Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian

[Jules Levin]

"You say mleko and I say mlijeko, let's call the whole thing off..."

My sympathies are with Beard.  As linguists, we don't have to accept the
popular idea of what a "language" is, since the criteria are totally
inconsistent around the world.  The man in the street, who has a lot more
influence in determining what is, or becomes, a "language", would rate very
significant the fact that a different alphabet is used, even if that were
the *only* difference.  Semioticians don't argue with shopkeepers about the
meaning of the word "sign", so why should we indulge tinhorn nationalists?
Re Scandinavian, I spent a Fulbright year in Norway, so I have some
familiarity with the "Spragsmal" [put a little circle over the first 'a']
there.  Actually Norway has TWO languages "riksmal and nynorsk".  The latter
is the {are the?} West Coast dialects which apparently really DO offer some
significant distinction from Swedish.  Unfortunately they are spoken by
only 10% of the population.  {All data cited from 30 yr old memory...}
But among the really disgusting manifestations of artificial
differentiation is the continual "updating" of Ibsen's corpus away from his
original language, which was too much like Danish to suit modern Norwegians.
Notice how English, spanning several countries and many varied dialects, has
managed to avoid this kind of schism, in spite of some drastic political
differences at various times.  So has Russian, curiously enough (unless you
count Ukrainian and BR, another can of worms...).  Maybe there is an inverse
correlation between a language's tendency to split into two or more
"languages" and the political, economic, military, and cultural significance
of its speakers.
Jules Levin
Department of Literatures and Languages
University of California
Riverside, CA  92521