Montenegrin alphabet

The Montenegrin alphabet encompasses the Montenegrin variants of Latin and Cyrillic alphabet, the two writing systems of Montenegrin language, a standard variant of Serbo-Croatian. They are based on Gaj's Latin and Serbian Cyrillic alphabet respectively, both expanded by two letters, ⟨ś⟩ and ⟨ź⟩ in Latin, and ⟨с́⟩ and ⟨з́⟩ in Cyrillic, in order to represent phonemes /ɕ/ and /ʑ/. The letters of the two alphabets correspond to each other one-to-one, allowing nearly unambiguous conversion from one to the other, as is also the case for Gaj's Latin and Serbian Cyrillic.

The new letters were officially introduced in 2009. Usage of the new letters is not mandatory, and the traditional spellings as found in other varieties of Serbo-Croatian remain standard in Montenegrin as well. Although Cyrillic and Latin are recognised as equal scripts by the Constitution of Montenegro, in contemporary usage the Latin script is predominant.

Background

Historically, in Montenegrin area as well as some of the Ijekavian Štokavian dialects outside it, an additional process of iotation, so-called "youngest" or "newest iotation" (as opposed to the more widespread and historically earlier iotations of type vík-ati – *vik-jem → vȋč-ēm), has taken place. It traditionally hasn't been regarded as standard in Serbo-Croatian, and it produced forms of the following type:

djèvōjka [djěʋoːjka] > đèvōjka [d͡ʑěʋoːjka] 'girl'

tjȅrati [tjêrati] > ćȅrati [t͡ɕêrati] 'to force, to drive (away)'

sjȕtra [sjûtra] > śȕtra [ɕûtra] 'tomorrow'

zjȅnica [zjênit͡sa] > źȅnica [ʑênit͡sa] 'pupil (eye)'

The forms on the left are standard in all Ijekavian variants of Serbo-Croatian (except for sjȕtra – outside of Montenegro the standard form is sȕtra). In 2009, the forms on the right have also been declared standard in Montenegrin. While the letters representing the outcome of iotation in first two examples already existed in the Serbo-Croatian Latin and Cyrillic alphabet, the other two types of iotation required new letters.