WThe South Slavic languages are one of three branches of the Slavic languages. There are approximately 30 million speakers, mainly in the Balkans. These are separated geographically from speakers of the other two Slavic branches by a belt of German, Hungarian and Romanian speakers. The first South Slavic language to be written was the variety spoken in Thessaloniki, now called Old Church Slavonic, in the ninth century. It is retained as a liturgical language in some South Slavic Orthodox churches in the form of various local Church Slavonic traditions.
WThe Eastern South Slavic dialects form the eastern subgroup of the South Slavic languages. They are spoken mostly in Bulgaria, North Macedonia and adjacent areas in the neighbouring countries. They form the so-called Balkan Slavic linguistic area which encompasses the southeastern part of the dialect continuum of South Slavic.
WBulgarian is a South Slavic language spoken in Southeastern Europe, primarily in Bulgaria. It is the language of Bulgarians.
WThe Declaration on the Common Language was issued in 2017 by a group of intellectuals and NGOs from Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Serbia who were working under the banner of a project called "Language and Nationalism". The Declaration states that Croats, Bosniaks, Serbs and Montenegrins have a common standard language of the polycentric type.
WThe Gorani or Našinski language, is the variety of South Slavic spoken by the Gorani people in the border area between Kosovo, Albania, and North Macedonia. It is part of the Torlakian dialect group, which is transitional between Eastern and Western South Slavic languages.
WMacedonian is an Eastern South Slavic language. Spoken as a first language by around two million people, it serves as the official language of North Macedonia. Most speakers can be found in the country and its diaspora, with a smaller number of speakers throughout the transnational region of Macedonia. Macedonian is also a recognized minority language in parts of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Romania, and Serbia and it is spoken by emigrant communities predominantly in Australia, Canada and the United States.
WSerbo-Croatian – also called Serbo-Croat, Serbo-Croat-Bosnian (SCB), Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS), and Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS) – is a 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.
WSlovene, or alternatively Slovenian, is a South Slavic language spoken by the Slovenes. It is spoken by about 2.5 million speakers worldwide, the majority of whom live in Slovenia, where it is one of the three official languages. As Slovenia is part of the European Union, Slovene is also one of its 24 official and working languages.
WTorlakian, or Torlak, is a group of South Slavic dialects of southeastern Serbia, Kosovo (Prizren), northeastern North Macedonia, and northwestern Bulgaria (Belogradchik–Godech–Tran-Breznik). Torlakian, together with Bulgarian and Macedonian, falls into the Balkan Slavic linguistic area, which is part of the broader Balkan sprachbund. According to UNESCO's list of endangered languages, Torlakian is vulnerable.
WTje, or Tshe, is a letter of the Cyrillic script, used only in the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet, where it represents the voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate, somewhat like the pronunciation of ⟨ch⟩ in "chew"; however, it must not be confused with the voiceless retroflex affricate Che (Ч ч), which represents and which also exists in Serbian Cyrillic script. The sound of Tshe is produced from the voiceless alveolar plosive by iotation. Tshe is the 23rd letter in the Serbian alphabet. It was first used by Dositej Obradović as a revival of the old Cyrillic letter Djerv (Ꙉ), and was later adopted in the 1818 Serbian dictionary of Vuk Stefanović Karadžić. The equivalent character to Tje in Gaj's Latin alphabet is Ć.