Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian

[Marta Pirnat-Greenberg]

In response to my assertion that Serbo-Croatian may not
be the most appropriate label to correspond to the
linguistic facts, Ralph Cleminson on Sept. 29, 1995 wrote:

"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!"

MG: I would like to make it clear that this is just the kind of thing
that I'm arguing against: outside "experts" insisting on what
someone else's language should be called.  Even worse when a linguist,
for example, Aleksandar Belic, uses selected linguistic data to
support such a theory (as he did with Vuk's idea).

RC: "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)."

MG:  I agree in principle, but there is no reason to wait 50 years
when the processes have been going on for quite some time already.
The idea of a Croatian standard is far from new. The Bosnian standard
is perhaps not mature, but there is a historical basis for it.
In short, I think two (or more realities) can coexist: one is what
linguistic facts (e.g. isogloss bundles, or their absence) tell us,
the other what speakers of a language tell us.  As long as we're clear
about which is which, I see no problem.















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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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