It is a recognized minority language in Croatia, North Macedonia, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic.

Serbian is practically the only European standard language whose speakers are fully functionally digraphic,[18] using both Cyrillic and Latin alphabets.

"[22] It has lower intelligibility with the Eastern South Slavic languages Bulgarian and Macedonian, than with Slovene (Slovene is part of the Western South Slavic subgroup, but there are still significant differences in vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation to the standardized forms of Serbo-Croatian, although it is closer to the Kajkavian and Chakavian dialects of Serbo-Croatian[23]).

Serbian is a rare example of synchronic digraphia, a situation where all literate members of a society have two interchangeable writing systems available to them.

[35] The Latin script continues to be used in official contexts, although the government has indicated its desire to phase out this practice due to national sentiment.

[35] Traffic signs and directional signs, and place names, on main or international roads are to be written with both Cyrillic and Latin script[37] To most Serbians, the Latin script tends to imply a cosmopolitan or neutral attitude, while Cyrillic appeals to a more traditional or vintage sensibility.

Notable loanwords were borrowed from Greek, Latin, Italian, Turkish, Hungarian, English, Russian, German, Czech and French.

Serbian literature emerged in the Middle Ages, and included such works as Miroslavljevo jevanđelje (Miroslav's Gospel) in 1186 and Dušanov zakonik (Dušan's Code) in 1349.

In the mid-15th century, Serbia was conquered by the Ottoman Empire and for the next 400 years there was no opportunity for the creation of secular written literature.

This artificial idiom superseded the works of poets and historians like Gavrilo Stefanović Venclović, who wrote in essentially modern Serbian in the 1720s.

These vernacular compositions have remained cloistered from the general public and received due attention only with the advent of modern literary historians and writers like Milorad Pavić.

In the early 19th century, Vuk Stefanović Karadžić promoted the spoken language of the people as a literary norm.

The Rječnik hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika (I–XXIII), published by the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts from 1880 to 1976, is the only general historical dictionary of Serbo-Croatian.

There are specialized etymological dictionaries for German, Italian, Croatian, Turkish, Greek, Hungarian, Russian, English and other loanwords (cf.

Она су обдарена разумом и свешћу и треба једни према другима да поступају у духу братства.Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Serbian, written in the Latin alphabet:[43] Sva ljudska bića rađaju se slobodna i jednaka u dostojanstvu i pravima.