Talk:Serbo-Croatian/Archive 2
Question about alphabets
Is it not true that Serbian is written in a Cyrillic alphabet and Croatian is written in a Latin alphabet? -- Zoe
- Yes it is absolutely. Here we have a little bit of ambiguity for one who doesn't know somehow both languages, which are in fact very close connected. But they are written in different alphabets because of the historical events. Serbs sometimes write in Latin too. But first they learn Cyrillic at school. Other Slavic languages written in Cyrillic are more different than these ones. For example Russian and Belarusian or Ukrainian. (But I am not an expert in the last threes, except of a Russian) -- XJamRastafire 20:12 Jul 29, 2002 (PDT)
- Not exactly. Serbs everywhere use Latin alphabet just as much as Cyrillics and most young people use Latin alphabet as their first alphabet. The status of both alphabets in Serbia was by the 1980s similiar to the former status of Latin and Gothic alphabets in Germany: Latin alphabet was used for daily business (much more practical because of typewriters and computers) and Cyrillic alphabet was used for documents and making things more fancy. However, many people, especially older, used Cyrillics as their first alphabet. With the advance of Serbian nationalism in the 1980s and early 1990s, Cyrillic alphabet became ridiculously popular - there was a time when ALL signs on the Belgrade railway station were in Cyrillics. But that trend was reverted in late 1990s - the world being as it is, the Latin alphabet is simply more practical. Zocky 07:13 Oct 20, 2002 (UTC)
- I put in a (so far ugly) table showing the two alphabets and their correspondences. Someone who actually knows about this stuff should probably check it over. --Brion VIBBER
- In practice, would one use a simple computer program to transcribe a text from one of these scripts to the other? User:Juuitchan
- Well, that sounds a lot easier than doing it by hand. Here's a set of fonts where the glyphs match up and you can switch alphabets just be changing from the Croatian to the Serbian font: http://www.linguistsoftware.com/lsrb-cro.htm
--Brion VIBBER
- Well, that sounds a lot easier than doing it by hand. Here's a set of fonts where the glyphs match up and you can switch alphabets just be changing from the Croatian to the Serbian font: http://www.linguistsoftware.com/lsrb-cro.htm
- That's cool! But for the love of-- they have the nerve to HIJACK DIGITS and use them as letters?!! What if the text contains numerals?? User:Juuitchan
- What are you talking about? There is a code page that uses brackets as letters, but this is the first time I hear about digits :) Nikola
- I believe he's talking about Z, which is similar to 3, and lowercase B, which is similar to 6. But, latin lowercase L is very similar to 1, lowercase G is very similar to 9 etc. This doesn't seem to be a problem. Zocky 15:02 19 May 2003 (UTC)
- Anyway, these letters became before Arabic numbers entered Europe :)
- It is possible and very simple to convert text from Cyrillic to Latin alphabet, but it is practically impossible to convert from Latin to Cyrillic. A computer cannot know which parts of a text (for example, foreign words or URLs) have to stay in Latin and which could be converted to Cyrillic. Also note that Cyrillic alphabet is more suited to Serbian language then Latin Nikola
Clarification of differences
I'll put this text from an article to clearify a bit more the differences between the two languages:
It should be noted that difference between Croatian and Serbian language is same as, for example, difference between Norwegian and Swedish language. Common mistake is saying they are almost the same, because Croats and Serbs lived for long time in same country, and everybody (Croats and Serbs, but also other nations in Yugoslavia) learned each other languages. Since dissipation of Yugoslavia it can be noted that younger generations do not understand each other so well, and the difference between those two languages is more obvious. [213.202.124.153]
- Yes I wonder how exact are these differences. Let me write some languages in a list:
- -- XJamRastafire 13:19 Aug 19, 2002 (PDT)
First of all, are we talking about written or spoken languages? There are number of Serbian dialects, some of them closer to Croatian dialects than to Serbian written language. This is similar to Low German dialects, they are closer to Dutch than to High German, but considered German dialects anyway. In written Serbian and Croatian there are grammatical differences as well as lexical one. But these differences are approximately of same magnitude as between British English and American English.
Talking about written language I would put the pairs of languages like this (starting from closer languages, ending with more different):
- Yes of course. Nice to know. My list was random for shure. I am not an expert of any of above languages, except I've learned English for 10 years, Russian for 2 years in secondary school and Serbo-Croatian for 3 years in primary and secondary schools, from the strips and spoken one from my vacations at Croatian coast. I meant more a written ones. (I do believe that in a written language a spoken one is mirrored...) Oh, I see also a connection between a German and a Dutch languages. We probably can give a scale of these connections like a hardness or an earthquake scales are. Interesting indeed. -- XJamRastafire 13:50 Aug 19, 2002 (PDT)
- One more thing. We should somehow put this kind of table in the Wikipedia as a full length article. I would call such a table a Nikolaev table but I guess such tables already exist somewhere around. :-) What would be a title of this article. Language(s)/Comparison perhaps? -- XJamRastafire 13:59 Aug 19, 2002 (PDT)
Dialects vs. closely related
"Dialects of the same language" vs "closely related languages" is purely a political issue; linguists consider it a non-issue (except those who are stuck firmly in one nationalistic camp or another). Since the political situation in the former Yugoslavia has clearly decided this matter, I suggest that those who are both interested and knowledgeble put their effort into making useful articles on Serbian language and Croatian language, while the present article should mainly note the historical fact that they were for some time thrown together by the then political situation. --Brion 18:21 Aug 19, 2002 (PDT)
QUOTE "Dialects of the same language" vs "closely related languages" is purely a political issue; linguists consider it a non-issue (except those who are stuck firmly in one nationalistic camp or another). /QUOTE Absolutely -- user:Vassili Nikolaev
The problem with dialects:languages distinction being applied in this case is that "Serbian" and "Croatian" (what about Bosnian? Montenegrin?) are linguistically and geographically completely arbitrary divisions, which cut across spoken dialects and really have nothing to do with linguistics. HOWEVER, there ARE different Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian, written standards. I have extensively reworked the article and tried to present this needlessly controversial issue in a rational manner. Zocky 09:23 Oct 20, 2002 (UTC)
- Looks nice, thanks! --Brion 09:34 Oct 20, 2002 (UTC)
- There is one more problem about this: there is an opinion that, what is today wrongly called Serbo-Croatian is in fact Serbian language, what is falsely called Croatian/Bosnian language is in fact spoiled Serbian language while real Croatian language is what is called Chakavian dialect. I will add a paragraph on this. Nikola
- Please, do not add a paragraph on this. It wouldn't be informative, but it would be inflamatory (especiall with expressions lik "falsely called", "spoiled language", etc. What was "originaly" whose language is extremely hard to prove and not really important. We have managed to keep this article free of nationalistic edit wars so far and it would be nice if it could stay that way.
Zocky 15:02 19 May 2003 (UTC)
- Well, I think it is important, and haven't used these expressions anyway ;) Here it is, anyway, I jus haven't finished communist POV.
- NOTE: following could be somewhat confusing to those unfamiliar of untying Balkan knots.
- Practically everyone agrees that official language in Serbia (Serbian language) and official language in Croatia (Croatian language) are one and the same language. But, which language it is? ...official policy... There is extreme Serbian view which says that what is today called Shtokavian dialect of Serbo-Croatian language is in fact Serbian language (where "Serbian language" is defined as: language which descended from language of historical Serbs), and only what is today called Chakavian dialect is, in fact, Croatian language (defined as: language which descended from language of historical Croats); from this follows that all speakers of Serbo-Croatian language who consider themselves Croats are either Serbs which changed their national identity to Croatian or Croats which abandoned their language in favour of Serbian. Similar, only completely opposite extreme Croatian view exists. Teoretically, it should be possible to compare these languages/dialects somewhat objectively by measuring differences in their words and grammar and comparing them with differences between established languages (for example Serbian/Slovene) but such work was never done.
- No, I still think it's not worth it. It's same as saying "Some people think that moon is made of cheese". Considering that most linguists agree that Slavic languages didn't separate until well after the migration to the Balkans, this would just turn into a debate on where did tribes of Serbs and Croats originally settle, which has nothing to do with the language. Zocky 18:47 26 May 2003 (UTC)
- No, you are completely wrong. Moon samples show clearly that Moon is not made of cheese, and it should be possible to objectively estimate wheter Croatian language is Serbian language renamed. Regardless of when did Slavic languages separated, there were centuries of time for separate languages to evolve. This is an importat issue, I'm only not sure is it important enough to start edit wars about it, you're probably from here so you know why. Nikola 13:15 27 May 2003 (UTC)
- Look - all we know about this issue is where which dialect has been spoken for the last couple of centuries, and it's clear that many people who considerede themselves Croatian at the time spoke Shtokavian. The whole thing is totally speculative - the distinction between Serbs, Croats and Muslims in many parts of the Balkans is purely religious . The Germans are a state nation, Slovenes are a language nation and Serb, Croats and Muslims seem to be religion nations - the ethnicity is not determined by language or dialect, so pinpointing dialects or ancient languages to ethincities is futile.
- Firstly, don't you think that there is written data in both languages/dialect for past 1000 years? Serbs and Croats (and Slovenes) existed as separate ethnicities before they came to Balkans (and I really don't see how these ethnicities should be called if not 'nations'). Now, what is true is that there was (and still is) process of creating new nations separated by religion or something else, but that should not stand in the way of establishing facts about true nations. By the way, if Slovenes are language nation Zagreb would be in Slovenia. Nikola 07:33 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)
I don't believe that such an amount of ignorant rubbish has succeeded to accrue in the Internet site with some reputation.
- But not enough with megacroatian nonsense, huh?
- Firstly, this is not a site, but a talk page, and has reputation of one.
Better try some elementary language summaries before spewing such balderdash. The entire article on "Serbo-Croatian", then Serbian and Croatian are pure and shameless greater Serbian agitprop with no linguistic facts whatsoever.
- So-called Serbo-Croatian language (Srpskohrvatski) is Serbian propaganda idiom ... It's creation served (Versailles countries backed) Serbian hegemonic politics in depriving non-serbian nations of their cultural rights in former Yugoslavia.
- "Greater Serbian agitprop"? :))))
Better try elementary info on these languages before writing such a crap.
http://www.hercegbosna.org/engleski/dummies.html#lang
http://www.cam.ac.uk/societies/cro/crolang.htm
- What a veritable sources :))
Or, still valuable study by Ivo Banac (former Yale prof.):"Main trends in Croatian language question".
- Which proves what? Noone talks about main trends, but of truth Nikola 04:29, 9 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Mir Harven's "SERBO-CROATIAN" FOSSIL
Back to the basics:
The best literature on Croatian is to be found here:
Ivo Banac: Main trends n the Croatian language question, Yale,1984
Branko Franolić: A Historical Survey of Literary Croatian, Paris, 1984
Miro Kačić: Croatian and Serbian: Delusions and Distortions, Zagreb,1997
Milan Moguš: A History of the Croatian Language, Zagreb, 1995
The best online pages are:
http://www.cam.ac.uk/societies/cro/crolang.htm
(a lecture by pre-eminent Croatian linguist and philologist Branko Franolić/Franolich)
http://www.degruyter.de/journals/ijsl/ijsl14701.html
(unfortunately, subscribers only)
And now something on the rubbish abounding in the "Serbo-Croatian" articles (and this page):
1. "Serbo-Croatian" is a relict. Now, some linguists still use a notion of "diasystem", but this has been challenged frequently. The term is "South Slavic diasystem", covering standard languages Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian and, maybe, Montenegrin in future. http://www.joensuu.fi/fld/methodsxi/abstracts/nuorluoto.html
2. this "diasystem" is composed of four, not three dialects groups: kajkavian, shtokavian, chakavian and torlak.
3. equating Serbian standard language with shtokavian dialect is ludicrous in many ways:
a) it's nonsense to equate language and dialect
b) Serbian language (as a system of dialects, not a standard language) can be divided in shtokavian and torlak dialects, torlak being in many ways closer to Bulgarian. Torlak dialect is spoken on cca. 30% of Serbia proper territory.
c) and, most important: virtually all literature written in shtokavian vernacular prior to Serbian language reformer Vuk Karadžić, ie. cca. 430 years of literary texts, belong to the Croatian linguistic and literary heritage. First major vernacular shtokavian text is "First Croatian prayer book", kept in Vatican library- date cca. 1380-1400. Then follow major authors covering Renaissance, Baroque, Classicist and Sentimental literaure: Držić, Menčetić, Gundulić, Bunić, Palmotić, Zlatarić (Dubrovnik), Kavanjin (Split, Dalmatia), Kanavelović (Korčula, Dalmatia), Divković, Posilović (Bosnia), Kačić(Dalmatia), Relković, Ivanošić, Došen (Slavonia)..The majority of these texts are titled as works on "Illyrian" or "Slovinian"/"Slavonic" language, but they explicitly equate Illyrian with Croatian- dor instance, first major shtokavian-based dictionary, Mikalja's/Micaglia's "Thesaurus linguae illyricae", Loreto 1649. "Hrvat, Hervat = Illyricus, Croata". Further info on older Croatian lexicography can be found at http://www.hlz.hr/eng/povijest.html
So- virtually everything written on shtokavian dialect (dramas, epic poems, sonnets, didactic epics, the first (unpiblished) Bible translation (1622-1637), grammars, dictionaries,religious texts (missals, prayer books, breviaries,..) from 1400s until 1810s (the commencement of Serbian reformer Karadžić's activity) is exclusively Croatian. More than 400 years of written word in multifarious forms, in shtokavian dialect, belongs to the Croatian culture. As Serbian-Jewish writer Oskar Davicho said: " Some still speak that Croats "got" their language from us. It seems it was the other way around." (A 1978. comment on a book by Croatian philologist Zlatko Vince)
Mir Harven (mharven@softhome.net)
Fiction position
If wiki were to take the position that Serbo-Croatian is a fiction (I, by the way, take no position on the issue), or consider it worth mentioning that some people consider this, it should be done so inline with the rest of the article, and not as a badly-formatted addendum.
Morwen 2050 GMT, Aug 9th.
Kulin's charter, Serbian shtokavian
The nonsense about ban Kulin and Serbian Shtokavian deleted.
1. Tha charter of Kulin Ban (probale original in Russia, the copy in Dubrovnik archive) is not classified as anything "Serbian", but is a heritage of both Croats, Serbs and Bosniaks. For instance, it is one of the sources in "The Dictionary of Croatian or Serbian language" (1880s-1977)-where it figures as a source for Croatian (which the neo-grammarian authors viewed as a variant of one languge). There is no linguistic continuity between this document and others, belonging to Serbian literary culture.
2. but, more important: this document is NOT written in Štokavian dialect, but in Church Slavonic, with some vernacular intrusions. The Kulin Ban parchment is not a text of Štokavian literacy. For Serbian Štokavian texts- look for 17th or 18th century. All legal and religious texts originating from BOSNIA, until its fall 1463., were written in CHURCH SLAVONIC and NOT ŠTOKAVIAN VERNACULAR.
M H
Genetic linguistics
Although this (IMO, superfluous) page is now more accessible, it has a few serious flaws: one of them is putting under umbrella of genetic linguistics only dialectal variants of well known standard languages, while omitting generally accepted different standard languages. According to genetic linguistics, the examples of genetically "one language" are:
- Hindi and Urdu
- Bulgarian and Macedonian
- Romanian and Moldavian
- Malay and Bahasa Indonesian
- ...........
The politics of "Serbo-Croatian" is best reflected in the fact that there still exists a cover term, while no one uses (except a few freaks) concepts like Hindi-Urdu or Bulgaro-Macedonian. Further: what the hell a court (the Haguaroo) has to do with linguistic description of a language or languages ? This page is now good, but needs editing since it has become heavily slanted on the "Serbo-Croatian one language" fiction side.
M H
Fictionality issue again
OK, let's try again: this is an encyclopedia. The fact that many books and many universities and many linguists use the term Serbo-Croatian is in itself enough to include it. Not to mention the dictionaries. At least the term is not fictional. OTOH, Hindi-Urdu or Hindi/Urdu is frequently treated as single language - try to google for it. Zocky 12:20, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Clarifying concepts / National classification of dialects
Oh, and maybe I should clarify something: Nobody is claiming that Croatian and Serbian are not two distinct standard written languages. Claiming that would be idiotic: an average standard Serbian sentence is not standard Croatian.
OTOH, claiming that the spoken language is split along Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian lines is quite controversial: even people who maintain so say that "Serbian language (as a system of dialects, not a standard language) can be divided in shtokavian and torlak dialects". So I guess that Croatian can be divided into Shtokavian, Chakavian and Kajkavian.
OK, so Torlak is Serbian, Kajkavian and Chakavian are Croatian. No problem there. But what is Shtokavian then? Or ate there three distinct Shtokavian dialects? One Serbian, one Croatian and one Bosnian? Is Serbian Shtokavian closer to Torlak then to Bosnian and Croatian Shtokavian? Is Croatian Shtokavian closer to Chakavian and Kajkavian then to Serbian Shtokavian? Do Serbs in Croatia speak Serbian Shtokavian or Croatian Shtokavian? How about Croats in Bosnia? Bosniaks in Serbia and Montenegro? Croats in Vojvodina and Kosovo? What language(s) do all these people speak?
The fact is that the term Serbo-Croatian is heavily politically loaded, but it does denote a useful concept. Zocky 12:44, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)
- This is an interesting thing that needs to be addressed. OK, let's go:
- 1. it mixes diachrony and synchrony, the past and present tense.
- People now (generally) speak standard languages, not dialects.
- This "dialects-addiction" was not ludicrous in, say, 19th century-but
- now is, to asy the least, obsolete. For instance, the major
- part of native speakers in Croatia's capital Zagreb (located
- in broader Kajkavian area) do not speak Kajkavian dialect anymore:
- they speak, on a colloquial level, some kind of inter-dialect
- which is a mixture of Shtokavian and Kajkavian: in phonetics,
- phonology, syntax etc. Or- in Slavonia (Croatia), where indigenous Croatian
- dialect is Shtokavian-Ikavian, colloquial speech is now
- vastly Croatian standard-ie. Shtokavian Ijekavian based.
- Mass media (magazines, TV, radio,..) have all but annihilated
- speech as a dialect situation.
- 2. then, there are further things to be said: even in
- more distant past (say, 300 or 500 years) there had been
- interpenetration of dialects and subdialects. As for intelligibility:
- there are at least 16 Kajkavian dialects and 8 Stokavian.
- In, say, 1500 to 1600, Croatian Shtokavian-Ijekavian (Dubrovnik)
- interferred with southern Chakavian (Hvar, Korčula)-but
- not with other Shtokavian dialects, like Montenegrin Zeta
- dialect or Serbian Kosovo-Resava. So, if you ask: which dialect
- "belongs" to whom, and what language-dialect speak,say, Serbs
- in Croatia, I can only answer: these are not valid questions.
- Looking in the past, we can say that the majority of some
- kind of Shtokavian were either Serbs, Croats or Bosniaks (diachronically).
- But now- these are obsolete notions. Standard languages are
- dominant colloquial idiom (and not only some sophisticated
- speech pertaining to "high culture"), and we can say that
- Croats speak standard Croatian with local colorings, Serbs
- standard Serbian (2 variants) with local colorings, while
- Bosniaks speak unsystematized mix of Serbian and Croatian-at least
- for the time being. Serbs in Croatia tend to speak Croatian
- (in cities) and Serbian (mostly in rural areas); Croats
- in Serbia (Vojvodina) speak Serbian (with coloring
- of Croatian Shtokavian-Ikavian). In modern times, standard
- languages have rolled over dialects and unified its native
- speakers in standard national languages. Pockets of "dialectal
- pastoral" still exist-but, they are only pockets.
- Regarding that "the term Serbo-Croatian [...] does denote a useful concept": I agree with this, but the common retort to this in Croatia is — why doesn't the term "Croato-Serbian" denote this useful concept instead? It's part of the whole who's-got-the-primacy issue of former Yugoslavia. If we only had a neutral and short term... --Joy [shallot] 13:53, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
- I don't really care what it is called. The fact is that it is most commonly called Serbo-Croatian in English. In Yugoslavia both Serbo-Croatian and Croato-Serbian were used, but this usage doesn't seem to have extended to other languages. But I don't think that the order is really a problem - there are great many things that are called after two countries or peoples and one has to come first. I think it's usually decided by what sounds more natural as a word in English. Thus Franco-German relations, not Germano-French. OTOH, if another term comes into general English use, I'd be happy to use it - the current term is at least wrong for excluding Bosniaks and Montenegrins. Zocky 17:17, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Hindi/Urdu, S-C term (dis)use
Hmm...there are a few points that need to be addressed in the main article, but, later...However, I'd just say a word or two on the above text(s):
- Hindi and Urdu. Of course that one can find the term Hindi-Urdu (or similar) on the Web. But- this is hardly an argument. ISO in Switzerland has only Hindi and only Urdu-no Hindi-Urdu. The point is that standard languages are not classified according to genetic linguistics (in short: predecessors and relatives), but *excusively* according to the sociolinguistics. Since there is still "Serbo-Croatian" in ISO standards (as the third language, some kind of umbrella for Serbian and Croatian)- it's evident that this designation is only a sign of inertia. Croats and Serbs have lived in one country, Yugoslavia, for almost 70 ys. And that's the only reason for S-C in ISO, and no H-U, or B-M (Macedonian), od M-BI (Malay). It's *only* politics and nothing else.
- When one browses thru post-1990 textbooks (or other links, like University curricula), one can see that S-C term is rapidly falling into disuse and that books bearing that name are overwhelmingly outnumbered by national standard language names (S, C,B..). I wouldnt comment on Bosnian since it is not yet fully crystallized as a standard language. But- dictionaries or grammars that try to teach foreigner S-C are extremely difficult and, essentially, useless: one gets lost in the maze of Ekavian and Ijekavian, Cyrillic and Latin alphabets, different vocabulary, syntax, word-formation,...Frankly- the very tortuousness of still extant S-C grammars and textbooks is the best testimony of futility of such enterprises. Who could find the way in such a jungle:
http://www.i-depth.com/P/e/ez00831.frm.music.msg/2561.html
Later.........
M H
A more cynical view
For a more cynical view on the entire issue: http://www.i-depth.com/P/e/ez00831.frm.music.msg/2571.html
M H
Table of Štokavian dialects
Although- it wouldnt be bad, just in order to dispell a few misty ideas, to present a diachronic table of Štokavian dialects and documents written in dialects:
1. the dialectal picture at the turn of the century (19/20) and ethnic/national affiliation:
- New Štokavian
- Štokavian-Ekavian (Vojvodina dialect, "eastern"): vastly Serbian
- Štokavian-Ekavian (Šumadija dialect): vastly Serbian
- Štokavian-Ikavian ("western"): vastly Croatian and Bosniak
- Štokavian-Ijekavian ("southern"): Serbian and Montenegrin (predominantly-ca 60%), Croat (ca.20%) and Bosniak (ca. 20%)
- Old Štokavian
- Kosovo-Resava (Ekavian) dialect: vastly Serbian
- Zeta dialect (Ijekavian): vastly Montenegrin
- Slavonian dialect (Ikavian): vastly Croatian
- Eastern-Bosnian dialect(Ijekavian): vastly Croat and Bosniak
Pre-1800 literature (sacral, secular, legal, commercial,philological,..) written in Štokavian vernacular:
- vastly Croatian (sacral, secular, legal, philological,..). Written in Štokavian-Ijekavian ("southern") and Štokavian-Ikavian ("western"). Writers are from Dalmatia (Split, Dubrovnik, Korčila island, Zadar,..), Lika region, Slavonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Written mainly in Latin script, but also in Bosnian/Croatian Cyrillic. The sacral literature begins in 1380-1400, and secular in ca. 1480-1490. More than 95% of Štokavian vernacular texts before 1800 are Croatian.
- there are instances of Bosnian Muslim Štokavian vernacular literature: Uskjufi's dictionary from 1630s and Kaimi's poetry in the 17th cent. First Bosnian Muslim vernacular poem is "Chirwat turkisi" (Croatian song), authored by Mehmed of Erdely (1579 ?). This literature is written mainly in Arabic script, with a few works in Bosnian Cyrillic
- also, there are instances of pre-1800 Serbian Štokavian literature: these include works by Gavrilo Venclović, Jovan Rajić and Zaharija Orfelin (all in the 18th century). These texts are written in Serbian Cyrillic.
Propaganda allegations, reversion justification
The page, as it is now is-crap. Another piece of dumb Serbian propaganda, and easily detectable at at that: -there is no Štokavian dialect in ca 25-30% part od SE Serbia, but Torlak -classification of dialects along denominational lines is idiotic- an even if accepted (for fun9, the figures are wrong. For instance, no more than 2 M Serbs (I guess it's "Orthodox", including Montenegrins) speaks some kind of Ijekavian -classification along the "jat reflexes" is stupid, since "ijekavian" are bot New-Štokavian (Eastern Herzegovinian or "southern") and Old-Štokavian (Eastern Bosnian and Zeta dialect). -the opinions of Serbian linguists are falsified. For instance, the most prominent Serbian linguist Ranko Bugarski doesnt follow the Greater Serbian linguistic propaganda exemplified in this article (or in works of his lesser colleagues like Brborić or Čupić). The greatest Serbian linguist alive doesnt think that Serbo-Croatian still exists-or that it was Serbian-based. -much more crap..
This page needs to be reverted.
M H
Other reasons for reversion:
- since Serbia has, according to last census, 6.2 M Serbs (including ca. 0.7 M refugees from Croatia and Bosnia); also, some 200 k Serbs in Croatia and ca. 1.3 M in Bosnia and Herzegovina-all in all, there are no more than 7.8 M Serbs in ex-Yu. The demographic drop due to emigration, war losses and lower fertility rate is ca. 600 k from 1991., when there were ca. 8.4-8.5 M Serbs in Yu. So:
- there is no way one could ascertain how many Serbs speak now this or that dialect
- no way combined "Orthodox" dialectal speakers (funny phrase) could add over 7.8 M people.
- the author persistently uses the term "Muslims" for Bosniaks. This is a dated designation, which can easily be verified consulting CIA Factbook
- the map of dialects is false
- the division along denominational lines is nonsensical
- the division along "jat reflexes" (Ekavian, Ikavian, Ijekavian) is nonsensical
- the contention that dialects can be considered as separate languages is nonsensical, especially since difference between some Čakavian and some Štokavian dialects, especially diachronically, is not more than 3 (even 2) features, and representative authors, like Croatian Renaissance poet Hanibal Lucić (the most original Croatian poet in the 16th century), who wrote in predominantly Čakavian dialect, in his works used interrogatory pronoun "što" instead of "ča" more frequently-the textual analysis is best covered in monumental monograph "Hrvatska renesansna književnost"/Croatian Renaissance Literature, authored by Marin Franičević in 1983. All in all- the page should be reverted.
- M H
UDC info
Does anyone have more info on UDC? If this is the same thing as ISO 639-2 then it should be added that Bosnian language also has standard codes "bs" and "bos".
Skoro, ali ne u cijelosti. Naime, premda je ISO krovna udruga koja određuje univerzalnu decimalnu klasifikaciju, sam sustav ISO nije dovoljno jednoznačan: kratice scr i scc (serbo-croatian roman i cyrillic) se ne pojavljuju u UDK (ovdje se izjednačuju "srpsko-hrvatski" na latinici s hrvatskim, te na ćirilici sa srpskim, dok je bosanski posebno obilježen, ali bez nadređenoga pojma koji bi uključivao "srpsko-hrvatski"). Mislim da po sustavu UDK/C još nije upisan bosanski/bošnjački. No, o tome bi valjalo detaljnije pregledati njihove internetske stranice.
M H
- Razumijemo se, ali radi čitalaca koji ne razumiju naše jezike, predlažem da koristimo engleski.
- I've searched www.udcc.org carefully and all I could conclude is that UDC doesn't deal with classifying languages at all (perhaps clasifying linguistic works with a topic of a certain language). A paper published in Herceg Novi in 1971 is the only reference on classifying languages. My suggestion is that we replace the reference to UDC with ISO 639 and ISO 639-2.
OK, but I think it's not the same. The point is that ISO codes you've mentioned are too inclusive, and UDC has different specific numerical codes for Cro., Serb. (and I guess Bos., but I should check). If you use ISO label, you're stuck with acronyms only (hr, bos etc.)-but NOT different numerical designations. Of course-you're free to put this on Bos. lang. page (along with literature in Bos.-or an onlike dictionary (do the google search))-but this is still a palliative measure. Anyway- not a bad idea, plus some addenda on languages differences page (not only Islamic loan words, but phoneme /h/ in 20 or so words (as in everyday speech). Add something on language history if you know-if not, I'll add a few things on dialectology and script.
M H
Reverting Igor
He did it again, no explanations. Sysops, you're going to have another edit war here just as soon as someone takes the plunge and starts reverting his junk. --Shallot 10:48, 28 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Comment from Utjesenovic-Ostrozinski
From Dr. Utjesenovic-Ostrozinski:
- Serbian and Croatian are two different languages.
- If You compare languages You have to compare them
as a whole. It s true that stokavski-ijekavski dialect is very similar to Serbian BUT that s just one politically as standard chosen dialect. Listen to Susak dialect or real Cakavica and You won t understand a word. And there are thousands of dialects like that which are all CROATIAN dialects and NOT Serbian dialects.
- You also have to take into account that Croatian and Serbian
were artificially and forcefully assimilated during Yugoslavian times.
- Strictly linguistically speaking these are two different languages.
šta as what
What Serbo-Croatian dialect says what as šta?
- Oh, that's just a wee bit of a distortion in some forms of štokavian. --Shallot 20:04, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)
- Oh. Did they used to speak Štokavian on Hvar?
- Well, my old high school Croatian professor would now kill me, but I don't recall :) I _think_ it was one of the islands that used both čakavian and štokavian, but I don't know any more. And in any case, after several centuries of standardization on neoštokavian, it's hard to say... --Shallot
- It's common in Bosnia to say sta for what, and sto for why (as a brief version of zasto) - unlike Croatia. I'll have to check for the official position of linguists. --Vedran 12:08, 6 Mar 2004 (UTC)
- Also, šta is used in questions (as what) and što as a conjunction. Therfore: šta radiš but drago mi je što si tu Jakob Stevo 14:35, 22 May 2004 (UTC)
The broken logical flow in Tox's version
The latest reorganization of the article has actually caused the article to be less organized. As it is now, the genetic linguistics and sociolinguistics are stuffed down there below the political connotations, and the standards bodies' markings are too, whereas those things are essential to understanding the political issue. It just doesn't make sense to me to first throw in a bunch of fairly unsubstantiated zealot opinions and then go about explaining the real deal. We should definitely acknowledge that there's enough zealotry to go around, and then some, but this is an encyclopedia, it should retain a focus on the right stuff. --Shallot 15:24, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- Restored now. --Shallot 19:09, 12 May 2004 (UTC)
"an", not "the"
The first sentence said that it was an official language of Yugoslavia, not that it was the official language of Yugoslavia. I am fairly sure that there's a semantic difference between those two. I don't think we should clutter up the initial paragraphs with a lot of extra data just because of this may theoretically be confusing to some readers. The "Simple English" Wikipedia exists for a reason... :) --Shallot 16:41, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Molise and Burgenland
In case anyone's interested why the recent reversions in the edit history happenned, the topic of emigrants to Molise and to Burgenland has already been discussed somewhat at Talk:Slavic_peoples#Gradisce/Burgenland, Molise, etc. In short, this anonymous user has been posting stuff with some sort of pro-Serbian agenda, and it has yet to be substantiated with any pertinent facts. --Shallot 19:46, 12 May 2004 (UTC)
Ikavica in Slavonia???
I was a bit stunned to read that Slavonians use Ikavstina. They most certainly don't in Osijek: instead a kind of Ijekavstina with slight Ekavian input ( something like dvje instead of dvije). But clearly Ijekavica. In Western Slavonia (Pozega area) it's even purer Ijekavian. They actually say mlijeko, not mljeko or ml'jeko as would Eastern Slavonians. So I wonder where in Slavonia in would be Ikavian? Jakob Stevo 14:21, 22 May 2004 (UTC)
- The old Bunjevci and Šokci use ikavski, yeah. It has the characteristic Pannonian drawl :) but it's ikavski all right. --Shallot 21:16, 22 May 2004 (UTC)
- Seems I never met any old Bunjevci or Šokci while living there for over a year:-) Where have they gone? Anyway, I like Slavonian drawl, zagrebacki accent sounds rather crude to me (a bit like continental Spanish) Jakob Stevo 23:58, 22 May 2004 (UTC)
- Nowadays, they are a minority population and are generally restricted to smaller villages, štokavski has long been dominant in the region and kids in school who speak ikavski generally get mocked by their peers for using the "strange" speech so it tends to die out among the youngsters. Yay for language standardization. --Shallot 13:11, 23 May 2004 (UTC)
total number of speakers exaggerated?
The article says it's "approx. 21 million", but no matter how I add things up, I can't reach more than 19 million, at least not domestically. Are the others all those Slovenes and Macedonians from other Yugoslav republics who de facto had to learn it, or the people from the diaspora? And in any case, how is this approximated? --Joy [shallot] 13:28, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I don't think so. The Ethnologue, which contains the most often cited population figures for languages in the linguistic community, says 21 million is correct. [1] Livajo 13:35, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)