Aromanian is an Eastern Romance variety spoken in the Balkans, considered by some a separate language, and by others a dialect of Romanian. Aromanian has a similar morphology and syntax with modern Romanian, and a large common vocabulary inherited from Latin, but has been largely influenced by Greek, Albanian, Macedonian and Bulgarian. In addition to Serbia, it is also spoken in Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, North Macedonia and Romania.
The presence of Aromanians in Serbia is mainly due to migrations in the 18th and early 19th centuries. These first comers were bilingual in Aromanian and Greek, while the last migration wave, in the late 20th century, comprised Macedonian-Aromanian speakers.
The 2011 population census registered 243 Cincari, the ethnonym used in Serbia to refer to this ethnic group, but the number of Aromanian speakers was not mentioned. Estimates vary from a few families to a few hundred persons.
The members of the community are scattered throughout the country and do not form compact groups anywhere. Larger Aromanian communities can be found in Belgrade and Niš, and smaller in the towns of Knjaževac, Pančevo, Smederevo. The majority of Serbian citizens of Aromanian descent do not speak Aromanian and adopt a Serbian identity.
Aromanian is not recognized as a minority language in the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, and legislation does not provide for teaching Aromanian in schools. However, for short periods, different associations or individuals have organized Aromanian language workshops.
* UNESCO’s Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger considers Aromanian ‘definitely endangered’ in Serbia, but data regarding the number of speakers is lacking. Ethnologue lists Aromanian as ‘vigorous’ in Serbia, with a user population of 13,000, and a total number of speakers worldwide of 191,000. The Catalogue of Endangered Languages lists Aromanian among the endangered languages in Serbia, considering it threatened.
At the end of the project, we will be able to offer more reliable data on the number of speakers in Serbia and the degree of language vulnerability.
Banat Bulgarian is a South Slavic variety spoken in the Banat region in Serbia, as well as in Romania, by the Banat Bulgarians (Paulicians), descendants of the Catholic refugees who settled here in the 17th and 18th centuries after fleeing from northern Bulgaria. This linguistic variety is an outlying dialect of Bulgarian, which uses the Latin script. The first codification of Banat Bulgarian dates from 1866.
In Serbia, Banat Bulgarians live in the towns of Pančevo, Vršac, Kovin and Zrenjanin, as well as in the villages of Belo Blato, Ivanovo, Jaša Tomić, Konak, Skorenovac and Stari Lec.
The 2011 Census registered 1,489 Bulgarians in the Vojvodina region, and 601 speakers of Bulgarian, but the unofficial estimates suggest that there are anywhere between 1,000 and 4,000 speakers of Banat Bulgarian in Serbia.
Legislation does not provide for teaching Banat Bulgarian in schools, given the fact that it is not officially recognized as a minority language. However, the optional subject Bulgarian language with elements of national culture was introduced in the primary school in Ivanovo. Language workshops aimed at teaching the variety both to children and adults have been also organized for several years in some of the localities inhabited by Banat Bulgarians.
* According to UNESCO’s Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, Banat Bulgarian is considered ‘definitely endangered’, with an estimated number of 25,000 speakers. The Catalogue of Endangered Languages does not list Banat Bulgarian as endangered in Serbia.
At the end of the project, we will be able to offer more reliable data on the number of speakers in Serbia and the degree of language vulnerability.
Vojvodina Rusyn (Ruthenian) is an East Slavic language written in the Cyrillic script. It is closest to Ukrainian, and has many elements borrowed from West Slavic languages. While similar varieties are spoken in eastern Slovakia, south-east Poland and the Transcarpathia region of western Ukraine, Vojvodina Rusyn is spoken in the Vojvodina region of Serbia (more precisely in Bačka) and in Croatia.
The members of the community settled in Vojvodina starting with the middle of the 18th century. Rusyns today live mainly in: Ruski Krstur, Kucura, Novi Sad, Kula, Vrbas, Đurđevo, Gospođinci, Bačka Topola, Subotica, Šid, Berkasovo, Bikić Do, Bačinci, Sremska Mitrovica. Until the middle of the 20th century, the community was predominantly rural, while today it is mixed.
According to the 2011 population census, the number of Rusyns in Serbia was 14,246, while the number of speakers of Vojvodina Rusyn was 11,340. The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages lists Rusyn among the minority languages in Serbia. The language was codified in 1923, being today one of the six official languages of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina. Education in Rusyn is organized at primary and secondary level, depending on the number of students who attend the classes. Regular classes in Rusyn from first to eighth grade can be attended in Ruski Krstur, Kucura and Đurđevo. In other places where Rusyns live, they can attend optional classes of Rusyn language with elements of national culture.
* According to UNESCO’s Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, Vojvodina Rusyn is considered ‘definitely endangered’, with an estimated number of 30,000 speakers. The Catalogue of Endangered Languages does not list Rusyn as endangered in Serbia.
At the end of the project, we will be able to offer more reliable data on the number of speakers in Serbia and the degree of language vulnerability.
Judezmo (Ladino) is the language of Sephardic Jews, a Romance variety which represents a historical descent of (Classical) Spanish. It was originally spoken in the Iberian Peninsula, prior to the expulsion of Sephardic Jews in the 15th century. As the Sephardic Jews spread across the Ottoman Empire, North Africa and some Western European countries, the variety has been influenced by Spanish, Hebrew, French, Italian, German, Turkish and languages of the Balkans. Given that it sufficiently differs from contemporary Spanish, it represents a second sub-branch of Romance, along with the Balkan Romance group of Eastern Romance.
Today Judezmo is a diaspora language, whose speakers are scattered in many countries around the world and communicate mostly via the Internet. Most speakers live in Israel, the United States of America, Turkey, France and Argentina.
The first Sephardic Jewish community in Belgrade was formed in the 1620s. The language shift from Judezmo to Serbian occurred between 1860s and 1940s. Despite efforts to slow down language shift, after the Holocaust only a few Sephardic families in Belgrade maintained the language as a means of communication.
There are no official data regarding the number of Sephardic Jews in Serbia today, who are included within the wider Jewish community. According to our estimates, the number of speakers of Judezmo in Serbia is probably less than ten.
* UNESCO’s Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger lists Judezmo as ‘severely endangered’. Ethnologue does not mention Judezmo in Serbia. The Catalogue of Endangered Languages lists Ladino as one of the endangered languages in Serbia.
At the end of the project, we will be able to offer more reliable data on the number of speakers in Serbia and the degree of language vulnerability.
Romani is an Indo-Aryan language spoken today in Europe, North and South America, and Australia by at least 3-4 million speakers. Linguists distinguish at least four large branches of Romani dialects: North, Central, Vlax, and Balkan, all of which can be further divided into subgroups of dialects and varieties.
The first information on the ‘Gypsy’ entertainment groups on the territory of today’s Serbia date from the 14th century. In the 16th century, Roma groups were inhabiting the entire region, but more intensive settlement occurred in the 19th century, when the Roma in the Romanian principalities were freed from slavery.
According to the 2011 population census, there are 147,604 declared Roma in Serbia and 100,668 speakers of Romani. The census does not offer data about the specific dialects, but in Serbia the varieties belonging to two major groups of dialects (Balkan and Vlax) are spoken.
The Roma inhabit today all regions of Serbia, both urban and rural. Among the bigger Roma settlements are those in Belgrade, Niš, Kragujevac, and Novi Sad. Roma are also settled in many towns in Serbia, e.g. Knjaževac, Pirot, Sombor, Valjevo, Smederevo, as well as in numerous villages.
Romani is recognized as a minority language by the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. The Romani National Council of Serbia passed the Resolution on the standardization of the Romani language in 2013.
The optional subject Romani language with elements of national culture has been introduced in primary schools in Vojvodina in 1998, and in the rest of Serbia in 2015. Romani is also being taught at the College for Preschool Education in Vršac.
Unlike other minority languages spoken in Serbia, Romani has been particularly stigmatized and negative attitudes towards the language and its speakers have been reported. Romani is completely absent in the linguistic landscape of Serbia.
* According to UNESCO’s Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, Romani is considered ‘definitely endangered’, but the number of Romani speakers in Serbia is not provided. Ethnologue distinguishes 4 endangered Romani varieties in Serbia: Balkan Romani, Sinte Romani, Vlax Romani and Romano-Serbian. The Catalogue of Endangered Languages mentions five endangered Romani varieties in Serbia: Balkan Romani, Baltic Romani, Carpathian Romani, Sinte Romani and Vlax Romani.
At the end of the project, we will be able to offer more reliable data on the number of speakers in Serbia and the degree of language vulnerability.
Megleno-Romanian is an Eastern Romance variety structurally related to Aromanian, Istro-Romanian and Romanian, originally spoken in the area where the Vardar (Axios) River crosses the North Macedonian-Greek border northwest of Salonika. Megleno-Romanian is viewed by some as a separate Romance language, a dialect of Aromanian, an intermediary between Romanian and Aromanian, or as a dialect of Romanian.
The presence of Megleno-Romanians in Serbia, namely in Vojvodina, is the result of colonisations made by the Yugoslav Communist Party after WWII, from North Macedonia. Among the colonized Macedonians there was also a small group of Megleno-Romanian speaking ‘Vlachs’, settled in the villages Jabuka, Kačarevo and Gudurica. The exact number of Megleno-Romanians settled in Vojvodina, as well as the number of returnees to North Macedonia, is not known.
Megleno-Romanian was used only within the family and knowledge of the language was mostly kept secret.
The censuses do not register Megleno-Romanians in Serbia. Today, there are probably only a few tens of them left in Vojvodina and even less speakers, not more than 10, who all belong to the older generation.
* Megleno-Romanian is considered ‘severely endangered’ by the UNESCO’s Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, and ‘threatened’ by both Ethnologue and the Catalogue of Endangered Languages, with a total number of 5,000 speakers, in Greece and North Macedonia. None of the three inventories mention that Megleno-Romanian is also spoken in Serbia.
At the end of the project, we will be able to offer more reliable data on the number of speakers in Serbia and the degree of language vulnerability.
Bayash Romanian is a non-standard variety of Romanian spoken in Serbia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Bosnia and Herzegovina by the Bayash, also known as Rudari or Romanian Gypsies. They originate in the Danubian Principalities of Moldova and Wallachia (nowadays Romania), where they have most probably been slaves until the mid-19th century. After the abolition of slavery, but also before this date, they left Romania and spread in the Balkans. In Serbia, Bayash Romanian has developed independently from the standard variety, and has been thoroughly influenced by Serbian.
The Bayash have not shown up in official Serbian population statistics until a decade ago, when the 2011 census registered 80 Bayash in the Bačka district. Nevertheless, their real number, as well as the number of speakers of Bayash Romanian, is much higher, of probably several tens of thousands of people.
The Bayash do not form compact communities anywhere in Serbia, but they inhabit more than 150 urban and rural settlements in central, eastern and northern parts of the country. In Vojvodina, they usually live in Romanian villages. Among the settlements with bigger Bayash communities we can mention: Belgrade (Ripanj and Marinkova bara settlements), Vajska, Apatin, Sonta, Brodica, Bukovik.
Unlike in Hungary, where Bayash is codified, the Bayash Romanian variety in Serbia lives on solely as an oral language, with a limited domain of use, within the family and as a secret language.
After World War II there was an attempt to introduce standard Romanian in the schools attended by the Bayash north of the Danube; a similar attempt was registered in 2009, but the optional classes were discontinued a few years later.
* UNESCO’s Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger and the Catalogue of Endangered Languages do not register Bayash Romanian as an endangered variety anywhere in Europe. However, Ethnologue lists Bayash among Romanian language dialects, together with Moldavian, Muntenian (Walachian), Transylvanian and Banat. The Commission “Vanishing Languages and Cultural Heritage” (VLACH) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences included the Boyash/Rudar variety of Romanian among the Romanian linguistic varieties which are today highly endangered.
At the end of the project, we will be able to offer more reliable data on the number of speakers in Serbia and the degree of language vulnerability.
Vlach is an Eastern Romance variety spoken in Eastern Serbia, recently codified. Due to the intense and prolonged contact with Serbian, and isolation of the speakers, the variety is characterized by a relative linguistic distance from standard Romanian, although the dialectal basis of the two varieties is similar.
The presence of Vlachs on the territory of Serbia is mainly due to colonisation and spontaneous migrations from north to south of the Danube, in the 18th and 19th centuries. Some authors suggest that the newcomers encountered and merged with a previous layer of Romanized population.
The 2011 census lists 35,330 Vlachs (Vlasi) in Serbia, and 43,095 speakers of Vlach (vlaški). According to unofficial estimates, the number of speakers of Vlach in Eastern Serbia is much higher, up to 200,000. The Vlachs inhabit more than 100 rural settlements of Eastern Serbia, and also, together with Serbs, several bigger towns: Požarevac, Majdanpek, Negotin, Zaječar, Bor.
For a long time, the use of Vlach has been restricted to the family domain. During the last 20 years, several systems of transcription for the variety have been created and efforts have been put into language planning and codification. In 2022, the Vlach National Council of Serbia passed the resolution for standardization of the Vlach language.
The optional subject Vlach speech with elements of national culture has been taught in several primary schools of Eastern Serbia starting with 2013.
* UNESCO’s Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger and the Catalogue of Endangered Languages do not register Vlach as an endangered language in Serbia. The Commission “Vanishing Languages and Cultural Heritage” (VLACH) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences included Vlach Romanian among the endangered linguistic varieties in Serbia.
At the end of the project, we will be able to offer more reliable data on the number of speakers in Serbia and the degree of language vulnerability.
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