The “largely” bit isn’t true—there are far more non-Slavic languages than Slavic languages using Cyrillic.
I don’t know anyone who considers Moldovan and Romanian to be separate languages. I’ve spoken to a lot of Romanians and Moldovans about the matter, both abroad and in their native lands, including both lay people and academic linguists, and without exception they’ve all dismissed the notion that they speak different languages. Even the Moldovan government considers the terms “Moldovan” and “Romanian” to be synonyms (when referring to the language).
Surely there are some folks that assert a difference, though they don’t seem to be taken too seriously.
As far as Serbian and Croatian, let me tell one anecdote. I was having dinner one evening with a Serbian and a man from Georgia (American version–he grew up partly in Atlanta, partly in Savannah). We asked the Serbian what was the difference between Serbian and Croatian. He replied that it was less than the difference between Georgian and Philadelphian. He lived, BTW, in Philly.
That difference is less and less nowadays, as the use of Roman letters increases in Serbia. It’s no problem to get by in Croatia without reading Cyrillic, but you would be partially illiterate in Serbia if you didn’t know Roman letters.
Looks like that is indeed correct, I had thought it was a similar situation to Macedonian.
So I guess they use the same pronouns in Romanian versions, nothing as weird as the Philly “youse” thing eh?
A good friend of mine is half Croatian, half Bosnian. He decided to learn his childhood kitchen Croatian for real, and signed up at the U. of Illinois for “Introductory Serbian or Croatian.” At the beginning of the semester, each student had to choose an alphabet for their homework assignments. But he got yelled at by his Croatian mom whenever he would use vocabulary he learned in class that she considered incorrect.
This scene is being repeated over kitchen tables across much of Croatia and the diaspora Croat community. Since the nation was founded they’ve made deliberate choices about the ‘right’ dialect to represent Croatian as a national language, which inevitably leaves all other dialects being to a greater or lesser proportion unofficial and increasingly anomalous.
Uzbekistan has officially switched to the Latin alphabet, but the Uzbek people are still in the habit of writing and publishing in Cyrillic. Azerbaijan switched to Latin script in 1991 and made it stick. Azerbaijan had been the first Turkic-speaking country to use Latin script a hundred years ago, and their example gave Atatürk the idea.
Yeah, there are dialectal differences, for sure. The big one I remember is “bread” is “kruh” in Croatian and “hleb” in Serbian. There is also instering a “j” (or “y”) sound in between vowels and stuff like that. When I volunteered in Croatia in 1996, we were explicitly taught not to say “hrvatski” (“Croatian”) or “srpski” (“Serbian”) when saying we did or did not speak the language, but rather “vaš jezik” (“your language”) so as not to unintentionally cause offense. But, yes, they are rather mutually intelligible.
There are certainly very slight regional variations, as you’d find in any language. I don’t know whether or not any of them occur in the pronoun system. (As far as such variations go, English “youse” is pretty low on the weirdness scale, since non-Philadelphians find it perfectly comprehensible.)
Yeah, in Chicago “youse” is perfectly fine, too. “What’yoose up to?” or “Whu’ choose up ta?”
That’s interesting because my Serbian informant told me about that, but added that he had heard from relatives that after the breakup of Yugoslavia, the Serbs were largely returning to Cyrillic. Perhaps that has reversed.
My son did a gig in Belarus. While there he went to a hockey game and took a photograph of Belarusian player and the name on his back–Gretzky–was in Roman. (And his number was 99, of course.)
I wouldn’t even consider those difference “dialectal”, just regional.
There are three dialects in Croatia - first one in the continental part, with German loanwords, sharing some similarities with Slovene language. Second one is the old coastal dialect, spoken on the coast and the islands.
Third dialect is the most prevalent . It’s most prestigious, it’s the dialect of media, academia and it’s spoken by majority of Croats.
It’s spoken by all of Bosnia and Herzegovina, regardless of ethnicity.
It’s spoken by all of Montenegro.
It’s spoken by all of Serbia save a small dialectal area near Bulgarian/Macedonian borders.
Croatian and Serbian are not only the same language, they’re the same dialect.
But, as they say, a language is a dialect with an army and navy, so there’s that.
There are regional variants and accents, of course, and some lexical differences (“truck-lorry” situations). But generally speaking, the difference is only slightly bigger than General American English - British English but less drastic than, for example, Alabama English and Scottish English.
Wow, this thread was quite an ignorance-buster for somebody who just wanted to know what languages were on their candy bar wrapper!
Is that the štokavian, kajkavian, and čakavian you’re referring to? Regional, dialectal … I’m pretty careful, as an outsider. Though that’s all Croatian, so I’m pretty safe. With Serbo-Corat, Or Croat-Serb, one side has plain “i” another side has “ij.” I don’t want to dip my toes too far into it.
While I admire and respect your carefulness, I doubt any Croatians or Serbians on SDMB are so faint-hearted 
or would get offended by innocent discussion about language. While I’m far from alone, I know I’m in minority in my own country when it comes to a particular language opinion. It’s a fascinating topic, both beautiful and nightmarish at the same time!
“Y’all gots any haggis?”