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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| salvius Bilingual Diglot Newbie Canada Joined 6582 days ago 22 posts - 22 votes Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian* Studies: French, German | Message 25 of 47 22 November 2006 at 10:56am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Firstly, I'll be very, very suprised if the differences become drastic in 'a couple of centuries.' The contact between the countries currently is FAR greater than at time past in history when Montengero was indipendent, Croatia part of different empires, Serbia and Bosnia part of the Ottoman empire. Yet, I have no trouble reading the Croatian or Serbian of 200 years ago, and current lingustic differences are very minor; for example, I understand an average Croat from Zagreb a heck of a lot better than many Serbs from South Central Serbia.
I do think it's one language, and I find the current trend of 'translating' text in all three 'languages' in Bosnia (where I'm from) strictly farcical. It would be funny were it not so tragic. The fact that there are 'translators' hired to do this blows my mind. The problem is that these languages WERE in the past referred as Croatian and Serbian depending on where one lived, and the Ottomans referred to it as Bosnian once in a while... It would be much simpler if the language could have been called something which had no regional/national affiliation. Edited by salvius on 22 November 2006 at 12:55pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7154 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes  20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 26 of 47 22 November 2006 at 11:08am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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You could be right about the time line. It may be more than my estimate of a couple of centuries. It all depends on how successful the puristic organizations are in continuing to influence school curriculums and whether they'll always have as much state support as they have had up to now.
The translation of Bosnian <> Croatian <> Serbian is indeed farcial but as you know, it's put forth for political reasons... Damn those politicians! :-P You could be on to something about the labels implying a national or ethnic affiliation. I think that "New Stokavski" or something similar would be one way to get around the current labels which imply that each successor state must always have its own "successor language". Edited by Chung on 22 November 2006 at 11:10am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Marin Triglot Groupie Croatia Joined 7057 days ago 50 posts - 51 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Italian Studies: German, Russian, Persian | Message 27 of 47 22 November 2006 at 6:03pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Some people are extremely touchy about the situation, that is the truth. But facts and the truth shouldn't depend on touchy situations and people with such experience. And the truth is that even in Yugoslavia the language had several official names as 'Serbocroatian', 'Croatoserbian', 'Serbian or Croatian' and 'Croatian or Serbian' but people in Croatia and Serbia still called it Croatian and Serbian, respectively. They were just little less preoccupied with the differences.
And I don't see why translation should be farcical, and why both countries shouldn't insist on their standard? Especially when it comes to books and literature in general. We have Serbian soap operas and movies on TV, they're of course NOT with subtitles, but books are 'translated' to fit Croatian grammar and vocabulary, and I don't see why shouldn't it be so? Some people for some political and national feelings insist that Croatian and Serbian are different just as any other language, which is not true. But some on the other hand insist on merging them together as if they re identical and using Serbo-Croatian which is not correct and not in use. I'll never use ekavica or da + infinitiv construction, which doesn't mean that I don't understand it. Serbian for me sounds in a way as Croatian with bad grammar (and probably vice-versa). That's why I DISLIKE very much when I see Serbo-Croatian used on this forum in discussion, language profile and other places. Not because I dislike Serbs or Serbia or because I think that Croatian and Serbian are different as English and Swahili. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| salvius Bilingual Diglot Newbie Canada Joined 6582 days ago 22 posts - 22 votes Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian* Studies: French, German | Message 28 of 47 22 November 2006 at 9:39pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Because Croats, Serbs, and Bosniaks in Bosnia all spoke pretty much the SAME dialect with minor variations. Nobody spoke the Croatian standard, for example, except those that came from Croatia.
Because it is absurd. A good example is to take drastically varying standards of English--should Huckleberry Finn have a special translation for the British, for example? Do Quebecois, whose French 'standard' is drastically different--I would say much more so that than the official standard between Serbian and Croatian--translate books from France's French into Quebecois? I'm not sure if this is done, but if Ivo Andrić's works are being re-translated to fit within any national standards, that just breaks my heart. Again, I think the problem here stems that it is translated from SERBIAN into CROATIAN; if the language standards never had a national affiliation (a rarity in Europe, I note) there would have been little trouble.
Well, Serbo-Croatian was always a bad name (even the ordering itself is a troublesome issue!). You will never use ekavica, but, then again, neither will I. And I'm not sure about Croatia, but Croats in Bosnia use the da + infinitive construct all of the time, and that's exactly my problem--when the regional variation is higher than standard variation, there's a problem.
No, I understand, and I don't see any solution to this, either, although I'm complaining about it. The problem is historical, and lies in the fact that both nationalities basically lay a claim to the language. If I go to Croatia and tell the native that what they are speaking is Serbian, I can expect a hot slap on the face (and no doubt, this works vice-versa). But if neither side had a CLAIM to the language, as is sometimes the case among some nations, the whole argument could be put aside and the regional variances could be treated as just that--regional variants. However, considering the current political climate, and the fact that one can't change history (that is, that Serbian and Croatian historically were treated separately), there's not much that can be done. Edited by salvius on 22 November 2006 at 9:40pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7154 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 29 of 47 22 November 2006 at 10:35pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
You're right. The truth SHOULDN'T depend on touchy situations and people who act that way. For better or for worse, what often happens in practice is that only the shrill voices of extremism get the most attention. Enter the touchy and sensitive people who rise up at the slightest provocation. These extreme reactions one way or another get the most attention and influence the perceptions of neutral observers. This could probably explain why you, Marin seethe at seeing some people who put Croatian and Serbian as one language and genuinely don't mean it as a political statement. The voices that pushed for enforced unity over the years had been loudest. Now that things are the other way around, we foreigners now hear shrill voices trying to convince us of the opposite. Frankly, it gets a bit tiresome to hear polarizing discussions like this since things are rarely as cut and dry as people on opposite sides of the debate would like to convey or believe. This kind of binary reaction comes off as being touchy since there seems to be no middle ground despite many Bosnians', Croats' and Serbs' initial (but sometimes half-hearted, I'm afraid) attempts to strike that middle ground.
While there's nothing wrong with countries insisting on what they decree are standards, you and I know very well that the standard versions of Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian don't differ in ways that require translators, interpreters or subtitles. In the future, if current trends toward purification and isolation keep up, there will be a need for such devices. However, such things are currently unnecessary and their presence really points to politics usurping linguistic reality. Using your logic of one state needing its own language means that American English and Canadian English must therefore have different standards ergo different languages. The last time I checked, people on both sides of the border called the language "English" rather than "American" or "Canadian". No one on either side disputes that the variants have peculiarlites (heck, everyone makes fun of each other's English accents. People get a laugh at George W. Bush's Texan accent, an episode of South Park mocked Canadian pronunciation, still others poke fun at the accent of Bostonian English.). At the same time, it's not as if native- speaking students of English from Canada must take an American TOEFL to enter an American university or vice-versa. The differences in the different standards of English aren't significant enough to justify subjecting people to that kind of policy. Taking your logic further, you would also find it practical and welcome for speakers of standard British English to insist on getting translators when dealing with speakers of standard American English. (dialects are another story, but that doesn't detract from arguments that consider standard variants of BCS or English as we are doing here.)
You can't have it both ways. On one hand, you just questioned why it isn't a farce to get translators who specialize in Bosnian<>Croatian<>Serbian, yet on the other hand you just mentioned that you, the Croat, understand Serbian even though you avoid using typical Serbian constructions. I assume that you're not alone, since all educated Bosnians, Croats and Serbs can understand each other and get points across to each other while rarely modifying their educated native speech patterns. Perhaps I'm being a little facetious but I gather from your response that you haven't called up the services of a translator when dealing with Bosnians or Serbs. I'm sure that other Bosnians, Croats and Serbs would report similarly. Again, no one here is assuming that Serbo-Croatian means Croatian = Serbian. Unfortunately, some of your comments and your capitalizing of the word "dislike" bely some of the touchiness that we foreigners experience when discussing the matter. Frankly, it can frustrate some listeners or makes others uneasy. The recent enforced separation of Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian standards is just as puzzling and artificial as the flawed united speech of Serbo-Croatian. As I typed earlier, I can only wonder for my friends in Ogulin, Split and Zagreb what could have been with their native speech if Maretic had failed or if the Croatian intellectuals had decided not to adopt Karazdic's dialect. If you want to discuss the linguistic aspects more via private messages, that's fine. I just don't want this exchange to become yet another online brawl about who started what, whose speech has always held the most unquestioned prestige (*blech*), or get another rehashing about old grudges or percieved slights. Been there, done that, don't care about those anymore. Regards Chung 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6766 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 30 of 47 23 November 2006 at 4:55am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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That was a very good post, Chung.
Naturally, if I ever learn Serbo-Croatian and visit the Balkans, I'll be careful not to offend anyone with what I call the language. But here and in English, I like the dual name because it gives a nod to the dual-script nature of the language while emphasizing its unity. There's no reason to take it to mean Serbs and Croats speak exactly the same way, and I think regional variations just add spice to a language.
Funnily enough, it's an ongoing joke in Canada that the Americans think they speak "American" — a joke the Americans unwittingly reinforce often enough on TV. We also make plenty of fun of Yankee accents, but there's nothing malicious there, and we certainly don't pretend our own English is special. (Though if you met certain Newfoundlanders you'd see there's at least one unique dialect up there.) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7154 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 31 of 47 23 November 2006 at 10:30am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Thanks Captain.
I find that foreigners and those who have no emotional ties or vested interests in the former Yugoslavia can see that I try to separate language from politics. I sometimes regard language as money. Both are inherently neutral and worthless unless people start using them in one way or another. My comments to Marin are more a reflection of my observations of political power rather than language utility, morphology, phonology or lexis. Unfortunately, the reception of my views from some Croatian and Serbian acquaintances is more mixed as the distinction for them between politics and language is much more blurred and tied up in wars and emotional or material loss. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Marin Triglot Groupie Croatia Joined 7057 days ago 50 posts - 51 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Italian Studies: German, Russian, Persian | Message 32 of 47 24 November 2006 at 6:12pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I think you got me wrong, Salvius and Chung. I am not interested in politics and relations between Serbia and Croatia. You don't see me talking about my personal loss from the war, as I see you talking about it. And I am saying that Croatian and Serbian are almost the same, so we agree on that. And I'm also saying that Serbian movies on Croatian TV don't need subtitles. But what I insist on is that literature needs not translation, but changes to fit in one's standard language. Your argument is with Canadian and English U.K. But the fact is that they DON'T have their own official standardised grammar, that's it. It's not just about understanding. As I mentioned before, Serbian and Croatian compared with each other are like one language with bad grammar. I understand Serbian "Hajde da idemo u bioskop" (Let's go to the cinema) but I prefer seeing "Hajdemo u kino" because it's the official dialect/language in my country. I understand "You ain't doinng that" but I prefer seeing "You're not doing that". That's all what I am saying. They can be called two different dialect of the same language, I just like when it is specified which dialect/language it is, with respect towards both of them. Why am I wrong? Eg. I also don't like seeing when somebody officially claims that their country of origin is Yugoslavia. There's no such thing as Yugoslavia, even though it can be associated to exact part of territory of Europe. Now exist different places. Or different names for the same place. Why are some people just...lazy?
Chung wrote: "Unfortunately, some of your comments and your capitalizing of the word "dislike" bely some of the touchiness that we foreigners experience when discussing the matter." No, I just don't like when people are lazy and inert, it doesn't have to do with Serbia, Croatia or any language, just in general :) Edited by Marin on 24 November 2006 at 6:22pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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