Bosnian

About Bosnian

Bosnian is one of the three official languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina, together with Croatian and Serbian. The three are standard forms of the same South Slavic language, and their speakers understand each other easily. Bosnian is also used in Montenegro and by Bosniak communities in Serbia and abroad. It has more words borrowed from Turkish, Arabic and Persian than Croatian or Serbian, and merhaba is a common informal hello.

Bosnian is written as it sounds, one letter for each sound. C sounds like the ts in "cats", č and ć are two kinds of ch, š is sh, ž is like the s in "measure" and j is like the y in "yes". Use Vi as the polite "you" with strangers and older people and ti with friends.

FamilyIndo-European, South Slavic
Official inBosnia and Herzegovina (with Croatian and Serbian)
ScriptLatin alphabet, also Cyrillic
Codesbs (ISO 639-1), bos (ISO 639-3)

Classification: Wikidata. Retrieved 26 September 2026.

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