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"Serbo-Croatian" and its descendants | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| daristani Senior Member United States Joined 7142 days ago 752 posts - 1661 votes  Studies: Uzbek | Message 1 of 28 27 July 2009 at 5:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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I ran across an interesting blog posting on the language situation in the former Yugoslavia, where political and ethnic identification seem to outweigh purely linguistic considerations these days. (The author is a Serb, per my understanding.) I have no knowledge of these languages myself, but thought that his comments might be of interest to others on the forum, especially his (presumably only half-serious?) suggestion that travelers stick to English to avoid inflaming passions...
http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2009/07/speaking-in-tongues.h tml 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Fazla Hexaglot Senior Member Italy Joined 6260 days ago 166 posts - 255 votes Speaks: Italian, Serbo-Croatian*, English, Russian, Portuguese, French Studies: Arabic (classical), German, Turkish, Mandarin | Message 2 of 28 27 July 2009 at 6:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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Being from the region, I'll also share my views, you all decide whom to trust.
First of all what strikes me the most from the majority of Serbian authors is how they, consciously label Croatian and Bosnian as "new" languages born in the 90's of the last century, when, as anyone and I mean anyone can make a quick research and see how Serbian as a language was born in the 90's too. Why? Because as they themselves point out the language was Serbo-Croatian, but somehow it was still Serbian. I really don't know. I'll speak for Bosnian as that's what my mother tongue is. Usually authors as this one say how "from the 90's, Bosnian is just Serbian with some new Turkish and Arabic words" which doesn't make a lot of sense. Why? Try to go to rural villages outside of big cities and see how people speak there. As those people were less subjected to the "mainstream" Serbo-Croatian that was pushed for almost a century, they "magically" speak exactly as does official Bosnian! magically all those rural villages use those "new" words from Turkish (aside the fact that official Serbian is full of them, but when a Bosniak does it he is an al Qaeda member). One just has to make a very brief historical research and see how Bosniak poet sang. It's a different speech, with many "new" Turkish and Arabic words. So one can drive his conclusions. There's a simple fact authors like him can't accept: historically, these people never spoke in the exactly same language. I can accept, because it's obvious, that there IS a base common to all western south slavic languages but what many authors would like to prove, that is that they always spoke as they do now in Belgrade, is simply put ahistorical. These were my 2 cents. 5 persons have 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 3 of 28 27 July 2009 at 8:26pm | IP Logged | ||
Nah, I think that's he's being a little facetious about speaking English rather than BCMS or Serbo-Croatian. (BCMS = Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian) If foreigners speak some standard language nowadays be it "Standard Bosnian", "Standard Croatian" or "Standard Serbian", any level-headed ex-Yugoslav will be grateful that they're making an attempt to an educated variant of their native tongue. I myself learned and use something that a purist or nationalist would say is a mixed dialect even though I had been learning "Croatian" that wasn't yet affected by the loony prescriptions that began arising in the 1990s from nationalist linguists. Nowadays I say that I learned some Serbo-Croatian (or BCMS when I want to be hyper-politically correct). When I deal with people who're fairly knowledgeable about languages from ex-Yugoslavia, I tell them that I speak štokavsko-ijekavica and avoid identifying what I learned with an ethnic group or national entity. In this case, štokavsko-ijekavica (or some sub-dialect of it) is native to many Bosnians, some Croats, most Montenegrins and some Serbs (usually those living in southwestern Serbia or outside Serbia proper). To boot, štokavsko-ijekavica is the dialectal basis for modern standard Bosnian, modern standard Croatian and the emerging modern standard of Montengerin (N.B. modern standard Serbian originally had this dialectal basis too but about 130 years ago began to be codified using štokavsko-ekavica NOT ijekavica). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Altair Diglot Newbie Yugoslavia Joined 5602 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes Speaks: Serbian*, English Studies: German, French | Message 4 of 28 27 July 2009 at 9:13pm | IP Logged | ||
Exactly!! In my opinion, that BSCM (whatever...) is one language, those are just different dialects. Everyone in the region would understand you if you speak any of these... hmm... languages. I would highly appreciate (and everyone I know would too) if I heard any stranger even trying to speak or just trying to understand our language, because I know how different it is in comparison with other European non-slavic languages. So, you'll have troubles in Belgrade if you speak Croatian or any form of ijekavica?? Nonsense!!! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Taiga Diglot Groupie Australia Joined 6308 days ago 81 posts - 85 votes 5 sounds Speaks: English, Spanish Studies: Russian, Serbo-Croatian | Message 5 of 28 06 August 2009 at 9:59am | IP Logged | ||
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Based on my personal experiences:
The Serbs are usually more tolerant with "ekavski" vs "ijekavski" because there are quite a lot of Serbs speaking "ijekavski" themselves. The Croats can be not so tolerant toward "Eastern dialect". However, it's not like they are gonna smash you (especially if you are foreigners) for speaking a wrong dialect. In a lot of cases, they will let you know and correct you if you are using the "wrong" terms. As Chung have put it, 95% of them will be grateful that a foreigner is making an attempt to speak their language. It's indeed a very tricky situation and it's def. not really a black/white issue. For example, I've personally met a Croatian lady and few Muslim BOsnians who spoke EKAVSKI. Also i've met COuntless Serbs who speaks IJEkavski. Even my Serbian friend once mistook this Serbian girl as Muslim BOsnian because she happened to have strong "Muslim accent" as my friend put it. As politic is very sensitive issue, I usually only say "pricam nas" which roughly means I speak "ours" which basically includes Serbian, bosnian, Croatian and Montenegrin. Edited by Taiga on 06 August 2009 at 10:00am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| amazonka Diglot Newbie Bosnia Hercegovina Joined 5553 days ago 1 posts - 6 votes Studies: French, Serbo-Croatian*, English | Message 6 of 28 09 September 2009 at 2:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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Learn any of BSC languages, and you'll be perfectly understood in all former Yugoslavia countries, I guarantee! :)
Now, I'm going to translate this on BSC languages, so you could see "differneces" Naučite bilo koji od BSC jezika, i savršeno će vas razumijeti u svim zemljama bivše Jugoslavije, garantujem! (Bosnian) Naučite bilo koji od BSC jezika, i savršeno će vas razumijeti u svim zemljama bivše Jugoslavije, garantiram! (Croatian) Naučite bilo koji od BSC jezika, i savršeno će vas razumeti u svim zemljama bivše Jugoslavije, garantujem! (Serbian) 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| !LH@N Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6819 days ago 487 posts - 531 votes Speaks: German, Turkish*, English Studies: Serbo-Croatian, Spanish | Message 7 of 28 10 September 2009 at 4:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't know what to say.
I find his post extremely politically biased. Fazla is right, he does as if everybody was speaking the exact same language and after the war the Bosnians and Croats all the sudden thought "Hey,we don't like them Serbians, so we are going to do everything we can to make our language es different than theirs!!!" As far as I know, these differences were in Yugoslavia officially accepted variants of "Serbo-Croatian". Croatia and Bosnia decided to declare one or another form of it as their own "official" written standard (the same way Bayerrisch is not the official written standard in Germany, but Hochdeutsch is). This is, in my eyes, a legitimate form of language policy. I also think that one can throw that blog post into the trash can. Regards, Ilhan 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 8 of 28 10 September 2009 at 4:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well during the 1990s, the Croats did make a concerted effort to make their variant distinct from the Serbian variant (usually by toying around with neologisms and arbitrarily squashing a few variations when using certain case endings). The Bosnians did something similar but not to quite the same degree (most of it involved toying around with neologisms using words of Turkish, Arabic or Iranian origin).
Nowadays the situation in Croatia is a little different. There's an academic scuffle between the majority of prescriptivist linguists who advocate "purity" and deprecation of words or structures considered to be "Serbian", and the minority of descriptivist linguists who advocate tolerance for common Croats' continued use of words or structures considered to be "impure" or "Serbian". I'd like to reiterate my earlier points that I think that the message from the original blog is somewhat facetious. I've found out first-hand that about 95% of the time, whether a foreign traveller uses "Standard Bosnian", "Standard Croatian" or "Standard Serbian" is of little importance in the former Yugolsavia. About 95% of the ex-Yugoslavians would be grateful that a foreign traveller is trying to use an educated variant of "shtokavian" or Serbo-Croatian rather than launching into English or some other language. The only people in the region who are most likely to throw a fit at using an "enemy" word or structure are purists or nationalist linguists. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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