"... A language is just a dialect with an army ..."
- Unknown

Serbo-Croatian, or Serbo-Croat, is a South Slavic language; this group of languages includes, for example, Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian, Macedonian and Bulgarian. Serbo-Croatian was the main language of the former Yugoslavia, and variants are now spoken in Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Montenegro, and Serbia. Serbo-Croat is divided into two main variants, known often merely as the eastern and western variants, the former spoken primarily in Serbia, the Western primarily in Croatia and much of Bosnia. The dialect spoken in Montenegro combines features from both main dialects. Alternate terms for these main variants are ekavski (for the eastern) and ijekavski (for the western).

Political events over the last decade have affected how we look at Serbo-Croat. In particular, the use of the term Serbo-Croat to encompass several dialects - and hence, to act as if we are dealing with several dialects of the same language rather than several different languages - has come under fire by many, mostly those with nationalistic interests. From a linguistic point of view, the two variants (in their standard forms) are mutually intelligible, which is one of the main criteria in determining whether one is dealing with dialects or separate languages. The fact that the western variant is written in a version of the Latin alphbet while the eastern uses a version of the Cyrillic alphabet is of little linguistic - but of occasional political - interest. However, speaking for the consideration of these variants as separate languages would be the fact that there are numerous lexical differences between the variants. For example, while the eastern variant uses names of months that have cognates in most west-european languages, the western variant uses neo-slavic terms created in the 19th century:

western	eastern	English
sijechanj	januar	January
veljacca	februar	February
ozhukak	mart	March
travanj	april	April
svibanj	maj	May
lipanj	jun	June
spranj	jul	July
kolovoz	avgust	August
rujan	septembar	September
listopad	oktobar	October
studeni	novembar	November
prosinac	decembar	December

Furthermore, there are syntactic differences as well. The eastern variant uses so-called "da clauses"), whereas the western form prefers infinitive consutructions. See the following example:

English	I like to drink beer.
western	Ja volim piti pivo.
eastern	Ja volim da pijem pivo.

However, (in common usage) American and British (as well as Canadian, for example) English are seen primarily as dialects of English, despite numerous orthographic and lexical differences; and similarly, "German" (Hochdeutsch) German, "Swiss" German, and "Austrian" German are usually treated as dialects of the same main language.

I chosen to treat "Croatian" (hrvatski), "Bosnian" (bosanski), and "Serbian" (srpski) as "Serbo-Croat". Part of this choice is purely practical; the variants are so similar that it makes no sense to create a separate website to discuss each individually. Important differences can be discussed as asides and/or footnotes. Additionally, I do not wish to be forced to "pick a favorite" variant and hence name this page/site according to a single variant. Finally, the decision to name the language "Croatian", "Serbian", etc. is almost exclusively a matter of identity politics and a tool of nationalist interests - to the extent that I oppose such politics, and find them entirely destructive and the source of numerous evils, I refuse to acknowledge their claims on what has become known as "Serbo-Croat".