Indo-European · ISO 639-3 hbs · sh
Serbo-Croatian Language srpskohrvatski jezik
Serbo-Croatian is an Indo-European language spoken by about 19 million people in 1 country. It is written in the Latin, Cyrillic and Glagolitic scripts.
Where Serbo-Croatian is spoken
- Official language
- Regional official
- Spoken by 10%+
- 1–10%
- Smaller communities
Countries that speak Serbo-Croatian
Language family
- Indo-European
- Classical Indo-European
- Balto-Slavic
- Serbo-Croatian
Writing system
Latin, Cyrillic and Glagolitic scripts
Related languages
About the Serbo-Croatian language
Serbo-Croatian (srpskohrvatski jezik) is spoken by about 19 million people. It belongs to the Indo-European language family and, more precisely, to the Balto-Slavic group within the Balto-Slavic branch.
Where is Serbo-Croatian spoken?
Serbo-Croatian is used in 1 country. The largest communities live in Serbia (19 million). More than half of the population speaks it in Serbia — the places where travellers will hear it everywhere.
Serbo-Croatian is not a national official language anywhere.
Writing system and status
Serbo-Croatian is written in the Latin, Cyrillic and Glagolitic scripts. It is a safe, widely transmitted language: children still learn it at home as their first language.
Its closest relatives in the same branch of the family are Russian, Polish, Ukrainian, Czech, Belarusian, Bulgarian and 2 more.
ISO codes: ISO 639-1 sh, ISO 639-3 hbs.
Frequently asked questions about Serbo-Croatian
How many people speak Serbo-Croatian?
Where is Serbo-Croatian spoken?
What language family does Serbo-Croatian belong to?
What is Serbo-Croatian called in Serbo-Croatian?
Is Serbo-Croatian an endangered language?
Data: Languages of the World dataset (MIT) — ISO 639-3, Glottolog (CC BY 4.0), Unicode CLDR, Google LinguaMeta (CC BY 4.0) and Wikidata; country lists: samayo/country-json (MIT). Speaker numbers include first- and second-language speakers where sources report them.