The Languages spoken in Bosnia and Herzegovina

The Bosnian, or Bosniak/Bosniac language, is the official language of Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as Montenegro, and Serbia. It is one of the customary versions of the Central-South Slavic diasystem. The name “Bosnian language" is the universally accepted name amongst the Bosniak linguists and officially used by the ISO-639 standard. The standard Croatian, Serbian, and Bosnian languages are all mutually intelligible.

There had been various controversies and arguments regarding the name of the language. Bosnia neighboring Croats and Serbs call their languages Croatian and Serbian. While Montenegro officially acknowledges the Bosnian language in its 2007 Constitution together with Serbian, Croatian, and Albanian languages, Montenegrin remains the “official language”. The Dayton Peace Accord accredited the Bosnian as a different language spoken by Bosniaks Bosnia and Herzegovina. This identification distinction is further recognized by the signatures of former presidents of Bosnia and Herzogovina (Alija Izetbegović), Serbia (Slobodan Milošević), and Croatia (Franjo Tuđman).

The Bosnian alphabet is derived from the Latin alphabet. Its vowel system is quite simple as consists of 5 vowels; all vowels are monophthongs. The consonant structure is more complex and has distinctive features of series of affricate and palatal consonants. Like with most Indo-European languages in west India, and in English, voicedness is phonemic while aspiration is not.