From: dmatic@athena.mit.edu (Davor Matic)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia
Subject: Re: Serbian language
Date: 23 Jul 92 14:58:56 GMT
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

In article <23JUL92.10635440.0188@UNBVM1.CSD.UNB.CA> George Bogavac <K2GT@UNB.CA> writes:
>In article <1992Jul23.040950.15849@athena.mit.edu> dmatic@athena.mit.edu (Davor Matic) writes:
>>
>>>I don't think you can draw a line in the sand and say: "OK, people
>>>on this side speak this and people on the other speak that!" ;-)
>>>You might think I'm oversimplyfing, but that is how I understood
>>>your sentence.
>>
>>A language should have a single literary form to avoid confusion.
>>When you create a language with two alphabets, two spellings, etc.
>>there is something wrong with it.
>
>The two alphabets were not "created" just like that. Originally,
>all south Slavs used the Cyrillic alphabet (including Croats), but
>over the centuries, Western influence introduced the Roman alplhabet
>which has spread from west to east. Now, Croats use only the Roman
>alphabet, whereas Serbs use both. I don't see anything wrong with
>that. I suppose it does create some confusion for people who are
>generally ignorant of the culture of the whole region, but that's
>their problem.
>The Sarajevo daily "Oslobodjenje" has (had?) one page written in the
>Roman alphabet, the next page in Cyrillic, and so on...
>When I would read it, I would automatically "switch" between the two
>not even knowing it... A friend of mine from London (he's English)
>was amazed at seeing that. He thought it was Russian! :-)
>
Well, Cyrilic is not used in Croatia.  Thus, it is not part of Croatian.
But literary form doesn't depend on the alphabet.  This question is
trivial, since the alphabets are equivalent.

>>>
>>>> As far as Monte Negro goes, it is
>>>>a whole new dispute how much Serbian Monte-Negrians really are :-)
>>>>
>>>
>>>Yes, it is a whole new dispute, but I wasn't talking about their
>>>nationality, but the fact that they speak the Serbian language,
>>>which is in the "ije" form.
>>>
>>Well, if they are not Serbian, why do you call the language they
>>speak Serbian when it even doesn't sound like it?  Curious question :-)
>
>Why not? The Irish speak English, but they are not English because of
>it! Try telling an Irishman that he is English and watch the
>response :-)
Irish do sound like English, don't they?  And there isn't Irish literary form
of English.  There is only one literary form of English.

>And if it's not Serbian, what is it? Croatian? Montenegrian(!?)
>
I dunno what it is.  MonteNegrians speak a mixture, I guess.  They
also use less declention cases (padeza) than S-C.  So they would
typically say "Ja stojim na noge."  rather than "Ja stojim na nogama."



But the fact is that you won't find words such as "ucinkovito", or
"stozar", or "glasovati" in any Serbo-Croatian dictionary.  These
are literary words of contemporary Ctoatian.  You also won't
find words like "kadija", "carsav", etc. in Croatian dictionaries,
while therse are legitimate words in Serbian.  I don't think that
you can use "ekavski" to write in contemporary Croatian, so in
Croatian there is only one spelling for "mlijeko", "vrijeme",
"bijelo", etc.  You also don't use Cyrlic letters to write in Croatian.
So there is plenty of differences between S-C and Croatian right here.
Even if Croatian and Serbian were one language at one time, in order
to keep them the same language, Serbo-Croatian will have to adopt
all the words from contemporary Croatian.  But somehow I don't think
that this is going to happen because of political reasons.  So even if
they were the same language, the process of their separation has already
begun.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia