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Language & Identity in the Balkans

Language & Identity in the Balkans. Ch 7 Conclusion. 7.0 The Serbo-Croatian successor languages: Shared obstacles and divergent solutions. Unified Serbo-Croatian was unstable and did not survive 1991 breakup of Yugoslavia Croats declared Croatian even before breakup

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Language & Identity in the Balkans

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  1. Language & Identity in the Balkans Ch 7 Conclusion

  2. 7.0 The Serbo-Croatian successor languages: Shared obstacles and divergent solutions • Unified Serbo-Croatian was unstable and did not survive 1991 breakup of Yugoslavia • Croats declared Croatian even before breakup • 1992 Serbian declared language of FRY • 1992 in BH promotion of Bosnian language • Newer moves for a separate Montenegrin • All four standards emerged from a single dialect area

  3. 7.0 The Serbo-Croatian successor languages, cont’d. • Orthographic squabbles have plagued Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro • Serbs solved this through gov’t planning • But this made Montenegrins nervous and more determined to have their own standard • 2001 Croatian descriptivist manual is a break with purist traditions • International community supports Bosnian alongside Serbian & Croatian in BH

  4. 7.0 The Serbo-Croatian successor languages, cont’d. • Recurring issues • Naming of languages -- there was no agreement over name of unified language, and names Bosnian, Montenegrin are contentious • Two pronunciations -- Serbian continues this issue • Peripheral dialects -- Status of Kajkavian, Čakavian still debated in Croatian • Lexical variation -- hot identity issue for Bosniacs & Croats

  5. 7.0 The Serbo-Croatian successor languages, cont’d. • Remissive issues: • Phonological vs. etymological spelling -- still an issue in Serbia & Croatia • Vuk’s Cyrillic -- an issue in Serbian standard • Turkish borrowings -- embraced by Bosnian, rejected by Croatian • Velar fricative h -- used to distinguish Bosnian from Serbian and Croatian

  6. 7.0 The Serbo-Croatian successor languages, cont’d. • Resolved issue • Neo-stokavian basis -- accepted for all four successor languages • New issue • New phonemes -- Montenegrins introduced 3 new phonemes to distinguish Montenegrin from Serbian

  7. 7.1 My language, my land • Through ethnic cleansing, Croatia, BH, Serbia sought new states in which language, ethnicity, religion, territory would correspond • Language policies became intolerant, minority language rights became problematic • Cf. Albanians in Macedonia, who had used SC as lingua franca in Yugoslavia, and resented becoming a minority and having to use Macedonian

  8. 7.1 My language, my land, cont’d. • “the demise of the unified Serbo-Croatian has changed many language attitudes” • Croatians feel pressured to adopt new Croatian standards to show patriotism • Bosniac identity expressed by use of Turkish & Arabic words • In BH 3 of the 4 successor languages co-exist, and if ethnic tensions subside, there could be language convergence in the future • Strong efforts at making the languages dissimilar -- probably irreversible -- will ultimately lead to loss of mutual intelligibility

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