Bosanski jezik?

[Ken Miyamoto]

On Thu, 12 Mar 1998 16:54:42 -0500
Wayles Browne <ewb2 at cornell.edu> wrote:

>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:

Thank you for pointing out the ambiguity related to the meaning of
language. I think what I wanted to ask was, Is a language (conventionally
called "srpskohrvatski jezik" or "hrvatski ili srpski jezik") with three
variant standard forms splitting into three different languages with one
standard form for each? This questin is perhaps more sociological than
linguistic.

>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.

I'm not so sure whether this comparison with English is helpful. It may
be so as far as the issue is strictly confined to its intralinguistic
aspect. However, English does not have extralinguistic centrifugal forces
which try to assert its British, American, and other forms as separate
languages. This is not the case with Serbo-Croat. As a result, a
linguistic unity, if it has ever existed, of the called Serbo-Croat
could any time break down to develop three independent languages.

Also, what makes Slovene and Macedonian independent from Serbo-Croat?
What is the defference between the three standard *forms* of Serbo-Croat,
on one hand, and two standard *languages* (Slovene and Macedonian)
distinguished from the standard forms of Serbo-Croat?

Ken M.
---------------------
MIYAMOTO Ken, or Ken C. Miyamoto
Princeton, NJ, USA
mailto:kmymt at worldnet.att.net