Montenegrin was codified as a distinct standard language following Montenegro's independence from Serbia in 2006. It is extremely closely related to Serbian and belongs to the same South Slavic dialect continuum. Montenegrin is distinguished from standard Serbian by two additional letters — 'ś' (ś) and 'ź' (ź) — representing sounds that occur in traditional Montenegrin dialects. Like Serbian, Montenegrin is fully digraphic, using both Cyrillic and Latin scripts in parallel. The language question in Montenegro remains somewhat divisive: according to the 2011 census, nearly as many citizens identified their language as 'Serbian' as those who called it 'Montenegrin', reflecting the country's complex national identity following decades as part of Yugoslavia and then the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro.
