Yugoslavia & Serbo-Croatian
the South Slavic language situation1

the national language of Yugoslavia
From 1918 to 2006, Yugoslavia was a nation-state
in southeastern Europe. The common andof cial language of Yugoslavia was SerboCroatian, sometimes called "Yugoslavian".
Although the South Slavic dialects form a dialect
continuum, Serbo-Croatian emerged as thecodi ed national standard language ofYugoslavia, and excellent education ensured
that nearly everyone in Yugoslavia could speakSerbo-Croatian (although many people couldspeak other languages too). With respect to theSouth Slavic dialect continuum, Serbo-Croatianserved as the standard language for every
dialect area between Slovene and Bulgarian.
fifi2Serbian writing and Croatian writing
Traditionally, Serbs write Serbo-Croatian using cyrillic letters, and Croats write SerboCroatian using roman letters; and school children in Yugoslavia would learn bothalphabets. For example, the Serbo-Croatian word for "horse" is pronounced the sameby both Serbs and Croats, but the Serbs write "коњ" and the Croats write "konj". (Trytesting this with your translation software!)
The different alphabet preference is due to a religious difference. The Serbs tend to be
Orthodox Catholics, who wrote the Bible with cyrillic letters; whereas the Croats tend
to be Roman Catholics, who wrote the Bible with roman letters. Because of thisreligious and orthographic difference, some people have wrongly thought that Croatsand Serbs speak different languages, when in reality Serbian and Croatian were justdifferent ways of writing the same Serbo-Croatian language.  

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dominant religionof Yugoslav republics
and of local municipalitiess4

Land of the Southern Slavs
Founded in 1918 as the Kingdom of Serbs,
Croats, and Slovenes, the nation’s of cialname was changed by King Alexander I
in 1929 to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia
In 1944, the monarchy was replaced by
Democratic Federal Yugoslavia, consistingof the six federal states and two
autonomous areas shown in this map
In 1989, civil war began, and Yugoslavia
broke up into several countries. This map
shows Yugoslavia before the break-up.

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1989~2008 break-up

Click on this animated map tosee the gradual break-up ofYugoslavia from 1989 to 2008.
[http://www.ksc.kwansei.ac.jp/~jed/LxEcology/Yugo/
Breakup_of_Yugoslavia.gif]

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strong ethnic identities
Ethnic identities were very strong. In the 1981
census, less than 6% of the people identi edthemselves as "Yugoslav", the rest preferring to
identify themselves with the listed ethnic groups
Local dominance is shown in this map based on
1991 data. The break-up occurred primarily along
ethnic boundaries, and the ghting and suffering
was worse in the areas of mixed ethnicity.

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Slovenia and Macedonia
The Slovenian language (the codi ed standard Western South Slavic dialectof Slovenia) is similar to Serbo-Croatian, but it is different enough to beconsidered a separate langage. Slovenia became independent of Yugoslavia
in 1991. Slovenia's independence ghting was minor (cf. the Ten-Day War).
The Slovenian language area closely matches the borders of Slovenia.
The Macedonian language (the codi ed standard Eastern South Slavic dialectof Macedonia) is more similar toBulgarian than it is to Serbo-Croatian.
Macedonia became independent
in 1991. Macedonia's independence
was peaceful.

It is natural to believe that the geographic separation and linguistic
homogeneity of Slovenes and Macedonians helped these peoples to avoid
the atrocities of the 1991-2001 Yugoslav wars.
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Serbo-Croatian becomes BCMS
Since the end of the wars, each of the new national governments of Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, andMontenegro has wanted to have its own national language, so these countries have been creating four different
varieties of Serbo-Croatian: Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin. From a grammatical or phonologicalperspective, these are not different languages. These language varieties are about as different from each other as
Osaka-ben is from Kobe-ben. However, because each country now has its own army, these countries want to use
different language names for political reasons.
From an eco-linguistics perspective, Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin are not four separate languages.
It is more accurate to say that Serbo-Croatian is currently a pluricentric language, which now has four codi ed
standard forms. Other examples of pluricentric languages include English, French, Chinese, Spanish, Tamil,Portuguese, and German. In contrast, before 1989, Serbo-Croatian was considered a monocentric language with asingle codi ed national standard (although it could be written with two different scripts), just like Japanese (which
can also be written with multiple scripts). Because of Serbo-Croatian's recent change from monocentric topluricentric, the Serbo-Croatian language is sometimes called "BCMS" in sensitive international political contexts.

fi fi9next week: Nigeria and Biafra

Next week, we willconsider the language
situation in Nigeria
and former Biafra.

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