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<http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/serbia-defending-cyrillic-alphabet-media-06-05-2017>
Serbia to ‘Fight to Save’ Cyrillic Alphabet :: Balkan Insight
Maja Zivanovic
3-4 minutes
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Worried that the future of the Cyrillic alphabet could be under threat, the
Serbian authorities will introduce fines and benefits to defend it against the
Latin script, media have reported.
Culture minister Vladan Vukosavljevic. Photo: Beta
The Serbian government is planning to set up a Council for the Serbian Language
and introduce fines for public institutions and companies that do not use
Cyrillic, as well as tax benefits to promote wider use of the script,
state-owned newspaper Vecernje Novosti
<http://www.novosti.rs/vesti/naslovna.1.html> reported on Monday.
The changes are envisaged in the new strategy for the development of culture
that the Serbian culture ministry is preparing, the newspaper said.
Culture minister Vladan Vukosavljevic told Vecernje Novosti that the Cyrillic
alphabet is in danger because of globalisation.
“The condition is relatively worrisome primarily because of the dominant use of
the Latin alphabet,” warned Vukosavljevic, adding that younger people are using
Latin script rather than Cyrillic because of the internet, television, brands
and logos.
"World trade, the media and especially the Internet, imposed this [Latin]
alphabet as the language of universal communication,” he added.
According to the Serbian constitution, adopted in 2006, Cyrillic alphabet is in
official use, together with the Serbian language, which means that all
communication between public institutions, but also between them and companies
or citizens, should be in Cyrillic.
Vukosavljevic said that the new culture strategy and changes to the law on the
official use of language and the alphabet, which the ministry will also launch,
will both impose stricter rules on the use of Cyrillic, while the Council for
the Serbian Language will tasked with taking care of the language policy.
Cyrillic is defined as a “native alphabet” in the strategy, while Latin will
have the status of a support script.
Belgrade city manager Goran Vesic recently said that Belgrade is considering
tax cuts for companies whose advertisements use the Cyrillic alphabet.
“In this way, we would give an additional incentive to save the Cyrillic
alphabet. Although the Latin alphabet is no less Serbian, we believe that
protecting Cyrillic in a time of globalisation and the internet is one of our
most important tasks,” Vesic said on May 24, Beta news agency reported.
In 2015, Serbian newspapers Politika and Vecernje Novosti campaigned for a law
that would entirely eliminate taxes for papers that are printed in Cyrillic.
Both newspapers use in Cyrillic.
The initiative was supported by the Journalists’ Association of Serbia, whose
president at the time, Ljiljana Smajlovic, was editor-in-chief of Politika.
The campaign failed as Serbian politicians did not take any action.
But the new changes announced in Vecernje Novosti could affect media, as Dragan
Hamovic, an adviser to the minister of culture, told the newspaper.
“We will propose benefits for use of Cyrillic in print media, and for
introducing a certain amount of Cyrillic in electronic media,” Hamovic
explained.
He added that the state will ask mobile operators to allow the sending of
Cyrillic text messages for the same price for Latin ones, as currently messages
in Cyrillic are more expensive.
