Novi Sad Agreement

The Novi Sad Agreement (Serbo-Croatian: Novosadski dogovor / Новосадски договор) was a document composed by 25 Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian writers, linguists and intellectuals to build unity across the ethnic and linguistic divisions within Yugoslavia, and to create the Serbo-Croatian language standard to be used throughout the country.

Matica srpska

Sponsored by the Serbian cultural organization's journal Letopis Matice srpske editorial board, talks on the use and acceptability of the Serbian, which uses Cyrillic and is centered on the city of Belgrade (known as the eastern variety of Serbo-Croatian) and Croatian dialect (which uses the Latin script, centered on the city of Zagreb, and is known as the western variety of Serbo-Croat) took place in the city of Novi Sad, in the Serbian province of Vojvodina. Two days of discussion from 8 through 10 December 1954, resulted in the signing of the agreement, which laid out ten conclusions regarding the language.

The agreement focused on the similarities between the two dialects, and was primarily concerned with reconciling the different dialects for the benefit of a federalized Yugoslavia. The agreement stated that groups of linguists and intellectuals from both the eastern Serbian variant and the western Croatian variant would work together towards establishing a single dictionary and terminology.

The agreement also stated that the future language should develop naturally, although it was being forged by political will and pressure from both dialects.

View from Novi Sad of Petrovaradin fortress over the Danube river (August 2005)

The new terminology and dictionary would have its roots in both varieties of the language, and the literary journal present at the agreement would have the same content published in both the Cyrillic and Latin script. However, many, such as Croatian intellectual Ljudevit Jonke, viewed the agreement as a veiled attempt to have Serbian become the official language of a federalized Yugoslavia, with only a passing nod given to Croatian.

As a direct result of the agreement, Matica srpska and its Croatian counterpart Matica hrvatska published an orthography manual in 1960. Although widely praised by all levels of Serbian and Yugoslav party officials and intellectuals, the orthography was roundly criticized by Croatian intellectuals, who saw the work as too Serb-centric. Their criticisms stemmed mainly from an analysis of the case of larger differences between the two dialects, claiming that the dictionary favored the eastern variant of the language over the western one.