The Serbian language belongs to the South Slavonic language group alongside with Croatian, Macedonian, Slovenian and Bulgarian. It is a part of the large Slav language group (including Russian, Belorussian, Ukrainian, Polish, Czech, Slovak). The language reformer Vuk Karadžić (1787–1864) laid the foundations for the modern Serbian language. He revised the alphabet with a new style of phonetic spelling with the maxim “Write as you speak”. Spelling and pronunciation are very easy in Serbian because words are written according to phonetic principles. Each letter represents one sound, each one is pronounced separately and each word is spelt as it is pronounced.