80 Bosnian, Serbian and Montenegrin

Bosnian, Serbian and Montenegrin are separate standard languages that are quite similar to the Standard Croatian.

The Cyrillic Alphabet

The first difference is that Serbian and Montenegrin use another alphabet — Cyrillic. However, there is an 1:1 correspondence between Croatian Latin and Serbian Cyrillic:

Serbian Cyrillic	А а	Б б	В в	Г г	Д д	Ђ ђ	Е е	Ж ж	З з	И и
Croatian Latin	A a	B b	V v	G g	D d	Đ đ	Ee	Ž ž	Z z	I i

Serbian Cyrillic	Ј ј	К к	Л л	Љ љ	М м	Н н	Њ њ	О о	П п	Р р
Croatian Latin	J j	K k	L l	LJ lj	M m	Nn	Nj nj	O o	P p	R s

Serbian Cyrillic	С с	Т т	Ћ ћ	У у	Ф ф	Х х	Ц ц	Ч ч	Џ џ	Ш ш
Croatian Latin	S s	T t	Ć ć	U u	F f	H h	C c	Č č	DŽ dž	Š š

Observe that the Cyrillic alphabet has a different order of letters than Latin. I have highlighted characters that are really different than Latin.

In reality, in today's Serbia the Cyrillic alphabet is mostly used in official and ceremonial uses. Majority of newspapers are published in Serbian Latin (a.k.a Croatian Latin) script. Web sites published in Cyrillic have usually a "LAT" button somewhere. For instance, Politika daily has pages both in Cyrillic and Latin (check CYR and LAT links on top), but B92 TV is in Latin only. Even the web site of Serbian government has links ћирилица "Cyrillic" and latinica "Latin" on the top (Cyrillic is chosen by default).

Serbian vs. Croatian

Serbian has some specific words which are almost never used in (Standard) Croatian, for instance:

Croatian	Serbian	meaning
mjëhur	bešika	"bladder"
mahune f pl.	boranija	"green beans"
nogomet	fudbal	"football"
otok	ostrvo	"island"
plin	gas	"gas"
riža	pirinač	"rice"
sat	časovnik	"clock"
sigurän adj.	bezbedän adj.	"secure, safe"
škare f pl.	makaze f pl.	"scissors"
tisuća	hiljada	"thousand"
tjëdan	nedëlja, sedmica	"week"
val	talas	"wave"
vlak	voz	"train"
žlica	kašika	"spoon"

Different terms indicate that Serbian and Croatian cultures developed separately. Some words have only a slightly different form due to different adaptation of foreign words:

Croatian	Serbian	meaning
gripa	grip	"flue"
kemija	hemija	"chemistry"
kaos	haos	"chaos"
funkcioniram	funkcionišem, funkcionisao,...	"function"
milijun	milion	"million"
minuta	minut	"minute"

Some words differ only in one sound, or endings; sometimes gender is changed:

Croatian	Serbian	meaning
jučer adv.	juče adv.	"yesterday"
opći adj.	opšti adj.	"common"
kuham	kuvam	"cook" (verb)
lani adv.	lane adv.	"last year"
shvaćam	shvatam	"understand"
sretan adj.	srećan adj.	"happy, lucky"
svećenik	sveštenik	"priest"
večer f	veče n	"evening"
točka	tačka	"point, dot"

Serbian frequently losses h, like in istorija "history", and simplifies some words e.g. ko vs. tko "who".

There are two more differences in spelling. The first one is spelling of foreign names. Serbian usually respells them using approximated pronunciation:

Serbian spelling	original
Njujork / Њујорк	"New York"
Džordž Buš / Џорџ Буш	"George Bush"
Čikago / Чикаго	"Chicago"

The second one is spelling of the future tense. When an infinitive is immediately followed by an auxiliary ću, ćeš... it's spelled together, and the infinitive-final t is discarded if exists:

Croatian	Serbian
pisat ću	pisaću
reći ću	rećiću

People usually associate Ekavian Štokavian (mlëko, lëpo) with Serbian, but it's not really true, since Serbs use both as Standard: most Serbs outside of Serbia (in Bosnia and Croatia) and in some parts of southern Serbia use Ijekavian Štokavian (mlijëko, lijëpo) and Serbs in most of Serbia, including Belgrade, use only Ekavian Štokavian (mlëko, lëpo). You can find both in Serbian newspapers. As a whole, the Serbian Standard is much less strict than Croatian, there is a bigger choice of "acceptable" variants.

As an illustration, here are double descriptions from a tube of tomato paste, Croatian at top, Serbian at bottom (I actually took photos of a tube):

Montenegrin and Bosnian/Bosniak

Montengrin uses more or less the same vocabulary and spelling conventions as Serbian, but only the Ijekavian variant. It uses few specific forms, like nijësmo vs. Croatian/Serbian nismo "we aren't". Recently the Montenegrin alphabet adopted two additional letters:

Montenegrin Cyrillic	Ć ć	́З ́з
Montenegrin Latin	Ś ś	Ź ź

In a case that your computer cannot render these characters, they look like a S and Z (both Cyrillic and Latin versions) with an additional stroke over it, resembling Ć. They are "softened" variants of š and ž. The new characters are not much used, the web site of the Government of Montenegro doesn't use them (and is by default in Latin, but can be switched to Cyrillic!).

Bosnian (or: Bosniak, there's a dispute over name) is similar to Serbian, but uses only Latin script and Ijekavian. Two spelling differences (e.g. Njujork and imaću) are used sometimes in Bosnian, but it seems that the Croatian version occasionally prevails (New York, reći ću). Bosnian sometimes freely mixes Croatian and Serbian terms, so both tisuća and hiljada "1000" seem acceptable.

Since Bosnian is a standard used by Bosniaks which are predominantly Muslim, there are lot of oriental and Islamic terms. Sound h is always retained, even where Croatian does not:

Bosnian	Croatian	meaning
lahko adv.	lako adv.	"easily"
kahva	kava	"coffee"
daidža	ujak	"uncle"