Bosnian language in the context of Official language

The Bosniaks in North Macedonia (Macedonian: Бошњаци, Bosnian: Bošnjaci / Бошњаци) number 17,018 people according to the 2002 census. The population is largely concentrated in and around the capital Skopje, but also in the municipalities of Veles and Dolneni.

Bosniaks, often referred to as Bosnian Muslims, are a South Slavic ethnic group and nation native to Bosnia and Herzegovina. They share a common ancestry, culture, history and the Bosnian language; and traditionally and predominantly adhere to Sunni Islam. The Bosniaks constitute significant native communities in Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia and Kosovo as well. Largely due to displacement stemming from the Bosnian War and Genocide in the 1990s, they also form a significant diaspora with several Bosniak communities across Europe, the Americas and Oceania.

Bosniaks are typically characterised by their historic ties to the Bosnian historical region, adherence to Islam since the 15th and 16th centuries, and the Bosnian language. Bosniaks have also frequently been denoted Bosnian Muslims in the Anglosphere mainly owing to this having been the primary verbiage used in the media coverage of the Bosnian War during the 1990s. Bosniaks self-identified simply as Muslims in a national sense until 1993, when their leading political Party of Democratic Action adopted the term Bosniak. The earlier term, Bosnian Muslim, is considered problematic today when used as an ethnic descriptor rather than a religious one. Bosniaks may also often simply be referred to as Bosnians. However, this term is understood to denote all inhabitants of Bosnia and Herzegovina (regardless of ethnic identity) or apply to citizens of the country.

Serbo-Croatian, also known as Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS), is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro. It is a pluricentric language with four mutually intelligible standard varieties, namely Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin.

South Slavic languages historically formed a dialect continuum. The region's turbulent history, particularly due to the expansion of the Ottoman Empire, led to a complex dialectal and religious mosaic. Due to population migrations, Shtokavian became the most widespread supradialect in the western Balkans, encroaching westward into the area previously dominated by Chakavian and Kajkavian. Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs differ in religion and were historically often part of different cultural spheres, although large portions of these populations lived side by side under foreign rule. During that period, the language was referred to by various names, such as "Slavic" in general, or "Serbian", "Croatian" or "Bosnian" in particular. In a classicizing manner, it was also referred to as "Illyrian".

Serbian is the standard variety of the Serbo-Croatian language mainly used by Serbs. It is the official and national language of Serbia, one of the three official languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and co-official in Montenegro and Kosovo. It is a recognized minority language in Croatia, North Macedonia, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic.

Serbian is based on the most widespread dialect of Serbo-Croatian, Shtokavian (more specifically on the dialects of Šumadija-Vojvodina and Eastern Herzegovina), which is also the basis of standard Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin varieties. Reflecting this shared basis, the Declaration on the Common Language of Croats, Bosniaks, Serbs, and Montenegrins was issued in 2017. The other dialect spoken by Serbs is Torlakian in southeastern Serbia, which is transitional to Macedonian and Bulgarian.

Sandžak (Serbian: Санџак; Bosnian: Sandžak) is a historical and geo-political region in the Balkans, located in the southwestern part of Serbia and the eastern part of Montenegro. The Bosnian/Serbian term Sandžak derives from the Sanjak of Novi Pazar, a former Ottoman administrative district founded in 1865. Sandžak is inhabited by a plurality of ethnic Bosniaks.

Various empires and kingdoms have ruled over the region. In the 12th century, Sandžak was part of the region of Raška under the medieval Serbian Kingdom. During the Ottoman territorial expansion into the western Balkans in a series of wars, the region became an important administrative district, with Novi Pazar as its administrative center. Sandžak was under Austro-Hungarian occupation between 1878 and 1909 as a garrison, until an agreement between Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire resulted in the withdrawal of Austro-Hungarian troops from Sandžak in exchange for full control over Bosnia. In 1912, it was divided between the Kingdom of Montenegro and the Kingdom of Serbia.

Arabic has had a great influence on other languages, especially in vocabulary. The influence of Arabic has been most profound in those countries visited by Islam or Islamic power.

Arabic loanwords have made into many languages as diverse as Abkhaz, Afrikaans, Amharic, Albanian, Armenian, Assyrian, Azerbaijani, Balochi, Bengali, Berber, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chechen, Circassian, Croatian, English, French, Georgian, Greek, Gujarati, Hausa, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Kazakh, Kurdish, Kyrgyz, Macedonian, Malay, Mongolian, Montenegrin, Nepali, Odia, Ossetian, Pashto, Persian, Portuguese, Punjabi, Romani, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Sicilian, Spanish, Sindhi, Somali, Swahili, Tagalog, Tajik, Tatar, Tigrinya, Turkish, Turkmen, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uyghur, Uzbek, Visayan, Wolof, Xhosa, Yoruba, Zulu, as well as other languages in countries where these languages are spoken. Other languages such as Maltese and Nubi derive from Arabic, rather than merely borrowing vocabulary. Arabic words were being used from the Iberian Peninsula all the way to Maritime Southeast Asia prior to the spread of European international words.

The Serbian Cyrillic alphabet (Serbian: Српска ћирилица / Srpska ćirilica, IPA: [sr̩̂pskaː t͡ɕirǐlitsa]), also known as the Serbian script, (Српско писмо, Srpsko pismo, Serbian pronunciation: [sr̩̂psko pǐːsmo]), is a standardized variation of the Cyrillic script used to write Serbo-Croatian, namely its Serbian and Bosnian (mainly in Republika Srpska) standard varieties. It originated in medieval Serbia and was significantly reformed in the 19th century by the Serbian philologist and linguist Vuk Karadžić.

The Serbian Cyrillic alphabet is one of the two official scripts used to write modern standard Serbian, the other being Gaj's Latin alphabet. Karadžić based his reform on the earlier 18th-century Slavonic-Serbian script. Following the principle of "write as you speak and read as it is written" (piši kao što govoriš, čitaj kao što je napisano), he removed obsolete letters, eliminated redundant representations of iotated vowels, and introduced the letter ⟨J⟩ from the Latin script. He also created new letters for sounds unique to Serbian phonology. Around the same time, Ljudevit Gaj led the standardization of the Latin script for use in western South Slavic languages, applying similar phonemic principles.

The General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, also known as the Dayton Agreement or the Dayton Accords (Serbo-Croatian: Dejtonski mirovni sporazum / Дејтонски мировни споразум), and colloquially known as the Dayton (Bosnian: Dejton; Serbian: Дејтон / Dejton), is the peace agreement ending the three-and-a-half-year-long Bosnian War, an armed conflict part of the larger Yugoslav Wars. It was signed on 21 November 1995 in Dayton, Ohio, United States, at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. It was re-signed ceremonially in Paris, France on 14 December 1995.

The warring parties agreed to peace and to a single sovereign state known as Bosnia and Herzegovina composed of two parts: the largely Serb-populated Republika Srpska and mainly Croat-Bosniak-populated Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Bosnia and Herzegovina entered into the related arms control treaty, the Florence Agreement, in 1996 under the Accords. The Dayton followed the Washington Agreement, signed the year prior, in collective efforts to delineate the country's geography.

More than 96% of the population of Bosnia and Herzegovina belongs to one of its three autochthonous constituent peoples (Serbo-Croatian: konstitutivni narodi / конститутивни народи): Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats. The term constituent refers to the fact that these three ethnic groups are explicitly mentioned in the constitution, and that none of them can be considered a minority or immigrant. The most easily recognisable feature that distinguishes the three ethnic groups is their religion, with Bosniaks predominantly Muslim, Serbs predominantly Eastern Orthodox, and Croats Catholic.

Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs speak the Shtokavian dialect of a pluricentric language known in linguistics as Serbo-Croatian. The question of standard language is resolved in such a way that three constituent peoples have their educational and cultural institutions in the standard varieties, which are considered official languages at sub-state levels: Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian.

Central Bosnia (Bosnian: Srednja Bosna, Croatian: Središnja Bosna) is a central subregion of Bosnia, which consists of a core mountainous area with several basins, valleys and mountains. It is bordered by Bosnian Krajina to the northwest, Tropolje (Livno area) to the west, Herzegovina to the south, Sarajevo to the east and Tuzla to the northeast. It is a part of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and is divided between the Central Bosnia Canton and the Zenica-Doboj Canton, with a population of around 800,000. The largest city in the region is Zenica, with the Sarajevo-Zenica basin being the most densely populated area. Its highest peaks are Vranica (2,110 m), Šćit (1,780 m) and Bitovnja (1,700 m).

The Party of Democratic Action (Bosnian: Stranka demokratske akcije; abbr. SDA) is a Bosniak nationalist and conservative political party in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Montenegrin (crnogorski / црногорски [tsr̩nǒɡorskiː]) is the standard variety of the Serbo-Croatian language mainly used by Montenegrins. It is the official language of Montenegro. Montenegrin is based on the most widespread dialect of Serbo-Croatian, Shtokavian, more specifically on Eastern Herzegovinian, which is also the basis of Standard Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian.

Montenegro's language has historically and traditionally been called either Serbian or Montenegrin. The idea of a Montenegrin standard language separate from Serbian appeared in the 1990s during the breakup of Yugoslavia through proponents of Montenegrin independence from Serbia and Montenegro. Montenegrin became the official language of Montenegro in 2007 with the adoption of a new constitution.

Shtokavian or Štokavian (/ʃtɒˈkɑːviən, -ˈkæv-/; Serbo-Croatian Latin: štokavski / Serbo-Croatian Cyrillic: штокавски, pronounced [ʃtǒːkaʋskiː]) is the prestige supradialect of the pluricentric Serbo-Croatian language and the basis of its Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian standards. It is a part of the South Slavic dialect continuum. Its name comes from the form for the interrogative pronoun for "what": što. This is in contrast to dialects that are exclusive to Croatian language: Kajkavian and Chakavian (kaj and ča also meaning "what").

Shtokavian is spoken in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the southern part of Austria's Burgenland, much of Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia. The primary subdivisions of Shtokavian are based on three principles: one is different accents (whether the subdialect is Old-Shtokavian or Neo-Shtokavian), second is the way the old Slavic phoneme yat has changed (Ikavian, Ijekavian or Ekavian), and third is the presence of the Young Proto-Slavic isogloss (Schakavian or Shtakavian). Modern dialectology generally recognises seven Shtokavian subdialects.

The Herzegovina-Neretva Canton (Croatian: Hercegovačko-neretvanska županija; Bosnian: Hercegovačko-neretvanski kanton; Serbian: Херцеговачко-неретвански кантон, romanized: Hercegovačko-neretvanski kanton) is a federated state and one of ten cantons of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The canton mainly comprises the Neretva river valley area and parts of Herzegovina west of Mostar, its administrative centre. It is one of the four cantons in the country with a Croatian majority (53.29%). However, in the case of this territory, it is more ethnically divided and is considered to have a mixed population.

Gaj's Latin alphabet (Serbo-Croatian: Gajeva latinica / Гајева латиница, pronounced [ɡâːjeva latǐnit͡sa]), also known as abeceda (Serbo-Croatian Cyrillic: абецеда, pronounced [abet͡sěːda]) or gajica (Serbo-Croatian Cyrillic: гајица, pronounced [ɡǎjit͡sa]), is the form of the Latin script used for writing all four standard varieties of Serbo-Croatian: Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian. It contains 27 individual letters and 3 digraphs. Each letter (including digraphs) represents one Serbo-Croatian phoneme, yielding a highly phonemic orthography. It closely corresponds to the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet.

The alphabet was initially devised by Croatian linguist Ljudevit Gaj in 1835 during the Illyrian movement in ethnically Croatian parts of the Austrian Empire. It was largely based on Jan Hus's Czech alphabet and was meant to serve as a unified orthography for three Croat-populated kingdoms within the Austrian Empire at the time, namely Croatia, Dalmatia and Slavonia, and their three dialect groups, Kajkavian, Chakavian and Shtokavian, which historically utilized different spelling rules. The alphabet's final form was defined in the late 19th century.

The Eastern Herzegovinian dialect (/ˌhɛərtsəɡəˈviːniən, ˌhɜːr-, -ɡoʊ-, -ˈvɪn-/, Serbo-Croatian: istočnohercegovački dijalekt / источнохерцеговачки дијалект) is the most widespread subdialect of the Shtokavian supradialect or language, both by territory and the number of speakers. It is the dialectal basis for all modern literary Serbo-Croatian standards: Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, and Montenegrin (in this last only partially codified).

Bosniaks in Turkey (Bosnian: Bošnjaci u Turskoj / Бошњаци у Турској) are citizens of Turkey who are, or descend from, ethnic Bosniak people, originating in Bosnia and Herzegovina and other former Yugoslav republics.

The Bosniak community in Turkey has its origins predominantly in the exodus of Bosniaks from the Bosnia Eyalet taking place in the 19th and early 20th century as a result of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire's rule in the Balkans. According to estimates commissioned in 2008 by the National Security Council of Turkey (Milli Güvenlik Kurulu) as many as 2,000,000 Turkish citizens are of Bosniak ancestry. Bosniaks mostly live in the Marmara region which is in other words the north-west of Turkey. The biggest Bosniak community in Turkey is in Istanbul.Yenibosna ("New Bosnia") is a borough, located on the western part of the Istanbul district of Bahçelievler, bordering with the neighboring district Küçükçekmece. The district saw rapid migration from the former Ottoman Empire after the founding of the Republic of Turkey.The origin of the borough's name comes from the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo. The settlement was initially named Saraybosna, which is the Turkish equivalent of Sarajevo, before it was renamed Yenibosna with the formation of the Republic of Turkey.