also known as Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS), is a Western South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Serbo-Croatian, also known as Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS), is a Western 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. The western Balkans' turbulent history, particularly due to the expansi Ap… Serbo-Croatian, also known as Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS), is a Western 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. The western Balkans' 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 region, encroaching westward into the area previously dominated by Chakavian and Kajkavian. Since then, Bosnian has likewise been established as an official standard in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and efforts to codify a separate Montenegrin standard continue. Like other South Slavic languages, Serbo-Croatian has a relatively simple phonology, with the common five-vowel system and twenty-five consonants. Its grammar evolved from Common Slavic, with complex inflection, preserving seven grammatical cases in nouns, pronouns, and adjectives. Verbs exhibit imperfective or perfective aspect, with a moderately complex tense system. Serbo-Croatian is a pro-drop language with flexible word order, subject–verb–object being the default. It can be written in either the Latin (Gaj's Latin alphabet) or Cyrillic script (Serbian Cyrillic alphabet), and the orthography is highly phonemic in all standards. Despite the many linguistic similarities among the standard varieties, each possesses distinctive traits, although these differences remain minimal. == Name == Throughout the history of the South Slavs, the vernacular, literary, and written languages (e.g., Chakavian, Kajkavian, Shtokavian) of various regions and ethnic groups developed and diverged independently. Before the 19th century, these languages were collectively called "Illyrian", "Slavic", "Slavonian", "Bosnian", "Dalmatian", "Serbian", or "Croatian". However, in modern Shtokavian the locative has almost merged into dative (the only difference is based on accent in some cases), and the other cases can be shown declining; namely: For all nouns and adjectives, the instrumental, dative, and locative forms are identical (at least orthographically) in the plural: ženama, ženama, ženama; For example, the tongue-twister navrh brda vrba mrda involves four words with syllabic /r/. A similar feature exists in Czech, Slovak, and Macedonian. Very rarely other sonorants can be syllabic, like /l/ (in bicikl), /ʎ/ (surname Štarklj), /n/ (unit njutn), and /m/ and /ɲ/ in slang. === Pitch accent === Apart from Slovene, Serbo-Croatian is the only Slavic language with a pitch accent (simple tone) system. This feature is present in some other Indo-European languages, such as Norwegian, Ancient Greek, and Punjabi. General accent rules in the standard language: Monosyllabic words may have only a falling tone (or no accent at all – enclitics); Falling tone may occur only on the first syllable of polysyllabic words; Accent can never occur on the last syllable of polysyllabic words. There are no other rules for accent placement; thus the accent of every word must be learned individually. Furthermore, in inflection, accent shifts are common, both in type and position (the so-called "mobile paradigms"). The second rule is not strictly obeyed, especially in borrowed words. Comparative and historical linguistics offer some clues for memorising the accent position: If one compares many standard Serbo-Croatian words to, for example, cognate Russian words, the accent in the Serbo-Croatian word will be one syllable before the one in the Russian word, with the rising tone. Historically, the rising tone appeared when the place of the accent shifted to the preceding syllable (the so-called "Neo-Shtokavian retraction"), but the quality of this new accent was different—its melody still "gravitated" towards the original syllable. Most Shtokavian (Neo-Shtokavian) dialects underwent this shift, but Chakavian, Kajkavian, and the Old-Shtokavian dialects did not. Influence of standard language through state media and education has caused non-standard varieties to lose ground to the literary forms. The yat-reflex rules are not without exception. For example, when short yat is preceded by r, in most Ijekavian dialects developed into /re/ or, occasionally, /ri/. The prefix prě- ("trans-, over-") when long became pre- in eastern Ijekavian dialects but to prije- in western dialects; in Ikavian pronunciation, it also evolved into pre- or prije- due to potential ambiguity with pri- ("approach, come close to"). For verbs that had -ěti in their infinitive, the past participle ending -ěl evolved into -io in Ijekavian Neo-Štokavian. Other fields—semantics, pragmatics, stylistics, and lexicology—also exhibit differences. However, that is the case with other pluricentric languages. Some comparisons are drawn to the closely related North Germanic languages, although these languages are not fully mutually intelligible as the Serbo-Croatian standard varieties are. Additionally, it is argued that the standardization of the Croatian language was a gradual process spanning several centuries. Croatian drew on Chakavian and Kajkavian influences, on the Dubrovnik subdialect—a specific western idiom of the Eastern Herzegovinian dialect rooted in Western Shtokavian—and on Western Shtokavian more generally.