Montenegro Culture & Language

Montenegrin, the official language, and Serbian, the most-claimed mother tongue, are standard varieties of the same Serbo-Croatian, and the choice between them is a statement rather than a difficulty; Bosnian and Albanian are the other significant languages, Albanian concentrated around Ulcinj, where 26 mosques stand in the town and its countryside. The 2023 census counted Montenegrins at 41.1 per cent and Serbs at 32.9 in a state with no majority.

The oral culture is the country's proudest possession: decasyllabic epics of heroes and battles recited to the gusle, a one-string fiddle, and their literary summit in Petar II Petrović Njegoš's Gorski Vijenac, written in the vernacular by a prince-bishop who is buried in a mausoleum on Lovćen's Jezerski Vrh. The Orthodox slava, each family's patron-saint day, is kept on the Julian calendar.

The coast is Mediterranean in every sense: Venetian palaces in Perast, Kotor and Herceg Novi, Catholic churches beside Orthodox ones, olive and fish cooking, and towns that have looked seaward for a thousand years. Cetinje, an hour above them, holds the monastery, the royal residence and the national institutions, and is where the inland Montenegro keeps its records.

Montenegrin is the official language, one of the standard varieties of Serbo-Croatian, written in both Latin and Cyrillic; Serbian is the mother tongue claimed by the largest share of the population, and Bosnian and Albanian are spoken by sizeable communities, Albanian mostly around Ulcinj. The tourist board says a few minutes of study will get you basic expressions and that hvala, thank you, will delight your hosts. English is common in the coastal tourist trade and thinner inland; Russian and Italian are both widely understood on the bay.