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Serbo-Croatian (srpskohrvatski or hrvatskosrpski) is a name for a language of the western group of the South Slavic
languages.
Serbo-Croatian was one of the official languages in former
Yugoslavia, the
other two were Slovenian and Macedonian. It continues to be used (under different names) in
today's Serbia and Montenegro, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina
and is still reasonably well understood in FYR Macedonia
and Slovenia. The language is also spoken by Serbian and Croatian minorities in Austria, Hungary, Albania,
Italy, Romania and elsewhere.
The name controversy
The name Serbo-Croatian is a controversial issue due to
history, politics, and the variable meaning of the word language.
Genetic lingustics point of view
From the genetic linguistics point of view, Serbo-Croatian grew out from
Neo-Štokavian dialect and is/was considered one language with two generally mutually intelligible variants: "western" or
Croatian and "eastern" or Serbian. This point of view dominated from 1870s to 1960s. The use of national names for the variants
could not accommodate Bosnian Muslims.
Genetic linguistics is, generally speaking, concerned mainly with two basic traits: the origin of a language and mutual
intelligibility between languages thus defined. So, according to these criteria, Hindi and Urdu are one language, as are Bulgarian and Macedonian. Genetically, there is not one German language, but at least two: one of them (Plattdeutsch) is, genetically, one language with Dutch language. English and Scots are in a rather similar position. Another example is the mutual
intelligibility between speakers of Indonesian in Indonesia and Malay in Malaysia, Singapore etc. These criteria
have dominated the thinking about South Slavic languages in the past 200 years.
Sociolinguistics point of view
The sociolinguistic situation is much more complex. Throughout
the history of the south Slavs, the vernacular, literatures and written language of the regions and ethnicities developed
independently and diverged to a point.
In the mid 19th century, both Serbian and Croatian writers and linguists decided to use the most widespread Štokavian
dialect as a basis for their standard languages. Thus a bi-variant language appeared, which the Serbs officially called
"Serbo-Croatian" and Croats "Croatian and Serbian". The variants of a supposedly single language functioned in practice as
different standard languages. The common phrase used to describe
this unusual situation was that Serbo-Croatian/Croatian or Serbian is a unified but not a unitary language.
After the ethnic tensions in the 1970s and especially after the breakup of Yugoslavia and the ensuing
war in the 1990s, most speakers decided to call their language either Serbian, Croatian or Bosnian.
Official names
The name Serbo-Croatian is not used. Rather,
- Bosniaks in Bosnia and Herzegovina use Bosnian
- Croats in Croatia and in Bosnia and Herzegovina use Croatian
- Serbs in Serbia and Montenegro and in Bosnia and Herzegovina use Serbian
- An initiative for Montenegrin language appears not to
be widely accepted
For more information, see: Differences in official languages in Serbia, Croatia and
Bosnia
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has specified different Universal Decimal Classification (UDC)
numbers for Croatian (UDC 862, acronym hr) and Serbian (UDC 861, acronym sr), while the "cover term" Serbo-Croatian is referenced
as the combination of original signs-UDC 861/862, acronym sh. Furthermore, the ISO 639 standard specifies Bosnian language with
acronyms bos and bs.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia
considers what it calls BCS (Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian) to be the first language of all Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian
defendants. The indictments, documents and verdicts of the ICTY are actually written in a "Yugoslav pidgin", with no regard to
grammatical prescriptions given in any authoritative linguistic work from 1899 on — be they Serbian, Croatian or
Bosnian.
Views of the linguists
Opinions of linguists in former Yugoslavia diverge.
- The majority of mainstream Serbian linguists considers Serbo-Croatian to be still one language with two variants. Also, the
majority of Serbian linguists thinks that Serbo-Croatian is essentially a Serbian-based language. A minority among Serbian
linguists is of the opinion that Serbo-Croatian had existed, but has, in the meantime, dissolved. A small minority avers that
there never existed "Serbo-Croatian" language and that this designates a Croatian variant of the Serbian language.
- The majority of Croatian linguists thinks that there was never anything like unified Serbo-Croatian language, but two
different standard languages that overlapped sometimes in the course of history. Also, they claim that no language has ever
dissolved since there was no Serbo-Croatian standard language. A minority of Croatian linguists deny that Croatian standard
language is based on the neo-štokavian dialect; also, another minority of Croatian linguists claims that Serbian language is
an offshoot of Croatian since as a system of dialects it is a subset of the Croatian system of dialects.
- The majority of Bosniak linguists considers that the Serbo-Croatian language still exists and that it is based on the Bosnian
idiom. A minority of Bosniak linguists thinks that Croats and Serbs have, historically, "misappropriated" Bosnian language for
their political and cultural agenda.
Political connotations
Nationalists have rather conflicting views about the language(s). The nationalists among the Croats and Bosniaks claim that
they speak entirely separate languages, whereas the nationalists among the Serbs claim that any divergence in the language is
artificial, or claim that the Štokavian dialect is theirs and Čakavian Croat. Proponents of unity among Southern Slavs
claim that there is a single language with normal dialectal variations.
Moderate people usually say that the issue of the language is exaggerated and that nomenclature is hardly important.
Dialects
The primary dialects are named after the word for what. Čakavian (čakavski) uses the word
ča; Kajkavian (kajkavski), kaj; and Štokavian (štokavski), što
or šta. However, outside of this classification are Burgenland Croatian and Torlakian (torlački).
Furthermore, there are three ways of rendering the Proto-Slavic vowel jat.
Čakavian mainly uses i, Kajkavian mainly uses e while Štokavian dialect is broken down into a
secondary subdivision based on whether ije or e is used.
Each of these primary and secondary dialectical units break down into subdialects and accents by region. In the past it was
not uncommon for individual villages to have some of their own words and phrases. However, throughout the twentieth century the
various dialects have been strongly influenced by the Štokavian standards through mass media and public education and much
of the "local color" has been lost.
With the breakup of Yugoslavia, nationalism has also caused many, especially in Bosnia and Hercegovina to modify their speech,
or even attempt to change dialects entirely. The various wars have also caused mass migrations, and changed the ethnic makeup of
some areas, especially in Bosnia, but also in Croatia and Serbia, especially in Vojvodina. In some areas it is unclear whether
location or ethnicity is now the dominant factor in the dialect of the speaker.
Because of these forces, the speech patterns of some communities and regions are in a state of flux, and it is difficult to
determine which dialects will die out entirely. Further research over the next few decades will be necessary to determine the
changes made in the dialectical distribution of the language.
Although most linguists nowadays consider Štokavian, Čakavian, and Kajkavian as three dialects of one common
language, there is a basis for considering the three as distinct tongues. However, since there is no clear-cut criteria for
distinguishing a language from a dialect, and dialects are usually described in reference to standard languages, a notion of
diasystem is frequently used instead of
Serbo-Croatian.
The example sentence in the following sections means approximately "What is, is; it's how it always was, what will be, will
be, and it'll be somehow!".
Rendering of yat
The Proto-Slavic vowel jat has changed over time and is now being rendered in
three different ways:
- In Ekavian (ekavski), jat has morphed into the vowel e
- in Ikavian (ikavski), the vowel i
- in Ijekavian or Jekavian (ijekavski or jekavski), the diphthong ije or je depending on
whether the vowel was long or short.
The following are some examples:
| English |
Predecessor |
Ekavian |
Ikavian |
Ijekavian |
| time |
vrěme |
vreme |
vrime |
vrijeme |
| beautiful |
lěp |
lep |
lip |
lijep |
| girl |
děvojka |
devojka |
divojka |
djevojka |
| true |
věran |
veran |
viran |
vjeran |
| village |
selo |
selo |
selo |
selo |
| to need |
trěbati |
trebati |
tribati |
trebati |
| to heat |
grějati |
grejati |
grijati |
grijati |
The first two examples involve long vowels. For instance, the first e in vreme and the i in
vrime are long, so the long diphthong ije is found in the Ijekavian form. In the third and fourth examples the
corresponding ekavian and ikavian vowels are short, so the short diphthong je is found in the Ijekavian form.
However, there are some cases where that pattern of correspondence is altered. The fifth example selo is there as an
example of a word in which the e did not derive from jat, and hence the word is the same in all three dialects.
In other cases, especially when the jat is following on an r, Ijekavian also formed out an e, as we
see in the sixth example, or an i as in the seventh example.
Štokavian
The Štokavian dialect is spoken in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Hercegovina, and the greater part of Croatia. The
Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian standard languages are all based
on the štokavian dialect.
The primary subdivisions of Štokavian are based on the different ways the jat vowel has been changed.
Ekavian, sometimes called Eastern, is spoken primarily in Serbia. Standard Serbian endorses both ekavian and ijekavian as
equal variants; Montenegrins and Bosnian Serbs, who also call their language Serbian, use Ijekavian, while most of Serbia uses
Ekavian. Some Bosnian Serbs who formerly spoke Ijekavian have begun switching to Ekavian. This used to be official politics in
the Republika Srpska during the 1990s, but has been abandoned more recently.
Ikavian is spoken in western Bosnia, and in Slavonia and northwestern Dalmatia in Croatia.
Ijekavian, sometimes called Western, is spoken in many parts of Croatia including southern Dalmatia, most of Bosnia,
Herzegovina, Montenegro. In Bosnia it was spoken by most members of all three ethnicities until very recently. It is the basis of
the Croatian standard and the Bosniak standard.
There are other differences between the standard dialects, including vocabulary, some syntax (primarily concerning preferences
for da-clauses versus infinitives), and orthography. See Differences in official languages in Serbia, Croatia and
Bosnia.
The first purely štokavian texts are dated ca. 1380-1400 (Vatican Croatian Prayer Book). There are several older texts written with elements of štokavian,
such as a charter written by the Bosnian ban Kulin in 1189. Bosniak or Bosnian vernacular štokavian texts go back to the 16th and 17th century (folksongs, poems, and a
grammar).
Example: Što jest, jest; tako je uvijek bilo, što će biti, (biće|bit će), a nekako već
će biti!
(The option in the middle is an orthographic difference between Serbian and Croatian
norms, respectively.)
See also:
Kajkavian
Kajkavian is mostly spoken in northern Croatia, in and around Zagreb and near the
Hungarian and Slovenian borders. It renders jat mostly as e, but note that this rendering cannot be equated to
that of the ekavian štokavian dialects, as many kajkavian dialects distinguish a closed e (from jat) and
an open e (from original e).
It bears many similarities to eastern Slovenian dialects,
but it has no dual number. Indeed some kajkavian
speakers near the Slovenian border speak dialects that appear to be mixtures of Kajkavian and Slovene. Some philologists in the
19th century considered Kajkavian an offshoot of the Slovene
language, but this has been abandoned since the beginning of the 20th century due to work by the Slovene philologist
Ramovš and the Serbian philologist Belić.
Kajkavian dialects near the Hungarian border have a lot of Hungarian loan words, though many of these borrowings are falling out of use today. Other changes are
also occurring due to the Štokavian influence mentioned above. For instance the word when used to be rendered
gda in Podravina and probably elsewhere, but today most people use the štokavian kada.
Some kajkavian words bear a closer resemblance to other Slavic languages (such as Russian) than they do to Štokavian or Čakavian. For instance gda seems (at first
glance) to be unrelated to kada, however, when compared to the Russian когда, the
relationship becomes more apparent. Kajkavian kak (how) and tak (so) are exactly like their
Russian cognates, as compared to štokavian and čakavian kako and tako.
1578 is the date of the oldest kajkavian written work, translation of "Decretum
tripartitum" by Ivan Pergošić. Probably the most authoritative text describing the kajkavian dialect is "Language of
Kajkavian Croats", authored by the pre-eminent Croatian linguist Stjepan Ivšić in 1934.
Kajkavian further stands out by lacking phonemes such as 'c' (ц) (instead using the combination of 'ts' as in
Hrvatska), 'č' (ч) (instead using 'tš', 'ć' (ћ), 'đ' (ђ), 'dž'
(џ), 'lj' (љ) and 'nj' (њ), as well as the characteristic semi-vowel 'r' (р). Furthermore, Kajkavian
includes a vowel the 'ə' which is similar to the Scandinavian 'ø' and missing from Štokavian and Čakavian.
Example: Kak je, tak je; tak je navek bilo, kak bu tak bu, a bu vre nekak kak bu!
Čakavian
Čakavian is spoken in the western and southern parts of Croatia, mainly in Istria and Dalmatia. The Čakavian in Dalmatia and southwestern
Istria is Ikavian as it renders jat as i, while the dialects of the remainder of the Northern Seacoast in
Croatia are either pure Ekavian or of a mixed Ekavian-Ikavian type, the reflex of jat depending on the adjacent
sounds.
Many dialects of Čakavian have a lot of loan words from Venetian and Italian, because they are
spoken in areas of Croatia that were previously under Venice and/or Italy. Such loan words particularly abound in Istrian dialects, since to this day an Italian
minority lives in Istria.
The first documents written in čakavian date from 1275 ("Istarski razvod") and
1288 ("Vinodolski zakonik"). There are elements of čakavian in older writings such as
the Baška tablet of 1100s.
Example: Ča je, je, tako je navik bilo, ča će bit, će bit, a nekako već će bit!
Dialects and official languages
The Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian standard languages are all
mainly based on the Štokavian dialect, although if they are considered as systems of dialects, one might observe that:
- Serbian is a system of two dialects: štokavian and torlak
- Croatian is a system of three dialects: čakavian, štokavian and kajkavian
- Bosnian is based solely on štokavian dialect
Although most linguists nowadays consider the štokavian, čakavian and kajkavian as three dialects of one common
language, there is basis for considering the three as distinct tongues. However, since there is no clear-cut criterion for
distinguishing a language from a dialect, and dialects are usually described in reference to standard languages, a notion of
diasystem is frequently used instead of
Serbo-Croatian.
Minor and/or transitional dialects
Torlakian
There also exists a fourth dialect called torlački or torlak which is spoken in southern and eastern parts of
Serbia, and it is often referred to as a transitional phase between štokavian and
Macedonian.
It is even thought to fit into the so-called Balkan Sprachbund, an area of
linguistic convergence among languages due to long-term contact rather than
being related.
Burgenland Croatian
This dialect is spoken primarily in the federal state of Burgenland in
Austria, but also in nearby areas in Vienna, Slovakia, and Hungary by descendants
of Croats who migrated there in the 16th century. Because they were separated from other Croats for so long, this dialect or
possibly family of dialects is quite different from standard Croatian. It has been heavily influenced by German and also
Hungarian. In addition, it has some properties from all three of the major dialectical groups in Croatia, as the migrants did not
all come from the same areas of Croatia.
At most 100,000 people speak Burgenland Croatian and almost all are bilingual in German. Its future is uncertain, but there is
some movement to preserve it. It has official status in six districts of Burgenland, and is used in some schools in Burgenland
and neighboring western parts of Hungary.
Molise Croatian
This dialect is spoken in three villages of the Italian region of Molise by the
descendants of south Slavs who migrated there from the eastern Adriatic coast in the 15th century. Because these people have
migrated away from the rest of their kinsmen so long ago, their diaspora language is rather distinct from the standard language, and rather influenced by Italian.
In addition, they have not been influenced by romantic
nationalism of the 19th century (unlike the people in Burgenland who were separated but still within the same empire) so they
have come to refer to their language merely as "Slavic". There has been some controversy as to whether they are Molise Croats or Molise
Serbs. Currently they are generally considered to be Croatian rather than Serbian.
Grammar
Serbo-Croatian is a highly inflected language. Traditional
grammars list seven cases for nouns and adjectives: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, locative, and
instrumental, reflecting the original seven cases of Proto-Slavic, and
indeed older forms of Serbo-Croatian itself. However, in modern Štokavian locative has merged into dative.
Like most Slavic languages, there are three genders for
nouns: masculine, feminine, and
neuter, a distinction which is still present even in the plural (unlike Russian). They also have two numbers: singular and plural. However, some consider there to be four numbers, since after two
(dva, dvije/dve), three (tri), and four (četiri), and all numbers ending in
them (e.g. twenty-two, ninety-three, one hundred four, etc.) the genitive singular is used, and after all other numbers five
(pet) and up, the genitive plural is used. (The number one (jedan) is treated as an adjective.) Adjectives are
placed in front of the noun they modify and must agree in both case and number with it.
There are seven tenses for verbs: past, present, future, exact future, aorist, imperfect, and plusquamperfect; and three moods: indicative, imperative, and conditional. However, the latter three tenses are typically only used in writing, and the time sequence
of the exact future is more commonly formed through an alternative construction.
In addition, like most Slavic languages, the verb also has one of two aspects: perfective or imperfective. Most verbs come in pairs with the perfective verb being created out of the imperfective by
adding a prefix or making a stem change. This type of aspect is difficult to learn for
most foreigners, including native English speakers, because it is both subtle and, at least among Indo-European languages, rare
outside the Slavic branch. The imperfective aspect typically indicates that the action is unfinished, in progress, or repetitive;
while the perfective aspect typically denotes that the action was completed, instantaneous, or of limited duration. Some tenses
favor a particular aspect.
Writing Systems
Through history, this language has been written in a number of writing systems:
The oldest preserved text written completely in the Latin alphabet is "Red i zakon sestara reda Svetog Dominika" from 1345.
Today, it is written in both the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets. Serbian and Bosnian use both alphabets, while
Croatian uses only the Latin.
The Serbian Cyrillic alphabet was revised by Vuk
Stefanović Karadžić in the 19th century. The Croatian Latin alphabet followed suit shortly afterwards, when
Ljudevit Gaj defined it as
standard Latin with five extra letters that had diacritical marks, apparently borrowing much from Czech, but also from Polish, and inventing
uniquely Croatian digraphs "lj", "nj" and
"dž".
In both cases, spelling is nearly phonetic and spellings in the two alphabets generally map to each other one-to-one:
Latin to Cyrillic
A a B b C c Č č Ć ć D d Dž dž Đ đ E e F f G g H h I i J j K k
А а Б б Ц ц Ч ч Ћ ћ Д д Џ џ Ђ ђ Е е Ф ф Г г Х х И и Ј ј К к
L l Lj lj M m N n Nj nj O o P p R r S S Š š T t U u V v Z z Ž ž
Л л Љ љ М м Н н Њ њ О о П п Р р С с Ш ш Т т У у В в З з Ж ж
Cyrillic to Latin
А а Б б В в Г г Д д Ђ ђ Е е Ж ж З з И и Ј ј К к Л л Љ љ М м
A a B b V v G g D d Đ đ E e Ž ž Z z I i J j K k L l Lj lj M m
Н н Њ њ О о П п Р р С с Т т Ћ ћ У у Ф ф Х х Ц ц Ч ч Џ џ Ш ш
N n Nj Nj O o P p R r S s T t Ć ć U u F f H h C c Č č Dž dž Š š
Digraphs Lj, Nj and
Dž represent distinct phonemes and are considered to be single letters.
In crosswords, they're put into a single square and in collation, lj comes after
lz and nj after nz, except in a few words where the individual letters are pronounced separately, for instance
"nadživ(j)eti" (to outlive) which is composed of the prefix nad- and the verb živ(j)eti. The Cyrillic version
avoids the ambiguity by using "Надживети" rather than
"Наџивети".
Đ used to be commonly written as Dj on typewriters, but that practice led to too many ambiguities. It
is also used on car license plates. Today Dj is often used again
in place of Đ on the Internet.
Sources
- 1. Magner, Thomas F. Zagreb Kajkavian dialect. Pensylvannia State University, 1966
- 2. Magner, Thomas F. Introduction to the Croatian and Serbian Language (Revised ed.). Pensylvannia State
University, 1991
- 3. Despalatović, Elinor Murray. Ljudevit Gaj and the Illyrian Movement. Columbia University Press,
1975.
- 4. Franolic, Branko. A Historical Survey of Literary Croatian, Nouvelles editions latines, Paris, 1984.
- 5. Banac, Ivo. Main Trends in the Croatian Language Question, Yale University Press, 1984
- 6. Ivić, Pavle. Die Serbokroatische Dialekte, the Hague, 1958
- 7. Rešetar, Milan. Der Schtokawische Dialekt, Berlin, 1908
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