Serbian - Worldwide Distribution

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Serbian is one of the official languages of Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo. It also has official, but only regional status in parts of Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia and on the Greek island of Athos.

Distribution Serbian► Interactive map

CountryRegionOfficial languageDistributionTotal
SerbiaSouthern Europeyes88.1 %5,803,000
Bosnia and HerzegovinaSouthern Europeyes15.2 %481,000
MontenegroSouthern Europeno42.9 %267,000
AustriaWestern Europeno2.2 %202,000
CroatiaSouthern Europeno4.4 %170,000
HungaryEastern Europeno1.1 %105,000
SloveniaSouthern Europeno1.3 %28,000
KosovoSouthern Europeyes1.6 %26,000
North MacedoniaSouthern Europeno1.2 %22,000

Origin and development of the Serbian language

Serbian belongs to the South Slavic group of the Indo-European language family. Its origins are closely linked to the historical migrations of the Slavs, who moved into the Balkan region in the 6th and 7th centuries. Old Slavonic is the earliest known form and developed in the 9th century through the missionary work of Saints Cyril and Methodius, who created the Glagolitic alphabet. This was later replaced by the Cyrillic alph abet, which is now one of the two official writing systems of Serbian alongside the Latin alphabet.

In the Middle Ages, the Serbian language underwent its first standardization through the creation of religious and legal texts. During Ottoman rule in the Balkans, it experienced numerous influences from Turkish and other Balkan languages. There was a significant development in the 19th century when Vuk Stefanović Karadžić carried out a reform of the language. It standardized the orthography and vocabulary and was strongly oriented towards the vernacular language.

Unless otherwise described in the text, this page is about native speakers — not the total number of speakers. How many people understand or speak Serbian as a subsequently learned language is not the subject of this page. Countries where native speakers make up only a few thousand, or even a few hundred people, or countries with a percentage well below 1% are unlikely to be listed here.

Official language, national language or lingua franca: explanation of frequently used terms

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