Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian

[Ralph Cleminson]

On Thurs., Sept. 28, 1995, M.Greenberg wrote:
>
> Further, it should be realized that saying "Serbo-Croatian" implies
> a stand that does not necessarily correspond well to "purely
> linguistic" facts.  For example, since the Kajkavian dialect of
> Croatian shares many more features with Slovene than it does with
> Stokavian, should Kajkavian be called Slovene?  (Alternatively,
> should Slovene be considered a dialect of Serbo-Croatian?)
>
This reminds me of Vuk's idea that all stokavian speakers should be
regarded as Serbs, all cakavians as Croats, and all kajkavians as
Slovenes.  Somehow this didn't go down too well, though he argued
that it was much more progressive than a division on religious lines!

Surely the truth is that there is a Serbo-Croatian linguistic entity,
but whether it is to be regarded as "a language" or "a group of
languages" depends not on the closeness or otherwise to each other of
the variants that exist within it, but whether one norm or more than
one norm within it can win practical acceptance as a literary
standard.  It is simply too early to say what the outcome will be in
the present case: one is tempted to say "Come back in fifty years'
time."  In any case it depends less on what the variants are than on
what people do with them (though both questions, I would contend, are
legitimate subjects for study).

It might be instructive to compare it with Lechitic, where a similar
situation obtains without the political passions.














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Ralph Cleminson, Reader in Slavonic Studies, University of Portsmouth
ralph at hum.port.ac.uk
http://www.hum.port.ac.uk/Users/ralph.cleminson/home.htm
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