Wiktionary:About Serbo-Croatian

This page is trying to provide a comprehensive guideline for any issues that arise in connection with the Serbian language, in particular Serbian words, in Wiktionary. It is mainly an instruction on how to format articles on Serbian words (more precisely, how to format the Serbian section of an entry). It is also concerned with Serbian translations of words from other languages.

Formatting of pages on Serbian words

You are advised to read Wiktionary:Entry layout explained first. It sets forth the general formatting rules for pages, as well as those specific to the English language.

Headers

The entry on the Serbian word should be inserted into the article in alphabetical order. It begins with the level-two header

==Serbian==

and ends with four dashes (----) in an otherwise empty line if another language follows. If the "Serbian" header is not at the top of the page, i.e., there is at least one other level-two header somewhere above it, make sure it also has four dashes atop.

The headers allowed below the "Serbian" header are the same as those used for English entries. They also have the same order and levels as for English words, and the format of their content will generally be identical as well, though certain differences between the two languages have to be taken into account, such as the "Declension" header.

Nouns

Headwords for Serbian entries should be in the nominative singular (or nominative plural/collective if there is no nominative singular).  It is not necessary to list declined forms or plural forms of the word because every entry includes a declension table, or paradigm.

• It should also be noted that Serbian is written in both Cyrillic script and Roman script. The two are not mixed together. If the entry word is in Cyrillic script, then following the definition one should place a heading (usually fourth level (====), depeding on length and leveling of an entry) called ====Roman spelling==== and list the Roman equivalent of the entry. Note that Roman script for Serbian is not to be taken as transliteration or pronunciation but as an equivalent script to Cyrillic.

Declensions

Serbian nouns are declined for seven cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, instrumental, and locative) and two numbers (singular and plural).  The nominative singular of a noun is its "basic" form, on whose page we include the definitions and all further information.  It would be ideal to provide a complete declension table for each noun, including those which do not decline for all cases.  If the word is not used in either the singular or the plural, this should be noted, and the declension table should only include the number the word declines for.

The declension template for Serbian nouns is:

It looks like this:

Some words in Serbian (such as words for professions) can originally be masculine but also have feminine alternative forms. You can use the gender template for such words:

It looks like this:

Verbs

Verbs are conjugated in Serbian.

(Templates for Serbian verb conjugation do not exist at this time).

Adjectives

Adjectives are declined in Serbian and depend on gender and number.

The declension template for Serbian adjectives is:

It looks like this: