accusative cursing

James Harbeck jharbeck at SYMPATICO.CA
Wed Apr 11 17:25:32 UTC 2007


>Reminds me of an argument I recently had in my Sociolx class about "true"
>languages.  When I said Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian, etc. now had the
>right to be called separate languages, one student said "But isn't
>Serbo-Croatian the _real_ language, and shouldn't linguists call it by its
>_true_ name?"   (I had cited Suzanne Romaine and Brian Joseph to the
>contrary.)  Ugh!

Your student should be introduced to a Croatian I used to work with. He had
an English - Serbo-Croatian dictionary on his shelf, and he had blacked out
"Serbo-" and "Srpsko-" everywhere it appeared on the book.

James Harbeck.

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