Serbian vs Bosnian vs Croatian 

This is the first video I am uploading in nearly 100 days. Considering everything that's happening in Iran these days, I have not been active on RU-vid as of late. Although I've always tried to keep politics away from my RU-vid channel, I am very active on social media and physically, at actual rallies and events here in Toronto to support the people in Iran who are giving it all to attain freedom. As a full-time engineer, and a father of 2 kids, it's sometimes difficult to find any spare time. My RU-vid channel has always been that hobby that took up any bit of free time I had. It's a passion, and something I love. These days, however, any free time I have is devoted to something I care about deeply, which is why I've significantly reduced my activities on RU-vid and have put a lot of time into supporting the people inside Iran, including my relatives, friends, and several incredibly brave people I have met in the past few months who are risking it all for this. I also wanted to let you know that although this channel aims to avoid politics, if you do care to know more my political views, and want to stay up to date with them, then follow my personal page on Instagram, which I personally believe is currently one of the best platforms to spread awareness and make a difference: instagram.com/bahadoralast I hope you enjoy the video and I want to thank you all for your support and being so understanding!

Loved how they said "sorry WE were speaking in OUR language" when they realised they weren't speaking in English to explain. They all subconsciously acknowledge they speak the same language.

Don't tell me that the Montenegrian overslept for this video, and that's why he is not appearing in it🤦

Tamara uses a lot of slang that is mostly spoken in Belgrade and it's not considered a dialect. Standard Serbian is the same language as Bosnian and Croatian, sharing the same grammar and >90% of vocabulary. Keep in mind that the Balkans has been a battlefield of two culturally different empires for centuries - Austrian and Ottoman, and while we were neighbors all the time, different influences had an impact on a language and culture we have today. Compared to Serbian, Bosnian has somewhat more Turkish/Arabic/Persian loanwords, while Croatian has more German/Italian/Czech. Apart from that, people from these countries can talk to each other without any problem whatsoever. Misunderstanding becomes a thing on a political level, not on a linguistic one. I hope we'll overcome those misunderstandings and be the best neighbors because we've had too much. No more brother wars. Slava Hrvatskoj, Bosni i Hercegovini i Srbiji!

To illustrate how much they “differ” I as a Serbian speaker when I tune into Croatian Radio Television (HRT), I literally understand 100% of the spoken language. Same when I listen to Al Jazeera in Bosnian. It’s the SAME language period. But as many things in Balkans that are non sensical to a normal person that grew up to different truth from falsehood it’s kind of normal in Balkans to hear in media or from “experts” or nationalistic politicians outrageous claims such as the one that it’s a different language. It’s not and it’s never been. We might be different nations or nationalities but the language is unfortunately or fortunately the same.

"WE ARE SPEAKING IN OUR LANGUAGE" ❤️

The Serbian woman isn't speaking Serbian, per se, but Belgrade slang. Bosnian woman is using a regional word not even I understand, and I'm Bosnian and a translator, thus linguistically trained as well as trained in the pluricentricity of Serbo-Croatian. In fact, I could understand Belgrade slang better than her regional Bosnian, but I do watch a fair amount of Serbian content. Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian, as well as Montenegrin are as different (or as similar) as UK, US, Canadian, and Aussie (Irish, Welsh, NZ, Indian...etc) English. So linguistically they are one pluricentric language, and everything else is pure politics and not linguistics.

All three of them spoke in slang which is often not even understood by their own respective peoples. If they spoke their normal everyday language, they would understand 99% of what each other was saying.

Thank you for doing this, Bahador! I am a Bosnian living in Canada. Many of the words Amina used are based on the loan turkish words which are not used so often. I wouldn't even understand some of them. They have probably been used more in the old days. The base of the 3 "languages" are the same and the proper grammar is probably close to 95% the same, except for the dialects spoken in those regions. In any case, if is beautiful to see 3 young people share this and a wonderful message at the end. Love! ❤

I'm from Sweden and I think south Slavic languages are some of the most beautiful and cool sounding languages in the world. If the grammar wasn't such a nightmare I would definitely have learned Serbo-Croatian by now. My parents have a lot of close Serbian friends who I grew up with and view as family and I have Bosnian personal friends who I wouldn't trade for anything. Ex-Yugo people are so warm and friendly and sometimes a little bit crazy. Thank you for this video, I always love listening to this wonderful language 🇸🇪❤️🇧🇦🇭🇷🇷🇸

Hvala! Sve je bilo odlično! Thanks a lot Bahador for organizing something others have imagined but nobody ever done until now 👏

I am Serbian but I have never heard the words: gilje, jura, akibetli, aščare, zijanče, sindžir, fineštru. The Croatian speaker is not completely fluent in Croatian, he appears to have been born and lives abroad. To summarize, standard (shtokavian) language in Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia and Montenegro is a one polycentric language. It has several dialects and sub-dialects where some words can be distinguished, but the differences in words are much smaller than, for example, in British English and American English, where you also have some words and even grammatical forms that differ (lift - elevator, taxi - cab, jumper - pullover - sweater). But in Croatia there are two dialects, Chakavian and Kajkavian, which differ from the standard Stokavian. In Serbian, there is Prizren-Timoc or the so-called Torlakian dialect, which is slightly different from the standard language, but it is also Stokavian, unlike these two dialects of Croatian, which are not Stokavian. It would be interesting to compare standard Stokavian with Chakavian, Kajkavian and Torlakian, but also these three dialects with each other.

"Josip, say something. Don't be a plant." 😂 Cool to see Tamara! She was in the Geography Now episode on Serbia. 😊 It's nice to hear her speak more Serbian.

I loved all of them, and secretly wished that such video on these languages would appear on your channel 😊 Last year I've been to the Balkans (Croatia and Montenegro) and loved the scenery, the culture, the people, the cuisine and can't wait to go back and explore more. 💜

Thank you for the great video, Bahador. As a Turkish citizen of Bosnian origin I can confirm the standard languages are 98% same, of course some regional dialects differ from one another.

This video made me very happy! You've done something great here. Bless you all ❤

Would like to see someone who speaks Chakavian dialect of croatian trying to communicate with someone who speaks Torlakian dialect of Serbian, those two dialects differ more from their perspective standard language than Serbian and Croatian from each other

Great video and wonderful guests! I was recently in Serbia and was treated very well. I really loved it.

They're dialects of the same language. Some politicians decided to classify them differently. No more different than American and British English (except for the writing system)

I love it when some people online from ex-Yu start arguing about how they're different languages in the same language.

The fact that they needed to use slang in order make this video tells you everything.

I am a Canadian that decided to learn Croatian for fun so this was interesting! Exciting that by learning one language I might learn 2 more by default 😅

Beautiful guys! As a swede speaking some south slavic i loved this. Svaka čast! And i also fell in love with Amina.

This is great! Thank Thank you for doing this 💓

Most important is to stay strong together 🇭🇷🇧🇦🇷🇸what was happened it was happened we are still support each other thats why i m happy to be part in Video thank you so much BAHADOR my friend‼️ its honor to work with you‼️💪🏻 #eliteofbrothers

Long time no see, Bahador! Interesting video as always. I live in Canada but as a language enthusiast, I am learning Bosnian (among other languages), so it was a delight to see the comparisons and also learn some new things along the way. I have a Bosnian friend from high school which sparked my curiosity

I don't speak these languages but it's still so interesting to hear a few familiar sounding words with common roots to the English and Spanish that I know. Thanks ❤

Same!! Thanks Bahador for your video. I appreciate very much your work !!

It is the same language! Only thing which is different is pronunciation and slang words used from one to other area. I saw more differences with people using Spanish, Portuguese and others then between Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro etc.

Josip is secretly Austrian, disguised as Dalmatian, often skipping English classes in high school 🤣

The Bosnian girl sounds like an America. Her english is very fluent.

I appreciate very much this particular video, since I am older than the participants, and I "indirectly" witnessed the war on the telly...quite sad...and also I've got a Croatian friend who was raised in the former Yugoslavia, and all of a sudden, when the former Yugoslavia was separated, she remained "stateless" for a long while; in summation I love to see these younger generations growing up with that sense of "friendship"; and for me languages are a "mean" to befriend or relate with each other. That's my linguistic point of view. Bahador you are a wonderful person; you succeed in getting together people from all over the world . BRAVO!

So happy to have you back ❤

This is about slang/dialect and not about language. I personaly am a Bosnian but "akibetli" never heard of coz it is Sarajevo slang, and i would say kruh rather than hljeb/hleb. Beside that, ekavica/jekavica/ijekavica are a part of every of those languages. These 3 wonderful people speak the same language!

Well, you can all imagine how much fun I have, raised in Serbo-Croatian, with parents from Bosnia and with my love for languages. Gilje is slang for shoes, I think, but I'm not sure, that it has the same root than the Turkish verb gelmek. For alkibetli I guessed and I guessed right :) Zijanče I know, aščara I don't. A wild guess would be obviously. I guessed that too :) I was confused with the prononciation of bela, haven't thought of Italian. I understood all the words od the sevdalinka, of course. My favorite sevdalinka is about the beautiful shops in Mostar :) Bahador, thank you for this. It's nice to hear from you and to see a video like this. Hvala i vama učesnicima, bili ste odlični!

My understanding was that the dialects from Belgrade, Zagreb and Sarajevo are fairly standardised from Yugoslav days and it only becomes more complicated in the less urbanised areas and the Dalmatian coast.

Just one advice, next time it would be better to find a Croatian speaker that is fluent in speaking and writing. Josip spoke with a strong german accent and there were grammar and spelling mistakes in the texts.

Amina is very beautiful

I love so much these videos. Thank you so much for that Bahador. For me it was also a bit confusing, as many people stated in comments, do they use standardised versions of "languages", dialects or slengs. But few people wrote that the intention was to speak how do they actually speak and not a standardised language, so I will stick to that. Tamara from Belgrade was speaking typical sleng from Belgrade. Even people outside of Belgrade sometimes have difficulties to understand something from that sleng, and not even to talk to people from Bosnia or Croatia. That is what I like about her and also she spoke with accent spoken in Belgrade as well. I think she was the most authentic one. Amina from Sarajevo did not speak with Sarajevo accent at all. She spoke with typical standardised accent that we have in schools, in media and in academic circles. I also live in Sarajevo and it would be great if she did it, like Tamara from Belgrade did. Amina also did not speak with sleng from Sarajevo. Sarajevo, same as Belgrade, has very unique sleng that is recognisible all over ex Yugoslavia. All what she did was speaking standardized language with standardised accent. She did not bring anything local Sarajevan in this video. When it comes to words she was using that was a bit Sarajevan. But, the problem is, she was using language of sevdalinka or some very old oriental words that most of people, except some very old people, don't use anymore. Language of sevdalinka is very poetical language, very sophisticated one. But, that kind of speech is not spoken anymore and for modt of time when people want to ubderstand what some sevdalinka means they need to search meaning of certain words and phrases. She was also giving some words that maybe were used in past, but not anymore. For example, word "akibetli" I never ever heard in my life, even I live in Sarajevo and at the other side am pretty good with old form of language spoken here 100 years or so. So she was bringing speech of past to us just to feel a bit different, was is ok, but that is not how TODAY people of Sarajevo speak. Josip from Zagreb was really really BAD! First of all, he lives in Wiena in Austria. He speaks English with typical German accent. Sentences that he was giving were full of mistakes. He was often writing nouns with capital letter, like it is in German, like Sestra, Bicikleta and so on. Nouns in our language are not written with capital letter, except names of people and places. He was mixing ikavica and ekavica. I don't know why he did it, because he stated that he is from Zagreb. People in Zagreb area speak non of it, they speak ijekavica, same as people in Bosnia, eastern Herzegovina and Montenegro. He said for example "mliko", but at the other side "primetio". I actually guess his parents might be from Dalmacija (southern Croatia), and there come ikavica. But am not really sure where does ekavica come in his sentences. I guess, might be wrong, since he lives in Wiena and there are so many people originally from Serbia who live in Wiena, that he might mix his speech by talking to them in daily life, what is totally normal. But in general, his speech IS NOT speech of Zagreb, because they speak differently. I am sorry to say this, but I think he was also lying a bit. He was using some sentence where he used word "bela". In our language in ekavica form it means "beautiful (girl or woman)". The way he pronounced it was with long e, what means exactly "beautiful". But that form is not used anywhere in Croatia, it is either "bijela" - ijekavica form or "bila" - ikavica form. "Bela" is ekavica form that is used only in Serbia and small parts of Bosnia. Then I think Tamara said it could be like Italian "bela", and he confirmed, but Italian one is with short e and not with long one. Other example is about word bostan. That ford has two meanings, either watermelon or a small garden. Amina was reading sevdalinka and Josip said that means watermelon, what Tamara confirmed. Amina did not know about that meaning and said that means a small garden. Then Josip said how his aunt lives in Bosnia and uses that word "bostan", BUT nobody uses that word in Bosnia anymore. All in all, it was a nice video. I would suggest to find few people who would speak exactly as they do in daily life, like Tamara from Belgrade did, and compare it. Amina was kind of ok, but did not represent Sarajevo speech, and Josip was really terrible. Greetings from Sarajevo.

It's heartwarming to see the people of these 3 countries have such friendly conventions 👏🏼👏🏼

Serbian, (Serb), Bosnian (Bosniak) and Croatian (Croat) speak same Language but different Dialects !

Just to see these young people together made my day. I had a Serb and a Croat friend and they both went to the war and never returned.

Good Video Bahador as always 👍!

Hvala puno za moju sestru srbkinju i sestru bosanku, a takoze mojego brata hrvata od rusa. Pricam od srca i dusi mojej, moji rodny. Volim vas!

This is cool, we can coexist. Need more of these type of videos. You only seeing negative things on the internet between nationalists off all 3 republics. It’s good to see some positivity for a change

As someone studying Bulgarian, hearing these three languages was both funny and confusing at the same time 😅

Great video. Super informative. From a Serb in the States.

Great video! Love this channel. Any chance you could do Catalan and Sardinian, or Hebrew and Russian?

Love it! Balkans people are lovely and the languages are super beautiful 😍

6:03 Zanimljivo sto je devojka iz Bosne rekla:"prodavnicu ili granap"! Kao da su sinonimi? ! Mlada je pa ne zna otkud se ovaj naziv (granap) "udomacio" kod bosanaca kao sinonim za prodavnicu ili trgovinu. To je, zapravo, skracenica za trgovinski lanac:"gradsko nabavno preduzece ", koje je bilo veoma popularno I zastupno u Sarajevu.Primera radi, zamislte da amerikanci umesto reci :" Store"(prodavnica) govore:"Walmart ".Slicno je (kod "nasih") jezika na primerima:pasta za zube-kaladont(naziv firme),kalkulator-digitron(naziv firme koja proizvoidi kalkulatore) I sl.

Bahador, it’s really interesting how many Persian words there were in all three dialects. I imagine the Persian words entered these languages through Turkish rather than directly from Persian.

Dzięki za ten material.

Greetings from Bulgaria. I just discovered that I am a polyglot. (Pozdrav iz Bugarske. Upravo sam otkrio da sam poliglota.)😁

Svi ste vi naši! Živi bili I pametni!🇸🇮❤️❤️❤️

Excellent video

Love this video between these close related languages.

My native language is Russian, but sometimes I watch serbian shows on U-tube and listen to south-slavic songs and when I misunderstand some words I often, because of not having serbian keyboard, use croatian or bosnian translators. And almost in any case it gives the same translation. 😀 So in my opinion, all three languages are practically the same, and differences between them even if they are more, than between american and british English, are not essential ones.

Its not even funny nor educational to say serbo-croatian language is split into different languages, they are all more similar than Australian English and American English and you dont see people EVER say that someone speaks Australian

Great video. Would be nice to have the languages of each person written under their window. It's hard to remember who speaks what.

I've been asking for this one for years 😅

I'm from Croatia...I speak slovenian and croatian,and also english....Josip has strong GERMAN accent in his english😉 P.s. Croatian,bosnian and serbian languages are VERY similar but also there is a BIG DIFFERENCE that only native people know and understand. There are some vrey important rules and grammar between these languages that differ in themselves,and based on these differences we can differentiate WHO IS WHO....This is VERY important in Balkans because of the POLITICS...and only Balkan people know what I'm trying to say😉 P.s. I'm someone who DOESN'T MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE...I LOVE ALL COUNTRIES and ALL PEOPLE FROM EX-YUGOSLAVIA!❤️🙂 Greetings from Croatia🤗

Comparing those 3 languages is like comparing US English, UK English and Australian English.

More ex-yu content please!! I love seeing this, especially seeing the Croatian spokesperson using very Dalmatian dialect

I am from Serbia and never heard word gilje in my life. and slang glava (head for one hundred) is unfamiliar to me so I would have to ask my compatriot to explain or translate it to proper Serbian in order to understand her. In other words it has nothing to do with differences between BSC languages

I studied this 'language' using a course called Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian by Ronelle Alexander and Ellen Elias-Bursac. It teaches all three at the same time. The texts are in three versions and you are told to use the one you wish to concentrate on and learn to recognise the others. I would say that they seem over 90% the same. The differences can be learned easily. I am a native English speaker from England and the differences in various forms of English even between Scotland, England and Wales seem often greater than the differences between Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian. I also speak Spanish and again the differences between some forms of Spanish are equally or more different than between BCS. The reasons for giving them separate names are really historical and cultural and the fact that there is no common name of a place of origin that they can all agree on as is the case in English, French and Spanish for example. But linguistically it's really a multi-centric language and the geographical boundaries of the countries never completely followed linguistic lines either with for example Croats in Zagreb probably understanding Serbs in Belgrade more easily than they would some other Croats speaking other dialects of 'Croatian'.

These three didn't throw bombs at each the whole time! Well done! When can we stop pretending these are different languages?

This is pure slang..i"m from Slovenia and i speak Serbo-Croatian-Bosnian-Montenegrin, which are more or less the same, but here they use some words that i never heard! But don"t you worry, in Slovenia we have more than 40 dialects and some of them i understand less than Serbo-Croatian..

Bostan is field with watermelons or any other melons. But in some parts of Bosnia (in north-west, for example), you can use it for watermelon too. I think we get from or via Turkish. Btw, I never heard of "akibetli" and generally Amina packed it too much with Turkish loanwords. Bosnian (language or version of language or dialect, however you like) is not just mix of standard BHS (BCS) and Turkish. Btw. I think Josip is not so good with Croatian grammar. Probably he's born or raised in Vienna. And, personally, I am more leaning to opinion that we all speak same language - polycentric one. That we don't use common name has something to do with politics. It's too bad that there is no neutral name - like Dutch for language spoken in Netherlands and part of Belgium. Maybe we could call it Nashki (naški) - meaning "our/ours".

I recognise Tamara from Geography now 😁

I speak Serbian,Bosnian, Croatian. I'm Hungarian by the way, from serbia.

Does anybody know whether the word "lyudi" that is present in some Slavic languages is a cognate of the German "Leute"? The meaning seems to be identical and if I had to guess how the modern form "Leute" has looked like in Old High German, I would guess it would have been "liutu"/"liuti" or something like that, so even more similar.

As a foreigner trying to learn the Balkan language, I found this fun and entertaining. I think the Croatian you chose was very easy to understand for everybody. I think if you had chosen some island dialect it would have been harder. For instance, near our house in Mali Losinj there is an island called "Susak". The people that live on Susak have very strange vocabulary. I also think some of the mountain dialects are very hard to understand in Bosnia and Montenegro. I was surprised you didn't explore the simple differences like the months of the year, the numbers (for instance 'one thousand'), and family members (such as 'brother-in-law'). Well done. You can easily do a second edition of this and get lots of people tuning in to watch.

The language is what is known as a dialect continuum, the further away you get from someone geographically the harder it is to understand them even if they live in the same country, but two people who live 20 minutes from each other but on opposite sides of the border would understand each other perfectly The language is most commonly referred to as "naš", which means "our" as in "our language", you usually only refer to it as Bosnian, Croatian or Serbian when someone asks you what language you speak haha

Let's see of you know what is Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian. Pušenje ozbiljno šteti vama i drugima oko vas. Pušenje ozbiljno šteti vama i drugima oko vas. Pušenje ozbiljno šteti vama i drugima oko vas. I know it's difficult but at least try. One of them is Serbian and I wrote it in latin.

The only one who had a great personality was the Serbian lady

These 3 languages are the same, just different dialects and slangs. Exactly like English in the UK, the US and Australia...

Gilje is slang. It's not part of an official language. In Croatia we have so many regional dialects, where some are so specific nobody understands like bednjanski. We understand each other perfectly really. That's reality.

Make a video about Hazargi language ( فارسی هزارگی ) vs Turkish language

The fact is we who are from former Yugoslavia and live somewhere else now, refer to these languages as "Nash Jezik" or "our language" or the literal translation would be "our tongue". Nobody says "Does he/she speak Serbian, Bosnian, Croatian, or Montenegrin?" instead we ask "Does he speak our language?"

Unpopular opinion: it's all the same language using regional dialects

Pozdrav od Bosanca iz daleke Amerike! Odličan video!

My mom has Bosnian roots but unfortunately she didn't teach me the language. I only know a few words here and there. I thought it was interesting that, despite me not knowing the language, Serbian from Tara definitely sounded like a completely different language but Josip and Amina sound like they're speaking the same exact language. I am judging only based on "sound" since I don't know the language but I can clearly tell Serbian is different. Also it's interesting to see in Bosnian a few words taken from Arabic via Turkish such as Bustan (بستان) and zulum (ظلم) :)

when political interests transform one language into three different idioms...

Its incredible how happy is everyone in this video. Bahador, thank you very much, as an Iranian I cannot be more proud of you. I am amazed how this young generation can truly save the direction of humanity.....we have changed...we should be inspired to continue this same path of acceptance and solidarity...if everyone could learn from this group.

Good to know about these three languages and their friendship.

Great video but the sound quality is quite bad 😔

The fact that we had lived in the same country from 1918 to 1941 (Kingdom of Yugoslavia), and then again from 1945 to 1991 (Socialist Yugoslavia) means that we can all speak to each other without a needed translator, even if we don't understand a word here and there. Before, it used to be Serbo-Croatian, in Yugoslavia, and now we have Serbian, Bosnian, Croatian, as separate languages. I would say it is the same language with some differences in dialects and certain words, but the languages correspond 90% or even 95% to each other .

This is the equivalent of putting someone from Minnesota to talk to someone from the deep South, same language with a few different expression here and there

It's not about language, but local slangs. "Gilje", "cirkanje", "akibetil", "beLLa" are local terms, it's not language. That Belgrade girl would have much more trouble speaking in Leskovac and Vranje market, and Croatian would have problems in Mostar or Kumrovce, and Bosnian girl would probably do best, as all things kind of combined there. But not in Nis! So yeah, it's exactly same alnguage, everyone understands each other and it's just different slangs. You could have added Montenegrin here, so they could speak everything the same, just with a dialect. Macedonian won't be far away, they are also in the league and get it all.

very interesting

I think the Bosnian girl used more "Bosniak" words than for example that non-Bosniaks would use. Bosnia is somewhat complicated. As a Serb from Bosnia I have like a mix between Bosnian Dialekt and Serbian/Croatian language. I guess it depends on where you live. Near Serbia/Croatia or between.

Serbo-Croatians are actually single ethnic group and speaking dialects of same language.

What's the best online resource for learning one of these languages?

Can you do Nepali (Khas) language 🇳🇵Vs Kashmiri? and Nepali(Khas) Vs Persian?🇮🇷🇳🇵

OK, I am Serbian, had been living in Belgrade for 13 years and I didn't understand the first sentence at all 😂 Not only "gilje", but " dve glave jura" neither 😅😅 I understood "cirkati" though

I love how nice they are to eachother 💜❤️🫶🇧🇦

It would be very interesting to make a video with Serbian, Macedonian and Bulgarian and see how these 3 languages compare.

Can you do Macedonian vs Bulgarian?

The Croatian sounds like Arnold Schwarzenegger

Bahador please add translation of sentences to English