Bunjevac language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Bunjevac Bunjevački |
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|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Serbia [1] | |
| Total speakers: | about 6,000-9,000 people (2002) | |
| Ranking: | not official | |
| Language family: | Indo-European Slavic South Slavic Western South Slavic Ikavian Shtokavian Bunjevac |
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| Official status | ||
| Official language of: | None yet | |
| Regulated by: | Unknown | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | none (B) | none (T) |
| ISO 639-3: | none | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key. | ||
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The Bunjevac language (bunjevački jezik) or Bunjevac speech (bunjevački govor) is a language used by the Bunjevac ethnic group. The Bunjevci who use it live in parts of the Vojvodina province of Serbia as well as in southern parts of Croatia. It is an Ikavian variant of the Štokavian South Slavic dialect. Its users are largely known to use the Latinic alphabet, as is illustarted in their locally published newspaper.
In the 2002 census results published by the Statistical Office of Serbia, Bunjevac was not listed separatelly as a language, but those who declared that their language is Bunjevac are listed in category "other languages". For example, in the municipality of Subotica, number of those who are listed to speak "other languages" (presumably Bunjevac) is 8,914. [2]
The status of the Bunjevac language as a language or even a dialect is vague, and instead it is often considered to be a dialect of Serbian or Croatian. According to the 2002 census in Serbia, some of the members of the Bunjevac ethnic community declared that their native language is Serbian or Croatian. This doesn't mean that they don't use this specific speech; merely that they don't consider it sufficiently distinct from the aforementioned standard languages to register as speakers of a separate language. However, those Bunjevci who declared in census that Bunjevac is their native language consider it as separate language.
In the old Austro-Hungarian censuses (for example one from 1910), the Bunjevac language was declared as a native language of numerous citizens (for example in the city of Subotica 33,247 people declared Bunjevac as their native language in 1910). During the existence of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, members of the Bunjevac ethnic community mostly declared to speak Serbo-Croatian, Serbian, or Croatian.
Today, there is wish among the Bunjevac community for affirmation of their language. The "Bunjevačke novine" is a Bunjevac language monthly newspaper published in Subotica. There are also demands for the school classes in Bunjevac.
