LINGUISTIC AREAS IN EUROPE — DOMINIAN. 439 



Rumanian prevails as the language of the upland.^ To the south 

 contact with Albanian is obtained. 



The area of Serbian speech thus delimited includes the inde- 

 pendent kingdoms of Montenegro and Serbia. Within the territory 

 of the Dual Monarchy it is spoken in the provinces of Croatia, 

 Slavonia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Dalmatia. The language is, 

 therefore, essentially that of the region of uplift which connects the 

 Alps and the Balkans or which intervenes between the Hungarian 

 plain and the Adriatic. 



Union between the inhabitants of this linguistic area is some- 

 what hampered by the division of Serbians into three religious 

 groups. The westernmost Serbs, who are also known as Croats, 

 adhere to the Roman Catholic faith in common with all their kins- 

 men, the western Slavs. Followers of this group are rarely met east 

 of the 19th meridian. A Mohammedan body consisting of descend- 

 ants of Serbs who had embraced Islam after the Turkish conquest 

 radiates around Sarajevo as a center. The bulk of Serbians belong, 

 however, to the Greek orthodox church. Cultural analogies be- 

 tween the Mohammedan and orthodox groups are numerous. Both 

 use the Russian alphabet, whereas the Croats have adopted Latin 

 letters in their written language. 



The Serbian group made its appearance in the Balkan Peninsula 

 at the time of the general westerly advance of Slavs in the fifth and 

 sixth centuries. A northwestern contingent, wandering along the 

 river valleys leading to the eastern Alpine foreland, settled in the 

 regions now known as Croatia and Slavonia. Here the sea and 

 inland watercourses provided natural communication with western 

 Europe. Evolution of this northwestern body of Serbians into the 

 Croatians of our day was facilitated by the infiltration of western 

 ideas. But the great body of Serbians occupying the mountainous 

 area immediately to the south had their foreign intercourse neces- 

 sarily confined to eastern avenues of communication. They there- 

 fore became permeated with an eastern civilization in which By- 

 zantine strains can be easily detected. In spite of these cultural 

 divergences, the linguistic differentiation of the Croat from Serbian 

 element has been slight. 



To-day the political aspirations of this compact mass of Serbians 

 are centered around the independent kingdom of Serbia, which is 

 regarded as the nucleus around which a greater Serbia comprising 

 all the Serbian-speaking inhabitants of the Balkan Peninsula will 

 grow. This Serbo-Croatian element is estimated to comprise at least 

 10,300,000 individuals.^ 



1 Serbian authorities usually extend the zone of their vernacular to points farther east. 

 Cf., J. Cviji<5, Die Ethnographische Abgrenzung der Volker auf der Balkanhalbinsel. 

 Petermanns Mitt., 59, I, March, 1913, pp. 113-118. 



2 J. Erdeljauovit''. Broj Srba i Khrvata, Davidovid, Belgrad, 1911. 



