Languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina

This article is about the demographic features of the population of Bosnia and Herzegovina, including population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population.

According to data from 2013 census published by the Agency for Statistics of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosniaks constitute 50.11% of the population, Bosnian Serbs 30.78%, Bosnian Croats 15.43%, and others form 2.73%, with the remaining respondents not declaring their ethnicity or not answering. The census results are contested by the Republika Srpska statistical office and by Bosnian Serb politicians, who oppose the inclusion of non-permanent Bosnian residents in the figures. The European Union's statistics office, Eurostat, however concluded the methodology used by the Bosnian statistical agency to be in line with international recommendations.

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, religion is often linked to ethnicity, i.e. (with the exception of agnostics and atheists) most Bosniaks are Muslim, Serbs are Orthodox Christian, and Croats are Roman Catholic.

Ethnic structure in 1895

Ethnic structure of Bosnia and Herzegovina by municipalities in 2013

Share of Bosniaks in Bosnia and Herzegovina by municipalities in 1991-2013

Share of Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina by municipalities in 2013

Share of Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina by municipalities in 2013

Bosnia's constitution does not specify any official languages. However, academics Hilary Footitt and Michael Kelly note that the Dayton Agreement states that it is "done in Bosnian, Croatian, English and Serbian", and they describe this as the "de facto recognition of three official languages" at the state level. The equal status of Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian was verified by the Constitutional Court in 2000. It ruled that the provisions of the Federation and Republika Srpska constitutions on language were incompatible with the state constitution, since they only recognised "Bosniak" and Croatian (in the case of the Federation) and Serbian (in the case of Republika Srpska) as official languages at the entity level. As a result, the wording of the entity constitutions was changed and all three languages were made official in both entities. The three languages are mutually intelligible and are also known collectively as Serbo-Croatian. Use of one of the three varieties has become a marker of ethnic identity. Michael Kelly and Catherine Baker argue: "The three official languages of today's Bosnian state...represent the symbolic assertion of national identity over the pragmatism of mutual intelligibility". All standard varieties are based on the Ijekavian varieties of the Shtokavian dialect (non-standard spoken varieties including, beside Ijekavian, also Ikavian Shtokavian). Bosnian and Serbian are written in both Latin and Cyrillic, whereas Croatian is written only in Latin alphabet. There are also some speakers of Italian, German, Turkish and Ladino. Yugoslav Sign Language is used with Croatian and Serbian variants.

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