order to read Serbian epic poetry in the original. By the end of the 18th century, the written literature had become estranged from the spoken language. In the second half of the 18th century, the new language appeared, called Slavonic-Serbian. This artificial idiom superseded the works of poets and historians like Gavrilo Stefanović Venclović, who wrote in essentially modern Serbian in the 1720s. These vernacular compositions have remained cloistered from the general public and received due attention only with the advent of modern literary historians and writers like Milorad Pavić. In the early 19th century, Vuk Stefanović Karadžić promoted the spoken language of the people as a literary norm. Dialects The dialects of Serbo-Croatian, regarded Serbian (traditionally spoken in Serbia), include: Šumadija–Vojvodina (Ekavian, Neo-Shtokavian): central and northern Serbia Eastern Herzegovinian (Ijekavian, Neo-Shtokavian): southwestern Serbia, western half of Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia Kosovo–Resava (Ekavian, Old-Shtokavian): eastern central Serbia, central Kosovo Smederevo–Vršac (Ekavian, Old-Shtokavian): east-central Serbia Prizren–Timok (transitional Torlakian): southeastern Serbia, southern Kosovo Zeta–Raška (Ijekavian, Old-Shtokavian): eastern half of Montenegro, southwestern Serbia Dictionaries Vuk Karadžić's Srpski rječnik, first published in 1818, is the earliest dictionary of modern literary Serbian. The Rječnik hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika (I–XXIII), published by the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts from 1880 to 1976, is the only general historical dictionary of Serbo-Croatian. Its first editor was Đuro Daničić, followed by Pero Budmani and the famous Vukovian Tomislav Maretić. The sources of this dictionary are, especially in the first volumes, mainly Štokavian. There are older, pre-standard dictionaries, such as the 1791 German–Serbian dictionary or 15th century Arabic-Persian-Greek-Serbian Conversation Textbook. Standard dictionaries Dictionary of Serbo-Croatian Literary and Vernacular Language () is the biggest dictionary of Serbian (and Serbo-Croatian as a whole) and still unfinished. Starting in 1959, 21 volumes were published as of 2020 and about 40 are expected by the time it is finished. Dictionary of Serbo-Croatian Literary Language () in six volumes in 1967-1976, started as a common project of Matica srpska (published in Cyrillic) and Matica hrvatska (published in Latin). Only the first three volumes were published by Matica hrvatska due to negative feedback from Croatian linguists. Dictionary of the Serbian language (; ) in one volume, published in 2007 by Matica srpska, which on more than 1500 pages in A4 format explains more than 85,000 entries. Etymological dictionaries The standard and the only completed etymological dictionary of Serbian is the "Skok", written by the