Talk:Serbo-Croatian/Archive 3

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Funny name

The name should be! --Josinj (talk) 07:37, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Serbo-Croatian is a political construct that has never existed as a standard language. And the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) based in Switzerland, variously marked Croatian and Serbian in the system of Universal Decimal Classification: UDC Croatian as 862 (abbreviation hr), and Serbian as UDC 861 (abbreviation sr), while the "Serbo-Croatian "still appears as a language derived without any specific number in mind," bite the numbers "861/862 (abbreviation sh). Croatian and Serbian literary languages had separate flows of standardization (which are the overlap of several decades), while the Bosnian language (more adequate name would be "Bosnian language") is only now in the final stage of design standards. This, as all three languages on the basis of crystallized novoštokavskoga dialect does not mean too: Linguistics is a lot of close, and recognized the different standard of language occurred at a similar or same dijalekatskoj basis. Examples include, eg: Indonesian and Malay - -Hindi and Urdu -Bulgarian and Macedonian -Norwegian and Danish

-Czech and Slovak

Croatian and Serbian -

-etc .... Croatian and Serbian standard languages differ in 1st spelling (Latin and Cyrillic) 2nd phonetics (about 100 laws in the accentuation) 3rd grammar and syntax (about 100 law) 4th spelling (though both languages use phonological spelling, in the Croatian manual adopts the morphological principle is present in a series of regulations, while the Serbian language more "fonetizira" in orthographic terms) 5th morphology (over 300 rules) 6th semantics (the difference in semantics are too complex structure to show in such a short exams) 7th dictionary (about 30% of different words that only Croatian or Serbian. In the vocabulary of 100,000 words, about 40,000 is different, as assessed by Croatian linguist Dalibor Brozovica in the corpus of 500,000 words, Croatian and Serbian are different in the 150,000 lexical units) Graphic indicator of the lack of "Serbo-Croatian" language is an example of the translation work of Swiss psychologist CGJunga "Psychology and Alchemy." This book, translated into Croatian 1986th, appeared in the Serbian translation of 1999-but also what has been translated from Croatian, and not with the German original. Croatian and Serbian translation of "Interpreting" different, even if they do neglect the differences in the letter (Latin and Cyrillic) and dijalekatskoj basis of standard language (and jekavski Ekavian), practically on every page of the book, the dictionary, spelling, syntax and semantics. Since it is often singthe analogy by which the relationship between the Croatian and Serbian was similar to the British and American English-visible nesuvislost this comparison because the translation from British to American English (and vice versa), simply impossible. Only the name "Bosnian language" in the past often been in the singthe štokavski Ikavian and / or štokavski jekavski dialect. This concept, that of 17 to 19 century Croatian writers and used jezikoslovi in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, in the sense of the term stokavian slovinskoga-Illyrian-Croatian language, can not serve potkrjepom of alleged historical reality of the modern standard language of the Muslims, with the tendency of the current standard Bosniac language appears as natural successor of the works in which he mentioned the term "Bosnian language".

Profiles of language standardization: Croatian standard language first-Croatian dictionary "Dictionarium quinque nobilissimarum europae linguarum-latinae, Italicae, Germanicae, Dalmatiae et Ungaricae" Venice 1595th By the mid 19th century, was published for another ten Croatian dictionaries from Mikaljina "Happy slovinskoga language" (Loreto 1649th) to Mažuranić-Užarevićevog "German-Illyrian syllabary" 1842nd -the first Croatian grammar is "Institutionum illyricae linguae libri duo", 1604th, Jesuit Bartholomew Kašića. To normative Croatian grammar for the lower classes of secondary schools "Tome Maretić 1899th, was printed in nearly eight p.m. grammar. (It is interesting to note that the Kasic auktor translation of the entire Bible (Old and New Testament, 1622nd-1636th) in a luxurious štokavian-jekavskom stylized idiom the expression of mature Dubrovnik Renaissance literature. This is a translation, which is not published for political reasons, according to his linguistic expression (except in spelling / spelling) is as close to the modern Croatian language as well as his French contemporaries Montaignea sadašnjemu French, English or modern English of Shakespeare. But Kašićev influence in the standardization of the Croatian language is the most worked over "Roman Ritual", 1636). http://arhiv.slobodnadalmacija.hr/20001205/prilozi.htm http://www.ffdi.hr/zivot/99-2-1.html -Croatian standard language is developed on the basis of Croatian literature, the critical period 2.polovici 18th century the introduction of novoštokavskog idioms, and standardization of spelling / spelling at the time of the Illyrian movement in 1830. Also, in some orthographic rješidbama influenced Danicic Karadzic-standards, especially during the so-called. "Croatian Vukovian" at the turn of the 19th the 20th century. Main features:-Standard is a neo-štokavian, but with tolerance and assimilation of other Croatian dialects (cakavian and kajkavian). Croatian literature on stokavian lasts more than 5 centuries, from Renaissance Dubrovnik, the Dalmatian and Bosnian Literature (Menčetić, Bunić, Zlatarić Držić Vetranović, Divković, Nalješković) through the key authors novoštokavskoga dialects in the 18th century (Kačić-Miošić, Relković , Grabovac, Kanižlić) to the final uoblike the 19th century. No-Croatian language is assimilated and the significant literature and lexicography chakavian written in dialect (Fitzgerald, Hektorović, Zoranić) and Kajkavianliterary (Habdelić, Belostenec, Brezovački), and hybrid-čakavsko Kajkavianliterary (Zrinski, Frankopan, Ritter-Vitezović). Therefore, the situation of the Croatian language as "the unity of the dialects" (enter dialectorum) with stokavian as headquarters, but not exclusively language-lawmakers are increasingly rejecting somewhat artificial division into three dialects, especially since some "štokavski» poddijalekti closer on many characteristics of certain "cakavian" stokavian than others (and the expression of the founder of Dubrovnik on the Croatian literature the national language, Center Menčetić and Džore Držić, historical linguistics, which is considered the originators of today's Croatian literary language, mixed-štokavski jekavsko Ikavian cakavian dijalekatskim interwoven with numerous features) čistunstvo-language that is characterized by the formation of neologisms, whenever possible, whether for living languages, whether for traditional or oriental. In short-Croatian language is constitutive, as is evident from the large jezikotvoraca 19th (Mazuranic Užarević, and, mostly, Sulek) to 20 century, the activities of Ladan and László .. lean-to Croatian literary heritage, and the gradual gradba new forms in accordance with this heritage. Continuity of tradition from 9 century literacy and literature in Glagolitic Croatian Cyrillic and Latin script (written in Croatian Church Slavonic language reviews and popular Croatian language). Moderate phonological spelling, the tendency of increasing preoblike standards in the formative or phonological-morphological spelling.

http://www.muturzikin.com/carteeurope.htm

http://www.muturzikin.com/carteseurope/5.htm

http://studiacroatica.blogspot.com/2008/07/velika-pobjeda-hrvatskoga-jezika.html http://www.knjiznicari.hr/UDK02/images/b/b1/Rje% C4% 8Dnik_razlika_izme% C4% 91u_hrvatskog_jezika_i_srpskog_jezika.doc.

http://www.knjiznicari.hr/UDK02/images/7/70/Osnovne_razlike_izme% C4% 91u_hrvatskog_jezika_i_srpskog_jezika.doc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.131.44.245 (talk) 12:47, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Central South Slavic Diasystem and SC in a sense "collection of dialects"

I've redirected pointless content forks Central South Slavic diasystem, and Serbo-Croatian languages to this article, because the sense of SC of "collection of dialects" is not only still used in linguistic circles, but is also already discussed in this very article.

The most comprehensive, up-to-date and authoritatively objective discussion on this topic is Croatian Poredbenopovijesna gramatika hrvatskoga jezika by Ranko Matasović [1], pages 64-67, the historical grammar of Croatian written by a distinguished linguist, head of the department of linguistics at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb. It was published last year by Matica hrvatska.

The thing is, as Matasović shows, that all the Croatian dialects (Čakavian, Kajkavian and western Shtokavian), Serbian dialects (East Shtokavian and Torlakian never exhibited a period of common exclusive development, and hence do not form a genetic clade. There was never "Proto-Croatian". Moreover, there was also no "Proto-Čakavian", as Čakavian dialects themselves are so vastly different (e.g. in to North and the South) that their ancestor goes directly to 7th century Late Proto-Slavic. Citing the conclusion from page 65: Međutim, takvih srednjojužnoslavenskih zajedničkih inovacija jednostavno nema. Štoviše, čak nije moguće pronaći niti zajedničke inovacije koje bi obuhvatile sve dijalekte čakavskoga narječja, dok općeštokavskih i općekajkavskih inovacija ipak ima ("However, there are simply no such common central south Slavic inovations. Furthermore, one cannot find even common innovations that would encompass all the dialects of Čakavian, whilst there are some pan-Štokavian and pan-Kajkavian innovations").

One should note that exclusively croatian Čakavian, exclusively croatian Kajkavian, exclusively serbian, bulgarian and macedonian Torlakian and exclusively croatian (western) Štokavian, exclusively bosnian central Štokavian and exclusively serbian east Štokavianare usually called narječja(systems dialects), which roughly translates as "collection of dialects", the word dijalekt being used in more specific sense, as opposed to English where these 3 (or 4, if ones adds Torlakian to the pile) are usually simply designated as "dialects".

The implications are twofold:

• Brozović coined the term "Central South Slavic dialects" simply to replace the meaning of Serbo Croatian of "collection of dialects", with a politically more correct alternative. As it turns out, there are no historical-linguistic arguments for such grouping, it being completely arbitrary and ultimately driven from political necessity.
• Modern sources which still use the meaning Serbo-Croatian of "collection of dialects" are also wrong: the dialects on that area are quite diverse and some of them very have little amount of mutual intelligence (e.g. Kajkavian of Bednja, and Čakavian of some Krk villages). It's also pointless and completely arbitrary to introduce such a new sense of SC without discussing and providing more details to the reader. In SFRJ no one questioned that grouping, and only recently it has become challenged, but it retained usage simply by inertia.

So, if CSSD and "Serbo-Croatian languages" are to be discussed they must be in this article, and if the section grows too large, we can extract the contents to separate article and link to it via {{mainarticle}}. But please no more creation of some obscure pages that "steal" some meanings from this article. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 15:37, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

• Also an interesting reading, from an interview in Vijenac, with professor Matasović: "Srpsko-hrvatski nikada nije ostvaren, jer nije postojao" (the page is in SC). --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 15:51, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Another language?

A quick question for knowledgeable Wikipedians: was Croato-Serbian another languages system or was it another term for Serbo-Croatian? I'm wondering because it makes little sense for "Serbo-Croatian" to be the name of the diasystem and the name of one of the languages within the diasystem. User:Imbris has presented the idea that "Croato-Serbian" and "Serbo-Croatian" were the two separate languages of the "Serbo-Croatian" diasystem. Previously, I was under the impression that "Croato-Serbian" was another term for the diasystem, sometimes used to represent it in when Croatian variants of various "two-version words" were predominantly used in the text. Regards --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 08:41, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Official policy in SFRJ was to use srpskohrvatski or srpski ili hrvatski by Serbs or when referring specifically to Serbian literary idiom, and hrvatskosrpski or hrvatski ili srpski by Croats or when referring specifically to the Croatian literary idiom. So basically back then it was a terminological issue, not to give overdue prominence to either of the ethnical terms (srpski or hrvatski). A very stupid move if you ask me - had the communists chosen some anationalist term like naški it would've very certainly survived to this day, since dual-national naming is politically very incorrect considering that the language is spoken by at least 2 other large ethnic groupings (Bosniaks and Montenegrins) which are being specifically ruled out (possibly fueling well-known "Montenegrins are Serbs" or "Bosniaks are Serbs/Croats" myths)..

In English literature, on the other hand, overwhelmingly predominate term has been and still is the Serbo-Croatian, and that is what Wikipedia articles should generally use. Alternative name, Croato-Serbian, is given in the first sentence of the article lead, ensuring that that the usage of Serbo-Croatian is purely a practical convention, and not some "evil plan" to promote one term at the expense of another.

The concept of "diasystem" (in the 1990s called "Central South Slavic diasystem") in the SC area was introduced only in the 1971 by Dalibor Brozović specifically in order to deprecate the usage of the term Serbo-Croatian in a sense "collection of dialects used on the territory of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro". Th term Serbo-Croatian was thus used in both senses: either as a collection of dialects, or more specifically referring to the stylised Neoštokavian base used for Serbian and Croatian literary variants. Brozović's concept of "diasystem" has been challenged as invalid and disputed as completely arbitrary (e.g. he says in has Deset teza o hrvatskome jeziku written in 1971: Drugim riječima, taj jezik-dijasistem postoji samo zato što se kajkavski i čakavski dijalekti, kojima govore samo Hrvati, i torlački dijalekti, kojima govore samo Srbi, ne mogu po genetskim lingvističkim mjerilima odvajati od štokavskih dijalekata, kojima govore i Srbi i Crnogorci i bosanskohercegovački Muslimani i Hrvati. - which is, according to e.g. Matasović 2008, completely wrong), and is not generally accepted. Often people use it simply as a politically more correct alternative to Serbo-Croatian, regardless whether they agree with the linguistic legitimacy of the term itself.

It's pointless to speak of "two separate languages of the SC diasystem", as long as those "two languages" share the same dialectal basis, which means 99% identical grammar with main differences being in specialised technical lexis. Croatian, Bosnian and Serbian started to function as separate standard languages only in the 1990s - prior to that they were simply part of the SC pie, with "common" dictionaries, grammars, orthographies.. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 09:37, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

I see... Sooo essentially: "Croato-Serbian" is/was the name used for the Serbo-Croatian diasystem when the Croatian literary idiom is in use? It is not another seperate language? --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 14:21, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Correct: hrvatsko-srpski, hrvatski ili srpski or simply hrvatski književni jezik denote(d) the same thing: Croatian "variety" of Serbo-Croatian. From the 1974 constitution: U Socijalističkoj Republici Hrvatskoj u javnoj je upotrebi hrvatski književni jezik - standardni oblik narodnog jezika Hrvata i Srba u Hrvatskoj, koji se naziva hrvatski ili srpski. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 14:42, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

I thought so, thanks very much. User:Imbris may beg to differ, though... --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 14:46, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Using both names in articles that are not concerned with this article' topic

First of all no official policy existed, some agreements do not constitute a clear policy, If for the purpose of the title of this article "the majority" chose Serbo-Croatian language because of its frequent use among the ordinary English speaker it would be fine, but the content of the article doesn't stress the fact that the Croatian supporters of Vuk, wrote about Croatian or Serbian and Croato-Serbian, and that without those support there would have not been a Serbo-Croatian. I also think this is why one of the official name of the language in the Constitution of SR Croatia was Croatian or Serbian.
The communists had introduced the terms Maternal, People's, and colloquially Our language but this all failed, so I do not see any purpose of delusion the general public.
I believe that Ivan Štambuk knows that there are many languages without the standard and that they are considered languages just as well, so his interpretation that Bosnian, Croatian, — and Serbian started in 1990s is preposterous, even if he presented the disclaimer word (standard) in his address.
I am not here to argue about what, the article, should definitely exclude from its content. I have included some interesting facts in the article, and have not even tried to push any POV. The entire topic started with the user diREKTOR (as he signed in the past) demanding that the term Serbo-Croatian language would be included in those articles where the diasystem was called the Croato-Serbian language. We have even reached compromises in that particular case. Now we are discussing the matter at Hey, Slavs where he disapproves the usage of, either:

• [[Serbo-Croatian language|Serbo-Croatian]] '''or''' [[Croato-Serbian language|Croato-Serbian]]
• [[Serbo-Croatian language|Serbo-Croatian]] '''/''' [[Croato-Serbian language|Croato-Serbian]]

I see that Ivan Štambuk speaks both hr-N and sh-N, but DIREKTOR speaks only sh-N; even if Mr. DIREKTOR once spoke hr-N [2]. Also interesting is Mr. DIREKTOR's opinion about the Croatian language — and — the Serbian language of today (where he also involved both nations). [3] Returning to the main topic, that being, when we are talking about symbols such as the anthem, shouldn't we clearly mention both names? Where is the harm in doing that, since both lead to the same topic/article? And to quote on the official policy:

• Otkako Jugoslavija postoji, u njoj se nije ustalio trajniji i jedinstveniji koncept jezične politike, pa je povijest problema bitno diskontinuirana. Njen se diskontinuitet manifestira u ovih nekoliko varijacija: hrvatskosrpski kao jedinstven jezik ili ne, hrvatskosrpski kao zajednički jezik ili ne.

Imbris (talk) 17:50, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

First of all no official policy existed - BS, it was explicitly stated in the constitution of the federal states, and the agreements (e.g. Vienna Literary Agreement, Novi Sad) signed by prominent Croat & Serb language authorities. Dictionaries, grammars, orthographies..all were written for a single language.

..nor the constitutional acts create a language. I agree, hence there is no such thing as "Croatian language", "Bosnian language", "Serbian language", "Montenegrin language" "<insert your favourite imaginary nation here> language", but different sociolinguistic varieties of Neoštokavian dialect (i.e. Serbo-Croatian).

If for the purpose of the title of this article "the majority" chose Serbo-Croatian language because of its frequent use among the ordinary English speaker it would be fine - naming scheme does not follow usage by "ordinary English speaker" (we couldn't care less about him/her), but established convention in the field in English-written books, and in this case that was Serbo-Croatian. In Serbo-Croatian itself during the SFRJ times it was necessary to use both hrvatskosrpski and srpskohrvatski in order not to give overdue prominence to one ethnic component. Today in English-speaking world we do not carry that burden anymore and is thus pointless to insist on it since 99.99% modern English literature doesn't utilise the naming scheme "Croatian or Serbian" that you advocate.

..Croatian supporters of Vuk, wrote about Croatian or Serbian and Croato-Serbian, and that without those support there would have not been a Serbo-Croatian. - Indeed, but they also called it "Croatian language" too, which proves that all of those terms were synonymous. E.g. 1901 Rječnik hrvatskog jezika by Broz-Iveković had 80% headwords taken from Serbian(ised) folk poetry/proverbs/tales collected by Karadžić et al. That is the most influential Serbo-Croatian dictionary ever, at least for the formation of Croatian literary variety of Serbo-Croatian (even today: Matasović's Poredbenopovijesna gramatika accentuates all words according to it), according to basically all historical accounts.

I believe that Ivan Štambuk knows that there are many languages without the standard and that they are considered languages just as well, so his interpretation that Bosnian, Croatian, — and Serbian started in 1990s is preposterous - your logic is fallacious. Standard language is an artifical sociolinguistic device, spoken language (from the perspective of genetic linguistics and dialectology) is another type construct, bound by more practical data. Indeed they are many hundreds languages today that lack standardization on a particular dialect, but that is a non-issue for the case of SC varietis - all of them are based on the same dialect. As standard languages, B/C/S started to function only in 1990s. Prior to that, they all had common regulatory body, grammars, orthographies, dictionaries..you know that all very well.

As for the issue in Hey Slaveni article - IMHO it's irrelevant what name is to be used (Serbo-Croatian, Croato-Serbian, Serbian or Croatian, Croatian or Serbian) as long as they link to this article where that dual-naming philosophy is more thoroughly explained. When there is no difference between varieties (which is not the case in case of Sloveni and Slaveni), Serbo-Croatian should be the only term used a generic container. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 23:29, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Does this mean we can use this phrasing: [[Serbo-Croatian language|Serbo-Croatian]] '''or''' [[Croato-Serbian language|Croato-Serbian]] when we talk about national symbols of the former Yugoslavia, particularly in such cases as Hej Slaveni — Hej Sloveni. -- Imbris (talk) 23:47, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

As I told you, they're all relatively "correct" names, but "Serbo-Croatian" is far more common in English, while the others are obscure outside ex-Yu. It makes no sense to start using different versions of the name in different types of articles. Why create completely unnecessary confusion? --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 00:34, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Concerning my Babel templates (which seem to interest you for some reason). I realized early on that I'd have to list myself as a native speaker of 5 languages, which seemed to me just a tad bit absurd. I figured everyone would get my meaning if I simply used sh. I speak fluent Croatian (with a rather weak Dalmatian accent). As with most people in Split, I use "šta" instead of "što" when speaking informally. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 00:42, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

This is not confusion if we list a completely correct form which leads to this very article. Your motivation on insisting of only using the wikilink [[Serbo-Croatian]] or [[Serbo-Croatian language]] is clear to everyone who visit your user page. So please stop speaking about you being neutral in this matter. -- Imbris (talk) 00:53, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Woops, again with the P. You're right, though, I am not neutral. I am strongly biased against ridiculous redirects and overcomplicated synonyms that are completely unnecessary and would only make you feel better because you subjectively feel they are more "Croatian-sounding". To me, for example, it seems easy to view "Serbo-Croatian" as a more "Croatian" term, in that it sounds like its the "Croatian language with a little Serbian in it - Serbo-Croatian". This is all nonsense, of course.

What possible excuse could you dig up for using a completely obscure term for a language in the place of one that is far more common and equally accurate and correct? Your argument that, "they all link here anyway" is no reason on its own. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 01:07, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Where do you see that using [[Serbo-Croatian language|Serbo-Croatian]] '''or''' [[Croato-Serbian language|Croato-Serbian]] sounds more Croatian, this is beyond comprehension to me. Both wikilinks lede to this very article. Even the s:hr:Novosadski dogovor mentions in the heading the srpskohrvatski and in the text hrvatskosrpski. And from looking who signed the conclusions I do not see that it is a representative "crowd". People could have used, and they did, the name which they preffered — but not in communist media, of course. I would ask of you not to start with all this P stuff, it is not becoming of you. -- Imbris (talk) 01:18, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Adding the name usually used for the Croatian idiom makes this "compromise" more appealing to you. And you do indeed see "yugocommunist/serbochetnik" conspiracies and POV whenever we meet. You see hidden agendas and evil plots which make it impossible to conclude any discussion in an amiable fashion. What am I supposed to conclude? Never mind all that, however, you didn't answer the most important issue: WHY would we replace a far more common term with a less common term for the same thing when they are both (relatively) equally accurate?? --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 07:04, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

I hope that Ivan Štambuk would see through your attempt to portray yourself as some sort of a victim. I have never used those labels for you, and I do not belive in any conspiracy led by Mr. I. R. The only thing I see funny is your putting word in my mouth and painting preety pictures of yourself (both positive and negative). I always try to work with all wikipedians in the same fashion, WP:AGF, making no exceptions. As I said when dealing with "hot stuff" like national symbols we must be respectfull of some former official norms, and so should other English speaking wikipedians, who should not object to those insertion, the only one who objects is you. Why do you object using a more descriptive term. I really do not know the answer to that question. User:Rave92 reverted you also. Now this could lead to a game of gathering support, but this is a fruitless effort, when all terms are acceptable, all lead to this very article. -- Imbris (talk) 18:32, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Did I imply you used them on me? I meant to say you see quote:"Serbianization" and underlying agendas everywhere, Mr. Imbris. Amazing how you could see through my scheme once more, though. Your long and cumbersome "more descriptive term" is hardly used in English.

Am I mistaken or are you now trying to prove on the Yugoslav Partisans article that the Serbo-Croatian language (aka "Serbo-Croato-Slovene") did not exist in mid-1941? --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 23:30, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

What do you mean "I. R."? --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 23:34, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

macrolanguage

Imbris, macrolanguage is special terminology used by SIL to classify languages, not a term used in general linguistics. We cannot simply call SC a "a macrolanguage", we must use an alternative formulation stating that e.g. SC is classified as a macrolanguage by SIL, containing Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian as the branches. Saying that it's a macrolanguage without putting it in the context kind of misses the point. I don't see article for e.g. Estonian or Albanian language saying in the lead that they're "macrolanguages".. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 07:21, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

RfC: Multiple issues concerning the Serbo-Croatian language

#1 Name of the Serbo-Croatian language on Wikipedia

The Serbo-Croatian language is known by a number of names. The relevant ones for the current dispute are: "Serbo-Croatian language", "Serbo-Croatian or Croato-Serbian language", and "Croato-Serbian language". Other than "Serbo-Croatian language" (2,430,000 hits [4]) other names are obscure and virtually unknown in the English speaking community (266 [5] and 3,310 hits [6] respectively). The problem, however, is that the name "Serbo-Croatian or Croato-Serbian language" mentions the term "Croato-Serbian", which appeals to Croatian nationalist sensibilities. The question is:
- Do we use all the available names in a random manner, most likely depending on whether the editor is Croatian or Serbian (there are these 3 names, + two more), or do we use one name (in order to supposedly avoid confusion)?
- If a single name is to be used, which one should be used in editor opinion?
--DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 10:26, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

• Serbo-Croatian, to the exclusion of others mentioned, per established usage in the English language. I don't think that "Croatian nationalist sensibilities" will turn out to be a problem, since every decent Croatian nationalist winces on mention of Serbo-Croatian or Croato-Serbian pretty much the same. GregorB (talk) 20:51, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
  • For clarification, let me also summarize my remark from User talk:Imbris: reasons to keep some sort of "parity" between "Serbo-Croatian" and "Croato-Serbian" are all but nonexistent in 2009 (though keeping parity was reasonable in SFRY during its existence), so there's really nothing to gain by using the obscure term (from the perspective of English speakers) "Croato-Serbian". GregorB (talk) 15:01, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

#2 Status of the Serbo-Croatian language

Is the Serbo-Croatian language a macrolanguage or a language? Is the term "macrolanguage" SIL terminology, or a term used in general linguistics?
Also, when referring to the historical use of Serbo-Croatian in Yugoslavia, should it be considered a macrolanguage or a language in that context? --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 10:26, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

• "Macrolanguage" is special terminology used by SIL to classify languages, not a term used in general linguistics. We cannot simply call SC a "a macrolanguage", we must use an alternative formulation stating that e.g. SC is classified as a macrolanguage by SIL, containing Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian as the branches. Saying that it's a macrolanguage without putting it in the context kind of misses the point. I don't see article for e.g. Estonian or Albanian language saying in the lead that they're "macrolanguages". --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 07:21, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
• I believe that "diasystem" is the word that best describes Serbo-Croatian. One could say that it is more narrow (i.e. more precise and thus "better") than "macrolanguage", but even that would be misleading because these two words really describe different aspects of language. GregorB (talk) 20:40, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

#3 Official languages of SFR Yugoslavia

- Were Hungarian and Albanian official languages of SFR Yugoslavia?
- Were Croatian and/or Serbian official languages of SFR Yugoslavia?
In other words, did the SFR Yugoslavia have seven official languages?? --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 10:26, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Informal Mediation

In response to a request for informal mediation on the Hey, Slavs article which mentioned this as an issue I'm going to give a hand. If you have an interest, please see the Hey Slavs talk page please! Thanks! Dotty••|^TALK 14:11, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

collation order - dependent on script?

Re this: probably I should have avoided editing an article about a subject that I know so little about, in which case I apologise. But it does rather appear to me that part of the point of this "sample collation" table is to emphasise that you do not simply have the same ordering in both scripts, but rather that the collation order depends on which script you are using, so that Инверзија comes before Инјекција when using Cyrillic script, even though Injekcija comes before Inverzija when using Latin script. What am I missing? Many thanks, — Alan^✉ 19:56, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Actually the point is that injekcija comes before inverzija which comes before inje, and the Cyrillic-script spelling provided on a sidebox was simply to illustrate where this <nj> is /nj/ and where it's /ɲ/ (which is differed in Cyrillic but not in Latin). Your concern on different ordering in Cyrillic as opposed to Latin is valid one, but I'm afraid that if we followed it it would prove to be more confusing than illustrative, as Roman-Cyrillic entries would be mismatched in rows. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 09:19, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I understand now, but it appeared to me as if it was meant to show the collation order in Cyrillic. I have now modified it to try to incorporate all this information. — Alan^✉ 12:18, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Breakup of Yugoslavia and languages

The statement "With the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, its languages followed suit and Croatian, Serbian, and Bosnian became separate standard languages" is false. The languages in question were a basis for the so called Serbo-Croat language (what is mentioned in the article) and therefore existed as separate languages before Serbo-Croat was formed in an effort to unify them. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.221.15.100 (talk) 16:17, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Serbo-Croatian was standardized in the early 19th century, and these new "standard languages" by the respective nationalist forces in the 1990s. They didn't exist before that except nominally in some people's imagination. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 02:52, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Quite wrong logic. The sole name of the language (SC) tells us what is written above, that it was a language created on the base of two languages; Serbian and Croatian. They existed for sure before and during the existance of this mixture.85.178.149.235 (talk) 23:06, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

"Serbo-Croatian" was formed by this guy back in the 19th century. Before that Yugoslavs spoke something similar to present day Ukrainian or Russian in that it was not spelled the same way it sounded and the spoken language sounded entirely differently. There was neither a Serbian nor Croatian before that, at least not the way it sounds now, there was a Servian used in Rascia and medieval Serbia and a mixture of Slavonian and Dalmatian (similar to Italian) was used in what is now Croatia though the country wasn't united and didn't exist the way it does today. The "Serbo-Croatian" language is an artificial creation of the reforms of the 19th century instigated by man mentioned previous, thus languages such as "Bosnian, Montenegrin, Kosovan" and whatever else you think up (Vojno-Kraijnan?) don't exist. 99.236.221.124 (talk) 04:04, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Merge

It's a bit silly to have the same phonological and grammatical info at Serbian, Croatian, Serbo-Croatian, and Bosnian, and presumably soon again at Montenegrin. This violates WP:Fork, and is difficult to maintain. If we can't agree to merge them under this name, how about a separate article we can agree on? Serbian and Croatian are the two oldest standards, so how about "Serbian and Croatian grammar" or some such? kwami (talk) 10:20, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

I've just discovered that User:Ivan Štambuk created the article Serbo-Croatian grammar back in August, but for some reason did not link it anywhere, although it is reasonably comprehensive. I suppose it should be revived and prominently linked, and Ivan given an appropriate barnstar. The articles on individual B, C, M and S (and SC) languages should be reworked so that they focus only on history, literature and socio-linguistic aspects. I think there are few more articles lurking around, which should be merged there or renamed: Serbian grammar, Serbian nouns, Croatian grammar. Oh my goodness, how much duplicated effort... No such user (talk) 12:19, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes, if people object to the name, we can always debate what it should be called. IMO, BCS and CWSS are awkward and Shtokavian obscure, but maybe s.o. can come up with a compromise. OTOH, English speakers all know what SC is. kwami (talk) 17:57, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree, of course. However, be warned: the nationalism-inspired resistance to this will be immense. The vast majority of Croats would find any merge offensive to the extreme and a direct attack on their national identity. I cannot emphasize this enough. The idea is logical, sensible, and natural, but none of that has anything to do with (ultra)nationalism. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 18:06, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

I know. You should see the reams of impassioned-if-rather-empty debate on what to call Yue Chinese/Cantonese. That's why I didn't want to attempt this on my own. I've proposed at WP:WikiProject Linguistics.

BTW, there's also Serbian nouns. kwami (talk) 19:00, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

"Reinforcements" are a good idea. As for the name itself, I don't think there's any doubt that "Serbo-Croatian (grammar)" is the most common name. In addition, let me assure everyone here that using "Serbian and Croatian" will not make it more "acceptable" to the opposition in the slightest measure. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 22:02, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

This is plain false - English speakers simply do not all know what SC is, just like they don't know what is C, S, etc are. This discussion in general looks like it is based on non-encyclopedic premises - the encyclopedia is here to describe, not to prescribe. If the present-day real-world situation provides reliable sources for the term "Serbo-Croatian grammar" and does not provide reliable sources for the term "Serbian grammar" or "Croatian grammar" (or provides them in comparatively minor amount), then that clearly merits a merge. But if we're talking about what you might call "parallel universes", the encyclopedia needs to describe that, it cannot try to change that. This would not only provoke a nationalist backlash, but a backlash from people who would not understand why would someone want to falsely describe the reality they live in. If you want to be able to counter such arguments, your "reinforcements" must be based on valid encyclopedic criteria, not wishful thinking. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 12:56, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

All right, I exaggerated slightly. Sheesh! My point is that "SC" is well known in English, whereas "Shtokavian" is practically unheard of. The reason for the merger is that the grammar is duplicated, with violates WP:fork. WP:Common is only pertinent to naming the merged article; it's irrelevant for whether the articles should be merged. If "Serbian" and "Croatian" were rarely used in English, but their grammars were markedly different, then we would split the SC grammar article despite common usage. — kwami (talk) 19:53, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

WP:FORK is something else, you mean Wikipedia:Content forking. The problem here is that we can't instantly decide the separated grammar articles constitute a policy violation if the content forking is already done in the real world, in otherwise reliable sources. When a fork is done merely in Wikipedia articles, then that's easy, but in this kind of a case, a merge is all too easily considered a POV act in itself. To resolve this kind of a fork/merge conflict, I think we need to get back to the basics and create an overview of all these sources, determine which are the most accurate and the most pertinent, and then make a set of editorial decisions that resolves or at least alleviates the NPOV dispute. Right now we are fairly slim on the matter of sources. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 13:28, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

What common English speakers know, think, or you imagine them to know or thing is immaterial. There is enough sources in English language by professional linguists that describe Serbo-Croatian as a single language, dating in an uninterrupted sequence of traditions all the way from the 19th century. There has been several generations of world Slavists that treat and analyze Serbo-Croatian as one language, and nothing has changed just because a bunch of nationalists decided unilaterally to change terminology. Just because there are some books titled Croatian grammar or Serbian grammar or Bosnian grammar, it doesn't mean that all three describe different entities, and that all three should be treated independently as describing different entities. In fact - we could do exactly that, but since both of us very know that Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian grammar is basically the same, there would be immense amount of multiplication that would look ridiculous. It would in fact be more confusing for an ignorant Wikipedia reader because it would imply that these 3 have nothing in common, which is far from the truth. Your terminological argument on the number of references for a particular term, instead of arguing what these terms mean and how those references would project to actual articles, is simply absurd. Terminology is irrelevant, it's content that matters. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 12:47, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, this kind of an argument by way of endless assertions is simply not encyclopedic or conducive to a good atmosphere, whether it comes from this camp or from the opposed camp. When a view is overwhelmingly substantiated in the real world, then it stands to reason that it's easy to provide more than a handful of decent reliable references that support it outright. That is the way to compose an encyclopedia article. Do that. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 13:28, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree with the merger but only after the article on SC grammar is sufficiently comphrehensive so that it includes all the information contained in those separate articles. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 02:58, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Of course, the matter must be properly merged or there can be no merge; and WP:COMMONAME pretty much settles the issue of the title. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 16:15, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

split the article?

At talk:Croatian language, I suggested we split off Standard Serbo-Croatian, which would cover the defunct Yugoslav standard, and retool this article to cover the common language of Croats, Bosnians, Serbs, and Montenegrins. I don't know if that would help or not with the politics, but it might help with the focus of this article. — kwami (talk) 06:06, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

• Never was there a standard language of Croats and Serbs, to have always been two standard languages in the Yugoslav period 1954-1991 called Zagreb or variants west (the language that are standardized Croats in Zagreb, Croatia) and Belgrade and the eastern variant (the languages standardize Serbs Belgrade). The Croatian standard language and affect kajkavian Cakavian on torlačko Serbian dialect, dialectal differences that affect the standard differences. Croats are Catholics and Orthodox Serbs to influence on the different cultural influences that are reflected in language. Conclusion, it was never a standard language although zza time Yugoslavia was trying to uniformization these two different national standards, these standards are now receding faster than the approximative!

Dialectal difference! Historical differences! Cultural differences! National differences! Voice difference!

There has been a common standard since the 1850s based on the Neoštokavian dialect. Kajkavian, Čakavian and Torlakian are not literay dialects and are thus irrelevant, and their influence on the respective standard idiom is infinitesimal/non-existent. Croats are not "Catholics", and Serbs are not "Orthodox" - ethnic and religious affiliation are mutually completely orthogonal, and Croatia and Serbia are both constitutionally secular states. Most of young Croats and Serbs today are atheist anyway. Differences among modern-day standards are minor and hardly justify the notion of "separate languages". --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 12:35, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

@Ivan Štambuk if you are an atheist, it does not mean that other people think the same... It seems more to me that you are trying to misuse wiki for political work... But your party has lost in 1995... Wiki won´t help... --Croq (talk) 20:41, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

It's certainly a valid point that not all Croats are Catholics, not all Serbs are Orthodox, and not all Bosniaks are Muslim, just as not all Yugoslavs were atheists. If you define language by religion, then we'd have to say that atheist Croats don't speak Croatian. — kwami (talk) 01:43, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

TIs article about a controversal language is POV!!! There are different opinions about that "pseudeo-language" Please insert a POV sign! --Modzzak (talk) 21:55, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Croq, I was still a child in 1995, and I've never voted in my life (nor do I plan to - that would implicitly bestow legitimacy to the corrupted democratic system). I don't see how that's relevant to the discussion anyway. I was merely remarking that religious, national and political affiliation has nothing to do with linguistic affiliation. The first is a result of an individual's free choice (well, mostly), the second is something outside his sphere of influence, and established on well-defined scientific methods. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 12:40, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

You are writing about "a corrupted democratic system".Is somebody paying you for working so hard in wiki for not existing language? Who takes care about standardization of so called "serbocroatian" ? You are wasting time... It won´t work.. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.8.228.231 (talk) 18:18, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Well kudos, Ivane, I don't vote either. :) Seems pointless and silly... --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 12:01, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

"Serbo-Croat"?

Where I live (the UK) this language was almost always referred to as "Serbo-Croat" rather than "Serbo-Croatian". For example, I recently found three old language-learning books in a second-hand bookshop and all used "Serbo-Croat". Is this just a British thing, or was "Serbo-Croat" used elsewhere? Loganberry (Talk) 02:16, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't think I've ever heard "Serbo-Croat" in the US, so perhaps it is. — kwami (talk) 23:42, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

I second Loganberry. I've only ever heard of "Serbo-Croat". I think the introduction of the article should be changed to reflect what a lot of native English speakers call the language.Iain (talk) 12:27, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Done. — kwami (talk) 17:35, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

"SC" in post-Yugoslav English.

Since there have been objections that SC no longer exists, I thought that I would post some excerpts from the 2006 (2nd) edition of the Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. This brings together numerous linguists, and so is fairly representative. SC is treated in ways similar to our objectors in articles on language politics and sociolinguistics. And of course lexicography: there are, after all, Canadian dictionaries, Australian dictionaries, etc., and each English-speaking country has its own vocab and pronunciation. But in articles on grammar, phonology, and cladistics, the language is simply SC. Some authors hedge, speaking of the language which 'used to be known as' SC and the like, or BCS; many others simply continue to use the term SC. There isn't even an article for Croatian: the reader is simply redirected to BCS. I've ignored biographies as not being current usage. When no author is given, it was the editors of the encyclopedia themselves. — kwami (talk) 10:42, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

• Albania: Language Situation [from now on 'LS']

"Macedonian and Serbo-Croatian are spoken by fewer people."

• Areal Linguistics. L. Campbell

"The languages of the Balkans are Greek, Albanian, Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Romanian"

• Austria: LS. JR Rennison

"there are now probably far fewer speakers of Czech in Austria than of Serbo-Croatian and Turkish." (the same author spoke of "Croatian" a paragraph earlier)

• Bosnia and Herzegovina: LS

"The term ‘Bosnian’ refers to the languages spoken by Bosnian Serbs, Bosnian Croats, and Bosnian Bosniacs (formerly referred to as Bosnian Muslims), although the Croats and the Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina call their language Croatian and Serbian, respectively. Bosnian is used to refer to the language of the Bosniac group. All three languages – Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian – are dialects of the standard version of Central-South Slavic, formerly and still frequently called Serbo-Croatian."

• Clitics. AD Caink (UK)

"To some extent, this is true of Serbo-Croatian, a language whose second [clitic] position has attracted much debate in recent years (Bosˇkovic´, 2001: 12)"

"Recent research on Serbo-Croatian demonstrates that the clitic cluster is restricted from intervening within some initial constituents, that there is substantial native speaker variation, and that the size of the clitic cluster is a factor (see Bosˇkovic´ , 2001: Chap. 2)."

"Pronominal clitics in many Indo-European languages are similarly restricted to appearing on a verb (as in Bulgarian (9) and French (10)), but this contrasts with Serbo-Croatian pronominal clitics, which do not distinguish between the category of host (see (5) and (7))."

"This holds true of most clitics, but recent evidence suggests that for some speakers at least, pronominal clitics in Serbo-Croatian may undergo ellipsis [...] (Franks and King, 2000: 336)."

• Coreference: Identity and Similarity. Y Huang (UK)

"to express a bound-variable anaphoric relation between a matrix subject and an embedded subject, while English normally allows neither gaps (or empty categories) nor reflexives, Serbo-Croatian allows gaps (or empty categories), Marathi allows reflexives, and Chinese allows both. [...] (Serbo-Croatian cited in Huang, 2000: 6)"

• Croatia: LS

"The official language of Croatia is Croatian (Serbo-Croatian). The writing system is based on an adopted version of the Roman alphabet. The same language is referred to by different names, Serbian (srpski), Serbo-Croat (in Croatia: hrvatsko-srpski), Bosnian (bosanski), based on political and ethnical grounds."

"Language politics have been heavily involved in the numerous ethnical conflicts that took place from 1990 to 1996, and it is still a very sensitive issue in the whole area of the Balkans. The language situation in Croatia has undergone a twofold change in the following period. First, there was a very active engagement of the government and other national institutions trying to stress the differences between the Croatian and other varieties of Serbo-Croat."

"One linguistic consequence of the political and ethnical processes during the 1990s is that the language that used to be officially called Serbo-Croat has gotten several new ethnically and politically based names. Thus, the names Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian are politically determined and refer to the same language with possible slight variations. The language has two major dialects, the Ekavian and Ijekavian, the former being spoken by the majority of Croatians. Still, these dialects do not coincide with the ethnically motivated names, because they both are spoken by more than one ethnic group."

• Croatian: See: Serbian–Croatian–Bosnian Linguistic Complex.

• Croatian Lexicography. M Tadic´ (Zagreb)

"the most influential Croatian philologists at the end of 19th century called themselves ‘Croatian Vukovians,’ thus opening the gates for the attempts at amalgamation of Croatian and Serbian – two languages that are genetically close but have completely different cultural traditions. The compiling and publishing of Rjecˇnik hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika (Dictionary of the Croatian or Serbian language) started in 1880 in Zagreb at the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts, giving an example of this amalgamation in the very name of the dictionary. This process was highly asymmetrical. With the establishment of Yugoslavia after World War I, the political center of the country in Belgrade banned the usage of ‘separate’ Croatian and even Slovenian language names, calling the official language of the country ‘Serbo-Croato-Slovenian.’ Although it was given a single language name, the Hrvatski rjecˇnik (Broz and Ivekovic´, 1901) in its preface subscribed completely to this newly established ideology. This ‘equal situation’ (with the ‘state language’ named Serbo-Croatian but in fact predominantly Serbian) was perpetuated after World War II in Communist Yugoslavia, culminating in severe opposition to Rjecˇnik hrvatskosrpskoga knjizˇevnog jezika (Declaration of the name and status of the Croatian literary language, 1967), which was compiled by Croatian writers, linguists, lexicographers, and the general public. It was only after the Republic of Croatia left the Yugoslav Federation that another general-purpose Croatian dictionary could be published under its natural name."

• Europe as a Linguistic Area. T Stolz (Germany)

"Figure 1 SCR = Serbo-Croatian"

"The next layer, with five shared features, is also exclusively Slavic, namely the west Slavic phylum plus Serbo–Croatian."

• Germany: LS. JMY Simpson

"These [guest workers] included speakers of, among others, Arabic, Greek, Serbo-Croat, Spanish, and Turkish."

• Intonation. M Grice (Germany)

"Languages [with systems] under development are Italian (IToBI), Greek (GrToBI), Serbo-Croation, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Spanish."

[That is, Mandarin and Cantonese are distinct languages from the point of view of computer representation of intonation, but Serbian and Croatian are not.]

• Italian. AL & G Lepschy (UK) [similarly Italy: LS]

"the linguistic minorities within the boundaries of the Italian republic (speakers of German, ca. 280 000, mainly in South Tyrol; of Occitan and Franco–Provenc¸al, ca. 115 000; of Slovene, ca. 53 000; of Serbo–Croatian, ca. 3000; of Albanian, ca. 100 000; of Greek, ca. 30 000; of Catalan, ca. 15 000)"

[that is, French, Occitan, and Catalan are separate languages, but S and C are not]

• Language Change and Language Contact. S Thomason (USA)

"when the source language and the receiving language are very closely related, with essentially no typological distance separating them and largely shared lexicon and structural features, structural diffusion from one to the other often happens without any morphemic exchange. This is perhaps most obvious in cases of dialect borrowing, as for instance when a Standard Serbo-Croatian pattern of syncretism in plural oblique cases (genitive vs. dative/instrumental/locative) replaced the naive syncretic pattern of the Hvar dialect (genitive/locative vs. dative/instrumental), though Hvar speakers retained their own case suffixes, which differ from those of the standard dialect (Hraste, 1935: 17–25).

[note the use here of 'standard' SC as opposed to dialect]

• Language Development: Morphology. H Behrens (Netherlands)

"The acquisition of morphology is related to language type. Slobin (1973) demonstrated that agglutinative languages like Turkish with very regular form-function matches provide the fewest problems, as opposed to more irregular inflectional languages like Serbo-Croatian."

• Language Development: Overview. E Lieven (Max Planck, Germany)

"Other languages present more difficulty – those in which the morphemes are: [...] (2) distributed (e.g., marked with a free form and an inflection, Serbo-Croatian locative markers)"

• Language Policies: Policies on Language in Europe. R de Cillia and B Busch (Vienna)

"The central role that language policy still plays in the process of affirmation of nation states or in the construction of national identities is shown in the example of former Yugoslavia, where the break-up of the federal state into individual states was accompanied by the deconstruction of the umbrella language of Serbo-Croatian and the establishment of the three languages Serbian (Serbo-Croatian), Croatian, and Bosnian as state languages in the three respective states (Bugarski, 2004)."

• Macedonia: LS. V.A. Friedman (U. Chicago)

"In the two post-independence Macedonian censuses (1994 and 2002), six languages were in official use: Macedonian, Albanian, Turkish, Romani, Serbian (Serbo-Croatian), and Aromanian."

[in the mother-tongue census, SC were pooled together; in the nationality censuses, they were not]

• Morphology in Parallel Distributed Processing. M.S. Seidenberg (USA)

"Mirkovicˇ et al. (in press), for example, developed a model of Serbo–Croatian that has inflections for number, case, and gender."

• Oral Traditions and Spoken Discourse. A Varvaro (Naples)

"An analogous mechanism was discovered by Milman Parry who looked at Serbo-Croatian poets. This case was described in a famous book, The singer of tales, by Albert Lord, and is now so widely known that it seems pointless to summarize it here."

• Periphrasis. A Spencer (UK)

"Serbo-Croatian provides an interesting instance. One (somewhat formal) way of forming the future is to use present tense forms of the auxiliary verb ht(j)eti (hoc´u, hoc´esˇ, etc.) together with the infinitive of the lexical verb"

• Reconstruction, Morphological. B Fortson (USA)

"Each Slavic language today has a different system. In Russian, all noun classes participate in it; in Novi Serbo-Croatian, only o-stems do."

• Reconstruction, Syntactic. S Thomason (USA)

"the concept of regular sound change that has guided applications of the Comparative Method for over a century: regular sound change is form-based only, while analogic change is both form- and meaning-based (as seen, for instance, in certain analogic leveling processes in Serbo-Croatian that affect noun declension but not adjective declension – Thomason, 1976)."

• Religion: Overview. E Fudge (UK)

"Social divisions or enmity on grounds of religion often arise within a single language community: in Northern Ireland, for example, despite wide-ranging differences in religious vocabulary, Catholics and Protestants have English as a common language. Serbo-Croatian (Serbo-Croat) is generally held to be a single language, despite religious vocabulary differences and a difference in writing system"

• Romanian. J Augerot (USA)

"there is no final devoicing of consonants as in Bulgarian and Russian and no contrastive vowel length as in Slovak, Hungarian, and Serbian (Serbo-Croatian)."

• Rule Borrowing. S Thomason (USA)

"One striking example is the development of a stress pattern, in a dialect of Croatian spoken near the Hungarian border, that is unique in all of Serbo-Croatian."

"A morphological example that also belongs in this category is found in the Serbo-Croatian dialect of Hvar, as described by Hraste (1935: 17–25). [...] But under the influence of Standard Serbo-Croatian, younger Hvar speakers had replaced this pattern with the Standard one [...]"

• Serbia and Montenegro: SL. B Arsenijevic (Netherlands)

"One linguistic consequence of the political and ethnic processes of the 1990s is that the language that used to be officially called ‘Serbo-Croat’ has received several new ethnically and politically based names. Thus, the names ‘Serbian,’ ‘Croatian,’ and ‘Bosnian’ are politically determined and refer to the same language with possible slight variations."

"The official language of the Republic of Montenegro is Serbian, but there are recent tendencies to introduce the name ‘Montenegrin,’ either parallel to or instead of the name ‘Serbian.’ Just as with Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian, this term refers to the same language that used to be called Serbo-Croat, and is rather a matter of political decisions and convictions."

• Serbian Lexicography. D Sˇipka (USA)

"The Serbo-Croatian phase was initiated by the 1818 Srpski rjecˇnik by Vuk Stefanovic´ Karadzˇic´, which was enlarged and corrected in 1852. These two editions promoted the Sˇ to-dialect common to Serbs and Croats, which after decades of polemics was finally accepted in the second half of the 19th century. In terms of its microstructure, this trilingual Serbian-Latin-German dictionary for the most part follows the tradition established by the earlier Croatian lexicography while having almost no connection with the Serbian tradition of that period. [...] The Serbo-Croatian phase ended with the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s."

• Serbian-Croatian-Bosnian Linguistic Complex. E C Hawkesworth (UK)

(Already quoted extensively, but here are a couple new ones)

"The language formerly known as Serbo-Croat belongs, with Bulgarian, Slovene, and Macedonian, to the South Slav branch of the Slavonic language family."

"The language spoken in these countries is now officially known as Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian, respectively. In linguistic terms, the standard language remains essentially the same, but the sociopolitical reality is that it no longer has a single name. [...] For the purposes of the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, it is known as BCS. University departments in Europe where it is taught refer to it variously as Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (Austria, Norway); Serbo-Croatian (Denmark); Serbo-Croat (France); South Slavic (Finland); Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian (Sweden); Serbian and Croatian (UK). In the absence of an entirely satisfactory solution, in this volume the term ‘Serbian-Croatian-Bosnian linguistic complex’ has been adopted as a clumsy but accurate description."

• Slavic Languages. L A Janda (USA)

"The Slavic language group contains three subfamilies: [...] (3) South Slavic, consisting of Bulgarian, Macedonian, Slovene (Slovenian), and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (BCS; formerly known as Serbo-Croatian).

• Slovene. ML Greenberg

"Together with Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian (Serbo-Croatian), Slovene makes up theWestern subgroup of the South Slavic branch of the Slavic languages (Indo-European). Slovene transitions to the Cˇakavian and Kajkavian dialects of Croatian. It is less close to the Sˇtokavian dialect, the basis for the Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian standard languages."

"Historical influences on Slovene have come from Friulian, German (Standard German) (especially the Bavarian and Tyrolean dialects), Hungarian and Croatian (Serbo-Croatian)," etc.

• Society and Language: Overview. R Mesthrie (Cape Town)

"The same has happened in what was formerly Yugoslavia, where Serbian and Croatian did not have independent status but were considered as ‘eastern’ and ‘western’ variants of the same language called Croato-Serbian (or Serbo-Croatian). With the bloody conflict that accompanied the breakup of the federation in the 1990s, differences between the two varieties were emphasized, and each of them have come to be considered independent ‘languages.’"

[note the scare quotes]

• Speech Synthesis. H C Nusbaum & H Shintel (U Chicago)

"TheMBROLAsynthesizer is based on diphone concatenation and free databases for different languages are currently available or under development including, but not limited to, Estonian, Hindi, Hebrew, Croatian (Serbo-Croatian), and Telugu,"

• Switzerland: LS. H Bickel (Switz.)

"Around 20% of Switzerland’s population is foreign (including nonnaturalized Swiss-born descendants of immigrants), which accounts for the fact that some foreign languages (e.g., Serbo-Croatian and Turkish) are more strongly represented than the national language Romansch."

• Syntactic Development. E L Bavin (Australia)

"Slobin (1982) compared the ages at which children acquiring English, Turkish, Serbo-Croatian, or Italian could interpret transitive sentences appropriately."

• Syntax-Phonology Interface. S Inkelas (UC Berkeley)

"In English, Hausa, and Serbo-Croatian, for example, phonological phrase formation has been shown [...] An example is Serbo-Croatian topicalization [...] This is illustrated for Serbo-Croatian by (6a) and (6b), which both mean ‘that man presented her with it’ and show that in Serbo-Croatian, second position clitics [...]"

• Variation in First Language Acquisition. E Lieven (Max Planck)

"There are reports of children varying in their relative dependence on case marking or word order in learning Finnish, Japanese, Korean, Serbo-Croatian, and Hungarian."

• Variation in German. S Barbour (UK)

"Such continua may include several languages, for example, Western Romance (including French, Catalan [Catalan-Valencian-Balear], Castilian Spanish [Spanish], Italian, Portuguese, Occitan [Auvergnat, Gascon, Languedocien, Limousin], and others) or South Slavonic (including Slovene [Slovenian], Croatian [Serbo-Croatian], Serbian [Serbo-Croatian], Macedonian, and Bulgarian)."

[brackets in the original]

SC no longer exists? LoL, perhaps if one asked the Serbian and Croatian governments - fortunately their "politicized" corruption of reality has no authority over the international scientific community. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 12:04, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

SC exists? LoL,LOL lOL. Who takes care about that fiction of a language nowadays??? Who takes care about standardization???? That language existed in ex Yugoslav Dictatures - but that corrupt an brutal regime is defeated. RIP SC, and never come back --Croq (talk) 19:20, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

This article folow the POV that the SC exits. But that is very controversal. So the article is not encyclopedical--Croq (talk) 19:42, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Languages do not exist or cease to exist by decree of governments or political parties. Who standardizes the English language? The Croatian or Bosnian or American governments do not have the authority to order linguists to follow their political views. The very idea is totalitarian in nature... The point here is to establish the view of the international scientific community. Whether or not you or someone in the Balkans is personally offended by it is insignificant. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 20:20, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Oh, yes languages are created by governments and cease by their decrees. Majority of wastern languages are standardised by the governmental act. Examples are Italian or German... There were dozens of different languages spoken in Ger. and Ita. before the governmental act and decision on the name and standard form of the language. Similar case is with the name of the Ilyrian language which was named by the respective government and ceased the same way.85.178.149.235 (talk) 23:12, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps you're unaware of the fact that thereare thousands of languages spoken on this planet, and only 200-something governments. Perhaps you're also unaware that in Europe alone there are a dozen or so of sovereigns who have no "official language". There was no such thing as Illyrian language; today that term refers to the ancient IE language of the Balkans, but in the 19th century it was a generic term covering several Slavic languages/dialects, including some artificial literary ones that were very short-lived. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 21:52, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

@Director, Stambuk and Kwamikagami: that´s trolling-behaviour.Not serious encyclopedic work. I guess you are wasting time here.That is no Standard language!!! --Croq (talk) 23:20, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Trolling? Are you kidding? :P

Let me put it this way: governments can declare the existence of languages or the cessation of their existence. However, it is up to the scientific community to follow that decree or not. They usually do, but not always.

Some languages are officially standardized by a central institution, others are not. This does not impact their existence.

Finally, your argument is self-defeating. If as you say, languages only exist when countries decree and standardize them, then the Croatian language did not exist until 1990 (In Austria-Hungary - "Croatian or Serbian" not standardized by any official institution, in Yugoslavia - Serbo-Croatian). Since your argument so far seems to be entirely "based" in nationalist sentiment, I sincerely doubt you will apply your own rigorous "standards" of language existence to the "sacred Croatian language" as well. :) --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 00:19, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Anon, who's talking about a standard language? I've heard arguments that standardized SC was a farce, and maybe it was. But that's rather irrelevant apart from the section of this article about Yugoslavia and standardization.

Meanwhile, we speak of the Shtokavian dialect. "Dialects" are subdivisions of languages: Glasgow dialect is a dialect of English, for example. So, which language is Shtokavian a dialect of? Not of Croatian, for that would mean it's not Serbian, which it is. Not Serbian, for that would mean it's not Croatian. So, what is it? The term in English for this language is SC. Some people use other names, like BCS, to avoid offending people's sensibilities. But, as they say, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet: whatever you call it, it's the same language. It's possible that some day we will move this article to a better name, but that won't change the fact that it describes a language with several standardized forms, of which Standard Croatian and Standard Serbian are the most developed. — kwami (talk) 04:44, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

In a few years Croatian language wil be a official language in the EU. Those people who try to establish "SC" will be responsible that these students will not be able to find somebody who will employ them, because they do not know Croatian langue. Keep in mind, you will remember my words. Why do you try to establish that lie here in the wiki? It has nothing to do with reality.--Croq (talk) 08:04, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Um, no-one is trying to "establish" anything.

If you know SC, you know Croatian, so no problem. Perhaps some new words to learn if you concentrated on the Serbian variant, just as you'd have some adjustments to make if you learn US English and end up being hired for UK English.

The EU has already said they don't want to recognize Croatian as a distinct language. Perhaps they will, or perhaps they'll recognize SC under a different name like "Shtokavian" or "Nash-yezik". Who knows; that's a political question, not a linguistic one. — kwami (talk) 08:11, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

But it is not only some new words. It´s not only in two variants. And the EU will recognize, you will see. Some people that seem to be under a similar influence as you are in doubt, but as that is no wikipedia but real life with real experts they will have to accept reality. SC is a political and not linguistic product. You have diaclectal continuums in the most area in Europe with slavic speaking countries, that is not the question (same as in german language speking contries). One day you will condemn the people that made you believe in this what you are fighting for in this wiki. --Croq (talk) 11:36, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

All four standards are based on a single dialect. Linguistically, such things are not 'languages', but 'registers'. Since we're an encyclopedia, we should use technical terms correctly. Of course, a 'language' in the non-technical sense can have all sorts of meanings ('the language of love', 'the language of Nature', etc.), so there's nothing wrong with calling Croatian a 'language', just as long as we're clear on the details.

And if it turns out that every linguistics book I've ever read is wrong, I'm certainly not going to "condemn" any of the authors. That would just be silly. — kwami (talk) 20:21, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

More accurately, those standards are called Autonomous languages (or Ausbausprachen, within a different framework). No such user (talk) 23:20, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

I've never heard the term 'autonomous language', but yeah, Ausbausprache, standard language, etc. — kwami (talk) 01:30, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

In the border area bewteen Poland and Czech Republic, the local dialect on both sides is similar. Same in the aera betweeg Germany and Netherlands, and in so many other countries. These dialectal continuums are probably in so many countries. But nobody says german-netherlands language, polish-czech, german-luxembourgian.... and so on. I hope now you will understand this problem. It´s just a matter of fairness.--Croq (talk) 06:54, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, we all know about dialect continua. Czech-Polish is called "West Slavic". German-Dutch is called "West Germanic". If this were a matter of Carinthian, Prekmurian, Chakavian, Shtokavian, Torlakian, Rup, and Macedonian, then you'd be correct: there would be no need to posit a "Serbo-Croatian language". However, there would be no need to posit a "Croatian language" either. Should we therefore delete the Croatian language article and restrict ourselves to the "Shtokavian language"? — kwami (talk) 07:53, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

False and inaccurate discussion!

Why are they removed all disputes and written nonsense! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.131.47.51 (talk) 08:31, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for posting this, that seems to have an article at Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics and as an encyclopedia it can be useful as a tertiary source. I suppose the individual texts could be treated as secondary sources. It looks certain that the stance of that encylopedia has not been to revert to "Serbo-Croatian language" as before, but to adjust to the new situation in the relevant places and avoid excess controversy. I have just reverted your edit on the Gaj alphabet article for the same reason. Now, it would be helpful if actual relevant article references were created from this. Particularly pertinent to this one seems to be the E. Celia Hawkesworth description. It's not really helpful that she doesn't have an article, and a new one might have a WP:PROF problem. In relation to this topic, that might even be looked upon as a view coming from the disintegrationist side of the aisle, given the author has published separate books on Croatian and Serbian vernacular. :) --Joy [shallot] (talk) 08:24, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

My concern is that, in bending backwards to avoid offending anyone by using the term SC, we imply that the language itself does not exist. We shouldn't avoid mentioning a topic at all just because we can't all agree on what to call it. In fact, much of the opposition to the term isn't to the name itself, but to the concept, and by avoiding it we play into the hands of this delusion. Hawkesworth uses an admittedly awkward workaround, and IMO it's not really satisfactory, but in any case it fails our CommonName criteria. The common name in English is still SC, no matter how much that may offend some people. That doesn't mean that Croatian or Serbian or Bosnian aren't "real" languages, only that they are part of something larger, but smaller than South Slavic.

I agree with you that the name Serbo-Croatian is still in fairly common use and that it's wholly pointless to eliminate it or replace it in all possible contexts. Nevertheless I don't think it's necessary or prudent to go about mass-replacing or re-inserting references to it in articles that already use the separate-standard-language style, which seems to have been happening for a while now. It occurs to me that -- while comparisons with English are generally ill-advised in this context -- there is one guideline whose spirit it would be nice to apply in this situation - Wikipedia:Manual of Style#National varieties of English - internal consistency, strong ties of a topic, retaining the existing variety, and opportunities for commonality. This is indeed the sensible manner in which many historical articles have been written already - for example numerous articles about the topics from the relevant periods carry the adjectives "Habsburg", "Venetian", "Yugoslav" together with "Croatian" or "Serbian" or whatever. Similarly, when discussing the Novi Sad Agreement it's perfectly pertinent to talk of Serbo-Croatian, but not so when discussing e.g. Bartol Kašić. On the hot topic of categorizing Croatian language in its infobox - that's another place where it's plain old advisable to avoid contradicting the local interpretation, but use a compromise, because having something looking somewhat cumbersome is much preferable to having a perpetual edit war. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 10:26, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Then what designation should we use when discussing Bartol Kašić? He didn't called his language Croatian. For him it was "Illyrian", and he explicitly mentions that language being expanded into lands populated by non-Catholics :) The only reason why it should be mentioned as belonging to "Croatian", is because Kašić is appropriated into modern-day perception of "Croatian literary tradition". Which is chiefly a result of nationalist fiction, because there was not Croatian state resembling anything of today, and Croatian nationalist consciousness, at that period (15th, 16th century). Wikipedia needs to be impartial, objective and equidistant from all nationalist/statist viewpoints. Using the term Serbo-Croatian is as close as we can get to that. The facts that certain writers are today usually classified as "Croatian", "Serbian", "Bosniak" or "Montenegrin" should be mentioned orthogonally to that - as ex post facto statist propaganda. For all the pre-19th century writers we should simply strip all national designation from the lead and text, except in a certain subsection discussing modern-day national and ethnic context. Like we already have for articles such as Ruđer Bošković, Nikola Tesla etc. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 11:19, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

How can you say that using "Serbo-Croatian" is something that is not based on any biased propaganda - when it was promoted by the local pan-Slavists and the Yugoslav state? You think that they're more accurate, so that somehow makes their terminology neutral and devoid of a bias? By way of... magic? I'm sorry, but this is just plain illogical and just goes to show that you are utterly biased in favor of Serbo-Croatian. One could almost call you a Yugoslav nationalist. Just in case it needs saying - please feel free to espouse such views, it's fine by me, but don't try to pretend that they have basis only in science and have no relation to any of that filthy nationalist stuff that you love to talk so pejoratively about. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 11:43, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

"Yugoslav nationalism" is contradiction in terms. Yes, the term Serbo-Croatian has absolutely nothing to do with petty Balkanic ethno-tribalism. In fact, it's exactly the opposite ! Yes some of those who participated in the standardization efforts of literary Serbo-Croatian in the 19th century were arduous Pan-Slavists, but the term itself was (is) completely devoid of ethnic classification. The problem is that some nationalists cannot cope with the fact that different nations/ethnicities could share essentially the same language. That's the insidious remnant of the 19th-century state-building theories, at odds with 21st-century perspective of globalization and multiculturalism. So what? Do foreigners using the term think that Croats=Serbs=Bosniaks? No they don't. It's what some of the nationalists expressing their objections here imagine them t beieve, scared to the bones of the loss of their fragile identities. It's also what some of them deceitfully propagandize, in pitiful efforts to reinforce the isolationist convictions that they entertain ("Serbs, Bosniaks and Croats are 3 completely different people that have nothing to do with each other"). For an objective, ultimate observer, the term is perfectly fine and historically justified in usage. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 21:48, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

So, for example, in Gaj's alphabet, the old wording implied that it was the Croatian alphabet, and happened to be used incidentally elsewhere, when in fact it is an alphabet of all four SC standards.

It's a question of interpretation - when you say the alphabet "of" all four, does that then relate primarily to the historical origin, or the present-day situation, or even some sort of perceived ownership? Anyway please see latest section on Talk:Gaj's Latin Alphabet. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 10:26, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

It's difficult to clearly present material when we're afraid to mention a central element of the topic under discussion. That's the reason I keep pushing the term; if we later decide that some other term is more appropriate, we can always use a bot to replace SC with that new term; if we hem and haw and skirt around the issue, then we'll have to rewrite the articles, and in the meanwhile their factual accuracy will suffer.

Also, I do avoid the phrase "SC language", as I can see how that would imply that the component parts are not languages, and I don't mean to do that. I've been using phrases like "SC standards", "SC standard languages", etc. Please suggest any other wording you think would be more appropriate. — kwami (talk) 09:07, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

I sympathize with the attempt to push a uniform solution for the simple purpose of clarity, but at the same time I don't believe we're doing the encyclopedia a favor if that means en masse sidestepping an existing real-world lack of uniformity on the topic. The encyclopedia describes, it does not prescribe... --Joy [shallot] (talk) 10:26, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

I guess that after Croatian language will be an official language in the EU this terrible dispute will end:All the peple that are studyin "SC" will get no job there..., not able to get a job... Then the can send protest notes to ... --Croq (talk) 20:28, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, right. As if, if the US were to start referring to its national language as "American", you'd no longer be able to get a job there, because you studied "English" in school. Give me a break. — kwami (talk) 22:11, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

While I try to steer clear of answering posts that amount to trolling for the simple purpose of conserving time and effort for more worthwhile endeavours, this time I'll bite: first of all, there is no terrible dispute, only a fairly straightforward, reasonably rational debate on what essentially amounts to issues of nomenclature and categorization. Trying to ignore the debate by way of some magic wand is tantamount to ignoring history - which usually leads to it eventually coming back and biting you in the ass. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 10:37, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

NPOV

This curent version is still according to the personal opinion of some authors. That has nothing to do with an encyclopedic article. As long as we don´t find a consensus there should be the NPOV sign. --Croq (talk) 08:33, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

You don't get to just place an {{NPOV}} tenplate to comfort you. You're supposed to actively discuss as well. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 08:36, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

There are so many postings. Do you really think that this article as non disputed? --Croq (talk) 10:39, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Again: you do not get to place an {{NPOV}} tag to feel better about yourself. If you place a tag, list the neutrality issues and start discussing ways to resolve them. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 13:18, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

This article includes so much POV statements. I tryed to remove some of them. Perhaps best would be to make a stub, or to ask for a mediation --Croq (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 14:06, 11 July 2010 (UTC).

Coordinated nationalist response

...is inevitable and should be expected. Nobody should be surprised if we see nationalist canvassing on the Croatian and perhaps Serbian wikis for the recruitment of meatpuppets to oppose any changes here. All out-mobilization, in fact. :) Numbers, however, do not mean much on Wiki. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 13:23, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Yugoslav Nationalsm

Please stop with that Yugoslaw nationalism. There is no way back... Croatians, Montenegrins, Bosniaks and Serbians are on the way back to normal relationship. Finally we have democracy, freedom - and Yugoslaw Serbocroatian are a sysonym for dictatorship, language discrimination. --Croq (talk) 13:58, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Language discrimination? In fact this is quite the opposite and more importantly has much less to do with politics and a lot more to do with linguistics. 83.131.59.10 (talk) 14:37, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

IP does not know about language discrimination? But in Croatia is well known that Yugoslav Nationalsists installed linguistical censorship, printmedia and linguistical discrimination against those who did not want to write "SRC". Is was dangerous to say or write anything against it. --213.103.161.171 (talk) 15:19, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Except we're not talking about politics but linguistics here, which some people tend to completely forget. No matter what happened during second Yugoslavia, these languages have been a very cohesive mutually intelligible unit since early 19th century. 83.131.59.10 (talk) 17:14, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

That's a common myth: the linguistic basis (ijekavian Neoštokavian dialect) of modern standard Croatian predates Communist Yugoslavia by at least century. Vienna Literary Agreement happened in 1850! --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 21:13, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Croq, don't you think that the phrase Yugoslav nationalism is a bit oxymoronic? I mean, Yugoslavia had a Communist regime that openly vilified nationalism and imprisoned lots of self-professed nationalists. Not that the people were forbidden to express "positive" nationalism; in fact, only a tiny minority of population in censi even claimed to have the nationality of Yugoslavs (usually those from mixed marriages and ardent Communists). The phrase Yugoslav nationalists is equally bizarre. Lets keep politics out of this, aye? --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 21:13, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

This is about linguistics not politics. In the Balkans linguistics (and science in general) are consistently influenced by politics, communist or nationalist to equal extent. Local publications are therefore to be disregarded without exception, both from the pre-1990 or post-1990 periods.
Croq, your ideological references and borderline personal attacks serve only to apparently satisfy you, other than that I cannot imagine any effect. Don't let me stop you though... --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 17:17, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Croq has now done exactly the same edit twice, even though it was reverted the first time. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 19:27, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Croq changed in every edit some details. But you are reverting everytime without discussion. Same as it happened in Ex Yugoslavia when the communists tryed to establish their "Yugoslav Language". Really interesting POV pushing team here.. --Croq (talk) 10:48, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm sure we'd all be glad to play the bad guys in your glorious crusade here, but I'm afraid Wikipedia is not the venue. You have been reverted, your edits are opposed, and you are engaged in a WP:EDIT WAR. In accordance with Wiki guidelines I am formally warning you to cease attempting to push your opposed edit via edit-warring, and achieve consensus on the talkpage via discussion prior to restoring any of it again. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 11:02, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Apparently we are a bunch of POV pushing vandals. Croq is threatening to report me to admins for POV pushing on my talk page, probably in response to me warning him. Besides, I didn't see any major changes in any of the edits Croq made. They all pretty much said the same things, such as "hybrid language" and "communist yugoslavia" that were blatant POV pushing. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 17:10, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

There are so many reasons why this article is pure POV: You removed that this language is controversial (and everybody knows very well that this is a fact), the sentence with the Novi Sad Agreement of and so many other things. This pseudo-language is a part of history of Yugoslavia when the dictators tried to establish a "Yugoslav Language". It ended in the same way as their general Ratko Mladic, Slobodan Milosevic and so many others ended. Please accept that the history is not written by the guys like them and that democracy and freedom has won against tyranism. --Croq (talk) 17:29, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Removing mentioning its controversial status within former Yugoslavia, especially Croatia, is, of course, POV. However, trying to deny its factual existence is equally POV: speakers of both (standard) Croatian and Serbian can easily understand eachother, making SC a language from a linguistic-scientific perspective; such things do not cease to be (or come to be) when the political situation changes. As an encyclopedia we have an obligation to report this (and the other) facts, no matter the sensitivities. (We thus must also report dictators' abuses concerning the language.) Also note that SC≠Yugoslav language here. --JorisvS (talk) 17:57, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, JorisvS, we agree that the the status is controversal. By the way not only in "Ex-YU" but also other lingists. So lets put it in the article in the beginning. --Croq (talk) 13:34, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

The language is not "controversial" in ex-Yugoslavia - its existence is simply not an issue. Each state promotes its own centralized standard language, and adherence to the ever-changing standard is not an issue of debate. Serbo-Croatian is considered not to be in existence in any form and is simply not a subject of controversy at all.

That is not truth, it contoversal there, too. The people know very well there which language they speak. In the croatian or serbian wikipedia such a discussion is not necessary.´--Croq (talk) 13:34, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Oh laugh-out-loud what nonsense... you're actually opposing me while agreeing with me. :D Very telling, I think, about the usefullness of any discussion along these lines. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 15:10, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

In other words, in ex-Yugoslavia a language's existence is generally considered to be defined by its standardization. Since no political organization or institution standardizes Serbo-Croatian, it is considered "not to exist" simply because of that, and since the myriad nationalist political institutions of each state institute each their own language, these are considered to be in existence (no matter how absurd their separation may be, e.g. Bosnian language, Montenegrin language, etc.) The above is evident from the responses of the opposing parties. Wikipedia, just like the scientific community, is not to be influenced by political institutions. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 18:31, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

No, Director. We know very well the phasis of political tryal to create a "Yugoslav Language" thert SC should become. But it ended in the same way as the whole country. And stop calling poeple that do not share your unitartistic opinion as "nationalists". By the way ist is the same way like comunists called those who oppose their dictatoirship and fought for freedom in their countries as dissidents. --Croq (talk) 13:34, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

"Crusade, crusade, communists, freedom, unitarianists," etc... I see no sense in responding to such rot. Croq, you are not getting the message, please read the following very carefully and please do not ignore it in future posts: this issue has nothing to do with politics and history. Nothing. You seem not to know what matters on Wikipedia. If you want to be taken seriously you should cease writing these utterly pointless essays and start referring to the international scientific community... or you could just keep posting these insulting pretentious proclamations, I don't know... this is not the backwater dump that is hrWiki. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 15:10, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

On a side note, Croq's only valid point of the language being politically controversial is thoroughly covered in the HUUUGE Present situation section. 83.131.49.180 (talk) 18:02, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

SC is not only political controversal. Thats´s only one point. The second one is also that it i POV pushing that Croatian, Serbian, Bosniak, Montenegrin are the same languages. They are similar but not the same. I guess for not native speakers maybe difficult to understand (same as if a native english speaker would start teaching me about something) but not accespting that Croats, Serbs, Montenegrins and Bosniaks do not know it is very arrogant. --Croq (talk) 20:57, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

No, they're not the same. They just happen to be 99% the same by the fact that they are all standardized on the same subdialect of the same dialect. Modern standard Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian have the same phonology, the same complex accentual system, same complex inflection, almost the same syntax... The only relevant differences are in some 5% of lexis of which majority are systematic and intuitively predictable (in Croatia they prefer -telj where sometimes in Serbia they prefer -lac, and similar). You need to stop downplaying obvious commonalities/similarities among the standards and dispense with abusive political name-calling. Your personal nationalist identity is of no concern us. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 21:24, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

No Mr Stambuk, you personal non qualification is so obvious for native speakers that you can sell you wisedom only to wikipedians who are not native speakers. Forget it, don´t play here with percentages, they don´t keep water. You are wasting time with your personal wiki project.--213.103.160.194 (talk) 22:04, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Per wikipedia policy, unqualified average serbs/croats/bosniks/montenegrins (sorry if denonyms are slightly off) would probably hold less water on this article than others, due to an inherent POV. That is not to say that their opinions are not important. And percentages do keep water, they are base facts. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 22:23, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Just to be perfectly clear: the languages are completely mutually intelligible. The Slovene language is a separate South Slavic language very similar to Serbo-Croatian, and a Serbo-Croatian speaker may understand some Slovene words, perhaps even the general meaning of what the Slovene-speaker is trying to say. On the other hand, a Serb and a Croat may often not even realize they (supposedly) speak "different languages". In other words, its much easier to list the very few differences than the completely common grammar between Croatian and Serbian. Anyone demanding "translation" from Croatian to Serbian or vice versa would not be understood as being serious and would literally be laughed at (as was actually the case during a trial in Bosnia and Herzegovina).

The absurdities go on and on... Croatian supposedly has two secondary dialects, Chakavian and Kajkavian, the differences between standard Croatian and its two dialects are vastly and incomparably greater than those between standard Croatian and standard Serbian (as both are based on Shtokavian), to the point its not even debatable. I'm not kidding - pure Kajkavian and Chakavian are virtually unintelligible to a standard Croatian speaker, with very different syntax and a LOT more different words than you'll find comparing Serbian or Croatian. The absurdity is this: Croq will undoubtedly tell you that Chakavian and Kajkavian are the same language as Croatian, but will exclaim that Serbian is "much too different" to be the same language. And not just him, most people from Croatia will tell you the same :P --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 23:34, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

I would just like to add - Kajkavian (especially the versions spoken around the Gorski kotar area, probably those in Medjimurje too) is actually more similar to Slovene and probably easier to understand for a native Slovene speaker than for a native (stokavian) speaker of Croatian. 89.172.55.34 (talk) 00:06, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Exactly, which further blurs the language differences: if Kajkavian is a Serbo-Croatian dialect, then Slovene can also be considered as part of the single "Serbo-Croato-Slovene language", which was official 1918-1943/45. This of course is an out of date concept today, and generally more debatable. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 01:04, 14 July 2010 (UTC)