Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian

[E Wayles Browne]

Certainly there is only one language when we count languages for the
purpose of scientific classification and construction of family trees:
the South Slavic languages are Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian,
and Slovenian.
It would be a mistake to say: that's all there is to it.
As linguists, we should ask our informants and our fellow linguists
what they think of the matter and we should observe how they behave.
1) Native speakers are divided on how to answer the question of how
many languages there are: some observe (rightly) that people from
the various parts of the Serbo-Croatian area communicate with each
other, can read one another's newspapers and watch each other's
television without special training, and from this observation they
conclude "it's all the same language."
Others are conscious of differences in vocabulary, spelling,
sociolinguistics, and (to a slighter extent) grammar, and say "This
is ours, and that is not ours."
As linguists, we ought to be informed of both sorts of reactions.
In the particular case of ekavski-ijekavski reflexes of jat,
we should be aware of the frequently expressed opinion of native
speakers: it's all right to write in ekavski and it's all right
to write ijekavski, but "one shouldn't mix them" - one shouldn't
write mlijeko and mleko in the same piece of writing.

2) Many members of the SEELANGS list are involved in teaching and
organizing language courses. We often have native speakers teach
such courses. We hire a Russian to teach a Russian course, a Pole
to teach Polish, etc. But we cannot hire a Serbo-Croat to teach a
Serbo-Croatian course. Whoever we hire will have an active knowledge
of only one of the variants: of Serbian if he/she went to school
in Serbia, of Croatian if schooled in Croatia, of Bosnian if edu-
cated in Bosnia and Hercegovina. Part of a teacher's duties is
correcting homework papers. A user of Serbian can correct a home-
work paper written by a student attempting to learn the standard
of Serbia, but cannot accurately correct a homework paper submitted
by a student seeking to acquire the standard of Croatia.
And vice versa.
 By an accident of my own history, I am able to
use both ekavski with Serbian lexical items and ijekavski with
Croatian lexical items; and I've been learning to
use ijekavski with Bosnian lexical items; this yields better
communication with Bosnians than if I were to insist on using
my knowledge of the Serbian standard while conversing with them.
Wayles Browne, Assoc. Prof. of Linguistics
Morrill Hall, Cornell University
Ithaca, New York 14853, U.S.A.
ewb2 at cornell.edu