Serbian language belongs to the group of Slavic language. According to the pronunciation of the Old Slavic phoneme Ë (yat), Serbian distinguishes ekavian and ijekavian (iyekavian) srpski jezik pronunciation (there also the ikavian, but is not considered literary or standard). There are also several dialects in Serbian. Among the ekavian group there are: the Šumadija-Vojvodina dialect, the Kosovo-Resava and the Prizren-Timok dialects. The ijekavian group includes: Eastern Herzegovina (Herzegovina-Krajina) and Zeta-Raška dialects. The Eastern Herzegovina and the Šumadija-Vojvodina dialects constitute the basic standard of the Serbian literary language. A characteristic speech of the people in the Morava river region falls to the Kosovo-Resava dialect, belonging to an old group of dialects which have been unjustly neglected, according to some linguists. It is a pure ekavianspeech, with accentuation towards the end syllables – junâk, čuvàr, čitâm, raspoznâvam. The aorist tense is also preserved – dođo`, radi`, stade (a type of a past tense with a perfective aspect). A phoneme ‘e’ is used idiosyncratically – Jelène, starêj, ovêm, onêm.
GEOGRAPHY
Ekavian dialect is common in Serbia, while ijekavian is more used by the Serba is Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Croatia. Ikavian is spoken by some Serbs in Slavonia and Dalmatia. Eastern Herzegovina dialect is widely used in Bosnia and Herzegovina, northern Montenegro, western Serbia. The Zeta-Raška dialect is spoken in parts of Raška and Montenegro, the Šumadija-Vojvodina dialects is common in northern Šumadija, Vojvodina and by the Serbs in Hungary and Romania; the Kosovo-Resava one is spoken in Kosovo, Šumadija, eastern Serbia; the i Prizren-Timok in Metohija, southern and south-eastern Serbia.