Eppes Wayles Browne III is a linguist, Slavist, translator and editor of Slavic journals in several countries. Browne is a professor emeritus of linguistics at Cornell University, with research interests in Slavic and general linguistics, notably the study and analysis of Serbo-Croatian, where he is one of the leading Western scholars.

Serbo-Croatian – also called Serbo-Croat, Serbo-Croat-Bosnian (SCB), Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS), and Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS) – is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro. It is a pluricentric language with four mutually intelligible standard varieties, namely Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin.