croatian Littoral and parts of coastal and southern Central Croatia (now collectively referred to as Adriatic Croatia or Littoral Croatia), as well as by the Burgenland Croats as Burgenland Croatian in southeastern Austr
Language secessionismLanguage secessionism (also known as linguistic secessionism or linguistic separatism) is an attitude supporting the separation of a language variety from the language to which it has hitherto been considered to belong, in order to make this variety be considered a distinct language. This phenomenon was first analyzed in Catalan sociolinguistics but it is attested in other parts of the world. The most critical factor that shapes the sociolinguistic reality of the Arab World is the phenomenon of diglossia.
YatYat or jat (Ѣ ѣ; italics: Ѣ ѣ) is the thirty-second letter of the old Cyrillic alphabet and the Rusyn alphabet. There is also another version of yat, the iotated yat (majuscule: , minuscule: ), which is a Cyrillic character combining a decimal I and a yat. There was no numerical value for this letter and it was not in the Glagolitic alphabet. It was encoded in Unicode 5.1 at positions U+A652 and U+A653. Yat represented a Common Slavic long vowel.
Constitution of MontenegroThe current Constitution of Montenegro was ratified and adopted by the Constitutional Parliament of Montenegro on 19 October 2007 in an extraordinary session by achieving the required two-thirds supermajority of votes. It was officially proclaimed on 22 October 2007, replacing the constitution of 1992. The Constitution defines Montenegro as a civic, democratic and environmentally friendly country with social justice, established by the sovereign rights of its government.
Autonomy and heteronomyAutonomy and heteronomy are complementary attributes of a language variety describing its functional relationship with related varieties. The concepts were introduced by William A. Stewart in 1968, and provide a way of distinguishing a language from a dialect. A variety is said to be autonomous if it has an independent cultural status. This may occur if the variety is structurally different from all others, a situation Heinz Kloss called abstand. Thus language isolates such as Basque are necessarily autonomous.
Ethnic groups in Bosnia and HerzegovinaMore than 96% of population of Bosnia and Herzegovina belongs to one of its three autochthonous constituent peoples (конститутивни народи): Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats. The term constituent refers to the fact that these three ethnic groups are explicitly mentioned in the constitution, and that none of them can be considered a minority or immigrant. The most easily recognisable feature that distinguishes the three ethnic groups is their religion, with Bosniaks predominantly Muslim, Serbs predominantly Eastern Orthodox, and Croats Catholic.
