Sřckij

Overview
Sřckij /sr̩̂t͡skij/ (срцкиj азик sřckij azik) is a South Slavic language native to large parts of northern Serbia and north-eastern Croatia as well as in large diaspora communities in eastern Slovenia. It has no official status in any country, but is a recognized minority language in Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia. It has a moderate system of inflection and is a partial pro-drop language with flexible word order, subject–verb–object being the default. Sřckij is based primarily on Serbo-Croatian and Russian, although it combines vocabulary derived from Macedonian, Czech and Slovak.

Pronouns, nouns, adjectives decline whereas verbs conjugate for person, tense, mood and aspect. As in other Slavic languages, the basic word order is subject–verb–object (SVO), but the declensions show sentence structure and so word order is not as important as in more analytic languages, such as English or Chinese. Deviations from the standard SVO order are stylistically marked and are used in different clauses, or to form the interrogative. For example,  on jeste pticova  (standard SVO),  jeste on pticova  (VSO), and '' jeste li on pticova? '' (interrogative [VSO]) are all correct. The VSO form is used in subordinate clauses and is always preceded by the word  što .

Nouns have three grammatical genders (masculine, feminine and neuter) that correspond, to a certain extent, with the word ending. Accordingly, most nouns ending in: -a are feminine, -o and -e neuter, and a -consonant are masculine but with some irregulars. The grammatical gender of a noun affects the morphology of other parts of speech (adjectives, pronouns, and verbs) attached to it. Nouns are declined into five cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative and locative, with distinct declensions for each case.

Verbs are divided into two broad classes according to their aspect, which can be either perfective or imperfective. There are six tenses, four of which (present, past, perfect, future I and II) are used in contemporary Sřckij, and one other (pluperfect) is used much less frequently. The pluperfect is generally limited to formal written language and literature. However, some nonstandard dialects (such as Svlediňa and Moraljevo) make considerable use of the pluperfect in vernacular usage.

* All Sřckij lexemes in this article are spelled in the Latin alphabet unless otherwise stated. See the Sřckij cyrillic script.

Consonants
2 Archaic in contempory Sřckij, but found in the Svlediňa, Moraljevo and Želnica dialects.

3 Can be syllabic /r̩/ in clusters such as sřcen.

4 /ɫ/ is develarised and palatalised to /lʲ/ when followed by j or ě.

* Fricatives Š, Č, Ž are palatalised when followed by j or ě, and change their place of articulation from post-alveolar to alveolo-palatal /ɕ/, /t͡ɕ/, /ʑ/ respectively.

Writing System
Sřckij is a digraphic language, meaning it is written in two distinct scripts. One of the Sřckij alphabets is based on the Serbian Cyrillic script (sřcka čirilica) and the other is based on the Czech Latin alphabet (which both contain 29 letters).

Sřckij Latin Alphabet
1Represents /ɟ/ when followed by j or ě in the Moraljevo and Svlediňa dialects.

2Represents /c/ when followed by j or ě in the Želnica and Moraljevo dialects.

3The letter Řř also exists but is not included in the Sřckij alphabet as it doesn't represent another phoneme. It shows that the stress on Rr is syllabic /r̩/ in clusters such as sřcen "sřckij person".

Pitch accent
The Sřckij language allows two tones on stressed syllables and can employ vowel length. short falling (ȇ), short rising (ě). Some dialects of Sřckij, like Želnica, lack pitch accent, instead using a stress based system, as well as differing from the standard language in stress placement. The accent can be on any syllable, but rarely on the last syllable.

Accent alternations are very frequent in both the quality and placement in the word. Different inflected forms of the same lexeme can exhibit all two accents: lonac /ˈlǒnats/ ('pot' nominative sg.), lonci /ˈlôːntsi/ (nominative plural).

All stressed syllables of Sřckij words are spoken with a high tone and that native speakers rely on the phonetic tone of the first post-tonic syllable to judge the pitch accent of any given word. If the high tone of the stressed syllable is carried over to the first post-tonic syllable, the accent is perceived as rising. If it is not, the accent is perceived as falling. Therefore, the narrow phonetic transcriptions of lǒnac lǒnca, lônci and lônaca are [ˈlo˦nats˦, ˈloːn˦tsa˦, ˈloːn˦tsi˨, ˈlo˦naˑ˨tsaˑ˨].

Although distinctions of pitch occur only in stressed syllables, unstressed vowels maintain a length distinction. Pretonic syllables are always short, but posttonic syllables may be either short or long (geminated). These are traditionally not counted as separate accents. In standard language, the six accents are realized as follows: Examples of falling are as in nebo ('sky') /ˈnêbo/ or geminated as in pîvo ('beer') /ˈpîːvo/; rising as in maskara ('eye makeup') /ˈmǎskara/ or geminated as in čokolada ('chocolate') /t͡ʃokoˈlǎːda/. Unstressed long syllables can occur only after the accented syllable, as in djevojka ('girl') /ˈdјěvoːjka/ or dostaviňa ('delivery') /ˈdǒstaviɲa/. There can be more than one post-accent length in a word, notably in genitive plural of nouns: prôčka ('alleyway') → prôčākā ('alleways' gen. pl).

Notes


 * 1) Falling tone generally occurs in monosyllabic words or the first syllable of a word (b â ba ('old woman'), k û čika ('small house')).
 * 2) Rising tone generally occurs in any syllable of a word except the last one and so never occurs in monosyllabics (v ǒ da 'water', poč ě tak 'beginning')

Thus, monosyllabics generally have falling tone, and polysyllabics generally have falling or rising tone on the first syllable and rising in all the other syllables but the last one. E.g. sřce /sr̩̂t͡se/ 'heart'.

Proclitics, clitics that latch on to a following word, on the other hand, may "steal" a falling tone (but not a rising tone) from the following word. The stolen accent is always short and may end up being either falling or rising on the proclitic (the negation proclitic ne).

Nouns
The nominal declension has six cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, locative, and vocative), in two numbers (singular and plural), and obeying grammatical gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter). Adjectives and pronouns have gender specific forms. Such forms, particularly noticeable in spelling, are also determined by whether the word ends in a "soft," palatalized, or "hard," unpalatalized consonant.

There are four major declension patterns for normal nouns: masculine, feminine, and neuter as well as a "soft" declension pattern for masculine and feminine nouns. Below are examples of regular declension patterns.

Masculine
Most regular masculine nouns end in a consonant or j.

гроб "grave" and nastaj "event"

Irregular masculine nouns ending in -š, -č, -ž
Srež "borough"

Feminine
Most regular feminine nouns end in -a. A common irregular feminine ending is -osť.

Istina "truth" and smjelosť "audacity"

Neuter
Most regular neuter nouns end in -o or -e.

Sredesto "medium" and kazalište "theatre"