Montenegrin
Language · official in 1 country
Crnogorski became an official language for the first time in the Constitution of 2007, a year after Montenegro's independence. It is a standard variety of Serbo-Croatian built on the Eastern Herzegovinian Shtokavian dialect, like Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian, and is written in Latin or Cyrillic letters with two extra letters, ś and ź.
The language on record
- Own name
- crnogorski
- ISO 639-3
- CNR
- Script
- Latin
- Family
- South Slavic
- Official in
- 1 country
Where Montenegrin is official
Montenegro is the one country on record where Montenegrin is official. The name is new; the language there was called Serbian until 2007.
About Montenegrin
What the language was called before
The language of Montenegro was historically called Serbian. About 95% of the population gave Serbian as their mother tongue in the first census, in 1909. Serbo-Croatian entered the 1974 constitution of the Socialist Republic, and the 1992 Constitution named the official language as the Serbian language of the ijekavian dialect. The idea of a separate Montenegrin standard took shape in the late 1990s and early 2000s, alongside the campaign for independence.
Who wrote the first standard
The Council for the Standardization of the Montenegrin Language was set up in 2008 and a spelling book was adopted in 2009. The 2009 proposal added two letters to the Serbo-Croatian set, ś and ź, to replace the digraphs sj and zj. The Ministry of Education accepted neither of the Council's two drafts and adopted a third, which the Council criticised as full of methodological and linguistic errors. The first Montenegrin grammar followed on 21 June 2010.
The request for an ISO code went in during 2008. The code cnr was assigned on 8 December 2017 and took effect on 21 December.
Why the name is still argued over
The question of the official language remains controversial in Montenegro. In the 2023 census 34.5% of the population gave Montenegrin as their native language and 43.2% gave Serbian. Supporters of Montenegrin favour Gaj's Latin alphabet over Serbian Cyrillic; the two new letters exist in Polish and are easy to type in Latin, while in Cyrillic they must be built from combining characters.
Common questions
Questions about Montenegrin
Is Montenegrin a separate language from Serbian?
Both are standard varieties of Serbo-Croatian resting on the same Eastern Herzegovinian dialect. Montenegro's 2007 Constitution treats Montenegrin as its own official language, while the 2023 census found more residents naming Serbian as their native language than Montenegrin.
Which letters does Montenegrin add?
Ś and ź, proposed in 2009 in place of sj and zj. They exist in both the Latin and Cyrillic versions of the alphabet.
When did Montenegrin get an ISO code?
On 8 December 2017, after a request first submitted in 2008. The code is cnr, effective from 21 December 2017.