Romanization of Serbian

A road sign in Serbia using Cyrillic and Latin alphabets. The towns are Šid (pronounced [ʃiːd]), Novi Sad and Belgrade.

The romanization or Latinization of Serbian is the representation of the Serbian language using Latin letters. Serbian is written in two alphabets, Serbian Cyrillic, a variation of the Cyrillic alphabet, and Gaj's Latin, or latinica, a variation of the Latin alphabet. Both are widely used in Serbia. The Serbian language is thus an example of digraphia.

Main alphabets used in Europe around 1900:
  Latin script: Fraktur variant
  Latin script: Antiqua variant
  KalmykMongolian script

The two alphabets are almost directly and completely interchangeable. Romanization can be done with no errors, but in some cases, due to the use of digraphs in the Latin script, knowledge of Serbian is required to do proper transliteration from Latin back to Cyrillic. Standard Serbian uses both alphabets currently. A survey from 2014 showed that 47% of the Serbian population favors the Latin alphabet whereas 36% favors Cyrillic; the remaining 17% preferred neither.[1]

  1. ^ "Ivan Klajn: Ćirilica će postati arhaično pismo". 16 December 2014.

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