Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian

[Robert Beard]

Robert Orr recently wrote:

>SERBIAN and CROATIAN
>I'm not a specialist in this particular area, but my own feeling is that
>dialectal differences WITHIN "Serbian" and WITHIN "Croatian" are much more
>interesting than differences BETWEEN "Serbian" and "Croatian".   Besides,
>common languages were no bar to the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the
>American War of Independence, the Thirty Years War, etc., etc.  Perhaps we
>won't get a "true" picture in our own lifetimes.  But I digress ...
>

I don't see this as a digression at all.  The dialectal isoglosses of
Serbo-Croatian coincide neither with the boundaries of Croatian, Serbia, and
Bosnia nor with the Croatian and Serbian dialect areas.  Indeed, as I
originally pointed out, there is no such thing as a Croatian and Serbian
dialect area, let alone language areas.

I remain convinced that the linguistic message is one of unity if not peace
and linguists should not be party to the political motivations urging us to
abandon out science.
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Robert Beard                              Bucknell University
Russian & Linguistics Programs            Lewisburg, PA 17837
rbeard at bucknell.edu                              717-524-1336
Russian Program   http://www.bucknell.edu/departments/russian
Morphology on Internet        http://www.bucknell.edu/~rbeard
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