....Its the usage of the Latinica variant....
You’re right!
Even in the Divine Liturgy prayer book, produced by the old Serbian Orthodox Church Midwestern Diocese under the auspices of Metropolitan Christopher of Eternal Memory, with parallel texts in English, Slavonic, and Serbian, the Slavonic text is in Latinica (with the Serbian text in Cyrillic and the English text as usual).
People like me who do not speak Serbian or know much Slavonic use that book so that we can understand—and even sing—the Liturgy. But we need to learn the intricacies of Latinica.
And most American Serbs or Serbian immigrants spell their names in Latinica, so we need to known it in order to pronounce their names right.
Christopher was an interesting character, he had his likeness painted into the frescoes that are in the entry way of St. Sava.
How would you feel is someone called New York Nev York? Or Ohio as Oheeyo? English names are transliterated into Serbian the way they are pronounced, so as not to, butcher them. I think it only fair and decent to do the same for Serbian names in English, especially since the same curtesy is exte3nded to Japanese, Hebrew, Russian and other names.
As for this "Latinica", there is no such alphabet in the Serbian language. Latinica is a misnomer meaning "Latin alphabet" but specifically rafers to the Croatian Latin alphabet, which some ignorant Serbs also call "Serbian" Latin alphabet.
As such, Croatian alphabet has been cataloged internationally and registered by the Croatian government as Croatian. It was invented by Ljudevit Gaj (try pronouncing that!) in the early part of the 19th century (around 1830) and originally used for one of the dialects used in Croatia, namely kajkavian, which is really a dialect of Slovenian. Until then, Croatian dialects, čakavski and kajkvaski, were written in Italian and Hungarian Latin alphabets.
After 1850, Croatians adopted the shtokavian (Serbian) dialect as the literary standard, and created their own redaction of the same which they call "Croatian," the way Americans speak and write an American redaction or version of the English language but have the decency not to hijack someone else's language, and therefore still call it English.
Croatian Latin alphabet was first forced into Serbia when he Austrian troops entered Belgrade in 1915. This was of course reversed when they were kicked out in 1918. But the formation of Yugoslavia (correctly transliterated from Serbian—Југославија) and king Alexander's megalomania caused the usage of both alphabets in official documents.
This was then pontentiated by the Communists after 1945. In 1952, an "agreement" was made (Novosadski dogovor) in Novi Sad (Serbia), in the offices of the Communist Party, between the Croatian representatives and Serbian representatives, whereby a new bynomial language was created ex nihilo, by decree, and officially dubbed Serbocroatian or Croatoserbian. Naturally, both alpbabets became "acceptable" in either version, except that Croatians never used Cyrillic and the Serbs continued to use Cyrillic in administration and everyday life.
In 1963, however, Tito's top communist official and security chief betrayed him. Even Tito's wife was involved in what was seen as an attempted coup by Serbian generals. This led to de-Serbianization of Yugislavia until Tito's death in 1980.
Soon, the regime prohibited the use and manufacture of Serbian Cyrillic typewriters, and Latinica began to be forcibly introduced into the Serbian language and public life as a fvoritre, almost as a slogan of loylaty to Tito. Insistance on Cyrillic became subject of suspsicion, and was often criticized and denoucned as "nationalistic" or 'chauvinist", or even "something dark and undesirable".
With hea advent of computers in the early 1980's, and the fall of Yugoslavia in 1989, the former communist regime of Serbia reinvented itself and reverted back to officially calling the language Serbian, but the Tito-era scholars continued to refer to the language as "Serbcroatian", and then dropped a bomb that was impossible even in Tito's times: they announced that Serbian has two alphabets, unlike any other language in the world, which are supposedly the exact same thing in two different "graphic solutions", one in Cyrillic and the other in Latin letters. Of course the Latin version is the same old Latinica the Croatians registered as their own long ago!
Since 1994, this unbelievable lie has been repeated sufficiently that now even unsuspecting Serbs (most of whom know next to nothing about their language, especially the history of it), and many Serbs who, as refugees, came from areas in Croatia and Bosnia and never learned Cyrillic, honestly believe this lie because it's in the Serbian grammar from 1994!
The officials went even one step farther, which is to actually falsify a book from 1827, showing that allegedly the Serbs created the same Latin alphabet as Ljudevit Gaj did, and that they could therefore also claim it as "Serbian". This forgery has been debunked by the original copy of the book which is located in the Serbian National Library in Belgrade.
Finally, with much difficulty and mental resistence, in 2006 Serbia proclaimed a new Constitution (following the breakup by Montenegro), in which Paragraph 10 specifically states that in Serbia the official language is Serbian and the alphabet (Serbian) Cyrillic. There is no other official alphabet in the Serbian language and never was. Of course, some "Laitnizers" interpret the "official" to mean only govenrment usage, as opposed to public, as binding.
You can't use your immigrant sources as authoritative. They are actually victims of vicious propaganda, and education aimed at destroying Serbian culture and historical literary fabric. Unfortunately (Serbian minds are not the sharpest knives in the kitchen, some brilliant individuals notwithstanding), and collectivism rather than individualism rules.
Serbian approach to problem solving is rather strange to put it mildly. And the problem with two alphabets, one of which is foreign, is no exception. Instead of taking their time to teach those generaitons raised in Croatia and other areas where they didn't learn Cyrillic, they print books in Latinica, thus perpetuating the problem!
This is also potentiated by the impression some Serbs have that the Serbian language written in Latinica is somehow "understood" by foreigners. This stupidity has been repeated even by a number of Serbian politicians, who truly believe that "pušenje zabranjeno" is somehow understood and pronounsable by foriegners simply because it's in Latin "graphic solution."