The original Serbo-Croat names of the Dalmatian towns and islands have
been commonly supplanted on the German-made maps by later Italian
names. But as the older ones are those which are at present used in
daily speech by the vast majority of the inhabitants, we shall not be
accused of pedanticism or of political bias if we prefer them to the
later versions. We therefore in this book do not speak of Fiume but of
Rieka, not of Cattaro but of Kotor, and so forth. In other parts a
greater laxity is permissible, since no false impression is conveyed
by using the non-Slav version. Thus we have preferred the more
habitual Belgrade to the more correct Beograd, and the Italian Scutari
to the Albanian Shqodra. The Yugoslavs themselves are too deferential
towards the foreign nomenclature of their towns. Thus if one of them
is talking to you of Novi Sad he will almost invariably add, until it
grows rather wearisome, the German and the Magyar forms: Neu Satz and
Uj Videk.
These names and those of persons have been generally spelt in
accordance with Croat orthography--that is to say, with the Latin
alphabet modified in order to reproduce all the sounds of the
Serbo-Croatian language. This script, with its diacritic marks, was
scientifically evolved at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The
chief points about it that we have to remember are that c is
pronounced as if written ts, ['c] as if written tch, [vc] is
pronounced ch, [vs] is pronounced sh, and j is pronounced y. So the
Montenegrin towns Cetinje, Podgorica and Nik[vs]i['c] are pronounced
as if written Tsetinye, Podgoritsa and Nikshitch, while Pan[vc]evo is
pronounced Panchevo. It will be seen that this matter is not very
complicated. But we have not in every case employed the Croat script.
We have not spoken in this book of Jugoslavia but of Yugoslavia, since
that has come to be the more familiar form.
The full list of Croat letters, in so far as they differ from the
English alphabet, is as follows:
c, whose English value is ts.
['c], " " " tch.
[vc], " " " ch, as in church.
[vs], " " " sh.
[vz], " " " s, as in measure.
d[vz], " " " j, as in James.
gj (or dj), " " " j, " "
j, " " " y, as in you.
lj, " " " li, as in million.
nj, " " " ni, as in opinion.