Serbian

Serbian may refer to:

See also

Serbian language

Serbian (Serbian Cyrillic: српски, Gaj's Latin: srpski, pronounced [sr̩̂pskiː]) is the standardized variety of the Serbo-Croatian language used chiefly by Serbs in Serbia, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. In addition, it is a recognized minority language in Croatia, Macedonia, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic.

Standard Serbian is based on the most widespread dialect of Serbo-Croatian, Shtokavian (more specifically on Šumadija-Vojvodina and Eastern Herzegovinian dialects), which is also the basis of Standard Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin. The other dialect spoken by Serbs is Torlakian in southeastern Serbia, which is transitional to Macedonian and Bulgarian.

Serbian is practically the only European standard language with complete synchronic digraphia, using both Cyrillic and Latin alphabets; speakers read the two scripts equally well. The Serbian Cyrillic alphabet was devised in 1814 by Serbian linguist Vuk Karadžić, who created the alphabet on phonemic principles. The Latin alphabet was designed by Croatian linguist Ljudevit Gaj in 1830.

Yat

Yat or jat (Ѣ ѣ; italics: Ѣ ѣ) is the thirty-second letter of the old Cyrillic alphabet, as well as the name of the sound it represented. Its name in Old Church Slavonic is jět’ (ѣть) or iat’ (ꙗть). In the common scientific Latin transliteration for old Slavic languages, the letter is represented by e with caron: ě (taken from the Czech alphabet).

There is also another version of Yat, the iotified Yat (majuscule: ⟨Ꙓ⟩, minuscule: ⟨ꙓ⟩), which is a Cyrillic character combining a Decimal I and a Yat. There was no numerical value for this letter and it was not in the Glagolitic alphabet. It was encoded in Unicode 5.1 at positions U+A652, and U+A653.

History

Yat represented a Common Slavic long vowel. It is generally believed to have represented the sound [æ], which was a reflex of earlier Proto-Slavic */ē/, */oj/, or */aj/. That the sound represented by yat developed late in the history of Common Slavic is indicated by its role in the Slavic second palatalization of the Slavic velar consonants. Significantly, from the earliest texts, there was considerable confusion between the yat and the Cyrillic iotified a ⟨ꙗ⟩. One explanation is that the dialect of Thessaloniki (on which the Old Church Slavic literary language was based), and other South Slavic dialects shifted from /ě/ to /ja/ independently from the Northern and Western branches.

Yaté

Yaté is a commune in the South Province of New Caledonia, an overseas territory of France in the Pacific Ocean. The Yaté Dam and Blue River Provincial Park are located within the commune.

New Orleans English

New Orleans English is a variety of American English spoken in the city of New Orleans and its metropolitan area. Native English speakers of the region actually speak a number of varieties, including: the variety most recently brought in and spreading since the 20th century among white communities of the South in general (Southern U.S. English); the variety primarily spoken by black residents (African American Vernacular English); the variety spoken by Cajuns in southern Louisiana (Cajun English); the variety traditionally spoken by affluent white residents of the city's Uptown and Garden District; and the variety traditionally spoken by lower middle- and working-class white residents of Eastern New Orleans, particularly the Ninth Ward (sometimes known, since at least the 1980s, as Yat). However, only the last two varieties are unique to New Orleans and are typically those referred to in the academic research as "New Orleans English." These two varieties specific to New Orleans likely developed around the turn of the nineteenth century and most noticeably combine speech features commonly associated with both New York City English and, to a lesser extent, Southern U.S. English. The noticeably New York-like characteristics include the NYC short-a split system (so that mad and map, for example, do not have the same vowel), the diphthongizing of /ɔː/ to [ɔə] or [ɔʷ], non-rhoticity, th-stopping (so that, for example, "those" may merge with "doze"), and the recently disappearing coil–curl merger. Noticeably Southern characteristics include the raising of /aʊ/ and possible monophthongization of /aɪ/ (just these features, plus non-rhoticity, often characterize the Uptown accent).