Yugoslavia was a country in the southeast of Europe. It is gone now — that is why you will almost always see it with the word "former" in front of it, or in a past-tense sentence. It began after the First World War, in 1918, as a kingdom that put several Slavic peoples under one king. After the Second World War it became a socialist country led by a man called Tito, and in that form it had six republics inside it: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Serbia, and Montenegro. Think of the republics a little like states or provinces — each with its own people and language, all inside one bigger country.

In the early 1990s it broke apart, and the breaking apart was violent; there were wars. Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, and Macedonia became their own countries. Serbia and Montenegro kept the name Yugoslavia for a while, then dropped it in 2003, and later split from each other too. So today there is no Yugoslavia on any map.

Because of this, the word does a lot of quiet work in English. When someone says "I was born in Yugoslavia," they are telling you roughly where they are from AND roughly when — before the 1990s. Older people from that region sometimes say it with real feeling: for some it means a lost home, for some it means an unhappy time. It is not a neutral word for everyone. In careful writing you will see "the former Yugoslavia" used for the whole region, and "ex-Yugoslav" as an adjective for people, films, music, and so on. Note the spelling too: the adjective and the person are "Yugoslav" or "Yugoslavian" — a Yugoslav car, a Yugoslavian passport.