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Montenegrin | ||
Tags: Serbo-Croatian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6944 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes  Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 17 of 53 04 October 2010 at 9:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
Some of us don't like seeing any of the four languages put down along any of the six lines in the following diagram, two possible directions per line: B--C |\/| |/\| S--M Other than that, it's not a big deal. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Aineko Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 5449 days ago 238 posts - 442 votes Speaks: Serbian*, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin | Message 18 of 53 04 October 2010 at 9:58pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm confused - are lines implying equality? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tracker465 Senior Member United States Joined 5353 days ago 355 posts - 496 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 19 of 53 04 October 2010 at 11:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
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This whole subject is something that I find to be very difficult to understand, and is also something that I have heard quite a bit of conflicting information about. As an American who lived during the war, yet was fairly young and non-political minded during the duration of it, I really do not know nearly as much on this topic as I could. Since there are many former Yugoslav refugees in my area, however, I feel that I can contribute a bit to this conversation.
One of my friends is from the former Yugoslav area, although he has never told me specifically what nationality he is, i.e. Croatian, Serbian, etc. Maybe a year ago when he realized that Montenegrin was being defined as its own language, he passed the news on to me and laughed about it. This guy is a closet linguist, privately teaches a “standard” version of Croatian to interested learners in the area, and has told me constantly of stories about some of his students. Some do not want to learn the Cyrillic alphabet, and others really want to, depending on the ethnicity of their family and their feelings about the war in general. A Bosnian woman I know told me constantly that there are not separate languages, i.e. Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, and Montenegrin. She told me that they are one and the same, and that the differences are as small as those between American and British English, for example. This woman actually is the one who recommended me to speak with the man who teaches Croatian in my area, if I wanted to learn the language, and she told me she is from Bosnia. Time and time again I hear these kinds of disputes, depending on who I speak with. From an outsider’s perspective, I find it hard to accept the idea that these are four distinctive languages. When discussing the idea that movies from this part of the world are sometimes subtitled in the other “languages”, a friend of mine who lived in Croatia for awhile told me that he was not surprised at all, as this sounded just like many of the people he met. From my point of view, the dividing factor seems more to be political, than anything, and that is why there is such a dispute to begin with. If I wanted to learn one of the languages for practical purposes, I would just study whatever material I could get my hands on, and let the nationals worry about whether I was speaking Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, Montenegrin, etc as I open my mouth to speak. To a national, I think that the topic is very important, for obvious reasons, but to a foreigner, it is not so much. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Aineko Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 5449 days ago 238 posts - 442 votes Speaks: Serbian*, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin | Message 20 of 53 05 October 2010 at 12:21am | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, as someone who left Balkan relatively recently (and lived through all the [the word
I wanna use here is more for the profanity topic] caused by 'high importance' of these questions), I see situation quite simply: officially, they are now four different languages. End of story, no needs for historical lectures. practically, no matter how you call them, you can't deny extremely high mutual intelligibility (which makes language learners happy). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6944 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 21 of 53 05 October 2010 at 12:38am | IP Logged | |||||
The language used to be, and sometimes still is, called Serbo-Croatian, so I suspect these two are the more senior members of the club. If nothing else, once you have two alphabets, you have a distinction right there, high mutual eligibility notwithstanding. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Aineko Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 5449 days ago 238 posts - 442 votes Speaks: Serbian*, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin | Message 22 of 53 05 October 2010 at 1:21am | IP Logged | |||||
Sorry, I still don't understand what you are trying to say... Some of us don't like when these languages are mentioned in which context? When they are mentioned as mutually intelligible or when they are mentioned as separate languages? (both being the fact at the present, due to various reasons) As for a different alphabet - Serbian has two alphabets, and until recently it was the official situation. Then, couple of years ago, the government decided to kick latinica out of the Constitution (which hasn't changed the everyday situation at all). The same way it changed 'overnight', it can change again. So I'm not sure what exactly is your point. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6944 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 23 of 53 05 October 2010 at 1:36am | IP Logged | |||||
Well, the thing I found surprising was a statement that Croatian was a low-prestige variety of the language. Since presumably it is not low-prestige among the Croatians, it was hard not to conclude that that opinion didn't come from a Croatian. So, I asked some follow-up questions.
I remember an argument about Hindi-Urdu in the forum a few years ago. At that time, there were no separate options for Hindi and Urdu, even though the alphabets are more drastically different and by all accounts, the two languages do diverge significantly in the higher registers. Eventually, Hindi and Urdu options were added to the Hind-Urdu one. All three seem like fine options to me, based on the forum member's preference. Ditto for Serbo-Croatian, Serbian, and Croatian. What would be less pleasant is to see a Hindi speaker claim superiority of Hindi over Urdu, and vice versa, same as for the two languages of more immediate concern in this thread. In the end, it partly boils down to what's a dialect and what's a language, and that question is not entirely devoid of politics, as you pointed out. Edited by frenkeld on 05 October 2010 at 1:41am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Aineko Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 5449 days ago 238 posts - 442 votes Speaks: Serbian*, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin | Message 24 of 53 05 October 2010 at 2:16am | IP Logged | |||||
well, the whole 'history' lesson, given as an answer to a simple question "will I be OK with Montenegrin if I learn from BCS materials?", is surprising at many levels (not to mention 'prestige' languages). I was hoping that this forum is more free of such things... Btw, in case that was the confusing part: "What's a big deal?" wasn't directed to you, but in general, to anyone ready to make a big deal of a fact that these are now languages of separate countries, but still perfectly mut. intel. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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