What language do they speak in Montenegro?

It sounds like a simple question, but in Montenegro the answer comes in layers. There’s one official language, four more in official use, two scripts with equal status, and a census that asks both about mother tongue and about the language spoken at home. Here’s what the constitution, the National Tourism Organisation and MONSTAT say, without wading into arguments that don’t belong in a travel guide.

What the constitution says

Article 13 of the 2007 constitution makes Montenegrin the official language. In the same sentence it puts Serbian, Bosnian, Albanian and Croatian in official use, and says Cyrillic and Latin script have equal status. The National Tourism Organisation sums it up the same way and notes that Montenegrin has been official since 2007.

For a visitor, that means signs in two scripts and, in places such as Ulcinj or Tuzi, Albanian names too, such as Ulqin for Ulcinj, Tuz for Tuzi or Guci for Gusinje, further north. How the country’s own name is written in each script is in Crna Gora and Montenegro.

What people declare in the census

The 2023 census asks two language questions. For mother tongue, Serbian came first with 269,307 people (43.18%), followed by Montenegrin with 215,299 (34.52%), then Bosnian (6.97%), Albanian (5.25%), Russian (2.36%) and Serbo-Croatian (2.08%). For the language spoken at home the picture is similar, with Serbian at 43.52% and Montenegrin at 36.23%.

These are personal declarations and I give them as they stand. I don’t interpret them, just as I don’t interpret those on nationality or religion, which are in Montenegro’s population.

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Cyrillic and Latin on the street

This is what will affect you most. You’ll see both scripts, sometimes on the same sign. I’d learn the basic Cyrillic letters before going, because they help you read the name of a bus stop, village or station when it only appears in one form. In this guide I always use Latin script, with its diacritics, as in Nikšić or Žabljak.

What about English?

The official websites I rely on, for tourism, national parks and airports, all have English versions, and gov.uk says the AMSCG roadside assistance line on +382 19807 also answers in English. How widely it’s spoken on the street or in the countryside has no official figure I’ve been able to read, so I won’t invent percentages. My approach would be to count on English in hotels and restaurants on the coast, which live off foreign visitors (2,446,563 of the 2,606,854 arrivals in 2024 were from abroad, according to MONSTAT), and in the north to carry an offline map and a translation app.

If you like this sort of everyday detail, I’ve gathered more in Montenegro facts, and matters of faith are in religion in Montenegro.

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