In the Old Dialect, a Balkan Region Regains Its Identity

[Marina Antic]

Although this article speaks of real issues and the extremely intrusive
politicization of Serbo-Croatian, some of the examples used in the
article are so wrong I feel I have to comment on them.  The suggestion
that Croatians refer to helicopters as zrakomlat (air beater)  or
television as dalekovidnica (seen from afar) is preposterous.  In fact,
these and many other such "new Croatian words" were jokes that cropped
up in response to Tudjman's (unfortunately very real) "reform" of the
language.  And usually such extreme rewritings of the language even when
they did happen were only used by the most extreme Tudjman supporters
and never made their way into the education system nor the academic arena.

Marina Antic
UW - Madison

George Mitrevski wrote:

>Here is an interesting article from the NY Times on Bosnian, one in a
>series of languages that have blossomed in former Yugoslavia since the
>country broke up in the early 1990's.
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/24/international/europe/24serb.html?hp
>
>George.
>
>Foreign Languages                 tel. 334-844-6376
>6030 Haley Center                  fax. 334-844-6378
>Auburn University
>Auburn, AL 36849
>home: www.auburn.edu/~mitrege
>
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