Serbian Cyrillic alphabet

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Serbian alphabet redirects here. For the Latin variant of Serbian, see Gaj's Latin
alphabet.

Serbian Cyrillic

Script type Alphabet

Time period 1814 to present

Languages Serbo-Croatian

(except Croatian)

Related scripts

Parent systems Greek alphabet (partly Glagolitic alphabet)

 Early Cyrillic alphabet

o Serbian Cyrillic

Child systems Macedonian

Montenegrin

ISO 15924

ISO 15924 Cyrl, , Cyrillic

Unicode

Unicode alias Cyrillic

Unicode range subset of Cyrillic (U+0400...U+04F0)

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The Serbian Cyrillic alphabet (Serbian: српска ћирилица/srpska ćirilica,

pronounced [sr̩̂pskaː ͡ tɕirǐlit͡sa]) is an adaptation of the Cyrillic script for the Serbian
language, developed in 1818 by Serbian linguist Vuk Karadžić. It is one of the two
alphabets used to write standard modern Serbian, Bosnian and Montenegrin varieties
of Serbo-Croatian language, the other being Latin.
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 iotified vowels, introducing ⟨J⟩ from the Latin alphabet instead, and
adding several consonant letters for sounds specific to Serbian phonology. During the
same period, Croatian linguists led by Ljudevit Gaj adapted the Latin alphabet, in use in
western South Slavic areas, using the same principles. As a result of this joint effort,
Cyrillic and Latin alphabets for Serbo-Croatian have a complete one-to-one congruence,
with the Latin digraphs Lj, Nj, and Dž counting as single letters.
Vuk's Cyrillic alphabet was officially adopted in Serbia in 1868, and was in exclusive use
in the country up to the inter-war period. Both alphabets were co-official in the Kingdom
of Yugoslavia and later in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Due to the
shared cultural area, Gaj's Latin alphabet saw a gradual adoption in Serbia since, and
both scripts are used to write modern standard Serbian, Montenegrin and Bosnian;
Croatian only uses the Latin alphabet. In Serbia, Cyrillic is seen as being more
traditional, and has the official status (designated in the Constitution as the "official
script", compared to Latin's status of "script in official use" designated by a lower-level
act, for national minorities). It is also an official script in Bosnia-Herzegovina and
Montenegro, along with Latin.
The Serbian Cyrillic alphabet was used as a basis for the Macedonian alphabet with the
work of Krste Misirkov and Venko Markovski.