Bosanski jezik?

[Ellen Elias-Bursac]

        There seem to be two distinct questions raised
here: what we call the language/s we teach, and how we actually teach the
various idioms in  the classroom. While there is quite a lot of debate on
that first point, there is much less on the second. Very few schools in
the United States separate instruction of Bosnian, Croatian or Serbian
usage. And while one can be delicate and careful in the classroom over the
course of a semester of work, it is a lot harder to bring that same
delicacy to a completely satisfactory name for the language/s.
        My approach in the classroom has been to use the Magner textbook,
which provides Serbian and Croatian lessons in parallel. The students
decide which of the idioms they need to master for whatever practical
purposes they have in mind, and I teach them to be consistent in the
vocabulary, syntax and occasional morphological distinctions which arise.
They have enough information to develop their own opinion of precisely how
similar and/or distinct these idioms are, and therefore come to an
understanding of the areas of overlap and separateness through a
semester-long process of acquaintance with the many subtle points. It
almost seems as if anything short of that cannot convey the
full complexity and delicacy of the issues involved.
        It seems to me that the question of truth and whether it is being
compromised or not lies not in the choice of the name, but rather in the
question of whether these are to be considered separate languages or not.
        I have always preferred the formulation (was it Krleza's?) that
this is a single language with several names. Croatian, Serbian and
Bosnian are authentic names, each with centuries of historical validity,
each referring to the same larger body of shared language, as well as to a
much smaller set of features distinct to that standard. They have been
around as terms for a lot longer than Serbo-Croatian or Croato-Serbian
have. And I hold that one can say, without hostility or nationalist
sentiment, that one is speaking Croatian, or Serbian, or Bosnian, without
suggesting that these standards are mutually exclusive.  Each of these
names suggests both the shared features and the distinct features which
the speaker is announcing that he or she is most familiar with. It seems
to me that an argument can be made which is not in collusion with the
nationalist agendas of the various states in this most recent conflict
that these individual names do, indeed, have genuine validity and are
acceptable for use in the names of courses or to refer, in general, to
this corpus of language material.