Talk:Serbo-Croatian language/Archive 1

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[edit] 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)
The Gothic alphabet was only used for Gothic, never for German. I guess you mean Gothic script which is a misnomer for blackletter. The main blackletter scripts for German are Fraktur (printed) and Sütterlin (cursive). Sütterlin was widely used in everyday life. These are simply other scripts for what is very much the same alphabet, except for the long s that is seldom used in antiqua script nowadays. So not a valid analogy to Latin/Cyrillic.--84.188.191.130 23:20, 11 July 2006 (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
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

[edit] 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:
Serbian - Croatian
Russian - Belarusian
Russian - Ukrainian
Bulgarian - Macedonian
Czech - Slovak
Norwegian - Swedish
English - American English
~
-- 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):

English - American English
Flemish - Dutch
Serbian - Croatian
Czech - Slovak
Bulgarian - Macedonian
Russian - Ukrainian
Russian - Belarusian
Norwegian - Danish
Norwegian - Swedish
Catalan - Spanish
German - Dutch


user:Vassili Nikolaev

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)

Yes, because new words were invented to emphasize differences of "new" languages. Generations born until 90`s (as for example, ME :-) learned Serbo-croatian (or Croat-Serbian, which is the same, just taught in Croatia) but latter on, Croats invented new words which were not even widely accepted in Croatia.

It remains as kind of status quo: we have to accept reality of 3 languages, howebever these are most likely similar languages in the world, and within a week of studying local differences you can speak several more languages. However, I have no problems in communicating with young Croats or Bosnians, once adopting new words. It seems that some local dialects in Serbia or Croatia are much differenr from official language, more than these 3 langauges among themselves.

And yes, we share the same code pages in Windows, and we have created several macros and stuff to make Cyrillic-Latin conversion much easier (were Serbs are unique by using both alphabets equaly)

O.K, that`s it Vojin /Belgrade

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.106.188.16 (talk) 03:10, 1 August 2005


To Vojin From Belgrade. Croats did not invent new words. Croatians and Serbs lived almost a 100 years in the same country. A large amount of that time Serbs had the majority of power. So their language was "more important". Croatian language was slowly loosing it's identity. The "new" words are only existing words or new that are not in collision with Croatian grammar standards. If you see Croatian literature before Croatia united with Serbia, the language differences are more than obvious.

I'd say it IS true that some new words were invented for that purpose, together with reusing some obsolete ones. I'm a Croat who live in Croatia, so I should know ;). I don't approve such actions, and so what if we were starting to lose integrity, what happened happened. Should we seek to reinstate kingdom too, something we also lost to foreign conquerers? To Vojin or Unsigned abowe (not sure which): Croato-Serbian and Serbo-Croatian were NOT two different names for one language, those were two different languages, CS basicly being Croatian and SC being Serbian. --Arny 06:04, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

124.180.93.41 17:13, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 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
Štokavian Croatian is based on a dialect from Herzegovina, not Serbian. It was chosen just because of its similarity to Serbian in the times of Panslavic idealism, though. --Arny 06:11, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
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)


Another thing that was avoided to be mentioned is how standarized languages came into being. For all of the South Slavic languages (at least) the need for standarized language came out of political desire to capture a previously ethnically (and politically) unindetified mass of people into a force which could then serve a certain idea.

History of South Slavic language dialectology teaches us that the dialects of Croato-Serbo-Slovenian tribe rised only very slowly and most logically through time after occupation of Balkans. Tribe was separated by foreign influences, either religious or political (Habsburgs, Turks, Hungarians). This strangly did not affect the usual language developement much, so the only serious linguistical issue in STANDARD languages remains the E/i/ijekavianism, which is not much of an issue at all, in dialectological terminology. With such rigorious standards Slovenian, for example, could be divided into several autonomous languages easily and that with much greater linguistical argument!

No, the difference between dialects "Serbs" and "Croats" selected for their standard language is not even such as between American and British English, which had already proven to be undermining for the great "serbo-croatian" thirst for identity as what is left is only a millenia of distinct foreign religious and cultural impacts.

Tomi

While Serbs and Croats were (almost) for sure closely related in distant past (i.e. before Balkan epoch), Slovenians were, in the same sense, closely related with Slovaks, Slovins (extinct ethnicity from Poland) and one tribe which was assimilated in Russia called "Slavs" (in general, all of the names are the same and means "Slavs"). --millosh (talk (sr:)) 02:24, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
Yes, some Slovenian dialects are more different then all Neo-Shtokavian dialect (as well as standars). But, difference between Kaykavian, Chakavian, Shtokavian and Torlakian are significant. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 02:24, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
There are no "Serbian" nor "Croatian dialect". There are dialect spoken by Serbs and Croats. And this question is different towards the question of Eastern-Herzegovian based standard languages (and all standard languages are Eastern-Herzegovian based). And, standard languages have political, not linguistic names. During one century it was prefered to say that there is one "Serbo-Croatian language" and it is not prefered anymore. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 02:24, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

==Mir Harven's "SERBO-CROATIAN" 'FOSSIL' Back to the basics:

ALL THIS IS A BIGGEST LINGUISTICAL TRASH IN THE NEWER HISTORY

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)

Hi, guys. I'm new here. I'm Croatian (or Croat, I still don't know which is correct) and I live in Kvarner (part of Croatia where is spoken Čakavian (Chakavian) dialect) I'm sorry, but I have to say that you're writing bullshit! Croatia and Serbia are two countries that N E V E R had anything in common until World war 1. Croats and Serbs were spoken different languages (and they still do), they had different culture. And that thing about Chakavian is NOT TRUE. Croatian has 3 dialects: Kajkavian (similar to Slovenian language) Stokavian (similar to Serbian language) Chakavian But this doesn't mean that kajkavian IS actually slovenian and that stokavian is Serbian language. That' not true.


Before,chakavian was spoken on the whole croatian coast (except the Republic of Dubrovnik) and kajkavian was spoken in all parts o Croatia norther of Karlovac (city) including all parts of Croatia 'till Serbia. But now that's changed. Chakavian is spoken in Istria and Kvarner, kajkavian in Zagreb (capital of Croatia) and norther all the way to Hungary. In Dalmatia, Slavonia and Lika spread stokavstina, becoming the most important dialect.

You can say everything you want but these are the facts: Croats and Serbs are 2 nations Croatian and Serbian are 2 different languages, which are transformed from the oldslavic language and have some similarity Bosnian are people (were they Croats or Serbs before doesn't mather) who had taken Islam as there's religion during the Ottoman Empire and they speak Bosnian language (which is the mix of Croatian, Serbian, Turkish language including some things that Bosnian people have invented themselves) Montenegrin is not language. It is just dialect of Serbian language. You can see that if you write sentence on Serbian and translate it to Montenegrin. It' s the same thing.


One more thing. I'm 16 and I am the generation of new Croatia (was born in 1990) I don't understand Serbian and Slovenian, but I understand Bosnian. I live in area which is popular of turism, and I have a lot of friends who are Slovenians and Serbs. When whe comunicate, 70% of our conversation is on English. Because we DO NOT UNDERSTAND each other! And you said that Serbo-Croatian is still spoken in all ex Yu states. Not really.

Bok! (it means bye!)


HA, HA, What you wrote above is just a bunch of trash. Serbian and Croatian language is ONE language, based on Stokavian dialect. That's why you don't understand someone from Serbia, Dalmatia or Montenegro, because they speak STOKAVIAN, and you speak CAKAVIAN! Capische? Stokavian and Cakavian are DISTINCT and they don't have much in common, but everyone who speak STOKAVIAN can communicate between themselves without any problem. And another thing, don't write those bullshit about 'new generation' etc. 95% of the new or post-war generation in Croatia listen serbian turbo folk songs, sing them and enjoy them, which shows that it's one language that is spoken and that is common and understood by everyone in Serbia and Croatia. You can call it Serbian or Croatian, but it's ONE LANGUAGE! Cheers!

I do believe this is a disscusion, therefore insults are not needed. Firstly we must agree as stated in this article that this is a rather sensitive topic, that said what in the world does serbian folk music have to do with the topic? The point was that Croatia and serbia are 2 different nations and have been since the begining of their existance, therefore the lanugages spoken are different, being forced to co-exist during the time of yugoslavia it is only logical that an offical lanugage was formed. However, after a lot of blood was shed independence and freedom rule, therefore each nation having the right to use their own language. Neither Croatians nor Serbs want to have ignorant people telling them what their own history is when they lived it, to say "You can call it Serbian or Croatian, but it's ONE LANGUAGE" is disrepectful to both nations and not necessary.

[edit] 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

[edit] 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

I am unsure about Macedonian and Bulgarian, but I can say the two are often considered a single language, just without hyphenated name. Moldavian is still considered by many to be one language with Romanian, as can be seen in this quote from the Article "Moldavian language":
"Moldovan is considered by most people to be identical to the Romanian language..."
As for Indonesian, it is considered (not only by linguists, but by everyone) to be a variant of Malay, as can be read in "Indonesian language"
"Indonesian is a standardized dialect of the Malay language..."
As for Hindi and Urdu, they are considered to be part of a diasystem called Hindustani. "Hindustani" is a medial form of the langauge that can be understood by all. The more loanwords there are from Arabic and Farsi, the closer the language moves to the "Urdu" end of the scale. The more loanwords from Sanskrit and Prakrit, the closer it moves towards the "Hindi" end of the scale.
Also, the form "Hindi-Urdu" is often used:
"The term encompasses standardized dialects in the form of the official languages Hindi and Urdu, as well as numerous nonstandard dialects that exist as vernaculars throughout the region. For this meaning, the term "Hindi-Urdu" often supplants the term "Hindustani."
I have an idea, however I don't know how popular it would be. The articles Bosnian language, Croatian language, and Serbian language all refer to "the Central-South Slavic diasystem, formerly (and still frequently) called Serbo-Croatian". I think that, since Serbo-Croatian is a diasystem, we should move this article to "Serbo-Croatian diasystem".-Larineso 16:41, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
By the way, the people who use "Bulgaro-Macedonian" and "Hindi-Urdu" are not "freaks", they are, linguistically speakeing, correct. The difference between most dialect of the Italian language and Standard Italian is much greater than the difference between the languages you mentioned above. Linguistics as a science should remain above politics and nationalism. National languages, many of which may be, in fact, the same language, are also valid. However, there is no reason to oppose an article about a valid scientific description of a collection of closely related languages/dialects (the term is used varies depending on the circumstances).
By renaming the article from "language" to "diasystem", we are no longer claiming that this is a language. We are saying it is a group of very closely related languages which are often mutually comprehensible.-Larineso 16:49, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
It's a decent idea, but you can't use the prefix "Serbo-Croatian" because the term has a history and there's always going to be someone bitching about that, to put it simply. --Joy [shallot] 16:25, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
Some people say that they are speaking Serbo-Croatian. So, this article should exist to describe a standard language. Article "Central South Slavic diasystem" should exist for dialects. (And I think that this article should describe only Shtokavian and Chakavian because Kajkavian should be classified in the West South Slavic and Torlakian should be classified in the East South Slavic group. But, it should be discussed about that. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 20:41, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
The main problem with the term "Serbo-Croatian" (as well as with classification East-West inside of South Slavic group) is political. But, not just in the sense of contemprary national feelings of Serbs, Bosniaks and Croats, but because of Serbian, Croatian and Yugoslavian nationalisms in the past. While Serbs are using two dialects (Torlakian from the East South Slavic group and Shtokavian from the Central South Slavic group), Croats use three dialects (Chakavian and Shtokavian from the Central group and Kajkavian from the West group). National connotation was: "if Torlakian is classified inside of Eastern group, then Bulgarians have "national right" for Torlakian-speaking people" and "if Kajkavian is classified inside of West group (and Shtokavian and Chakavian inside of Central group), then Slovenians have "national right" for Kajkavian-speaking people". Also, four different dialects are classified inside of "one language" even Torlakian is closer to Bulgarian and Macedonian and Kajkavian is closer to Slovenian only because there were strong Yugoslavian nationalism. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 20:41, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
As I think that national constitutions are finished (I don't think that any Torlakian feels that (s)he is Bulgarian; as well as I don't think that any Kajkavian feels that (s)he is Slovenian), we can finish with such kind of political classification. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 20:41, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
The term "Serbo-Croatian diasystem" is similar to some hypotetical term "Provencal-Castelan diasystem" which would include all dialects from France and Spain (or Indo-German for Indo-European languages; even Indo-European is not good enough term because of Iranians). Linguistics can use much better term to describe one diasystem. "Central South Slavic diasystem" is much better name for dialects. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 20:41, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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.
User:Mir Harven
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)
Yep, we'd all want a decent, fair solution, but there isn't one. So we're stuck with things named after a couple of largely inconsequent Alan tribes, plus a myriad of rationalizations and explanations. Such is life :) --Joy [shallot] 10:56, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
One could call it "South-Western-Slavonic". No solution but a fairly neutral term at least.
--Der Eberswalder 23:55, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] 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

Hindi and Urdu are certainly mutually understandable on a vernacular level. However, when it comes to purer forms (spoken) and literature, they become exclusive due to their huge vocabulary difference. Urdu is 40% Perso-Arabic in roots while Hindi is almost fully Sanskrit-Prakrit. The mix is known as Hindustani. Also, I am removing the link placed for some reason on the main article page.--LordSuryaofShropshire 05:39, Sep 4, 2004 (UTC)
And actually, I don't find S-C grammar books any more daunting than Slovenian. In Slovenian, there's two correct methods of declension, conjugation or comparison for several classes of nouns, verbs and adjectives. There's also two correct ways to accent great many words. Not such a biggie. Zocky 18:50, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] 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

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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

-And YOU and your IDIOTIC theories are the GREATEST CRAP on this page and all other pages wherever you put your crappy(M H) signature!:)) Serbian language is Croatian language, it's ONE language, and no miserable morons like you can change those true facts! And watch your trashy language, because everything bad you say is returning to you like a boomerang;Cheers!

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
Actually, there are 6.5 M Serbs in Serbia; 1.5 M in BH; 200k in Croatia and 200K also in Montenegro. That altogether alone gives you an 8.5M figure, more-so including all Montenegrins getting ever closer to 9M. --PaxEquilibrium 00:08, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 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".

Vedran

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

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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.

THIS IS NOT TRUE AT ALL, and it shouldn't be exposed in this encyclopedia! Eventhough you sign yourself as a "Dr.", it is obvious that you don't have any clue about south slavic languages, in this case= the SERBOCOATIAN language. You cannot write all these tendencious lies, because the people who speak SERBOCROATIAN, whether they are in Dalmatia, Serbia, Slavonia, Montenegro, or Bosnia=they will never agree with what you wrote! SERBIAN OR CROATIAN = IT IS ONE LANGUAGE BASED ON STOKAVIAN DIALECT. ONLY PEOPLE WHO DON'T UNDERSTAND THIS TOPIC AND CRO NATIONALISTS CAN SAY DIFFERENT. THE TRUTH HURTS, DOESN'T IT?

You're apsolutely right, man!! It takes a total moron buried in his history books to overlook the simple and plane fact: these languages are ONE (much as their respective peoples are as well). It is only the different history of the territories these people lived on that seperates the Croatian and Serbian dialects. Despite the different history and religion, it is plain that we were originally one people. dIREKTOR

I totally agree with you diREKTOR. Let the truth winn over all miserable liers on this encyclopedia, now and forever! CHEERS!

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] "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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)
'Štokavski' and 'Ikavski' are not opposing terms, in fact a dialect used where I live is mostly Štokavski+Ikavski. Those terms address different issues, so here is how it goes: either Ikavski/Ekavski/Ijekavski combines with Štokavski/Čakavski/Kajkavski. --Arny 06:23, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 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)
That doesn't mean much, really. Did you just read the page? The Ethnologue says there are 10,200,000 speakers in "Yugoslavia and Macedonia (1981 WA)", and "21,000,000 (1999 WA)" in all countries, but without actually listing a breakdown per each country. Given that it also says that it's a language of "Yugoslavia", I'm not at all assured of its accuracy!
Also, for minorities, it thinks there are "103,000 or more" people in Burgenland speaking Gradišćanski (in 1991), but that goes way beyond the actual number of Slavic people there per census. Then there's "4,800,000" people in Croatia, whereas the census (regardless of the 1991-2001 change in methodology) simply doesn't count that many people there. The number for Hungary is from 1986, for Italy from 1987, from Russia from 1959 (!)... --Joy [shallot] 12:16, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I've amended it to be less exact. There's also the issue of the people in former Yugoslav republics of Slovenia and Macedonia which may account for the 4 million difference between the native 17 million and 21 million mentioned in Ethnologue. However, not all Slovenians or Macedonians fully understand let alone speak the language, because Yugoslavia stopped introducing/forcing it to them some thirteen years ago. --Joy [shallot]

[edit] Ethnologue

Just a comment concerning Ethnologue and the accuracy of their figures:

Ethnologue belongs to and is produced by SIL (Summer Institute of Linguistics). They are professional linguists with decades of experience, and they do not rely on Google or other published sources for their data. When determining numbers of speakers for languages that have many thousands or even millions of speakers, they work with the national and provincial governments and dept's. of education in question, under formal agreement. SIL's numbers for Serbo-Croatian come straight from the lion's mouth. I do not believe 21 million is inaccurate.

The Ethnologue page for Serbo-Croatian is clearly a work in progress, for obvious reasons. There is tremendous indecision and disagreement about the S-C languages & dialect divisions and names, as you are all aware. Ethnologue offers some tentative language codes, but until decisions are made and agreed on about this particular dialect area, a practical breakdown of speakers by dialect is too difficult.

--Stephen 08:55, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I see nothing but assertions here. Also I see nothing to support the claim that SIL's numbers on Croatian part of "Serbo-Croatian" are based on national or provincial governments or departments of education in question, because none of them in the modern countries would agree with the information shown there. It sounds more likely that they use data they obtained from SFRY authorities. Just look at the census data (Demographics of $country articles) and you'll see that the number of 21 million speakers simply cannot be reached without including more population than there ever existed in hr/bs/scg. We do not have to, and indeed we should not, blindly copy information that claims to be authoritative yet is blatantly out of contact with reality, and has been for decades. --Joy [shallot]
Yes, of course. But SIL always trys to include all speakers everywhere in its language numbers. That means that the 21 million would include S-C populations in Germany, the U.S., etc. But as I said before, it's possible that 21 million is not accurate. It's up to you what you put on that page, but I personally would trust SIL's 21 million over the original 17 million that someone I know nothing about had suggested. --Stephen 11:29, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Seventeen million is the broadly rounded total population of hr, bs and scg that speaks the language (most of the population in the three countries, except for some of the Albanians in Kosovo). The data at Ethnologue does not indicate anything about Germany, the US or any other place with large emigrant population from ex-yu, yet it has fairly precise (if dated) information about other countries, so I don't see why you'd think that the former is included in the figure.
Granted, it's not impossible that there are four more million people in the diasporas that know the language(s), however, there needs to be at least a modicum of explanation for this. AFAIK all governments should track immigration and therefore be able to give at least the number of people who immigrated legally that know the language(s). The censa in those countries should also record mother tongues of those immigrants. But asserting that there is 4,000,000 of them and listing various country names without any sort of a detailed breakdown, that's simply not encyclopedic.
I've looked over it again and they now have some .ba information, but still cling on to "Yugoslavia and Macedonia", which I presume is like Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (nowadays Serbia and Montenegro) and the Republic of Macedonia. Also, they've made a really arbitrary and incorrect classification of the language as more inherent to those two countries, listing "Alternate names: Serbian, Montenegrin" in the top section. It's not a matter of indecision or disagreement to superimpose up to eleven million speakers in western countries (the Macedonians actually have a different language so they are hardly relevant, but anyway) over eight million native speakers in the western two countries. It's ignorance and/or caprice (and cynics would say -- malice).
I may not be a member of a respected international linguistics body but I don't think it takes a wizard to figure out that something's just not right in their numbers and that they cannot be relied upon. --Joy [shallot] 12:08, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Phonology & Orthography

I've added a relatively large section on phonology, stress and orthography, which definitely needs polishing. Namely: - check IPA and X-SAMPA symbols and see whether they match the actual pronunciation - put in accent diacritics (images/unicode characters?) - spare few words on palatalizations, voiced/unvoiced shifts, ioting, etc. - wikify - etc. Also, I moved "Dialects", which are IMO not central to the topic (but are fairly long section) into separate article. Duja 13:44, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] *čepiti

Only few additional words are misspelled, mostly in order to resolve ambiguity: otčepiti (uncork) - pronounced očepiti (to avoid confusion with "očepiti" (hurt))

Um, I'm pretty sure that otčepiti comes from odčepiti, and that the d morphed into t because of pronunciation. Also, there's little or no need to disambiguate because the accentuation is different (the accent on the "e" is long in the second word). --Joy [shallot] 18:15, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
My bad. Actually, there's no rule by which <tč> should merge into <č>, and (in slow speech) the [t] in otčepiti is prounounced (although only just, or with a slight glottal stop in-between) (accentuation difference notwithstanding). There are few more (rare) words where merging does not occur (pot&#269injeni). I'll remove the entry.Duja 13:32, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Stephen G. Brown's Edits

<Moved to User_talk:Stephen G. Brown> (147.91.173.31 14:37, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC))

[edit] Trebati

I noticed that verb "trebati" (to need) is used as an example of different rendering of Yat. However, in the Serbian language, verb "treba" is impersonal and has no infinitive form (so it is conjugated as ja treba, ti treba, ono treba etc.) Can somebody confirm that this is true in modern Croatian as well, so that we can edit it accordingly? It's a bit silly to use a word that doesn't even exist as an example. --Dejan Cabrilo 07:31, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Err, it's conjugated as "ja trebam", "ti trebaš", "on/ona/ono treba", "mi trebamo", "vi trebate", "oni trebaju". --Joy [shallot] 00:22, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
That's Croatian, right? I guess it can still make sense to leave it, though I am not sure if there is any Croatian spoken in ekavica? Serbian certainly doesn't have that form (afaik, serbo-croatian that I learned in school doesn't have it either), and "trebati" always grabs my attention because I studied in school that it's not right to use it. I know this is a silly reference, but it's still valid [2]. We should probably consider removing it, in fact, I am sure that we should remove it, since we are talking about Serbo-Croatian language, and there is no need to get into it, but I am reluctant to be bold and do so, since I am not sure how it was in serbo-croatian, and if it even was regulated language-wide. Give me some community blessing first :) --Dejan Cabrilo 05:59, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
That's some weird rules you have there :) I was familiar with the fact the form "treba da" is more common in Serbian, but didn't know that it was an actual rule. How do you say "We won't need that" - "Mi to nećemo trebati" is improper, only "Mi to nećemo da trebamo"? (There exists ekavian in a few Croatian dialects, but the standard is like the above.) --Joy [shallot] 13:54, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
That would probably be "Nama to nece da treba", but since it does sound awkward, we would probably say "Nece nam biti potrebno". It's impersonal verb, so it wouldn't be used in such a context. I'm sure that many people would use (what seems to be an incorrect form) "nece nam trebati", but things like Ja trebam, ti trebas, etc. sound very awkward in Serbian. I'll check grammar books when I get around to it. --Dejan Cabrilo 16:50, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Let me jump in with few words on the subject -- (you'll forgive me the delay because I'm serving my military service :-( ). Indeed, in Serbian, "trebati" is impersonal verb, i.e. its direct grammatical object (in accusative or genitive case) is the object of needing, and its indirect object (in dative case) is the person that needs something. However, it's not correct that it does not have an infinitive: "neće nam trebati" is perfectly acceptable. Also, it does have all the tenses and persons, but these are seldom used outside of 3rd person neutral, and the usage differs from Croatian: ti mi ne trebaš, ja ti ne trebam. In Croatian, the usage is closer to the English one, i.e. that would be ne trebam te, ne trebaš me instead.
Also, is "si" (short form of "sebi") "officially" accepted in Croatian? Duja 16:31, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
AFAIR, yes, why not? When appropriate, the forms shorten: mene-me, sebe-se, sebi-si, njezin-njen, njega-ga, nju-ju... although I can't verify right now. --Joy [shallot] 21:37, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I'm asking because si in particular is not used (and is AFAIK proscribed) in Serbian. It is met only in "idiomatic" jebi si mater :-). Also, ju is considered archaic, and je is preferred instead (which causes some ambiguities in combination with perfect tense, so one must use either video ju je, or video je and deduce the object from the context). Duja 14:12, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Well, the use of 'si' and 'ju' in Croatian depends on the dialect - for example, they're both regularly used in Zagreb, but normally not used in Split. --Arny 06:37, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
There are two ways to use the verb "trebati", one of them is more common in Croatian, the other is more common in Serbian, but neither are exclusive. In the "Croatian" pattern, the subject and object are same as for the English verb "need", so "I need you" is "ja trebam tebe" or in normal speech, "trebam te". In the "Serbian" pattern, the needed thing is the subject in nominative (not the object in accusative) and the person who needs is the indirect object in the dative. So "I need you" is "ti mi trebaš" or "trebaš mi". To unaccostomed Croatian speakers this sounds like "You need to me". Since the roles of object and subject are reversed, a better literal translation would be "You are needed to me" Zocky 21:21, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Well, except that in Croatian I would understand "trebaš mi" as "I need you" ;) --Arny 06:32, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
Yes, true, my bad -- it is the subject indeed. However, there is also usage where the other indirect object (usu. gradivna imenica) is in genitive, so I mixed it up. Cf. treba mi voda vs. treba mi vode, where the semantic difference is only slight, but the grammatical role of voda quite different. Duja 11:18, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Oh, I forgot the other usage of trebati, where it corresponds more to "should" than "need". In Croatian, the commonly used form is similar as in the first case, with infinitive used as the object: Ja trebam ići or Trebam ići ("I need to go"). In Serbian, it is more common to use the verb trebati with an implied 3rd person singular subject and to use a personal verb phrase for the object: Treba da idem ("[it] needs that I go" or "It is needed that I go" Zocky 10:42, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] A surprising discovery

I was checking whether latin alphabet was official in Serbia or not and I discovered something surprising. If the document at [3] (the constitution of the Republic of Serbia at Serbian government site) is current - and according to that website it is - the official language of Serbia is Serbo-Croatian (written in cyrillics) - see Article 8. Does anybody know if this has been changed? Zocky 21:21, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I found the english version at [4]:
Article 8
In the Republic of Serbia the Serbo-Croatian language and the Cyrillic alphabet shall be officially used, while the Latinic alphabet shall be officially used in the manner established by law.
In the regions of the Republic of Serbia inhabited by national minorities, their own languages and alphabets shall be officially used as well, in the manner established by law.
Zocky 21:26, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Yes, but the main reason for that is that this constitution hasn't been changed since SFRY. It's a known issue, on WP even, see Talk:Serbia#constitutional language. --Joy [shallot] 01:23, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)
That's what I figured. But "Official names: The name Serbo-Croatian is not used." is obviously not true then, right? Zocky 16:16, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Well, de jure... I think that the last adjustment makes things all right. --Joy [shallot] 22:12, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] tonal, pitch, or melodic

Someone please pick which is right from this bunch :) --Joy [shallot] 12:21, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Yay! Google test time!
  • 238 for pitch accent [5]
  • 68 for melodic accent [6]
  • 35 for tonal accent [7]
I excluded "wikipedia" and "name controversy" to get rid of our hits and mirrors. I think pitch clearly wins.
Zocky 13:43, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I was hoping for a more scientific explanation... see also comments at Talk:Pitch accent. I'll go ask Johan Magnus if he knows perhaps. --Joy [shallot] 23:35, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)
A slightly more scientific explanation is available in Tone (linguistics). Zocky 02:18, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Our articles on Tone (linguistics), Pitch accent, and melodic accent don't quite agree with each other. Looking on the web, it seems that in the common usage, "tonal accent and pitch accent" are used interchangably, see Dictionary.com. Under that definition, I think BCS has a tone accent, as in "Gore gore gore gore" ("Up there woods burn worse"). -Key45
The case seems to be that according to the theory presented in our articles on phonetics, there are different kinds of accentuation which use tone. One of them is the pitch accent and Serbo-Croatian uses it. According to other people, this typology is wrong and there is no clear way to claim that a language has a pitch accent system, as opposed to other kinds of tonal accentuation systems. See [8] and [9]. Zocky 03:02, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)
As has recently been discussed on Talk:Melodic accent that term seems to border on original research. I share Key45's observation that the different articles don't quite agree with each other. I've written a draft new version of Pitch accent at User:Alarm/Pitch accent that tries to adress the different meanings of the term. I would appreciate any comments.
By the way, could someone clarify the Serbo-Croatian system to me? Are there essentially two tones, rising and falling, that can be combined with short and long vowels? Or are the pitch patterns for the long and short versions of the tones fundamentally different?
Also, I would be interested to know how stress is realized in Serbo-Croatian? Does it use the pitch element exclusively, or as in English, does it relay heavily on other elements (such as articulation and vowel reduction, see also timing (linguistics))? Something I noticed when writing my draft was that some linguists see a clear dichotomy between stress accent and pitch accent. This is probably due to comparing English with Japanese, but as a Swedish speaker I find this opposition rather problematic, and I would be interested in getting a Serbo-Croatian view. / Alarm 13:11, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] S-C Affricates

My informant on Serbo-Croatian (native speaker, ethnically Serbian, US/Serbian dual citizen) has repeatedly told me that the distinction between Џ/Ђ and Ћ/Ч is one of tone and rounding, not palatization or point of articulation, i.e. Џ and Ћ are low tone rounded and Ђ and Ч are high tone unrounded. He's fluent in several languages and knows his linguistics, so I don't think he's misinterpreting his own speech, but it still might an oddity of his speech or that of the Pittsburgh immigrant community. I'm not changing the article for now, but it merits further investigation.

Sorry, it does not make much sense as written here. Not that I'm really an expert on linguistics, but "tone" and "roundness" are applicable only for vowels/syllables, not consonants. I tried to demonstrate the difference using e.g. "nature" and "chair", but that's not very different in English, and certainly not in all English dialects. Usually, they pairs are called "soft" and "hard" -- "đ" and "ć" are softer and palatalized compared with "dž" amd "č". Actually, the corresponding English sounds fall somewhere in-between the two. Duja 20:16, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Any articulation of a consonant involves both a particular frequency of revolutions/second and a particular position of the lips, and a range of possible values for both are possible. Therefore consonants most certainly do have the capacity for contrastive tone and rounding; in fact, many languages use rounding contrasts to distinguish consonant phonemes, and there are also some that use pitch contrasts in consonants (in fact one of the ways tone arises is voiced>low and voiceless>high.) What im asking is whether Serbo-Croatian is such a language outside my friend's idiolect.
The answer is no, to my best knowledge. To be more precise, "č" and "dž" are pronounced so that the tongue tip lies on the back of upper teeth, and the body of the tongue lies very tightly on the palata. OTOH, with "ć" and "đ" the tongue tip also lies on the back of the upper teeth, but the tongue body does not touch the palata. Duja 08:45, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Related discussion at another Talk page

Interesting discussion about the history of the Serbian and Croatian language appeared at Image_talk:Cpw10ct.gif. Feel free to check it out.

[edit] Natural Divergence

The article claims: These arguments are political. However, the speed of communication today makes it unlikely that the languages of the Balkans will diverge naturally. This may make easier determining which changes are authentic and which are artificial.

Does this mean, the Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian speeches (a) won't further diverge from their current differences, or (b) that they won't become mutually unintelligible, or (c) that the standardised written forms of the languages will probably stay roughly static from now on? Only (c) seems to be remotely plausible.

(a) is clearly false. The formerly homogenous speech mass of Australia has began diverging in this age of fast communication and mass inter-migration. Particularly in the eastern states, we are first and foremost Australians and only incidentally Victorians or New South Welsh or whatever else. Nevertheless, there is divergence along state lines, with Victorians pronouncing 'celery' and 'salary' as homophones, but New South Welshers not, even in towns nearish the border (though not necessarily on the border). This change has occurred between my parent's generation (tail-end baby boomers) and mine (I'm 20). This without there even being a strong Victorian vs New South Wales identity. How can it be claimed no further natural divergence is likely in an area where there is a huge difference of identities amongst speakers of the various speeches? That's unbelievable!

(b) is probably false by implication. The speech is not one day intelligible and the next day not; the gradual increase in minor changes such as the merger of /el/ and /æl/ in Victorian Australian English (which I pick on primarily because I realise that it's the only innovative geographic variable in AuE), which build upon each other (as well, of course, as grammatical/lexical changes), eventually (over hundreds of years, admittedly) makes it increasingly difficult for the speakers of now distinct dialects to understand each other.

I also take issue with the words 'naturally' and '... changes [which] are authentic and which are artificial'. What does that mean? Is there some secret cabal of Croatians and another of Serbians who say, behind closed doors, that as of next year, Croatians shall instead pronounce /l/ as [w], and Serbians will pronounce it as [j]? that Croations will increase the use of present participles but Serbians will use the simple past (or whatever is comparable)? Who knows what the causes of linguistic diversion are, but surely any distinction such as 'natural' and 'artificial' are, unless well backed up, themselves artificial!

Is there some special meaning of this in Serbo-Croatian linguistics, or is it just a point-of-view statement in a difficult article?

Felix the Cassowary 1 July 2005 12:57 (UTC)

Have to say I've lived in Victoria for about 40 years, and never heard anyone pronounce 'celery' and 'salary' as homophones! 202.156.6.54 12:45, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A number of very very problematic claims

I'd like to express my opinion on some issues... Boraczek 14:12, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Serbo-Croatian doesn't have 16-21 millions of speakers. I don't think that more then 100.000-200.000 of people feels SC as their langauge. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 00:16, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
I can't agree. Whether Serbo-Croatian is conceived as a single language or as a group of languages, it's clear that the languages of Bosniaks, Croats, Montenegrins and Serbs are included. So all the speakers of these languages should be counted. How they call their language and what they feel about it is another matter. Boraczek 14:12, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
  • SC is one standard variant. As I said before, it can be said that it exists as spoken language from 19th century up to present. Before that time there were no any "SC language". So, you can't say that "Serbian and Croatian languages belongs to Serbo-Croatian standard language". --millosh (talk (sr:)) 00:16, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
Well, if by "Serb-Croatian" you mean a set of dialects, you can talk about Serbo-Croatian even before the 19th century. If by "Serbo-Croatian" you mean a standard language, then it didn't exist before the 19th century. During the Yugoslavia period standard Croatian and standard Serbian were two variants of standard Serbo-Croatian. There were small differences between the variants, but from the linguistic, sociolinguistic and juridical points of view the language was essentially the same. Whether you call Croatian and Serbian two standard languages or two variants of one standard language is in fact a matter of convention, because every variant or dialect is a language itself. Boraczek 14:12, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
They would have been essentially the same on all three noted points if there was no srpskohrvatski/hrvatskosrpski distinction. However, there was, which indicates that something isn't quite right with your idea of essentially the same. I'd mark that as a medium-sized sociolinguistical difference, and a small linguistical one. (For comparison, we could say that we currently have a large sociolinguistical difference, a small linguistical one, and a medium-to-large juridical one.) --Joy [shallot]
You're right, Joy. Boraczek 08:16, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Serbo-Croatian is not used "under other names". SC was the other name for two similar standard languages for around 35 years! And it was political product. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 00:16, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
I'd call it an ideological product. The standard Serbo-Croatian language was born in the 19th century as a result of the tendencies to unite the Southern Slavs. Yugoslavia had nothing to do with it, as it only started to exist in the 20th century.
As for "other names", the matter is simple - if A is another name for B. then B is another name for A. There's no wording "under other names" in the article though. Boraczek 14:12, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
  • SC is understandable in Macedoina and Slovenia, but Serbian minority in Hungaria speak Serbian, Croatian minority in Austria speak Croatian; some people say for themself that they speak Serbo-Croatian. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 00:16, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
Millosh has a point here. The article as it stands suggests that the minorities speak standard Serbo-Croatian, which is not true. Boraczek 14:12, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
  • "Slavic Vlachs" is nonsense in this meaning! This paragraph is more poetic then encyclopedic. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 00:16, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
I agree that that part should be changed. The mention about Vlachs is unclear and of dubious relevance. Boraczek 14:12, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
  • From "genetic linguistic point of view" are very hard words for one nonsense. It claims that genetic linguistics today says that "Slavic Vlachs" exist and that "Serbo-Croatian grew" before it was recognized by people who was speaking it. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 00:16, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
I don't think it does claim so. Boraczek 15:01, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Native language of Vuk Karadzic was Neo-Shtokavian Iyekavian. There were and are a lot of Serbs who was and who is speaking Neo-Shtokavian Iyekavian. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 00:16, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
  • There are no "official names of SC", as I explained before. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 00:16, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Claim that "majority of Serbian linguists think that SC still exist" is at least not true. As I know a lot of Serbian linguists, I can say that this claim is clear desinformation. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 00:16, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
  • The story about language policy between Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks, Montenegrins, etc. is not relevant for description of one small standard language. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 00:16, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
I think it is very relevant, as it explains the controversies about the term "Serbo-Croatian". Boraczek 15:01, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
  • This paragraph explains that person who write it doesn't have any linguistic knowledge: These arguments are political. However, the speed of communication today makes it unlikely that the languages of the Balkans will diverge naturally. This may make easier determining which changes are authentic and which are artificial. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 00:16, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
The paragraph is very dubious indeed. Boraczek 15:01, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Tomorrow, I would continue from "Dialects of SC". --millosh (talk (sr:)) 00:16, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
  • The point is that this article is written by people who have strong influence of pro-Yugoslavian ideas about one "super-language" and one "super-nation". This is clear political POV, not encyclopedic description of linguistic matter. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 00:16, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
I don't agree. The article seems to be neutral and to present differing points of view. Boraczek 15:01, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
I agree with Millosh to a point. There is a clear political implication of retaining the title as is, and telling the story as if the current situation is just a minor point. I think it's near-impossible to avoid this kind of a situation, but I see where he's coming from. --Joy [shallot]
In this matter every decision has its political implications. I'd rather ignore the political implications and look at the matter from the purely linguistic point of view. Boraczek 08:16, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

To continue:

  • Dialects: --millosh (talk (sr:)) 16:34, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
    • The term "Serbo-Croatian dialects" is political because Torlakian dialect is more close to Bulgarian then to Chakavian (dialect) and Kaykavian is more close to Slovenian dialects then even to Shtokavian. This term (as well as similar terms) is political construction of SFRY and philologist from the 19th century. It is much better to have an articles "dialects of Croatia", "dialects of Serbia" and "Shtokavian dialects", "Kaykavian dialects" etc. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 16:34, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
I don't agree. Serbian dialects are difficult to separate from Croatian dialects, so it's better to have one article for both. Boraczek 15:01, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
Well, shtokavian has to be bumped into one, and so does the e/ije/i rendering of yat. Both of these things are done in that article, we could work on that. But the rest really has little to do with the S-C and its standardization which tended to discard it. --Joy [shallot]
    • Subtitle "Rendering of yat" should not stay here, but inside of Shtokavian dialect (which is better to be moved to Shtokavian group of dialects and languages). Standard forms of Serbo-Croatian are only Ekavian and Iyekavian. And the article should describe standard forms, not dialects. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 16:34, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
I don't agree. I think the article should describe both standard languages and dialects. I see no reason to restrict the article to the standard languages only. Serbo-Croatian is also a name for a set of dialects. Boraczek 15:01, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
I don't actually think that it's right to relegate the rendering of yat just to shtokavian, although in this context that's a minor quibble. The notion of ikavian has implications on chakavian, Ukrainian and whatnot. Perhaps this is for the yat article. --Joy [shallot]
  • Grammar: --millosh (talk (sr:)) 16:34, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
    • Locative is not copletely merged into Dative (there are some rare accent differences which are significant). (I'll find examples in the future; however, it stays for all Shtokavian-based standard languages.) --millosh (talk (sr:)) 16:34, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Wrigint systems: --millosh (talk (sr:)) 16:34, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
    • Again, sublimation: Shtokavian->Serbo-Croatian. The history of Serbo-Croatian standard language began in 19th century, not before. Serbo-Croatian was never written with Arabic alphabet nor Glagolitic alphabet. Only in Cyrillic and Latin alphabets. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 16:34, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
    • Gajica didn't have letter Đ, đ. It is borrowed from Djuro Danicic's Latin alphabet. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 16:34, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
It's true that the original Gajica didn't have the letter Đ, which was introduced later. The point is that the name "Gajica" refers not only to the original alphabet invented by Gaj, but also to its later forms. Just as the name "Cyrillic alphabet" refers not only to the original alphabet used to write Old Church Slavonic, but also to modern, different alphabets. Boraczek 15:01, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
Cool factoid, I'll go add it to Croatian alphabet :) --Joy [shallot]
BTW, as far as I know the letter Đ replaced the digraph gj. Boraczek 11:33, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
Isn't it bilabial? Boraczek 15:01, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Accents: --millosh (talk (sr:)) 16:34, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
    • Words can be with two stresses: pOljoprIvreda (farming).
But then only one accent is primary and the other is secondary, isn't it?
    • Falling stress can occur at the other: accent on "i" is short falling stress. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 16:34, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
    • These two rules are standard, not exceptions (for example, see Morton Benson's eng-sh dictionary). --millosh (talk (sr:)) 16:34, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
    • There are no idiolects of SC; or it can't be said in that way. Again, SC is one standard form, not the group of dialects. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 16:34, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
Of course there are idiolects of Serbo-Croatian. Every spoken language has idiolects. Serbo-Croatian can be also conceived as a group of dialects. This is a typical ambiguity - the same name ususally refers to a standard language and to a group of dialects. Take "English" for example. Boraczek 15:01, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Orthography: --millosh (talk (sr:)) 16:34, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
    • Corelation between orthography and pronounce is again treating SC as a group of dialects. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 16:34, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Demography: --millosh (talk (sr:)) 16:34, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
    • Again logical fail: Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian are in equal status as Serbo-Croatian -- all of them are standard languages. Thus, it can't be said that SC has 16 millions of speakers, but only the number of speakers which say for them that they speak SC. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 16:34, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
I already expressed my opinion on that issue, so I'd only like to add that Bosnian is not fully developed as a standard language. Boraczek 15:01, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
There's a discrepancy between interpretations here: S, C and B are not necessarily treated as "horizontally equal" to S-C because there's an impression that they are all descendents to S-C. You'd first have to clarify that issue before trying to choose the right angle... --Joy [shallot] 00:26, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
    • Also, "differences between sr, hr and bs" is not good term because there are differences between sh, too. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 16:34, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

After all of those political POV, I think that this article should be completely rewritten. But, I think that this is not the case only with this article, but with the whole complex of Shtokavian-related articles. Also, I am waiting for other people for this change. As well as I would call some non-Balkans linguist (I noted that there are some linguists here who understand ex-YU language problems). --millosh (talk (sr:)) 16:34, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Oh boy, here we go. Jebem mu jezik. I'll agree, some rewrite would be good. In that vein I rewrote the intro for better NPOV. I won't agree to all your points though, and I'll respond to them individualy as I have time. --Tox 11:48, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
 :) Sentences like "SC can be treated as a group of dialects and as one standard language", "In the sense of group of dialects..." etc. should be good enough. Also, with the notes that SC is political, not linguistic term; that Kaykavian, Chakavian and Torlakian don't have anything with SC standard; that it is better to make difference between standard languages and spoken languages/dialects using their right names (political or linguistic). --millosh (talk (sr:)) 15:13, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
Serbo-Croatian is also a linguistic term. Since standard Croatian and standard Serbian are almost identical, it's often convenient to refer to them as one language system. This has nothing to do with politics. Boraczek 15:01, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
Please, look my notes at the end of Talk:Shtokavian dialect. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 15:13, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
I think sometimes we're talking past each other on the whole SC issue. Some people are thinking about the attempt at having a unified standard for all the related dialects (which has largely failed, and probably was more of a dual standard even at its height). Others are thinking more about the group of mutually intelligible dialects of one language (that clearly does not have a single standard).
So-called standard languages are always a bit artificial or enforced (either politically or culturally, or both). The English language clearly has many dialects and more than one "standard". (Hvala Bože) there is no academy that tries to enforce a standard, while the French have an academy (and laws) that try to enforce a standard in France. Clearly, the governments of the former Yugoslavia have been actively involved in creating new standards since the breakup. I despise government meddling in language, but that doesn't change the reality, and even without it there would still be several standards based on culture, history, practicality, and communication/transportation technology (like for English), which is fine and perfectly natural.
Anyway, this article needs to address the historical attempt to create a unified standard on the one hand, but on the other hand it is very useful from a linguistics standpoint to talk about the various dialects as they were in the past and are today. Yeah, the name "Serbo-Croatian" might be unfortunate, but like someone said earlier, we're stuck with it as the umbrella term for all these dialects. One possibility is dividing this article into two seperate articles, one about the historical attempt at a single standard, and the other a linguistic view of this group of dialects.
Those of us with Balkan blood can't help being hot-blooded and emotional. And what happened during the wars was truly tragic. But, hopefully those of us Wikipedians can temper that with a little rationality and work out what is now a messy concept and figure out how to get this organized correctly. --Tox 10:49, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Just to say that I agree with you a lot (in some paragraphs you didn't understand my not so good English :) ). I would rearange questions tomorrow, so people can read discussion more easy (or at least two of us). I was putting problems here without categorization (I didn't devide linguistic problems and political problems). I am glad that one linguist is here and wants to work on this article. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 19:38, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Removed POV tag

The article addresses most of the issues that Millosh brought up. If you are concerned about factual innacuracies, then simply provide a source for what you think is correct. --Dejan Čabrilo 03:33, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Dejane, don't behave like a vandal. So called "facts" inside of article should be explained with real facts. For example, I would like to see tha facts about the number of speakers of SC. Also, how can anyone claim that SC was written in Glagolitic and/or Arabic alphabet when SC didn't exist in that time? --millosh (talk (sr:)) 05:33, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
This is not a short story and a lot of people think that this article is POV. If you want to talk about that, please talk, but don't remove POV template before the talk is finished. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 05:33, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

I'll try to address your concernes tomorrow (or whenever I get enough time), but honestly, I am rather fed up with all the nationalists trying to rationalize their edits while having no other arguments then their own belief of what is right or using sources which do exactly the same. It's just a bunch of what should be considered original research, with no merit. But, I am digressing. --Dejan Čabrilo 05:03, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

You are Yugoslavian nationalist and this is the main problem with this article: a number of Yugoslavian nationalists (and people who support them) are trying to represent facts in their way. And this is the clear POV. And, your nationalist eyes only see "us" (Yugoslavian nationalists) and "them" (Serbian, Croatian, etc. nationalists). There are no others. This is typical form of nationalism. (Also, we can talk a lot about your cultural intolerance; for example, about your intolerance towards Cyrillic alphabet.) --millosh (talk (sr:)) 06:54, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Its not Grammar that seperates the language

Croatians and Serbians could not care less about the gramatical differences in the language. The difference is the people, what happened in history that seperates us. Keep it seperated. By the way, there are many words that are different. I can tell the difference between a Croatian and a Serb right away by the words they use and the way that they speak. There are many other reasons that i could post here which explain why the languages are seperated, but they are inapropriate.

[edit] It is still the same language

I learned Croatian from a text book, but mainly used it on my trips to Serbia, without ever having been to Croatia. No problems at all. Just a few local differences and I started speaking Serbian. I would say the difference is no greater then between British English and American English. The only difficulty is when I meet someone croatian. When I want to talk to him in his own language, what should I say? I speak Croatian? No, because I speak Serbian. But saying to a croat tht I could talk to him in his own language because i speak serian also sounds very silly. The situation gets even more complicated when you start talking to Bosnians. My conclusion: it is still one and the same language, the rest is Politics, and the language should have the same name for convenience's sake. Peter


The difference is certainly greater than British English and American English. It is however also certainly a smaller difference than between many other dialects that are considered part of the same language. There's no absolute definition there so taking the historical, social and political factors into consideration is pretty natural. As a Croatian expat living in Sweden, I speak both languages fluently. The difference between Croatian and Serbian is roughly the same magnitude as the difference between Swedish and Norwegian. Today very few people dispute that there is such a thing as a Norwegian language (there are actually two), but this was not always the case. When Norway was under Denmark, referring to a Norwegian language was forbidden. There are plenty of other examples - Dutch and German are more similar to each other than some Italian dialects are. Point being, the political context is quite relevant while the linguistic context is less so. --Lucas


You have no idea about languages! Croatian and Srebian dialects of Serboroatian language are ONE language, with 99% same grammar and 98% same vocabulaty. The difference between Norvegian and Swedish is MUCH BIGGER. That's why they are 2 languages and not 2 dialects of the same language. Capische? You can compare Serbian and Croatian only with English American and British English. That's the truth and keep your miserable lies to yourself, because you cannot fool anybody with them! Cheers!

It is interesting there are always people that feel themselves Croatian that have to assert the seperateness of their language. Maybe it is because they put a great deal of their national identity on the language and are afraid of the impacts slightly stronger (in numbers) ex-brother nation. Well, I'm Croatian, linguist and would say that there is mere slight dialectiological difference between Serb and Croatian dialects, which cannot even be compared to the vast phonological differences between English and "American". But opinions and emotions are mostly all what we have on the issue... --Tomi

[edit] Need for Serb-Croat language

Well,

Without much historical and nationalistic reviewing, there are reasons for language to stay. I am a 25 yrs old Serbian, living in Belgrade and most of my education, until nationalistic uprising, was in Serbo-Croatian and Croato-Serbian (when reading Croatian books). I will point out just obvious reasons:

  • Wether it is a political creation, I don`t know of two more similar languages.

I have travelled to Croatia several times, and as far as Zagreb is concerned I feel that Croatian and Serbian as official literal languages, prior to 1991. silly changes like `brzojav` or `zrakomlat` (not funny just for me, for my friends in Zagreb too`)are most similar languages I know of. List of different words can be learned `on road` or in a week.

  • In Serbia today we use many Croatian books without any problems, in science, in culture etc. Same goes vice versa in Bosnia and Croatia, with slight difference that they don`t use and learn what is written in cyrillic.
  • Since new languages came with new `reborn` nations after long years of being under Turks or Austro-Hungaria, then Yugoslavia, not all grammar books etc. needed to fully standardize languages are created. So in Bosnia for example, they still use SERBO-CROATIAN books.
  • And if you ask me, I speak either Serbo-Croatian, or if you like 3+ languages. I admit Macedonian and Slovenian are very different, but these languages really look like a dialects of one. And no one argued that until separation

came and new nations needed everything new. It seems that Serbs are most romantic. I wouldn`t say just being for "Greater Serbia". Remember that intelectuals that wanted to have one SouthSlavic country were Croats too, and altough Yugoslavia was under Serbian influence it also weakened traditional Serbian kingdom and country and I believe Croats had more rights than under Austro-Hungarian (Republics, Banovinas etc. with local gov.). So don`t think it`s all about Serbian domination. There are a lot of common roots in language and tradition, no matter how much nationalist leaders want to divide us.

So long, so good, my Croat friends. Don`t use what unite us, to divide us more. War is over, and everything goes forward. Come to Belgrade, and I like to drink "Ozujsko" at "Ban Jelacics" square. And I won`t stick or flash any photos. I`ll just admire your culture, history and beauty.

--Rastavox 02:05, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

THIS IS THE BEST THOUGHT SAID IN THIS DISCUSSION. All of us, the South Slavs should always see and respect what unites us, not what divides us, because we're all same blood. Having a same language (with many dialects, which after the split of the former country are named as "separate languages") is a precious thing and we should be proud of it, building the ties between us even stronger. Those, who look for differences and separation are spreading hostility and evil between the brother's nations. Don't let them brainwash you, either you are Serb or Croat, and let's keep our beautiful south slavic diversity the best way we can, wherever we are. Let's not be afraid to visit all the parts of our countries, and let's all of us feel like at home weather we're in Zagreb, Belgrade, Split, Skopje, Sofia, or...Ljubljana, of course. Cheers; G., V.

[edit] Linguistic and political questions

I tried to devide discussion into two separate question. I think that solutions for those questions is soultion for the POV tag on this article (of course, with a number of consequences inside of article). --millosh (talk (sr:)) 00:14, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Dialects, history of languages and standard languages (linguistic question)

There are no dubt that Serbian and Croatian (and Bosnian and Serbo-Croatian) are almost the same standards (in the sense of grammar). I think that there are no rational person from the area of Neo-Shtokavian dialect who would say that (s)he doesn't understand Bosnian or Croatian or Serbian or Serbo-Croatian (or some future Montenegrin) standard. We can understand each other very well. If someone doesn't understand some word, it can be understandable from the context. So, this is not any kind of rational question. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 00:14, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

The point is that all of the four standards are based on Neo-Shtokavian dialect. All of those people speak Shtokavian and standard is just formalized dialect (i.e. "language is dialect with army and navy"; I always forget who said that :) ). In this sense, SC standard is just one more Shtokavian-based standard and it is equal to all other standard forms. In this sense, article should stay. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 00:14, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Linguistic terminology (political question)

Linguistic terminology can use term SC in two ways: --millosh (talk (sr:)) 00:14, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

  1. To describe all standard language forms together (i.e. Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian). --millosh (talk (sr:)) 00:14, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
  2. To describe all (four) dialects spoken in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia (i.e. Kaykavian, Chakavian, Shtokavian and Torlakian). --millosh (talk (sr:)) 00:14, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

The main problem with the term Serbo-Croatian is that it is too offensive against majority of Montenegrins, Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks. (Personally, I don't care for the name [I prefer linguistic name -- Shtokavian], but you can try to ask communities on sr:, hr: and bs: do they like to call their language SC.) --millosh (talk (sr:)) 00:14, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

And we can say that "only" the term is a problem if we are trying to call three (or four) standard languages with that name. It is better to use BCS or something like that. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 00:14, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

But, the second question contains (political) linguistic problem, too. I think that people can't understand that inhabitant of Zagreb (in Croatia) can understand better inhabitant of Maribor (in Slovenia) then inhabitant of Pirot (in Serbia); as well as inhabitant of Pirot would better understand inhabitants of Sofia (Bulgaria) and Skopje (Macedonia). Of course, if all of those people speak in their dialect. If they speak using standard language, they would understand each other better then their neighbours --millosh (talk (sr:)) 00:14, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

The point is that virtual usage of SC to describe four dialects (Torlakian, Shtokavian, Chakavian and Kaykavian) is very POV and very political. Yes, we were learning that those dialects are the part of SC language in primary school... But, I would like to see any person from Belgrade (Serbia) or Zagreb (Croatia) or someone who was learning SC/S/C/B standard language -- would (s)he understand dialects of Pirot (Serbia) or Vis (Croatia)? Of course, not to ask people to talk in standard, but in dialect. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 00:14, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Usage of this term for dialects had political motivations. Croats and Serbs were trying to make one state ("of all South Slavs") for almost one century. After that, they had the state for around 70 years. And politics were trying to unify all political differences. Of course, if polititians and linguists out of Yugoslavia wanted to have good relations with their coleagues from Yugoslavia -- they had had to promote this terminology. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 00:14, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Today, there are no Yugoslavia and there are no needs to cover four very different dialects (in the Slavic languages sense, of course) with one term. As well as this term is offensive to the most of speakers of those dialects. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 00:14, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

In the context of the article, my suggestion is: --millosh (talk (sr:)) 00:14, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

  1. To say that it can be used as linguistical term for standards, but to talk about standards in the existing article Differences in official languages in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia. To say that it is offensife term to the most of speakers from Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 00:14, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
  2. To say that it was used (as well as it is still used by some linguists) as a term to describe four dialects. However, general story about dialects should be inside of existing article South Slavic language and more detailed story should stay inside of separate articles (as it stays; there is no article only about Torlakian dialect). It should be noted that at least "some people" think that this usage of the term is false. Of course, it should be noted that it is offensife term, too. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 00:14, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

(I am tired and too lazy to check the text with spelling checker. I hope that my text is understandable.) --millosh (talk (sr:)) 00:14, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Why is this "Accuracy dispute" tag still there? I'm sure we can agree that once upon a time there was a language officially called "Serbo-Croatian", which presented the "common denominator" for all the languages (Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian) it is based on. We certainly can not agree what is the correct denomination of it and whether it really existed (but it had a name, a state, and a written standard), but we can put the dispute notion and let readers decide. Or am I missing a point? Most of this article describes features which are common for all "covered" languages officialy "supported" nowadays. Duja 10:53, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
I am sure that we can. But, for a half of month I am waiting someone who is willing to talk about this issue :) (As well as I am not so quick, too.) So, I started with implementation of correction the day before yesterday. And you are welcome to join me. We need just a little bit better description of disputed parts of the text. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 13:55, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
Whoever started this complication about Bosnians, Bosniaks, Croats in Bosnia, Serbs in Croatia etc. will find it removed. We can accept the fact that not all members of certain ethnic group call the language by its own people name, and that they're entitled to do so, but 1) they're certainly a minority and 2) where will we get by enumerating all the nuances? ...ali Mujo iz Vlasenice zove svoj jezik Fatin posto se udo. Duja 10:53, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
Heh, Bosniak nationalist propaganda. They want to say that all Bosnians (including Croats, Serbs, maybe Germans, Jews, etc.) call their languages "Bosnian". --millosh (talk (sr:)) 13:55, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Vocalic Consonants

I removed the entry on vocalic L because it's stretched at best -- Vltava is a Chech word (which has a vocalic L) imported without changes, but IMO its existence does not justify the claim that "L can be vocalic". It cannot, except in this very case. I've never heard of vocalic Lj, M, and N, and even if they can appear, they're so rare and unstandard that aren't worth mentioning.Duja 10:53, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

It is rare, but it exists. Afrikan names (with starting "m" or "n" followed by some plosive) are transcribed with syllabic m or n. A lot of place names (such as "Vlčje") from Southern and Eastern Serbia are as-is in standard pronounce. Syllabic l was often enough always. "Ljvov" is example of syllabic "lj", as well as idiolect "žlj", "šnj", etc. This is the fact in Serbo-Croatian (Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian) phonology. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 13:35, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Linguistic topics

I'm inclined to move the linguistic topics of this article (from Grammar to Orthography) elsewhere, as the page now is a mixed bag and overly long. Further, much of those contents are already copied from here to Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian article -- but where? Shtokavian dialect is one possible candidate but I'm not happy with it, and something like (Main article:) "Linguistic topics of Serbo-Croatian language" looks clumsy. I'm open to suggestions... Duja 13:18, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian language seems to be gaining currency as a fixed expression replacing S-C. --Elephantus 13:42, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
Grammar should go to Shtokavian (language description) or inside of article "Neo-Shtokavian dialects" or something like that. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 15:56, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
Orthography in the sense of differences, should go into "Diffrences between official languages..." (which should be moved into "Differences between Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian and Serbo-Croatian". Otherwise, it should go into articles about Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, SC language. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 15:56, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Croatian and Serbian language are two simmilar, but quite different languages

PING: THE TITLE CONTAINS A WRONG STATEMENT!CHEERS! Even both Croatian and Serbian linguists in former Yugoslavia tried to fuse both Croatian and Serbian language into single Serbo-Croatian language they have eventually failed. No one in Croatia doesn't talk Serbo-Croatian language, and no one in Serbia doesn't talk Serbo-Croatian language either. Croats talk Croatian and Serbs talk Serbian language.

   * Bosniaks call their language Bosnian
   * Croats call their language Croatian.
   * Serbs call their language Serbian.

I'll provide few sentences in English, Croatian and Serbian to compare both languages.

   * Can we eat? - English
   * Možemo jesti? - Croatian
   * Možemo da jedemo? - Serbian"

This is grammar difference. Serbian language is prone to use word "da" in questionable sentences with object (in this case, object is hidden). Croatian language doesn't use that kind of sentence structure.

Croatian form is correct in Serbian, too. --millosh (talk (sr:))

Also Serbian form is in use in Dalmatia and Slavonia i.e. 85% of Croatia; "

  * What time is it? - English
  * Koliko je sati? - Croatian
  * Koliko je časova? - Serbian

Časova (sing. čas = hour) Satovi (sing. sat = hour)

Partially wrong. You will never hear "Koliko je časova?" in Serbia. Actually, sat replaced čas in colloquial usage almost everywhere by now (except when referring to school class). čas sounds overly formal. Duja 08:35, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
Just in refering to 24 hour clock. It is more usual to say "sada je 13 casova" ("it is 13 hours now") then to use "sat". But, it is very unusual (as Duja said) to say "sada je 1 cas posle podne" ("it is 1 hour PM"). --millosh (talk (sr:)) 02:46, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes it's like lift in American and elevator in english. Same language —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Hxseek (talk • contribs) 12:53, August 23, 2007 (UTC).

Even both words mean the same thing (hour), they're not spoken the same way. "

  * First president of USA was George Washington. - English
  * Prvi predsjednik SAD-a je bio George Washington. - Croatian
  * Prvi predsjednik SAD-a je bio Džordž Vašington. - Serbian"

Foreign words aren't written the same way. Croatian language allows foreign words to be written in the original manner (router, switch, hard drive, Yuriy Gagarin). Serbian language, thanks to Vuk Karadžić and his "write as you speak, speak as you write" policy doesn't allow such writing (ruter, svič, hard drajv, Jurij Gagarin).

Wrong again. Such writing is allowed, just less common. I doubt you will find "Yuriy Gagarin" in many Croatian texts, either. As for ruter, svič, hard disk, these became imported words so it's proper to write them as that, even in Cyrillic. OTOH, when an English (or other foreign) term did not become common, it is usually written in original form, and in Latin script if in Cyrillic text. Duja 08:35, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
And your point is...? Duja 08:35, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
Again, Croatin form is correct in Serbian, too. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 02:46, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] pitch accent

I just wrote up a section on vowel length and pitch accent for the Croatian article, and was about to suggest it on the Serbian talk page (I don't know if Serbian follows the same system), when I realized that it was already covered in this article. These articles really should be cross referenced so that people can find relevant information. I don't care whether Serbian/Croatian is considered one language or three, but political schizophrenia shouldn't interfere with data access.

Anyway, the bit I wrote up for Croatian uses the IPA. Someone asked a while back how to do this, so here you are. kwami 00:09, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

I've been contemplating for a while writing a series of articles named "Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian Grammar" (sounds clumsy, but the best politically correct term I can think of), with subarticles of "SCB verbs", "SCB phonology", "SCB orthography", then linking all 4 articles to that. However, that's a huge job and I'm not sure if I'm competent enough. Duja 07:59, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
No one in Serbia uses "koliko je casova".. And yes, it can be used but it's not "serbian" only. Tberefore, you're incorrect again. Serbo-Croatian is one language - Yugoslavian

[edit] Serpentine political intrusions...

I edited the following sentence: "Officially, the term was used from 1921-ca. 1993 as a "cover" term for dialects spoken by Serbs and Croats, and later Bosniaks and Montenegrins", as it is historically inaccurate and may be perceived as offensive by both Bosniaks and Montenegrins - as a Montenegrin I certainly see it as heavily influenced by politics, rather than linguistics. The last part ("...and later Bosniaks and Montenegrins"), implies these nations either spoke a foreign language (croat or serbian), borrowed from their neighbours, or didn't exist as separate ethnic groups before modern times. Since both of these statements are clearly false, I erased "and later" and placed their names in alphabetical order. It seems the only fair thing to do.

Well, it is disputable whether they did exist as separate ethnic groups before modern times; clearly, they weren't widely accepted as such. I won't enter the discussion on the topic, as it is clearly open to interpretation whether an ethnic group had "existed" before its self-determination, involving the very definition of word "existing". I have no problem with your version (and I don't appreciate your referencing of mine as a "serpentine political intrusion"), but I'd reorder them by size and importance rather than alphabetically. Duja 11:09, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

I will restrain from editing the page and will try to reason with you instead. To reorder them by "size and importance" is ARBIRTRARY an totally unacceptable by NPOV rules. There are more people in India speaking english language than there are in the UK - does that mean one should begin the list of anglophone nations with India? Since none of the said nations (bosniak, croat, montenegrin, serbian), "invented" the laguage and presented it to others, but they are all native speakers of it, the only decent thing to do, I repeat, is to place them in alphabetical order. "Importance" of one or the other particular nation varies through history, is arbirtrary, and the use of that very notion when it comes to nations is subject to controversy, to say the least. Size does not matter, when it comes to linguistics. Nor does politics. Only science does.

Dunno. I don't fancy being overly politically correct either; as a counterexample, wouldn't it be silly to write "English is the official language of Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, Bahamas, Barbados, Canada...United Kingdom and United States"? Certainly, there's something in the fact that it (used to be) called "Serbo-Croatian". Although the language is certainly not made up solely by Serbs or Croats, only those two nations officially existed for the most part of the period when the term was in use, with all due respect to Bosniaks and Montenegrins. And our country is not called "Crna Gora i Srbija" in alphabetical order, too. Duja 08:16, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
Actually, Duja, that is not true. The language used to be called "serbo-croatian", or "croato-serbian", depending on the speaker. In the proceedings of both Matica srpska and Matica hrvatska from the SFRY period (when the term was in official and undesputed use), those two names are juxtapositioned and equally used. It is just one's personal POV and habit made within the narrow limits of one's own society/environment that makes things look more -which is your case, I daresay - serbo-centric. I mentioned India because you called on "size and importance", but you failed to see my point. Bosniaks, Croats, Montenegrins and Serbs are all NATIVE speakers of "serbo-croatian", or at least, used to be. Both Montenegrins and Muslims (now Bosniacs), actually WERE, as you say, "recognised" nations while the term was used. The exception was, of course, the misfortunate Karadjordjevic regime. As for the "importance" criteria, I fail to see what standard does one use to determine this importance. If it is sheer size, your order would make sense. If it was cultural influence, Croats would be the first on the list. If it was tradition of statehood, it would be Montenegro etc. All of this is controversial, to say the least, and borderline grotesque.
The fact you're mentioning the unfortunate example of "Serbia and Montenegro" only supports my stand - you are politicizing the article, perhaps unknowlingly. We should thread carefully when it comes to defining anything that has to do with our former homeland, and just a little of political correctness never hurt anyone. I still believe alphabetical order is the only logical and decent one. And I have precedents - even such an eminent institution as the Hague tribunal (ICTY), uses the term "BHS" (bosansko-hrvatsko-srpski / bosnian-croatian-serbian), to reffer to the language. Note the alphabetical order. I understand you're proud of being a serb - but this is not the right place to express that sort of feeling. As for your new version, I believe it only makes the implication I mentioned in my first comment, even more obvious. In that respect, it is even less acceptable. Let's make this article stay an impartial scientific article, please. All the best from the CG part of SCG.
Where did I state I was a Serb? And I'm not "proud of being a Serb", I'm neutral about being a Serb, even if were one. That aside, look, I defend the current version more on a technical ground: only Serbs and Croats were mentioned in both Vienna agreement and Novi Sad agreement (red links, I know), and thus its naški and English name. Montenegrins were officially accepted as ethnicity, I think, 1945, and Bosniaks 1964 (don't hold my word for exact years, it can be easily checked on Wiki). I don't mind your version either (you do have a point), and I try to remove unnecessary politization here; just, I don't think that the current version is politizing anything. Duja 15:50, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] {{cleanup}} tag

Estavisti, care to expand why you added cleanup tag? The article has gone through many iterations and, being relatively stable for a while, I consider it pretty NPOV and in line with facts. It could be made shorter by moving Grammar section to a separate article, with links from Bosnian language, Croatian language and Serbian language as the main article, but until that job is undertaken by someone, I don't see what's otherwise essentially wrong with it? Duja

Maybe because of my English :) --millosh (talk (sr:)) 20:43, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
There's nothing wrong with it (your English); I'm removing the tag, as it's too ubiquituous and doesn't specifically pinpoint anything. If Esti wants to return it, I don't mind, but I'd like to hear concrete objections first.Duja 08:03, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Also, I think that article like "Neo-Štokavian language system" for grammar would be enough good. For example, there should be described rendering of yat which includes Ikavian which is not inside of any language system; also, there should not be described Kajkavian or Chakavian or Torlakian and those dialects are (in political sense) Croatian or Serbian. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 20:50, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Whatever it's called, I'd like to have it... (sigh). Duja 08:03, 20 December 2005 (UTC)


All those who don't see the Serbian-Croatian-Bosnian as one language with its numeruous dialects are the victims of the biggest lie, propagated by their nationalistic medias (especially in Croatia). Anyway, the majority of the Serbs, Croatians (especially Dalmatians, who are closer to Serbians than to Croatians from the north) and Bosnians are not nationalists and they are proud of having the same language, which can be a powerful basis for their next union, this time maybe just a cultural one, under the cover of EU. And at the end: Whatever a negative reaction to this my writing comes, it will reffer back to those who write it, because what I wrote is the absolute truth about one of the most beatiful languages in Europe-the SerboCroatian language.

Thanks and Cheers;

[edit] Unusual?

Thus a bi-variant language appeared, which the Serbs officially called "Serbo-Croatian" and the Croats "Croatian or Serbian". The variants of a supposedly single language functioned in practice as different standard languages. The common phrase used to describe this unusual situation was that Serbo-Croatian/Croatian or Serbian is a unified but not a unitary language.

How is that unusual? What makes it different from UK/US/Australia/etc English or German/Austrian German, or any other language that has more than one standard? Zocky 07:47, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

It isn't overly unusual indeed. Fixed. Duja 10:04, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
Another thing... Can "Serbs" and "Croats" really call anything "officially"? Who called it that? The governments? Matica srpska/hrvatska? JAZU/SANU? Zocky 17:26, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
Ack, more: Now that this is no longer considered unusual, what's the value of including it at all, especially with words like "supposedly" and "in practice", which imply that all those people, governments and writers who supported the single-language view were objectively wrong. Zocky 17:32, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] "Vice versa" hidden message

Someone put a hidden message in the text querying the use of "vice versa". It went like this:

"So if one compares Serbo-Croatian words to the similar Russian words, the stress in Russian will be on the following syllable if the Serbo-Croatian word has either rising stress and vice versa."

I think the problem is actually the use of the word "either". If that is removed, the sentence seems to make sense, but does it then express the thought that the writer meant? If not, perhaps he/she can find another way to put it. I have removed the "either" for now, and the sentence in question is now flagged with the hidden message "<!---I mean <<<this<<< sentence.--->". Kelisi 17:17, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] V - Labiodental approximant or Voiced labiodental fricative

Millosh, for god's sake, "V" is a fricative sound, not an approximant! I didn't notice that change from August until it spread all the way to Macedonian language. Duja 08:06, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Do you have a reference? It is an approximant [ʋ] according to the Handbook of the International Phonetic Association, based on the speech of an announcer at the Croatian Television Network. They contrast it with a [v] as in grof bi. kwami 10:21, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
For example:
"A Handbook of Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian", Wayles Brown and Theresa Alt, SEELRC 2004, page 12 [10].Duja 10:43, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
Also:
[11] Duja 12:10, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

OK; we seem to have contradicting sources. IPA handbook, "Croatian grammar" by Barić, Lončarić et al. (as stated in this revision), and this web page classify v as an approximant. The two sources above classify it as fricative; I'll try to find some books as web sources are scarce. In my opinion, it is a fricative in standard language, but [v\] can occur as an allophone. For example, it's clearly [vεliki] and [vaza]; but it can be either [hrʋatska] and [hrvaːtskaː], and [gɔvoriːm] could go through [goʋoriːm] all the way to even [goworiːm]. But I still hold that [ʋ] is not what I normally speak or hear, both on Serbian or Croatian TV. Duja 12:50, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't know about Serbian, Bosnian or "Serbo-Croatian", but I checked several sources in Croatian (two grammars, orthography handbooks etc.) and none mention v as a labiodental fricative (which would also make it a voiced pair of 'f', thus influencing voicing assimilation). This paradox is resolved by "A Handbook of Bosnian..." in the section 1.3.3.3.2 as follows:
1.3.3.3.2 V and f are, phonetically speaking, bilabial fricatives, hence obstruents, although v has less friction than f. However v behaves as a sonorant in never undergoing or causing devoicing. Thus there is no assimilation in ovca 'sheep' and tvoj 'your'.
With the IPA text (it may have been included in the Rosetta project source above under "Croatian dialect"?) claiming actual measurements on speech by an announcer on Croatian television, I'd tend to agree with Croatian handbooks and the IPA, of course, only on Croatian language. As for the others, try finding more sources. --Elephantus 13:02, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
OK, I'll see what I can do.
By the way, would you please check IPA definitions for [e] and [o] in Croatian language? IMO it should really be ɛ and ɔ respectively. I'm pretty positive about [ɛ] – [e] is Slovenian; o-case is more moot, as it leans to [ɔ] when stressed but [o] unstressed. One way or another, English approximations don't match. Duja 13:30, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

All contemporary phonetics/phonologies of Serbian, Croatian and Serbo-Croatian classifies 'v' as approximant. Unlike in Russian, in the groups where pronounce is very hard 'v' + unvoiced consonant gives 'u' (vocal), not 'f' (v'tor > utor; in Russian v'tor > ftor [written as 'vtor']) or consonants changed positions (v'se > sve); otherwise, it stays as 'v' ('rovovski'), as well as it doesn't affect consonants before ('sve'). --millosh (talk (sr:)) 13:49, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

I have a number of references inside of literature (not on the net): Fonologija srpskohrvatskog jezika (Simic and Ostojic), Gramatika srpskog jezika (Stanojcic and Popovic), Savremeni srpskohrvatski jezik (Stevanovic) etc. (Note that the last two references are in the few of books which are the most relevant descriptions of Serbian and Serbo-Croatian language.) --millosh (talk (sr:)) 13:49, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Sigh. OK, maybe I rushed, I'll concede the case to the appeal to authority. Still, as we'd say, izdvojiću mišljenje, and trust my ears (and lips). Duja 14:06, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
I'm the one who first objected to Duja's claims, but now I'm having my doubts. (BTW, I have no direct experience with SC.) I first doubted the claims of /v/ being [v] as simply broad transcription, like transcribing English /r/ as [r]. However, the arguments presented above for [ʋ] are unconvincing. Their basis seems to be that /v/ doesn't behave like the other fricatives, and therefore shouldn't be considered a fricative. But that's a phonological argument, and doesn't tell us whether /v/ is phonetically a fricative or not. For example, voicing assimilation could have become fixed several centuries ago when /v/ truly was an approximant, but it may have since become a phonetic fricative without affecting those assimilation patterns. (I'm merely speculating here, but this is a common enough phenomenon.) That is, lack of voicing assimilation should not be considered proof that /v/ is an approximant. We need something better than that.
The IPA Handbook lists /ʋ/ as the phoneme. But they don't discuss why they do this. They don't discuss the consonant at all, or list its allophones, so again this could be a phonemic rather than phonetic description.
I'm restoring Duja's deletion on the labiodental approximant article until we get this resolved.
As for the mid vowels, they appear in the Handbook as mid vowels, not close-mid. The height of /o/ is 43% of the way between /a/ and /u/ on their chart (note that we don't know that /u/ is 100% close or that /a/ is 100% open - they're shown as something less than this on the chart, but of course the corner vowels on these charts are placed rather impressionistically). The height of /e/ is 47% the distance between /a/ and /i/. That is, both appear to be slightly on the open side of mid, but not really open-mid, assuming that /i u/ and /a/ are equally close to their cannonical values. kwami 19:48, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
Assimilation is still alive process in Neo-Shtokavian dialect (i.e. Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Serbo-Croatian standards). In all derivations (including new ones) assimilation is still alive (orthography doesn't reflect that in all cases; there are some system exceptions (d+(s|sh) doesn't give 't', but only in orthography! as well as in some foreign names, like Vasington [=Washington]). Unlike them, 'sve' is not pronounced as 'zve' ('tvrdo', not 'dvrdo'; 'kvrga', not 'gvrga'; 'shvrljati', not 'zhvrljati' ['zhvljati' is another lexeme]; 'chvarak', not 'dzhvarak' etc.). --millosh (talk (sr:)) 20:28, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
BUT, I gave proofs for original research. ALL contemporary phonologies and phonetics say that 'v' is approximant. I mentioned some of them. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 20:28, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
But do they specify whether they mean phonemically an approximant, or phonetically? It's entirely possible for it to be a fricative but not behave like one. In Swedish, for example, front vowels palatalize consonants, except for u, which only became a front vowel recently. For this reason, many phonologies treat it as a central vowel. kwami 03:07, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
I know that phoneticians (not phonologists!) introduced 'v' as an approximant ("sonant"). Serbian linguistics (I don't know for the situation in Croatia) had only phoneticians, not phonologists (i.e., all Serbian phonology is simple reproduction of Jakobson-Trubetskoy theory). Even today, there is only one Serbian phonologist (prof. Draga Zec). And, as I know, Serbian phonetician (I forgot her name) introduced it in Serbo-Croatistics (maybe I am wrong, but I heard claims like "she had a lot of problems to introduce it in official linguistics" in 1970s). Also, Serbian (Croatian, Bosnian) speaking people have problems to pronounce Russian 'v' correct (I was learning Russian and some proffesors forced "stronger" pronounce). We pronounce it with one soft touch between teeth and lips, not like, for example, 'z'. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 14:20, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
Russian 'v' is indeed vvverrry fffrrricative, but I don't hear how SC 'v' differs much from English or French ones. Duja 15:50, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
I'd say that the scenario described by Kwami is likely – that v is a phonetic fricative but a phonological approximant, and that due to lack of real phonetic research many authors took the previous data for granted. I don't see, however, how such conclusion (even if true) could be included in the article, as it dangerously borders against WP:NOR. Some sources I listed above, though, do list it as a fricative.Duja 15:50, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
Most of the sources simply pigeonhole the phonemes without discussion. There is no objective dividing line between approximants and fricatives, and we're trying to impose a binary category. For example, Spanish /b, d, g/ between vowels aren't really fricatives, but many people claim that they have more frication than most approximants. Maybe SC /v/ is something like Spanish /b/? As far as I could see, only one of the sources listed above, [12], actually described the phonetics of this phoneme:
[v] as the "w" in Dutch "wat" [which is [ʋ] –kwami]. When preceeding /e/ and /i/ in stressed syllables, the Croatian /v/ sounds similar to the English "v" in "vat", but with a "looser", more lax, contact between the lower lip and the upper teeth. When unstressed or preceding /a/, /o/ and /u/, Croatian /v/ is weaker still, sounding to English-speakers much like the "w" of "war".
This sounds like a light fricative before stressed front vowels and an approximant elsewhere. Maybe we could transcribe it as a fricative with a lowering diacritic, [v̞], or as an approximant with a raising diacritic, [ʋ̝]? kwami 01:42, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
Well, I don't agree with that description; I must notice that Giblin is a foreigner, although I won't object his competence. I agree with you that the dividing line is thin, and that pronunciation depends on position, dialect and idiolect. However, I still hold that in standard language and most idiolects it is a fricative. There are few words where it virtually must be an approximant, like Novska or kraljevski, but it is not in most positions.
I wonder whether proximity to Slovenian language somehow affects pronunciation of Zagreb speakers; in Slovenian, v is definitively a [w] in final and pre-consonant positions (although I don't notice it's mentioned in that article), and a [ʋ] in other positions (I think, I don't speak it although I hear it from time to time). Kajkavian dialect, still influencing speech of Zagreb, is pretty close. (I think that Slovenian should be listed in Labiodental approximant article).
Perhaps not related, but note that BCS is, AFAIK, the only Slavic language where frequent prefix v- (in-, into-), which can lead to clumsy consonant clusters, evolved into u- (presumably for easier pronunciation): it has ustati, ustranu where e.g. Russian has v-. Also, vse (all) evolved into sve. Also, clitic preposition v (vo) (in, into) produced u.
Ukrainian also has this feature, "u n'ogo" but "v oboh". -Iopq 08:42, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
So, I think it should be [v̞]. However, we're missing the general article on grammar of all 4 languages, so I propose that the current version stays until it appears. I'm too busy in real life these days to start it, though. Duja 08:17, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Views of the "linguists"

I think that the paragraph on views of the linguists is rather a personal or political point of view of the speakers than truly scientific opinion based on historic facts. Since there is no definite office for the standardization of languages (now there is one in Croatia), anyone could claim that he or she knows all about the language - and in the end nobody knows anything (especially some aspects of the bosniak's point of view expressed here are rather ridiculous). linguists should rather focus on the traditions of the languages, the real languages and their developments, based on hard facts. this article does not say enough about history, cultural issues and identity. there are many problems and cultural interactions which have had significant impact on the cultures and their languages. there is too much incompetent (quasi-scientific) writing about this issue that neglects and distorts the true situation. and that was the comfortable policy during communist Yugoslavia (since, everything had to be unified and simple - instead of manyfold and complicated. to many people this idea of panslavic unity still suits quite well.). anyway, many linguists who have held high positions in the past have always been marionettes for the governing regime(s). they have never really expressed scientific evidence nor followed natural linguistic developments (therefore they simply renamed the name and their job was done). one should be very careful when listening to "linguists" in this field and everyone can judge for him or herself whether something is based on facts or whether it is just a bad joke. --Neoneo13 22:18, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree that this part should not be in the article. If someone whants to explain all positions, then (s)he should give all relevant references. What others think? --millosh (talk (sr:)) 22:45, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
I don't think mere removal would solve anything. As it is now, the section is a mixed bag – there is something in it, but it's not backed by evidence. Since it's reasonably short, I prefer to leave it in, since it does describe an outline. In any case, it does present an over-generalization.
Like Neo, I don't have overly high opinion of linguists here overall (with due exceptions) – most of them do politics and tell what the language wannabe rather than doing real research and describe what it is. Duja 07:56, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] population

"Population unknown" is a bit much. We can't give exact figures for any language, but we can make a decent estimate.

Using Wikipedia figures, Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, Montenegran speakers in Serbia, Croatia, & Bosnia: 15.5M. Slovenia: 0.2M. Other neighboring states: ~0.1M. Germany (ethnic numbers, including those born in Germany): 0.9M. Assuming a couple hundred thousand uncounted, the total is 17M. This can certainly be adjusted if better info is available, but the figure is known better than for many other languages, like Turkish or Persian. kwami 09:15, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

"Serbo-Croatian" and "Croato-Serbian" is a mother tongue to a total of 7,015 people in Croatia, according to the 2001 census here, so it can hardly be said to be spoken there by 4 million people. Also, it's, AFAIK, not official anywhere (maybe in Serbia according to the unchanged constitution?). --Elephantus 11:25, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
Don't play games. This is an article about a language, not a word. SC is Serbian, Bosnian, and Croatian considered as a single language. Therefore its population is the combined population of Serbian, Bosnian, and Croatian. This is the same as Hindustani being Hindi and Urdu considered a single language, or Chinese being considered a single language. Whether or not any one individual likes the term is irrelevant. For instance, I might say that I don't speak English, I speak American. Should we remove 300M from the number of English speakers because that's not the word I use for my language?
The new number of 13M is unsupported. Please give some reason for changing from 17M. Also, the phrase "no one official" doesn't make any sense - I can't tell what it's even supposed to mean. Serbian, Bosnian, and Croatian are official in Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, and Austria. Thus the phrase "various registers official in" to indicate that SC isn't official under that name. kwami 20:20, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
Serbo-Croatian is not the name for three different standard languages. Today, in usage is BCS. Serbo-Croatian was a standard language for less then one century and before and after the names had been/are different. It's position is the same as the position of all other standard languages (Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian). Also, please, do not be offensive toward 17M of human beings. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 21:11, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
If you take offense, I think you're being overly sensitive. This is simply how the word is used in English. Not everyone considers BCS to be separate languages, just as not everyone considers Hindi and Urdu or Malaysian and Indonesian to be separate languages. Of course we say everything you just said in the article. However, we should not censor an article because an opinion is no longer considered politically acceptable. "Serbo-Croatian" is the term that people in the English-speaking world continue to use to describe what is to many of them a single language.
If you wish to disambiguate with "this article concerns the standard language of the former Yugoslavia. For contemporary BCS considered as a single language, see article X", that would be fine. However, at present there is no BCS article, so this needs to cover BCS as well as official SC.
Perhaps we can reword the info box to accommodate everyone's concerns. But it is unacceptable to print falsehoods so as not to offend someone. It is not true that the number of speakers is "unknown", so that needs to be removed. We know perfectly well who speaks this language (within 10% or so). And again, the phrase "no one official" is gibberish, so it also needs to go. Replace it with something else if you like, but please don't restore nonsense to an article. kwami 22:12, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
Approximately 3/4 of Wikipedian population from Serbia and Montenegro, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina is "overly sensitive". Do you think that, for example, Norwegians are offended if you say that their language is Danish (not Norwegian); or do you think that Pakistanians offended when you say that their language is Hindu (not Urdu)? Also, I would like to know for usage of terms like "Dano-Norwegian" and "Hindu-Urdu"... --millosh (talk (sr:)) 23:00, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
There are some people who consider that their native language is Serbo-Croatian and it is not known. Inside of parenthesis stays number which describes similarity between standard languages (as well as inside of articles for Serbian language, Croatian language and Bosnian language). This amount of informations is enough because in the article this question is described. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 23:00, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
We think about making an article about Neo-Shtokavian language system (i.e., BCS) and we would do it. However, there are articles about differences between standard languages and all articles (Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, Shtokavian, Serbo-Croatian, Differences between languages [...], etc.) describe very well similarities between standard forms. Yes, we need one general linguistic article, but before the existance of such article there is no need to use this article instead of general linguistic article. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 23:00, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
The number of people who feels SC as it's native language, as I said, is unknown (around 200.000, but I am not sure and I don't know where to find data). So, "not known" is appropriate definition. There are no official usage of SC anywhere. Some people are using it, but I think that there are more citizens of Canada and USA who think that their language is SC, then citizens of Serbia, Croatia etc. Also, with the clear number (for example "around 200.000") there are no problems to put that this language is spoken in Serbia, Croatia etc. Without clear distinction between the standard language of former Yugoslavia and Neo-Shtokavian based standard languages usage of something like "SC is spoken in Serbia and Montenegro, Croatia..." has offensive meaning. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 23:00, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
My English is not so well and I would like that you put something better inside of table; but keeping in mind that usage of the term SC in the sense of Neo-Shtokavian standard languages is very offensive. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 23:00, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Millosh, I really don't think that any Danes, Norwegians, or Swedes would be offended by a Scandinavian language article that listed all of their countries as where it was spoken. It happens that Scandinavian is not much used (at least in English) as the name for Swedish-Danish-Norwegian, and no one has thought it worth an article. (It's just a redirect for North Germanic.) If it started being used with that meaning, then yes, it should be an article, regardless of whether some people take offense.

Hindi-Urdu is a redirect for Hindustani. The Hindi, Urdu, and Hindustani articles all state that Standard Hindi is a dialect of Urdu, and that Urdu is a dialect of Hindi (in the broad sense). Yes, many people find that offensive, but that cannot be avoided without being dishonest. Hindustani is rather commonly used with this meaning in English, so it warrants an article regardless of whether people are offended or not.

SC is also widely used, at least in English, to mean BCS as a single language (and not just Neo-Shtokavian, which is just one dialect of the overall language), and people will want this information. "If I learn Bosnian, how many people will I be able to communicate with? Let's see, the over-all language is called Serbo-Croatian. What does Wikipedia have to say..." They won't mind being redirected to some weird politically-correct title instead of the one they grew up with, but they will mind being told that they aren't allowed to know how many people speak the language because someone might be offended. I'll see what I can do to reword the table, though. kwami 01:45, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm, maybe the hypothetical English speaker should also be told that speaking Serbian in Croatia might not get him very far. He might be understood, but it's doubtful whether he'll get any answers. :-) --Elephantus 10:26, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
The number of English speaker who speaks this/these languages so perfectly that their pronunciation and selection of idioms could be unambiguously recieved as "Serbian" (or "Croatian") by native speakers is so minuscule that the situation you describe is hypothetic indeed... plus, it wouldn't be polite to an obvious foreigner to quibble about his dialect. A friend of mine from Novi Sad had a misunderstanding recently in Zagreb about "vrhnje" or "pavlaka" on a sandwich, but he and the seller resolved it in a friendly manner. I noticed the smiley, but you're exaggerating too much. Duja 12:38, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that Serbs, Croats, Bosnians and Montenegrins would be offended with Serbo-Croatian language as a redirect to South Slavic languages (Scandinavian language -> North Germanic languages) or as a redirect to Western Balkans. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 12:22, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

In English it was very usual to call African Americans as Niggers. So, please, try to understand that a lot of your names (and not only Niggers, faggots) are offensive (which is usual; all languages have a lot of offensive names...). --millosh (talk (sr:)) 12:22, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Serbo-Croatian are different standard languages based on the same dialects. There are a lot of similarities (in written form like between Norwege Bokmal and Danish; in spoken form more closely). --millosh (talk (sr:)) 12:22, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Also, I would like to know distinction between "dialect" and "language" in your interpretation. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 12:22, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

About "political correct term": when you start to use wideley known term "Niggers" instead of "African Americans", I would agree with you that there is no need for political correct usage of the names of our linguistic terms. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 12:22, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

The sentence: Relatively few people identify their language as "Serbo-Croatian". Some 17 million speak Serbian, Bosnian, or Croatian. seems to me ok, but "approx. 50th" doesn't. If you want to be descriptive (instead of short "not known (17M)", "not known (app. 50th)"), then do it there, too. --millosh (talk (sr:))

Is only the number of speakers the reason why the {{pov}} tag stands? (As I don't see any other reason in the discussion). If so, I plan to remove it if there are no strong objections. There are various ways to overcome the problem (longer explanation or a footnote in the template), but please use the template more sparingly; I didn't see any serious complaints about POV-wording of the article itself so far. Duja 11:38, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Register -> Language

I've changed the term register into 'language' in the infobox. "Register" seems inappropriate here, as it refers to a subset of a language used in a particular sitauation by a single person. --Elephantus 13:58, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Phonetics: Retroflex vs. postalveolar

Now, this requires a thin ear, an existing serious phonetic analysis of the language(s) (is there one?), and a sort of compromise. In my opinion, SC postalveolar consonants (Š, Ž, Č and DŽ) should be actually retroflex ones. Actually, the retroflex feature and lack of any palatalization make affricates clearly distinguishable from alveolo-palatal ones (Ć and Đ) in most dialects.

Now, this is also a dialectal issue. For entire Serbia, Montenegro and Herzegovina, eastern and western Bosnia (1) (speeches on which the standard is based), this is so. However, in wide Zagreb area speech, central Bosnia, and most of Dalmatia, a "softening" takes place (at least in affricates) (2), while in eastern Slavonia (Osijek) and by some Belgrade speakers (sometimes mockingly referred to as "džiber-speak"), "hardening" takes place (3). Guess I have to make a table to make it clear:

Belgrade (1) Zagreb, Sarajevo (2) Osijek(3)
Č retroflex, tʂ postalveolar, ʧ retroflex, tʂ
Ć alveo-palatal, ʨ alveo-palatal, ʨ postalveolar, ʧ
DŽ retroflex, dʐ postalveolar, ʤ retroflex, dʐ
Đ alveo-palatal, ʥ alveo-palatal, ʥ postalveolar, ʤ

In some idiolects, there's even a merger of Č-Ć and DŽ-Đ (considered substandard), either on the "soft" side (common in Bosnia) or on "hard" side (in eastern Slavonia). A neighbour of mine from Ilok uses retroflex pretty much everywhere.

Similar happens with fricatives Š (ʃ West / ʂ East) and Ž (ʒ West / ʐ East); however, as they don't have alveo-palatal counterparts, the distinction is less important. I'd say that they're "slightly less" retroflex than Russian ones even in Eastern speeches.

My point is, at least Serbian standard should list Č and DŽ as retroflex. It's less clearcut for Croatian and Bosnian, where both retroflex and postalveolar variants are acceptable (and can be heard) as long as they're distinguished from alveo-palatal ones. Duja 10:26, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Velar, not glottal fricative

I am a native speaker of Croatian and I am almost sure that <h> is phonetically [x], not [h]. It appears in syllable onsets, all kinds of consonant clusters and it remains perfectly audible. It can be weakened in some cases, but most often is simply omitted in informal speach, not reduced. Glottal fricative should be replaced by velar in all articles about Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian and Serbo-Croatian. --Meneldil 00:22, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks; it escaped my attention before indeed. Duja 14:57, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
I have edited this and Croatian article, but not Serbian and Bosnian, I do believe that they too have [x] instead of [h], but I can not be sure. Meneldil 04:42, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
OTOH, we desperately need a common grammar/phonology/phonetics article(s) for all 4 languages (whatever were political opinions about it). Do you happen to have a good reference book about, um, our, phonetics, preferrably online? See my remarks above about retroflex/postalveloar affricates, as well as the v discussion – all books I encountered barely mention the issues and use whatever phonetic transcription they see fit, without entering the details. Duja 14:57, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
Yes, indeed. My suggestion would be renaming this article into something that is both more politically and linguistically correct and using it for language description, and using Croatian, Bosnian and Serbian articles for standards, since both ideas about three different languages, and about Serbo-Croatian, are absurd. Meneldil 04:42, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
In my opinion, this article (named "Serbo-Croatian language") is needed, at least to explain the... how can I say it... political issues about unification and separation of Serbian and Croatian (and...). After all, the standard named "Serbo-Croatian" did exist and some people even now refer to it by that name.Duja 08:20, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
However, the current sitiation with 4 separate articles describing the grammar are IMO a) unnecessary b) unmaintainable. Most other language articles have main "grammar" articles with lots of sub-articles describing the grammar, phonology, etc. in detail. My idea is that all 4 articles should be shortened and focused on historical and political issues and literature, and all the linguistic stuff moved to one "main", named e.g. Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian grammar, mentioning differences where they exist (there's already Differences in standard Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian). Duja 08:20, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
This does look like a good solution.--Meneldil 00:49, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
I doubt that something exists online, but there was one interesting book about Croatian phonology, I'll see if I can find it again. <v> certainly isn't fricative, and I don't know for ć, č, đ, dž, š, ž, but the book I mentioned did entered into details about them. Meneldil 04:42, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
Please do distinguish Phonology and Phonetics. It's more the latter that I'm whining about the lack of resources. For example, it is clear that <v> is a phonologic approximant, because it does not interact with unvoiced consonants like a fricative would. However, phonetics is a less exact science when applied to a language in global – what is <v> phonetically means "how the majority of speakers would pronounce it in the majority of words", so it's a pretty open issue. Duja 08:20, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
My mistake, I wanted to write phonetics, but well, apparently I didn't.--Meneldil 00:49, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Just to say that it seems that I made a mistake. Yes, h is velar, not glotal. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 12:27, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Momci, kako ste uctivi.  :)
(Guys, how polite you are. ) --VKokielov 05:53, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dental and alveolar

In official nomenclatuer 's', 'z', 'c', 'd' and 't' are dental, not alveolar. However, 's', 'z' and 'c' may be treated as alveolar. So, the person who changed that said good thing. I think that something was wrong with IPA table when I made table. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 19:58, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I reverted the changes; we have discussed the "official nomenclature" before and (I think) concluded most of it sucks focuses on phonology rather than phonetics. Point by point:
  • S and Z are definitively not dental. Voiceless dental fricative sound corresponds to English think and Voiced dental fricative to English the. (Thuth my referentheth to Elmer Fudd in the edit thummary.)
  • As for C: there's no even Voiceless dental affricate article; I can't imagine how one could even produce an affricate with the first component dental.
  • D and T: Well, our D and T are definitively "more" dental than English (actually, they're laminal rather than apical), and the anon poster could have a point there. See also discussion in Voiced dental plosive and Voiceless dental plosive. Duja 21:47, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Correct pronounce of 's', 'z' and 'c' is with tongue on the down tooth. People from Eastern-Herzegovian area pronounce that sounds like that. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 15:55, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Not really. The friction occurs on the upper teeth, the lower teeth being just a coarticulation. Try to pronounce s and z while holding your lower jaw with a hand – it's perfectly doable, with some difficulties.

There are two problems with the official Serbian linguistics (related to this article): (1) As I said, there is only one Serbian phonologist and she lives in USA; all others are phoneticians; (2) I know that there is a lot of problems with official Serbian linguistics but we are not here to make original research. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 15:55, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Now you lost me. Isn't it the other way round? Phonetics deals with sounds of the language, and it's closely interconnected with stuff like acoustics, spectral analysis, physiology etc, while Phonology deals with phonemes of the language, i.e. (semi-arbitrary) lexical units and how they interact with each other. I'd expect far more phonologists thant phoneticians; it's a cheaper thing to do, if not for other reasons. Duja 19:35, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
I know what I am talking about :) My field is computational phonology, I am working on perceptional/distinctive attributes of phonemas, syllabs etc. using mathematics and computers. Unlike me, my professors are working on acoustics, articulation etc. For example, a person who introduced 'v' as approximant is phonetician (not phonologist!) and she is closely related to Institute for Experimenal Phonetics and Speech Pathology. Phonology in Serbia is a secondary job of morphologists and it Serbian phonolgy is completely based on Jakobson's and Trubeckoy's works (the first half of 20th century); so it is not relevant scientific field in Serbia. Unlike phonolgy, phonetics is very relevant field in Serbian linguistics. There are at least four phonetic laboratories on Belgrade University (Institute for Experimental Phonetics and Speech Pathology, Philological Faculty, Philosophical Faculty and Faculty for Electircal Engineering). --millosh (talk (sr:)) 11:40, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
I retreat and I claim the opposite :-). Duja 16:25, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

I realized now why I said 'alveolar' instead of dental (th/the are dental). However, it should be noted that all of them are "officially" and phonetically dental, but in some other way then English th/the. So, some note inside of parentheses or similar would be good enough to explain that those sounds are not alveolar, but that it is the closest approximation. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 15:55, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Phonologically, you mean? ;;).
 :) No. See above :) --millosh (talk (sr:)) 11:40, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
See, the problem is that Serbo-Croatian s is always an IPA [s]]. In Wikipedia, this is defined as Voiceless alveolar plosive. I see no problem to note that official phonology lists it as dental, but only as a remark; otherwise, we're creating confusion. The confusion is IMO already created with [v] versus [ʋ]; we should decide whether we do the phonological listing (as in Serbian textbooks) or phonetical one. These should be the same, yet they're not in official sources. And there we have a problem. Duja 19:35, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
As I said, it is phonetically and we should just note that it is treated as a dental, as well as articulations is dental, but IPA approximation is alveolar (and link it to alveolar sound). --millosh (talk (sr:)) 11:40, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
Having browsed through various Wiki "Foo phonology" articles, many list /s, c, z/ (French phonology, Italian phonology, Russian phonology) as dental or dental/alveolar, but link to appropriate articles of alveolar type. The duality is to an extent explained in Dental consonant. Maybe it's a result of English phonology applied worldwide? Duja 16:25, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
I don't speak SC, so take what I'm saying with a grain of salt, but if SC /s, c, z/ are or can be pronounced with the tip of the tongue touching the lower teeth, then what we have here are probably laminal denti-alveolar sibilants - in the case of European languages simply called "dental". There's no problem distinguishing dental sibilant from non-sibilant fricatives in the IPA: the one is [s̪] (ess-bridge), and the other [θ] (theta). But a denti-alveolar articulation is common for laminal alveolars (it's the rearmost area of contact that counts accoustically, even if it's the foremost area of contact that's visible and most often gets described), so perhaps the sibilant should be transcribed as [s̻] (ess-square). However, there are cases where a denti-alveolar articulation is further forward than a true laminal alveolar, but is not quite purely dental either. Often in such cases the dental bridge diacritic is used. In case of doubt, though, the safe bet is the laminal square diacritic. kwami 20:50, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
Then, [s̻] is the right IPA notation. --millosh (talk (sr:)) 11:40, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
There's a nice example in Russian phonology#Consonants. It has two tables, one with basic phonemes, and the other with phonetic details; at least, it makes it clear whether the discussion is about language phonology or phonetics. So, I suggest that the current table remains as-is until we someone writes more specific article about our phonology and phonetics. Duja 21:58, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Categorisation

According to the most recent census here, there was a total of 7,015 speakers of Serbo-Croatian and Croato-Serbian in Croatia, which is less then the number of speakers of Albanian, Bosnian, Czech, Hungarian, Roma, Slovenian, Serbian, or Italian. Also, it has no official status or recognition in Croatia, that's why I removed it from the category "Languages of Croatia". --Elephantus 11:39, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Serbo-Croatian declaration was political and not real linguistical category. People that declare their nativa langauge as SC or HS only expressed their opinion on language issue. Luka Jačov 11:46, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I'm not really into mind reading. As I said, there is neither a significant community of speakers nor any kind of official recognition to warrant its inclusion in the category. --Elephantus 12:21, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Croatian, Serbian, Kajkavian, Chakavian, Shtokavian they all belong to Serbo-Croatian. More than 95% of Croatian population speak it as mother tongue no matter how they call it. Wikipedia doesnt have to adjust to any goverment decission on matters like this especially to narrow minded nationalism. Luka Jačov 12:30, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is about what people themselves think, say and claim. And people, in this case, have spoken. So, second-guessing census results is a no-no. --Elephantus 23:26, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes and these people have linguistic education. come on... Luka Jačov 22:13, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Here, "people" meant speakers. Languages are formed by a community of speakers, not linguists. --Elephantus 09:52, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
I'd agree with Elephantus re: languages are formed by a community of speakers, but I don't believe his reasoning necessarily supports his conclusion, it is counted in the census and is as the category includes Istriot language, Istro-Romanian language, I think it needs fixing. We don't have Dalmatian language in there, so there isn't a precedent for historical purposes. - FrancisTyers 10:10, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
The difference is that in the case of Serbo-Croatian we don't know how this "language" looks like-unlike Dalmatian, Istriot etc. One can easily recognize whether a short text (say, the Lord's prayer or the Isha upanishad) is in Croatian or in Serbian. But-what would be a Serbo-Croatian ? A 50-50% mix ? 70-30% ? 20-80% ? Serbo-Croatian is not a cover or "encompassing" term, but a derivative one. Sure, one can say that they speak Serbo-Croatian, but if this conention possesses any thruth, this would mean a mixture of Croatian and Serbian: something like a mix of Bulgarian and Macedonian, or Czech and Slovak. A possibility of mixing, without rules, of 2,3,... elements doesn't imply existence of a stable mixture. In case there were rules for combining Serbian and Croatian into another language-then, the S-C would have meaning. Otherwise, it's just a fossil notion from the past ("Slovin" language, luminiferous ether,..).Mir Harven 21:00, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
I admire your knowledge on the matter, but, to reuse Francis's words, I don't agree with the conclusions you draw from it. In a dialect continuum like ours, it's a matter of definition (and/or political force) where you draw the language borders. A Croat from e.g. pre-war Sarajevo might say that he spoke Croatian, but one could not distinguish his idiom from his Serb neighbour who spoke Serbian. And both idioms would not be identical to those of Zagreb or Belgrade. I don't imply that Bosnian idiom is the Serbo-Croatian language; rather, my point is that "language existence is in the eye of beholder". On both questions, "did Serbo-Croatian exist?" and "does it exist?" I reply mu. Duja 21:13, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
Well-actually, the "official BH language" was not a mix: it was Serbian Ijekavian, a variant of the Serbian language (although it was not desirable to say it loud).And-I learned it as wu. Lu Kuan Yu, "Ch'an and Zen Teachings". Eh, tempus fugit..Mir Harven 21:29, 20 April 2006 (UTC)


There's NOTHING to MIX between Serbian and Croatian dialect of SerboCroatian language, for a simple reason that they are just 2 DIALECTS of a SAME LANGUAGE, and they use same WORDS! Capishe? Mixing is going just in your brain! Cheers!

[edit] The improvement of the text

I guess the text would be more readable if the basic info on the theme is included, as a prologue of a sort.

1. what is a language, what a dialect, what can be consider variants of a language or various languages- this is not a linguistic question. This is a socio-political designation.

2. to say that X and Y are one language linguistically, but two politically, is an unsupportable claim. See the point 1.

3. languages are, in linguistic atlases, classified mainly along typological-structural similarities. But, here we're again in the muddle: sometimes the "twin languages" (the most famous pair, Hindi & Urdu) are classified as variants of a language, and sometimes as different languages. So, the typological criterion is evidently not enough. The only way to tell a variant from a language is the existence of a language community: that's why Nynorsk and Bokmal are variants, and not different languages, and Hindi & Urdu different languages (in the majority of classifications)-and not variants. There is not one langauge community that would use both Hindi and Urdu.

4. also, the written languages are not in the same position as ordinary vernaculars spoken mainly in what are essentially Neolithic societies. In short- although it would be nice if one could deal with language structures, as it were, "history-free", this is impossible. The history has decided, for instance, that Serbian and Croatian do not have phonemes /ś/ and /ź/ in the standard languages. Phonologically, it would be more rational had the difference between šuma and liśće had been preserved.

5. here we have come to the standard languages question. As is well known, linguists can make & remake languages. For instance, if some proposals dealing with Croatian are accepted, the number of phonemes in standard Croatian will be different from that in the standard Serbian and Bosnian. /č/ (or /ć/) will be gone, as well as /dž/ (or /đ/- I dont have the proper fonts). But-the Serbian/Bosnian can follow the same politics (why bother with essentially unnecessary phonemes ?), and we'll have standard languages with the same number of phonemes-just, a bit trunctated.

6. linguistic (not dialectological) atlases give standard languages classifications. We've seen that standard languages can be done & undone & redone. I think that this aspect of arbitrariness has to be stressed when dealing with the theme. Mir Harven 21:33, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

I, more or less, agree with your points, but I don't think that such elaboration is appropriate for this article. There's e.g. a good one at Ausbausprache et al. IOW, the Serbo-Croatian situation is not so unique. I think that we should stay focused on the subject; this is (meant to be) an Encyclopedia and I find that such prologue would be more suitable for a scientific magazine. And I don't see how you could make such prologue short. Duja 21:51, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
Agreed, but then make a short intro mentioning the Abstand/Ausbau dichotomy. Maybe I'll write something later, if I can find spare time. Later...Mir Harven 22:21, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
I did some minor expansion of the intro, trying to explain the dichotomy, and linking to relevant *sprache articles (the big one might get split, so I linked it twice in effect). Duja 20:48, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

I think Pluricentric language might be a better description than Dachsprache ? I'll check what it says in Kloss' paper when I get home, but I suspect that is the term he uses to describe BCSMxyz. - FrancisTyers 10:14, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Kloss refers to it as a "Polycentric standard language".
The relation between the polycentric standard language (as typified by Serbo-Croatian) and the ausbau language (as typified by Slovak in its relation to Czech) is not a static but a dynamic one. In some countries we observe a tendency to bring about a rapprochement. In Norway, e.g., no expert would have doubted at the turn of the century that Riksmaal and Landsmaal were different languages. Since then systematic efforts have been made to make them more and more similar so that today there are experts who hold that they should be regarded as two forms of one language, that is to say, of a polycentric standard language.
From "Abstand languages" and "Ausbau languages" (1967). - FrancisTyers 17:26, 20 April 2006 (UTC)


More on what "polycentric standard language"'s are:
... we have two variants of the same standard, based on the same dialect or a near-identical dialect. Serbo-Croatian is a case in point. The existence of two variants must not prevent us from treating them as a single language, for there is a difference between the two but not intrinsic distance apart from any external features like script or spelling which have little or nothing to do with the corpus of the language. Moldavian and Roumanian also seem to be variants of the same standard language rather than two separate languages and according to some - but not all - experts, the same holds true for the relation between Perian and Tajik. Polycentric standards will be found where a language is dominant in two or more geographically separated countries (British and American English; Portguese in Brazil and Portugal) and in speech communities which are still in the beginning stage of their modernization (Albanians, Basques, Kurds, etc.), or where political circumstances have brought about separated developments for two variants of one single language (Roumanian and Moldavian; Serbian and Croatian).
- FrancisTyers 17:31, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
There was a discussion, ca. 5-6 months ago, between a notable Croatian linguist Ivo Pranjković and, well, not so notable Croatian (or Serbo-Croatian) linguist Snježana Kordić, a resident lecturer in Germany (I forgot where, one could use gooogle). Bottom line: she insisted on a pluri/polycentric definition, he on the Ausbau. The difference is this: a polycentric language serves one language community (say, Norwegian), Ausbau different language communities. Since there is no Serbo-Croatian language community (let's not forget that Bosniaks are offended by the very name), there can be no variants of a standard language. Only possible variants are ekavian and ijekavian variant of the Serbian language. For those interested in arguments, they are presented, in a somewhat shorthand manner, at http://www.public.asu.edu/~dsipka/PRIK10B1.HTM Mir Harven 18:15, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
I'd probably agree with you there. Its fair to say that now Croatian/Serbian are Ausbau languages, previously (when Kloss was writing) they were pluri/polycentric.
It would be more correct to say that they have been Ausbau languages from the moment (or period) they have been standardized. The substance and structure of Serbian and Croatian (I won't address the Bosnian language issue) has not changed in past 15 years. So, there were no language changes, but only changes in languages recognition. Btw-had this situation been so idyllic in the major part of the 20th century, there would not have been language quarrels (some of them described at Franolić's page http://web.archive.org/web/20040606041856/http://www.cam.ac.uk/societies/cro/crolang.htm Mir Harven 18:54, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
Evidently, By language community I presume you mean official recognition. It should be mentioned though that linguists do still use the term Serbo-Croatian to refer to all the dialects spoken in the former-SC area, unless they are specifically discussing features of the standard or features of a subgroup of dialects etc. In my experience, the distinction is usually footnoted in detail :) - FrancisTyers 18:23, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Category

Funny, how people argue over these stupidities, when even Wikipedia (Slavic languages) doesn't separate the languages. If one views the Brockhaus Encyclopedia or Encyclopedia Britannica, or even LaRousse, he/she will notice that the seperation of the Serbo-Croatian language was accepted only politicly (as it factually only that way was possible to do) and no serious linguist even considers (maybe there are exceptions) the political mettling of some nationalists that mettle in linguistics in these lands. --HolyRomanEmperor 10:57, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm...who are "serious linguists" with regard to the "Serbo-Croatian" (let's use this name) ? As far as I know, the following names are the most prominent:
  • Serbian linguists (Ranko Bugarski, Milka Ivić, Milorad Radovanović, Slobodan Remetić,..). Their main thesis is that there (still) exists one, Serbo-Croatian language
  • Croatian linguists (Radoslav Katičić, Dalibor Brozović, Josip Silić, Ivo Pranjković,..). They say that Serbo-Croatian doesn't exist-moreover, it never existed.
  • German, American, Ukrainian, Russian (Werner Lehfeldt, Leopold Auburger, Thomas Magner, Ljudmila Vasiljeva,..): the majority is of the opinion that S-C does not exist now.
Some linx: http://www.ids-mannheim.de/prag/sprachvariation/fgvaria/Kordic_PDF4.pdf, http://www.frankn.com/cgi-bin/a/amazon_products_feed.txt?item_id=3873360098&search_type=AsinSearch&locale=de, http://www.unc.edu/~rdgreenb/ Mir Harven 18:36, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
Wow, there! Didn't you understand my comment. I was arguing your arguements on this talk page. That "Category" dispute was kindah childlish. --HolyRomanEmperor 19:08, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
Here's my opinion on what should be noted in the article. It is important to recognize Serbo-Croatian as a **standard of communication** implemented in the Yugoslav federation between speakers of such dialects (if we may forswear the old arguments about languages and dialects) that were close enough to one another to be unified (but artificially) into one language. Therefore, Serbo-Croatian was ever attached to Yugoslavia -- to the federation; and so it has died with that federation. --VKokielov 20:59, 20 April 2006 (UTC)


Hmmm....no. Actually, the standard for communication in ex-Yu was, on various levels, the Serbian language. Things are much simpler: Serbo-Croatian was considered, under different names, to be one language from, say, ca. 1850s on. The central criterion was mutual intelligibility combined with basic grammar (morphology + basic syntax). But, evidently, texts from 1880, 1900, 1930, 1960,..can be easily recognized as either Cro. or Serb. So, if you insist on intelligibility in communication only: Serbian and Croatian are one language. If you insist on defining the physionomy of language (word-formation, higher syntax, semantics, lexicon, discourse,..), you got 2 languages (at least). If you insist on profiling the standard of the chief language of communication in ex-Yu: it was Serbian.Mir Harven 21:16, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
I guess there's nothing to it any more but linguistic shorthand, nowadays, in any case.  :) You're apsolutli right. --VKokielov 22:08, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
Does that mean that what was called Serbo-Croatian was in fact Serbian with the occasional concession to the other dialects? --VKokielov 22:09, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
Resounding: yes. Mir Harven 22:48, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
Hmm, I find that statement curious. Are you seriously claiming that all Croatian authors and speakers who called their language Serbo-Croatian at the time were speaking and writing in Serbian with few occasional concessions to other dialects? Zocky | picture popups 13:45, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Yes; the Serbian language never used the Latin scrypt (honor to exceptions) before its melting into the Serbo-Croatian language.However, I think that the real irony lies in the fact that the Serbian language existed for only 3 years (1847-1850) before uniting with the Croatian. Now, minding the 4 year gap in World War II, we now today have what, 12-13 more years ol existence? Compared to nearly 150 years of the Serbo-Croatian language. The Croatian language's just a little older than the Serbian language (first half of the 19th century) as well... --HolyRomanEmperor 16:47, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
These are weird statements. Let's see:
a) the Serbian Cyrillic issue. Actually, the language prevalent in Yugoslavia was a sort of Skerlić's ideal come true: Serbian ekavian written in the Roman script. I can understand the emotional side of the issue (http://www.politika.co.yu/ilustro/2232/6.htm, http://www.rastko.org.yu/projekti/glasnik/dpetrovic-cirilica.html ,..)-but, linguistically, from phonetics to pragmatics, the language was Serbian-apart from the dominant script. Anyway, we all know that Serbian Cyrillic has not seen much revival in past 15 ys. Surely it can't be blamed on Croats, or on the Serbo-Croatian ideology. It's inertia, not much else.
b) the statement about the Serbian (and Croatian) language "life-span" is even weirder. Serbian vernacular has appeared, for the first time, in Gavrilo Venclović's texts in 1740s, and the modern Serbian goes back to the reform of Vuk Karadžić in ca. 1820s. Serbian texts have been appearing under Serbian name from that time on- Laza Lazarević and Milovan Glišić, for instance, or, as far as philology goes, Stojan Novaković, Ljubomir Srojanović,...or Pavle Ivić, who used Serbian appellation alongside Serbo-Croatian. And, this is just about name: it's absurd to claim that Serbian appeared in the 1st half of the 19th century, then disappeared, being swallowed in the Serbo-Croatian, and then reappeare in the 1990s. It's, to put it mildly-a hilarious joke. Mir Harven 19:07, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Recent edit warring over the category thing

In Category:Languages of Croatia we have:

I'd like to see some firm evidence that:
(1) Serbo-Croatian is not spoken in Croatia
(2) Serbo-Croatian was never spoken in Croatia

Now, you have to figure out some really firm evidence to support your statements since I attend Faculty of Philosophy, University of Zagreb and I happen to drink a lot with historians who tell me that official language in Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina was called "Serbo-Croatian" (which means that the language very much existed in some point of time) and I happen to drink a lot with linguists who tell me that the language I speak is pretty much Serbo-Croatian (they say that's because I listen to much of Balašević and Bijelo Dugme and read to much science fiction published in Novi Sad).

If you do not prove neither (1) nor (2), then we have two options:
1) Exclude all but Croatian language from category in question
2) Leave Serbo-Croatian in the category.

Thanks for your patience --Dijxtra 20:15, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

OK, while I don't agree 100% with option 1), I'm willing to go with it and have removed everything but Croatian from the category Languages of Croatia. --Elephantus 13:18, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Hmm, is that a violation of WP:POINT, besides you've already been reverted at Istro-Romanian language. - FrancisTyers 13:46, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Aaaand, Dalmatian language just got reverted? Hoh, well, now we have inconsistencies? Shall we edit-war on all of this articles or just leave the Serbo-Croatian in the category? --Dijxtra 16:23, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
I have gone through most "Language of X" categories and there seem to be no clear-cut criteria for inclusion and exclusion of languages. It is apparently a combination of two things: number of speakers and the "exotic factor" – a small and/or dead language spoken exclusively in country X. Using such roughly defined criteria it's pretty clear that Serbo-Croatian doesn't belong to the category "Languages of Croatia" – it falls somewhere in the middle between Croatian and Serbian (number of speakers) and Istro-Romanian (small, exotic etc.), just like many other languages predominantly spoken elsewhere with small linguistic minorities in Croatia (Albanian, Czech, Slovenian, Roma, Italian, Hungarian, German, Slovakian etc.). --Elephantus 14:40, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
So, if it falls somewhere between Croatian and Serbian, then it is equaly reasonable to put this language to Category:Languages of Croatia and Category:Languages of Serbia and Montenegro. So, then we have following options:
1) removing this article from Category:Languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Category:Languages of Croatia and Category:Languages of Serbia and Montenegro since it falls in between, and then emptying all of Wikipedia categories of articles which fall in between two or more categories
2) leaving this article in Category:Languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Category:Languages of Croatia and Category:Languages of Serbia and Montenegro
Now, which of the two you propose? --Dijxtra 16:23, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
I apologise for not making myself perfectly clear: it falls between Croatian and Serbian _on one hand_ (both have a share of >1% of the population and can be included on that account) and exotic stuff/dead languages like Istro-Romanian, Dalmatian, Istriot etc. _on the other_. As for Bosnia and S&M I left it in those two categories because: 1) there are no data on the linguistic make-up of Bosnia after 1991 so it should be presumed that Serbo-Croatian is still present as a significant language there and 2) the constitution of Serbia still declares Serbo-Croatian as its official language. Otherwise, I would have removed those two categories as well. --Elephantus 17:07, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
But, you do agree that if we permit both Serbian and exotic languages to Category:Languages of Croatia, we should permit Serbo-Croatian too (because it falls in between of those)? --Dijxtra 17:23, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
No, just as I don't think we should include Albanian, Bosniak, Czech, Hungarian, Macedonian, German, Roma, Slovak or Slovenian, all languages with similar number of speakers in Croatia. --Elephantus 14:04, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Then why including Istriot, Istro-Romanian, and Dalmatian? Consistency, man! If we're gonna include obscure languages which are spoken by none or just a few people, then we should do it consistently. Thaks, Dijxtra 14:59, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Consistency is exactly what I'm striving for. I suggest going through the subcategories of Category:Languages of Europe and seeing for yourself. --Elephantus 16:34, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

I'd say Serbo-Croatian was pretty exotic... judging by the level of politicking going on... - FrancisTyers 17:16, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Couple of things

There are a couple of sentences in the second paragraph, which probably need revision.

  1. Many native speakers nowadays find the term politically incorrect or even offensive. - Is this an euphemism for "nationalists hate it when somebody identifies them with people on the other side of Drina"? I'm particularly bothered by "policially incorrect", as most anarchist, socialist, pacifist, etc. organizations would probably prefer S-C when discussing language. Talking about political correctness is especially silly considering it's coming from the part of the world where 41% of web-site visitors would not watch porn movies with Roma because it would be too repugnant
  2. Conversely, the term "Serbo-Croatian" went out of use, first from official documents and gradually from linguistic literature. - can it be sourced that the term went out of use from lingustic literature? I still quite frequently come across the term in books and articles, although I probably have a North American POV.

So, is anyone tethered to this paragraph? I'd rewrite it to something like:

With the breakup of Yugoslavia, language became a more prominent part of ethnic identity, and Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian got (re)affirmed as separate languages (Ausbauspraches). Conversly, the term went out of usage from the official documents (perhaps add exact dates for constitutions, etc.). Censuses reflected the change; in 1971 n% claimed their language was S-C, in 1981 n% did, in 2001 n% did. (s/last sentence/meaningful and useful census results/). The term is still frequently used to describe commonalities of the dialect continuum in Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro.

Please say what you think, so we can avoid another edit war. --dcabrilo 07:15, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

As for no. 1, yes, many native speakers of Croatian, Bosnian and to a lesser extent Serbian find the term politically incorrect or even offensive or just plain wrong. It's not a euphemism for anything, and I think trying to portray all such people as nationalists is also very problematic and unsustainable.
As for no. 2, the term Serbo-Croatian has mostly gone (or is going) out of use even in linguistic circles – many, if not most Western academic institutions have abandoned the term in favour of various combinations of Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian in their course-, program and subject names:
Grammar of Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian on the Slavic and East European Language Resource Center: here.
--Elephantus 14:31, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

What's your point? I can list more Serbo-Croatian ones: [13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [19], [20], [21] etc. What's your point? Some people adopted what new governments decided is right, some didn't. Anyway, I'll ask you to source the universal political incorrectenss. Also, do prove that linguists don't use Serbo-Croatian anymore. --dcabrilo 16:45, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I think I wrote the two sentences in question :-D, but I also like dcabrilo's version, so I invite you to merge. I don't see particular problem with 1st one; "politically incorrect" was purposefully written not to be euphemistic, but to describe the state of affairs: even many non-nationalists would raise an eyebrow hearing a self-reference to "Serbo-Croatian" (but would seldom really object), and "many" is purposefully ambiguous. As for second one, it could be defined more precisely; as far as I heard, many universities switched to separate or "long-name" courses, if only for practical reasons, to avoid creating controversies, and that trend (heard somewhere, can't find the reference) is growing. Duja 10:56, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] WP:POINT

I noticed that Elephantus removed Category:Languages of Croatia from two language articles from my watchlist: Istro-Romanian language and Dalmatian language. I have reverted them. They are/were languages spoken in Croatia and they belong to that category. I won't join your disputes and instead, I just ask you to please stop disrupting the rest of Wikipedia. Thank you. bogdan 13:38, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Categories. My portion

Inasfar as this page is a private playground for a tiny minority in ex-Yugoslavia, that minority will do well to remember the following. "Categories" are visible to the entire site. Adding "Languages of Croatia" as a category goes against not only the official Croatian government stance, but also against the prevailing majority opinion in Croatia. There is no national agitation in the other direction. No one is proposing that we destroy the article or, worse, that we destroy the article about shtokavian dialects. But on this question there should be no compromise. --VKokielov 21:33, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Vkokielov, we don't care about official Croatian government stance all that much. It's important for the article, but it will not determine its content. Also, do bare in mind that, e.g. most of the world doesn't think abortion should be allowed, but that does not mean we are going to delete Abortion. Look up for discussion. --dcabrilo 21:47, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Zivote moj...trebaju ti naocare. I say in particular no one is suggesting we delete anything -- except for this little lie -- and you tell compare to deleting abortion...--VKokielov 15:19, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry that you're trying to portray this as evil Croatian government vs. the good people – it's simply not true. Also, in one of your edit summaries you stated "find a proof that serbo-croatian was never spoken and is not spoken in Croatia" – this is also clearly absurd, as most of the languages that were ever spoken or are spoken in a given country are _not_ included in the category "Languages of Country". --Elephantus 09:41, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

First of all, the burden of proof is on DCabrilo, not on us. Second, there was never an independent Croatian state which listed Serbocroatian as an official language. --VKokielov 15:17, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Ok, guys, try to think outside of the box for a moment. First of all let's all agree on something: language cannot be defined. There is no clearcut border between dialects and languages. Also, Serbo-Croatian is a concept used by many people, including linguists and politicans, to describe language(s) of Bosnia, Croatia and S&M. It's not exclusively used, but it is used often enough to be important. Serbo-Croatian is also a name of the standard (somewhat prescriptive) language, and we colloquialy often call idiom which combines today's independent prescriptivism of Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian as such.

Now, Wikipedia is not a place to please anybody, nor do our standards reflect any government's opinion. If I wanted to learn something more about Croatia, I would of course be interested in language(s) spoken there. I would then surf a little, browse some categories, and I would inevitably want to know what is Serbo-Croatian language and how it differs from Croatian. I would find out here, on Wikipedia, that many people used Serbo-Croatian to describe unity of Serbian and Croatian, and would expect to see some mention of Serbo-Croatian in articles about Serbia and Croatia. I would also find it very interesting to read how many people in Croatia think of their language as Serbo-Croatian, Croato-Serbian or Croatian or Serbian, and how the government deals with that stuff.

Excluding such information, not putting the most obvious categories in respective articles, is just silly. Categories are here to make surfing easier, to put pieces together and Serbo-Croatian of course merits such inclusion. --dcabrilo 03:06, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Serbo-Croatian is propably the only "standard" language in history that didn't have standard. It had at least two standards. It's like creating Dutch-German language with "2 standards" - dutch and german. Quite a strange "language". --Ante Perkovic 05:54, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

The language you are using right now does not have any single standard. Prescriptivism is not as wide spread as you may think. BTW. I'm not sure if you read my argument. Term Serbo-Croatian is primaraly descriptive, not prescriptive. Nobody denies that idiolects are different, although it is a fact that a person from Belgrade will communicate much easier with a person from Zagreb or Sarajevo, than with a person from a village near Leskovac. But, once again, we cannot and should not try to define languages, just describe what we know. --dcabrilo 15:23, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Does the fact that people from Copenhagen are able to read Henrik Ibsen's plays without translation mean that we should put Dano-Norwegian in the category "Languages of Denmark"? --Elephantus 04:48, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Elephantus, do try to take my arguments into consideration. It took me some time to type it all out, not because I'm usually that verbose, but because I tried to present it from a different perspective. --dcabrilo 05:20, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Some people used to use and some still use Dano-Norwegian to describe what they perceive as unity (or at least closeness) of Danish and one of the Norwegian standards. Does this mean that Dano-Norwegian should be put in the category Languages of Denmark or doesn't it? --Elephantus 06:03, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure at all. But, "Dano-Norwegian" gets less than 30k google hits, while "Serbo-Croatian" gets 2,900,000 (it doesn't prove anything but that Serbo-Croatian is more widely used concept). --dcabrilo 13:29, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] (Serbo-)(Croatian) [l]

And now a little linguistic question for a change. The [l] is described as "lateral alveolar approximant" in the article. I've always been wondering - isn't it velarized, at least in some varities of Serbian? Thanks. --85.187.44.131 10:24, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, no—the "pure" phoneme is not velarized, and velarized occurs only as an allophone. However, unlike Torlakian and Macedonian, Serbian has lost L in many vocalic and pre-consonant positions (which became O or U), so velarized allophone is even rarer in standard Serbian. Now, Torlakian is (mostly) a part of Serbian diasystem but not standardized, and such treatment is considered sub-standard. See also here. Duja 11:51, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. In what contexts does the velarized allophone occur in Serbian? In Macedonian and Bulgarian, /l/ is velarized everywhere except before /e/ and /i/, but my auditory impression has always been that Serbian /l/ is velarized even there (or at least before /e/)?.. --85.187.44.131 13:59, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Normally, it will be velarized preceding most consonants (esp. velar ones): polka, strelci, Malta. However, take a look at the last paragraph in velarized lateral alveolar approximant – in most cases, Serbo-Croatian -el-, -il-, -ol-, etc. has already evolved in history into -eo-, -io-, -u- etc. (bio, beo, suza) so cases with terminal and pre-consonant /l/ are far rarer than in Macedonian and Bulgarian. What remained are mostly pre-vocalic L's. Duja 07:45, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
I see. And yet...
Maybe I'm crazy :), but when listening to the text [here], I'm 99% sure that I'm hearing a velarized ("dark") [l] in words like "pelene", "chuvali", "leze", "videli", "chuli", "isprichali" ... (though not in "loze" and "bila"!?)
Sine I'm Bulgarian, I'm pretty "sensitive" for it, because we'd have a "clear" /l/ in "pelene", and a "dark" /l/ in "loze". Now this sounds to me like some North-Western Bulgarian dialects that have a dark /l/ in "pelene". Similiarly, Russian and, I think, Czech velarize all the [l]s that aren't palatalized anyway.
Err, any comments? What do you hear in "pelene" and "chuli"? --85.187.44.131 13:10, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
Are you my old friend from Macedonian language with new IP number?
Yep, I am. Persistently "anonymous". Now I have an account, but I only use it when absolutely necessary. I wonder how you people have the patience to log in each time. --85.187.44.131 14:57, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
The cookies do it for us. --logixoul 13:50, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
I admit my ear is not so sensitive. I hear in "pelene" and "čuli" just the right L :-). Now seriously, to my ear, most Bulgarian ones sound have a lateral component (/ɬ/) (admittedly, not as audible as Welsh one), unlike Serbian ones, except the ones in e.g. ангел and гостилница, which are clearly velarized.
Now you've got me confused. Did you mean they sounded voiceless like the Welsh thing? --85.187.44.131 14:57, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
Yes, my bad. See below.
The latter two, however, are far more velarized than all the ones from Serbian examples. What do you hear in Croatian variant? To me, the ones in Serbian and Croatian samples sound the same. Duja 13:43, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
To me, too. I'd almost say that the Croatian ones reaffirm my heretical beliefs, because they sound even more definitely velarized than the Serbian ones to me. No "normal" Bulgarian could ever say "Galileje" like this. Same thing with "Betlehem", "plemena" and "gle". It's very much like the Czech version. --85.187.44.131 14:57, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
I agree with you that Bulgarian L is "softer" than Serbo-Croatian L (except terminal/pre-consonant ones) ("softer" being used in purely non-scientific sense). I disagree with your diagnose that it's more velar. Did you listen to ogg files in:
(You'll also need to install Ogg codecs).
Now, what I hear in Serbo-Croatian is alveolar lateral approximant. What I hear in Bulgarian is not Voiceless alveolar lateral fricative but it, how should I say, leans in that direction... slightly more palatalized... but you should really get a phonetician. Maybe I'll invite Kwami to join this discussion. Duja 07:26, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
Yes, thanks, it would be useful to hear other people's opinions on this. BTW, I didn't diagnose all Bulgarian /l/s as more/less velar than Serbo-Croatian, I just keep distinguishing between /l/ in гостилница and, say, цялата (before consonants and non-front vowels) and /l/ in Галилея (before front vowels). To me, the first /l/ sounds like /l/ in English all, and the second close to /l/ in British English lion and nearly identical to the "general European" /l/ as in French alors, German leider, Spanish, etc.. In Bulgarian, both are contrasted with the palatalized /lʲ/ phoneme (as in лято and Russian лето). --85.187.44.131 09:42, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
To clarify: we agree that Bulgarian гостилница and Serbian strelci have velarized L (so I dropped that from discussion altogether). I also hear that the Bulgarian and Serbian L are different, but I don't think that Serbian one is velarized (by the way, note that e.g. Serbian Birth of Jesus doesn't have any pre-consonant and terminal ones). Further, Serbian does not distinguish between L before front and back vowels. To be honest, I'm learning along – but maybe the difference is that Serbian L is always apical while Bulgarian pre-front-vowel one is laminal (or maybe I'm talking b*s*t)? Unfortunately, Kwami is on a wikibreak; I'll try to drag someone from International Phonetic Alphabet. Duja 13:02, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unprotected

The article has now been unprotected per a request by User:Duja at WP:RfPP. I'm hoping that you've all reached agreement on the debated aspects of the article and will be able to edit responsibly, taking into consideration the ideas of others, and with adequate discussion. Please do your best to abide by WP:1RR, or even 0RR where possible--discuss changes and reverts, and then implement with consensus. If edit-warring begins to flare up again, I will have this page watchlisted and will jump in at the first sign and reprotect. Please drop me a note on my talk page or here if you feel protection is necessary again, or if you need my assistance with anything else. Thanks, and happy editing! AmiDaniel (talk) 09:56, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Duja 12:41, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] grijati

It is said in the article that Ijekavian word grijati was formed by the rule that r + short ě gives ri. That's not true. Usually there would be an e here (because of consonant + r + short ě, which gives re*), but there is i because of j that follows it. When a vowel or a soft consonant follows short yat, it turns into i in Ijekavian dialect. --213.244.208.49 19:29, 7 July 2006 (UTC) (Djordje D. Bozovic, I can't log in now, mrzi me) * - notice that r + short ě gives rje when in front of a word or when it's after a vowel. It gives re only when it's after a consonant (rječni, rječnik, rječica, rječca).


Um... in the same article (Rendering of yat) the last line of the table (saw) claims that ijekavian rendering of the word vid˘el is vidio... AFAIK (and i'm a native ijekavian speaker) it should be vidjeo. Similar example: s˘el (sat) sjeo. So the rule should be ˘el -> jeo. Correct me if i'm wrong?! 89.164.155.24 01:00, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Serbo-Croato-Bosnian, etc

Due to recent edits, I went ahead and did a google and google scholar search on the included alternate terms for Serbo-Croatian.

Here are my results

Google Google scholar
Serbo-Croatian 3,350,000 6,570
Croato-Serbian 1,340 90
Serbo-Croato-Bosnian 368 1
Serbo-Bosnian-Croatian 6 0
Bosnian-Serbo-Croatian 535 0
Bosnian-Croato-Serbian 999 0
Croato-Serbo-Bosnian 9 0
Croato-Bosnian-Serbian 9 0

This is, of course, a rough count since I noticed a number of instances were a result said "Bosnian (Serbo-Croatian)" or some other non-dashed format. But the point is clear. The top two are clearly the most common to such a degree that the other forms can be considered mistakes. Of these terms listed, only Serbo-Croatian and Croato-Serbian should be included. AEuSoes1 01:26, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Terminology

If I wanted to refer to all of these closely related languages combined, which would be the preferred terminology? Since Scandinavian languages and Hindustani are terms agreed upon by linguists, there should be some acceptable term here as well, trying to avoid political overtones... 惑乱 分からん 15:20, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I use "Serbo-Croatian" wherever practical (i.e. if brevity is called for); a very linguisto-politically correct name would be "Central South Slavic diasystem" (which, of course, carries the risk that you won't be understood). "Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian" could be a "politically (hyper)correct" term (waiting for Montenegrins to object). Duja► 16:08, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, I still think it's a better choice than having the exact same linguistic examples described three different times for political correctness... 惑乱 分からん 16:26, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Name

The article was moved from 'Serbo-Croatian language' to 'Serbo-Croatian' -- any idea why? - Francis Tyers · 14:48, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Hm. Don't know, but why not? Naming policy: shortest possible non-ambiguous term. "Language" is not needed, because "Serbo-Croatian" hardly ever refers to anything else, does it? Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:15, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
Per Wikipedia:WikiProject Languages#Structure, note below 2). Not that I think it's exactly applicable ("Esperanto language" is pretty nonsensical, "Serbo-Croatian language" isn't), but as FP said, "why not". Duja► 15:26, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
Serbo-Croatian, differently from Esperanto, wasn’t a 100% artificially-constructed language. The eventual differences between the ways of speaking and writing from Serbians, Croatians and Bosnians are similar (or even smaller) to the differences between British English and American English. And Bosnians, Croatians and Serbians don’t need interpreters to talk with each other. So, Serbo-Croatian still exists somehow, but nowadays it’s called Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian basically because the religious nationalism that arised during Yugoslav Wars. That’s it.--MaGioZal 12:36, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
Correct, but religious nationalism is not the point. --PaxEquilibrium 16:42, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

No, that is exactly the point!; Just because you share different beliefs or write in different characters does not mean it is ANOTHER LANGUAGE! If that was the case, the Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims would fighting each other over this senseless issue. Yes, they are a few differences in slang and vocabulary, but the grammatical structure is the same, it is understandable, and you don't need ANY interpreters whatsoever. Other examples would be the African Americans, the White and Hispanic, who coins up a lot of phrases due to their history, but they speak the SAME language with NO need to have a translator by their side! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.178.187.243 (talk) 17:49, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I suggest moving the article to 'Central South Slavic diasystem' since the first sentence of the article itself says it is just a term for various languages and dialects. It would be linguistically and politically correct. Mrcina (talk) 20:42, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps we need two articles - one about the Central South Slavic diasystem and the vernacular dialects (srpskohrvatski narodni jezik or srednjojužnoslavenski dijasustav), and one about the Serbo-Croatian literary language of 1850s-1990s (srpskohrvatski/hrvatskosrpski književni jezik in Yugoslavia). --George D. Božović (talk) 15:28, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
That is a great idea. Mrcina (talk) 22:33, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dj and Tj

Are there words that have dj and tj inside them? As in, words that would conflict with writing Đ as dj or Ć as tj? The article says it causes ambiguities, but can someone provide an example? -Iopq 07:50, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Nadjačati (to overwhelm), tjeskoba (anxiety). But your question is wrong: Ć is never writen as Tj, and Đ is written as Dj only when one has to stick to "pure ASCII", in which case there are even bigger ambiguities regarding omission of diacritics from Š, Č and Ć: (ASCII) sisati = sisati (to suck) or šišati (to trim); (ASCII) pice = pice (pizzas) or piće (drink)? The language is not meant to be, and normally isn't written that way. Duja► 08:12, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Well, my question is not wrong because I never said that it was written as tj. I am actually working on a project and I'm trying to see how many Slavic languages distinguish tj (тй, тj) from ть (Ć, t'). I assumed serbo-croatian doesn't, but obviously this is not the case. Thanks, it seems that the majority of the languages do. -Iopq 08:53, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Ah OK. But then, it contains an incorrect assumption that Ć and Đ in Serbo-Croatian chiefly come as result of Iotation of T and D. Some of Đ's do (nađen (found), građani (citizens) ), and few Ć's might [compare S-C poći (to start), peći (to bake) the exact morphology of which I'm not sure of, with Russian пойти, печь] but iotation in Serbo-Croatian is seldom productive today. DJ and TJ combinations at morpheme boundaries which occured later during the course of language development are mostly preserved. Some notable dialects do still morph TJ into Ć (potjerati->poćerati, (to drive off)) but it's not standard. Many Đ's and Ć's actually seem to have an origin of its own, or stem from Turkish, Hungarian and Italian loanwords. Was this more helpful? Duja► 10:57, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Russian пойти comes from the same root as idem, not poći which comes from the same root as начать (correct me if I'm wrong). Unless you're using it for the "go" meaning instead of the "begin" meaning. Well, from some words like ђаво (compare to Russian дьавол) which comes from Greek διάβολος it would seem that the loans also had the same transformation. But names like Ференц Ђурчањ do come from actual palatal sounds in Hungarian. -Iopq 16:05, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Yes, poći (more precisely, "to start going") and пойти are cognates, coming from "to go" root. Also, početi and начать are cognates ("to start" (doing something)). However, I'll throw a random list of words containing ć and đ whose origin is unknown to me: ćaskati (to chat), vreća (bag), kuća (house), ćutati (to be silent), međa (landmark, boundary), riđ (red-haired), đubre (trash), lađa (ship). I can identify etimology of some other: đinđuva (Turkish), ađutant (Italian), aforementioned đavo (Greek), rađati (by iotation from rod-, to give birth); ćar (Turkish), ćurka (dunno how, but apparently cognate to Turkey (bird)), vraćati (by iotation from vrat-, to return). Duja► 16:44, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Well, if you consider that ćurka at some point was tjurka then the resemblance to turkey becomes undeniable. -Iopq 14:00, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
Wait, tjeskoba is only in Ijekavian, right? What about a word that contains тj in Ekavian? -Iopq 01:09, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
I didn't mention them because I couldn't have recalled any. There are (IIRC) no prefixes ending in -t, and few suffixes starting with -j did affect the preceding -t, resulting in iotation: Хришћани, љући. I did a brief search in few documents I have around and found none -tj-'s in Ekavian texts. It seems to be rare or even nonexistant (except in foreign text translations, e.g. Тетюхин -> Tetjuhin). Duja► 09:00, 14 December 2006 (UTC)


[edit] SIMPLE TRUTH

All one needs to do is listen. Just listen to a Serb for 5 minutes and then a Croat for just as long. You will see that it is a simple truth that these two people have spoken in an identical language. Yes, I dare say identical!, because if you then listen to a Slovak, a Slovene or a Macedonian (the speakers of languages most simmilar) you will easily be able to tell the difference. That is why it is unikely IDIOTIC, among the languages of the world, to say that these people do not speak the same language. Indeed you would have to be either a raving nationalist, an ignorant scholar buried in books of sundering history (wich has ripped apart the culture of this nation sending it on a path of mutual hatered) or a religion-blinded fool not to see that THIS IS ONE LANGUAGE. 'Croatian' supposedly has three dialects: the shtokavian, the (dying) chakavian and the kajkavian. I am a speaker of the shtokavian one from the city of Split, in Croatia's Dalmatia province and I can honestly and objectively say that I UNDERSTAND SERBS FAR BETTER THAN THE PEOPLE AROUND ZAGREB WHO SPEAK THE KAJKAVIAN DIALECT. It is one thing when people understand each other's language, but a completely diffrent thing when the SPEAKERS OF THE SUPPOSEDLY 'DIFFERNT' LANGUAGES QUITE OFTEN UNDERSTAND EACH OTHER BETTER THAN SPEAKERS OF 'THEIR OWN LANGUAGE'. I present this simple argument as evidence of a simple truth overlooked by many who are learned in the troubled history of our people and have forgotten common sense. It is quite riddiculous, therefore, to say we speak different languages. dIREKTOR


I TOTALLY agree with you diReKTOR, and for all those that want to read more about the Serboroatian language, here's an article from the Dalmatian newsapaper 'Slobodna Dalmacija', from 2006, where they have an interview with a famous croatian linguist, who admits that Serbian and Croatian are ONE language! I will translate this article in English very soon, for now it's in SerboCroatian. Please follow this link: http://arhiv.slobodnadalmacija.hr/20060207/kultura01.asp

Just CLICK THE LINK AND YOU"LL SEE THE TRUTH! CHEERS!


*sigh*... common sense, you are missed in the Balkans. :( lol Stop The Lies 01:30, 8 February 2007 (UTC)Stop_The_Lies
Yeah pretty silly. Kinda like war. The fact of the matter is, though, that speakers consider it a different language and so scholars follow suit. Chinese has the opposite situation. Many "dialects" that we would call languages. Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 20:51, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
We could call people who think the two are separate language idiots, but it would be offensive and where would it get (besides, they think the people who think Serbo-Croat's one're idiots). But naturally, in time, Serbo-Croat will reunite when we're all in the European Union (it has always been like that for Serbs and Croats - 50 years of peace & glory and then brutal slaughter and then again and again and again...don't see a reason why it won't happen again (this time without the latter part for good, hopefully). --PaxEquilibrium 01:14, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
"Serbo-Croatian" is (a) politically, a common language standard (with variants) of Serbs, Croats etc. - now largely dead, and (b) linugistically, a somewhat arbitrary grouping of Slavic languages spoken in Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Montenegro. Nobody relevant is disputing the facts that Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, etc. are now separate standards (although they still influence each other), nor that most Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks and Montenegrins speak Shtokavian vernacular, which is linguistically quite uniform compared to smaller surrounding languages where dialects change significantly between neighbouring valleys.
People often confuse the two issues, and we get regual protests about one or the other. Maybe we should rewrite the intro to make these two aspects clearer to readers? Zocky | picture popups 17:28, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
Good idea. Any suggestions? --PaxEquilibrium 01:40, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
Well as a speaker of the language I would agree that it is all one language. The main point of contention is that using the term Serbo-Croatian leaves out Bosnians (and now Montenegrins since their independence). That is why BHS or Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (in the language it is Bosanski/Hrvatski/Srpski) is used by many international organizations including the ICTY. My feeling is that linguistics should be based on science and not political pressure. However Wikipedia cannot change this and needs to report on the facts. The University of Zenica has a department of BHS literature and language.[22]. Read the Wikipedia article about Bosnian language and you will see information about how it came out in the 12th century, but wasn't widely heard of because of a lack of standardization and political will. Following the argument that these are different languages you would also need to split up Spanish from Spain, Cuba, Argentina, Colombia, and every South American nation. (76.108.174.133 01:47, 4 April 2007 (UTC)).

[edit] Map

A map showing the spread of the different dialects of the SC language(s) in the region would be more than welcome in order to make it more comprehensible.


You can see the map of SerboCroatian Language and its dialects in the section of 'Bosnian language', written in bosnian.

[edit] Offensive

Could do with a citation. - Francis Tyers · 07:37, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] SerboCroatian is ONE LANGUAGE, no matter that it has 2 standards:-cyrillic and latin.

For all those morons of the Ante Perkovic and Mir Harven's type, who spread lies about the same language od Serbs and Croats: -Your dying propaganda is becoming more and more obvious, and nobody normal will be fooled by you any more. Maybe you have temporary fooled the editor od the Bosnian/Croatian/Srebian page to lock it out, but it won't last for long. Your ideas will collaps very soon, because they're fake. The good news is that SerboCroatian Language will be ONE LANGUAGE in all official sites of EU, under the name of BCS. It's a big thing and very certainly you will all dissapear forever, together with your evil propaganda. As a speaker of SerboCroatian, dalmatian dialect, I will repeat that Dalmatian SC dialect is much closer to Serbian SC dialect, than to Zagreb's dialect. Dalmatinians feel much closer linguistically and mentally to Serbs than to Croats from the Northern Croatia. That's the truth, someone like it or not! As for the unity of the SerboCroatian language, here's an article from 'Slobodna Dalmacija', a newspaper from Split, Dalmatia, from 2006, in which there's an interview with a famuous croatian linguist, who despite all negative influence around him-confirms that Serbian and Croatian are ONE and SAME LANGUAGE-SerboCroatian.

http://arhiv.slobodnadalmacija.hr/20060207/kultura01.asp

CHEERS!


[edit] Official language status

Per Duja's request in edit summary, let me clarify why (I claim) there were no three official languages. A quote from Pravna enciklopedija, 1979, entry "Jezik" (my emphasize): Prema odredbama čl. 246. Ustava SFRJ jezici naroda i narodnosti i njihova pisma ravnopravni su na teritoriji Jugoslavije. U SFRJ su u službenoj upotrebi jezici naroda, a jezici narodnosti su u službenoj upotrebi u skladu sa ovim ustavom i saveznim zakonom. Osim toga, prema ovoj odredbi, zakonom (republičkim i pokrajinskim) i statutom društvenopolitičke zajednice i samoupravnim aktima organizacija udruženog rada i drugih samoupravnih organizacija i zajednica obezbeđuje se ostvarivanje ravnopravnosti jezika i pisma naroda i narodnosti u službenoj upotrebi na područjima na kojima žive pojedine narodnosti i utvrđuje se način i uslovi primenjivanja ove ravnopravnosti. For more clarification, "narodnosti" are peoples who live in Yugoslavia but their majority lives outside of the country. E.g. Albanians, Romanians, Hungarians, Slovaks... while "narodi" are peoples who's majority lives in Yugoslavia. So, while the constitution gave Macedonian, Slovenian and Serbo-Croatian a "primus inter pares" status by making "narodnosti" languages having to have a sort of local self-governing policy for usage (e.g. Albanian and Serbo-Croatian shall be used in Kosovo in such a way that...), it does not state that languages of "narodi" are any more official than the languages of "narodnosti". While the three languages were de facto languages of communication on the federal level, they had no de iure status of that sort (at least I can't find a law saying that). This encyclopedia also states in one of its articles (or was it Vojna?) that Yugoslavia has no official language, but I can't find that reference right now. To the best of my knowledge (prove me wrong though) "zvanični jezik" was not used on the federal level, but rather the term "službeni jezik" (which are languages of all peoples). --★čabrilo★ 10:10, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Another concern of mine: even if we say that it was an official language of Yugoslavia, why start the article with it? We certainly don't start articles for Macedonian or Slovenian that way. Term Serbo-Croatian was coined and used before Yugoslavia, even before the SHS kingdom, and is still used today, so putting it into a historical context, moreover into a certain time frame, in the opening paragraph is a bit off. --★čabrilo★ 12:08, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, OK; I guess just used to that intro; I more objected to your replacement sentence. Apart from legalistic nitpicking (which shouldn't concern us too much anyway), the definition of official or non-official or whatever is really not binding to the language. I'll try to rephrase... Duja► 12:48, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, my replacement sentence was a bit awkward and in the spur of the moment (I just went in to change that it was official, but then remembered something new had to be written:). Current version is just fine. --★čabrilo★ 14:39, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Total speakers

Total speakers: Some 17 million speak Serbian, Bosnian, or Croatian. This is an article about the Serbo-Croatian language. Why you don't give a real number of people who say that they speak Serbo-Croatian? --N Jordan 00:10, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

In truth, that number is very low. But for most linguistic bodies, particularly those which promote a descriptive approach to languages and related matters, they generally agree that the three named languages are the "main" successors to Serbo-Croat. To an extent, they existed before its creation; obviously not in their modern forms, but then who speaks the same in any languge as they did nearly 200 years ago! For a local from Belgrade and Zagreb to communicate would pose no problem; one can call his language Serbian, the other Croatian. If either chose to call their language Serbo-Croat, they wouldn't be speaking anything differently. So technilcy, you are right - 17 million declare one of the three, it is not "Serbo-Croat" in the strict sense. Evlekis 10:22, 13 September 2007 (UTC)