Bosanski jezik?

[Wayles Browne]

We have to distinguish "standard language" from other meanings of
"language". I teach a course which is still called "Serbo-Croatian"
in the Cornell course catalog. My information sheet for students
explains the situation as follows:
"What kind of language are we learning?
The linguistic raw material is practically the same, but different
standard languages were made by different groups of people in
different places. Our book [David Norris, _Serbo-Croat, A Complete
Course for Beginners_] begins with the standard form used in
Croatia. The standard form in Bosnia is similar to that of Croatia
except for some choices of words and differences in 'accent';
I will give samples of it too. There are samples of the standard
form used in Serbia later on in the book. The traditional alphabet
in Serbia and Montenegro is C'IRILICA, Cyrillic (similar to Russian
letters). Students will learn to read Cyrillic before the end of
the first year."

An interesting characteristic of Norris's book is that it was written
and published in Britain. Therefore when the students see "flat" or
"tram" or "speciality" or "return ticket" in the book, I can
make the point that _u americ"kom standardnom jeziku_ these are
"apartment" and "streetcar" and "specialty" and "round-trip
ticket".
For the purposes of classifying the Germanic languages, there
is only one English language. From the point of view of users,
standard British is slightly different from standard American;
intercommunication is usually possible, but sometimes breaks down.
>>From the point of view of teaching, no American would be able to teach
standard British to foreigners without making occasional mistakes,
and no Britisher would be able to teach standard American to
foreigners without making mistakes.
The situation is the same with Serbo-Croatian. There are reference
books for standard Croatian, for standard Serbian, and recently also
for standard Bosnian (Senahid Halilovic', _Pravopis bosanskoga jezika_,
Sarajevo: Preporod 1996, now adopted as the standard for schools).
No e.g. Zagreb person would be able to teach standard Serbian or
standard Bosnian without occasional mistakes.

>Hello,
>
>Recently, I've encountered the term "bosanski jezik" several times,
>including a title of a small dictionary....How do slavicists see the current
>linguistic situation of the region?
>

>MIYAMOTO Ken, or Ken C. Miyamoto



Wayles Browne, Assoc. Prof., Department of Linguistics
Morrill Hall, Cornell University
Ithaca, New York 14853, U.S.A.
tel. 1-607-255-0712, home 1-607-273-3009
fax 1-607-255-2044 (write FOR W. BROWNE)
e-mail ewb2 at cornell.edu