Talk:Croatian language

phonology

Finally got around to merging the phonology section as proposed months ago. That was easier than trying to keep all three articles in sync and adequately sourced, beside the triplication in content. — kwami (talk) 11:44, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Latest version of the lead

For what it's worth, I disagree with this Kwami's change. I think it goes a step beyond of what is commonly assumed when talking about "Croatian language". It is not so much a matter of referencing, but of editorial choice how to phrase the language and its connections. And I assert that the most common definition is not "the name commonly used for Serbo-Croatian as spoken by Croats.", but rather much closer to the Sokac121's version of " a South Slavic language spoken chiefly by Croats [... which is with Serbian] commonly subsumed under the term Serbo-Croatian".

We've had the previous version as a sort of a compromise, i.e. as something that even Croatian hard-line nationalists could grudgingly live with. I think the Kwami's one goes one step too far, and I would like the previous one restored. No such user (talk) 12:46, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I checked here for the promised discussion per your null edit, and when I didn't see it, I ref'd my edit.

Do we really need to compromise with nationalists? This is an encyclopedia; AFAIK we're not supposed to be compromising for political reasons (though I'm sure it happens a lot).

The prior wording was IMO confusing, as often happens when articles are written to placate rather than illuminate. "is a South Slavic language spoken chiefly by Croats" (if it's spoken by Serbs it's Serbian, not Croatian). "There are three principal dialects: Shtokavian, Chakavian, and Kajkavian, along with a few Croatian speakers of a fourth, Torlakian." (How can there be a few Croatian speakers of a Croatian dialect?) "the basis of Standard Serbian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin. These are commonly subsumed under the term Serbo-Croatian". (SC isn't just the standards, but all of Croatian + all of Serbian etc.)

On the other hand, we have numerous RSs that the name "Croatian", like "Serbian", "Bosnian", and "Montenegrin", are based on ethnicity and politics rather than language, that the linguistic differences are in the standards. Why shouldn't we just say that? It clears up all the oddities of the old lede, such as there being a few Croatian speakers of a "Croatian" dialect. Though I'm sure there are better ways of putting it than what I came up with. — kwami (talk) 13:05, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, I do not advocate compromising for political reasons, but then, it is undeniable that those reasons exist anyway. Things are not black and white in real life, either. The socio-political situation today is that the speakers of those languages treat them first and foremost as "their (Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian/Montenegrin)" language, and only after that as a part of the common (Serbo-Croatian language). Abroad, the differences are often perceived as exaggerated, but then, I don't think that too many people unanonymously say "oh wait there are no differences, let us use 'Serbo-Croatian' everywhere". I think that you're going too much in the direction "let's use 'Serbo-Croatian everywhere'". I'm not sure if I'm explaining myself well; my point is, it is not a matter of references, it is a matter of WP:CONSENSUS. I wouldn't define myself "Croatian" first and foremost as a "name given to Serbo-Croatian as spoken in Croatia", and I liked the previous lead somewhat better; maybe move the reference to Serbo-Croatian closer to the beginning. While I think that Mir and others above exaggerate the differences, influence of Chakavian and Kajkavian, etc. those things still do fit in the definition of "Croatian language" (in the broad sense of the word). No such user (talk) 14:34, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Though I'm sympathetic, I can't think of a less offensive way of putting it that does not sacrifice clarity or accuracy the way the old lede did. Do you have any suggestions? I'm not trying to get people riled up, but as I see it, the defining feature of Croatian is not the language itself, but whether it's spoken by a Croat. I suppose many languages are like that, especially when there is no dividing line between them, such as Macedonian and Bulgarian, but at least in most other cases there's a core that can be ID'd as one or the other, even if many individual cases are ambiguous. Not here, apart from Chakavian and Kajkavian speakers. — kwami (talk) 19:31, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't think that's fully accurate. In BCS case, the "cores" of national languages can be easily identified, at least by the native speakers. Granted, the Croatian "core" and Serbian "core" are mutually intelligible and a casual observer would have a hard time discerning them; some whole sentences might be identical, but on the other hand, it would be difficult to compose a non-trivial text which couldn't be identified as C or S; (B falls somewhere in-between, but that's a clue also).

Also, have in mind that standard languages make a feedback into dialects: people go to school, read newspapers, and watch TV, and that in turn affects their idiolects, and gradually the substratum dialects. Today, Drina is a rather sharp isogloss between ekavian and ijekavian, an isogloss which was much further on the east 100 years ago: whole western Serbia became ekavized due to influence of standard Serbian (from Serbia). I don't have a reference, but I believe that speakers of Eastern Herzegovinian dialect in the Dubrovnik (hr)-Trebinje (BiH)-Herceg Novi (Mne) triangle have discernible features, at least in vocabulary. And so on. Of course, if you go to, for example, Sarajevo, you will have a hard time distinguishing ostensible "Serbian", "Croatian" and "Bosnian" (same would go for other ethnically-mixed regions); but on average, the "cores", as spoken in respective cultural centers and in media, are different, in a rather systematical manner. Just like variations of English spoken in England, Scotland, USA, and Australia. No such user (talk) 06:52, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Granted, just as many Urdu and "Hindi" speakers have discernible features due to cultural or educational differences. (Interesting parallel: Urdu written in devanagari, but with an orthographic distinction to show it's Urdu rather than Hindi, much like the new letters in Montenegrin.) But AFAIK we don't have Croatian-speaking Serbs or Serbian-speaking Croats unless they're culturally assimilated, as we would if the distinction were objective. Regions differ in their dialect, and in as far as they are ethnically homogeneous, the ethnic registers vary as well. But the defining feature of Serbian is not pronunciation, grammar, or vocabulary, but the fact that it's spoken by Serbs, and the defining feature of Croatian is that it's spoken by Croats. Torlakian is considered a Serbian dialect, but when we come across Torlakian-speaking Croats, their language is no longer Serbian but Croatian, for no other reason than that the speakers are Croats. The language law in Bosnia stated this explicitly, that there is a single official language, which is called "Bosnian", "Serbian", or "Croatian" based on the ethnicity of the speaker.

Anyway, any wording you can suggest that gets the point across that S, C, B & M are essentially ethnic registers without unnecessarily raising hackles would be much appreciated. — kwami (talk) 07:47, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Hm, your latest version still suggests that SC is a cover term for the standard languages, rather than the language as a whole. It also doesn't cover the crucial point that the different between it and Serbian is ethnic. Can you think of a way to correct those two points? — kwami (talk) 08:42, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't think that either of those suggestions is unambiguously true: " the crucial point that the different between it and Serbian is ethnic". No, it is not purely ethnic; it is ethnic in dialects/sociolects near the borders, but the "cores" of the languages as spoken in Belgrade and Zagreb (and much of Serbia and Croatia) are distinguishable. Second, the definition of a "language" is rather loose, as you well know: while I do advocate the statement that Croatian is part of Serbo-Croatian (as a language group, a polycentric language, or a cover term, you name it), and oppose the bunch of diachronical arguments put forward by Mir above, I can't go as far to say without reservations that "Croatian is just one of names for Serbo-Croatian language". If for anything, there are socio-political reasons, but there are more than that. The issue is complex, nuanced, and occasionally chaotic; the "Serbian" and "Croatian" had their periods of convergence and divergence, cannot be always cleanly separated indeed, and are mutually intelligible. See for example this Greenberg's attempt to summarize [1] (courtesy of I.Š). But I would avoid even trying to resolve all those fine points in the article lead, especially not with bold use of equivocal statements like yours. No such user (talk) 10:43, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

True, the speech of Zagreb and Beograd is different. But that doesn't seem to be the essence of what makes Croatian Croatian or Serbian Serbian. There aren't Chakavian-speaking Serbs, but if there were, wouldn't they be said to speak a dialect of Serbian, simply because they're ethnic Serbs? And in the dialect that the standards are based on, ethnicity and, partially, education-driven vocabulary (like Protestant and Catholic vocab in Irish English) are about the only objective distinctions. It would be as if Protestant and Catholic Irish decided they spoke different languages. Sure, the speech of Belfast is different than that of Dublin, that that wouldn't be the defining feature. I'll have to get back to you when I have a chance to read that article. — kwami (talk) 05:22, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

I think that it does "seem to be the essence" though. It is true that Serbs of Gospić speak the same language as Croats of Gospić, and that Croats of Vojvodina speak much the same language as Serbs of Vojvodina (see however Bunjevac dialect); however, I think that emphasizing that fact gives a WP:UNDUE. Besides, in the last Croatian census there were much more ethnic Serbs than speakers of Serbian language : probably many "nationally unaware" Serbs simply declared their mother tongue as "Croatian", although it would be OR to include in the article.
My point is, simply: when I hear "Serbian language" or "Croatian language", I first think about the standard language, i.e. the one of press, television, books and as spoken by the cultural elites (concentrated in the capitals); the identification with those idioms by the members of the same ethnic group along the borders comes distant second. Yes, former Yugoslavia was ethnically mixed, but it was not that ethnically mixed that you couldn't tell the "ethnic" (and thus linguistic) "cores" of the nations. Only when I want to abstract those differences and discuss grammar or phonology, I think of "Serbo-Croatian". No such user (talk) 13:36, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

This does remind me a lot of Hindi-Urdu, even if the history is different. The prototypes of the languages are different: different scripts, different technical vocabulary. But the "Hindi" and "Urdu" speakers of any one city will often be uneducated, and thus not use any script nor know much of that technical vocab; even if they are educated, they may be indistinguishable in colloquial speech even to each other. Yet many of those people will still insist that they speak different languages. This is an atypical situation among the world's languages, as it's usually obvious which language someone speaks apart from transitional dialects (like Torlakian for Serbian vs Bulgarian); being atypical, I don't think it's UNDUE to present the point up front. What if we modify Ivan's & my lead-in wording to "Croatian is a form of Serbo-Croatian spoken in Croatia and by Croats in Bosnia ..."? Does that account for both of our POV's? As for Croatian-speaking Serbs, I'd always assumed that they were culturally assimilated, and simply not trying to "be Serb", but maybe I'm missing s.t.

BTW, although Hindi and Serbian are the numerically dominant forms, I think a good argument can be made that the languages are essentially Urdu (Hindi = Urdu spoken by Hindus) and Croatian (Serbian = Croatian spoken by Serbs), if one considers history and dialectical diversity, but that would be OR. — kwami (talk) 20:44, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

From bad to worse. You Kwami have no idea about these languages. Now you are really erasing Croatian language!? All this OR was first started by the Serbian nationalists (I.Š. is not a Croat, he is a Serbian extremist from Bosnia) and now you even multiply this OR with new inventions of yours. Someone should restrict your presence in these pages before your ego produces more fakes. You are probably so much in love with yourself that you are not even able to recognise obvious contradiction between South Slavic languages template constructed by I.Š. and arguments used by 3 of you here. This is your private circus, not linguistics, not science... There in the template talk you Kwami wrote: "SS includes Bulgarian and Slovenian, and so is not as synonym. SC is a node between SS and Shtokavian." Really? How come the same template lists Chakavian and Kajkavian dialects as SC then? Do you want to say that Chakavian and Kajkavian dialects are Shtokavian too? This is madness. If you can't deal with the basic facts in SS languages don't mess with it. People who criticize you are not nationalists, they are just common people from Croatia, people who are deeply offended by anti-Croatian position of yours. Is there any serious supervision in this wikipedia? Someone inteligent and objective should be alarmed about this!!! 78.3.124.71 (talk) 10:50, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

No, many Serbs object to the same thing, as do many Bosniaks. Yet the Bosnian language law made this explicit, as do good linguistic sources such as the Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Political objections to reality are irrelevant: we're not here for propaganda. Your objections are adequately handled by us having 'Croatian language' as a separate article. — kwami (talk) 20:40, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Not all croats are ignorants and they are not overly concerned with the "anti-cratian" position of people who are above the balcanic butchery shop butchering everything. The fact is there are no separate languages that can be identified to be specific to each one separate wannabe "people", be them croats or montenegrins or whatever. You nee to wake up and face the fact that despite the nationalist hysteria and schizofrenia so typical to you balkans, is not a criterion for determination of a language. Face the fact that 55% of croats are speaking kajkavian natively, not your "old croatian language". Face the facts that the same "old croatian" language was the same language spoken by serbs until the Obrenovic dynasty took over and, just as croatian politicians are doing now, imposed one dialect, ekavian, on the rest of the serbian people, effectively rendering invalid the reform of the serbian language done by Vuk Karadzic, who is still today considered as a reformator of the serbian language, but his language is not official language of serbia today.

Just as today in croatia, the serbian despots simply imposed the dialect of their preferred minority on the rest of the population.

That does not make it autohtone language of the people. Only official. The difference is enormous. The one and the same language common to all four Jugoslav republics today existing as separate states is stokavian ijekavian variant. And since that variant is official in bosnia, where it is used by both croats and serbs, and it is also spoken in montenegro and parts of western serbia, your "croatian" language point is just a farce that is shooting back and right between your eyes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 120.20.196.83 (talk) 15:05, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Nationalists? Why are we nationalist kwami? Just because we don't want to see our language raped and butchered by "experts" like you and Štambuk? Whatever you do, you can't change the fact that Croats and Serbs speak different languages, Croatian and Serbian (no matter where they live).--Jack Sparrow 3 (talk) 09:57, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Therein lies the problem: it is not "your" language. You do not "own" the language that you talk. In particular, you do not have the exclusive right of describing and classifying it in comparison to other similar/same languages. The very fact that you imagine to have that kind of right only shows factshow deluded you nationalists are. Science is blind to tribal affiliations. While I'm sure that you imagine that Croats/Serbs/Bosnians/Montenegrins speak "different languages", you fail to understand that not everybody shares that view, especially the worldwide linguistic community. See WP:NPOV - your view is already represented in the article (and in the higher-level article [[Serbo-Croatian language]] where Croatian nationalist viewpoint is also mentioned in all its glory), but we cannot mention it as the only Truth, everything else be damned. The major classificatory theory supported by most of the sources, i.e. that B/C/S/M are nationally codified varieties of a single language, must be given prominence, and the alternative viewpoints described relatively to their importance/influence. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 10:44, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

What do you think of No Such User's points? I respect their opinion, but IMO their current version of the lead does not adequately convey that Croatian is only a language in the sociolinguistic sense, which is not what the typical reader thinks of as a 'language'. — kwami (talk) 11:04, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

You don't have the right to fake the facts Štambuk. And the fact is, though Croatian and Serbian are similar languages (we are neighbors after all), they are not the same language. "tribal affiliations" - don't make me smile. You're not talking about some natives from isolated islands. You're speaking about the world wide recognized nation. I know that you and your colleagues deluded by your propaganda don't share my view, but that's not my fault. And don't call me a nationalist. I'm a nationalist just as you are the president of the USA.--Jack Sparrow 3 (talk) 11:41, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Nice try, Jack. Your conflating of language with human traits (Languages cannot be raped and butchered. People, however, can be) is the characteristic of nationalist language purists who assuage their nationalist egos with shrill cries of "defending national honour" (whatever the hell that is according to the musings of a cabal of politicians or misguided idealists). In addition your declaration of support at User:Jack Sparrow 3 for the Croatian_Party_of_Rights marks you as a Croatian nationalist and so your denial in the face of kwami's and Ivan Štambuk's comments is laughable and insulting to the intelligence of any impartial observer of Balkan affairs. Thanks for coming out... Vput (talk) 18:28, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Well I think that the current lead is fine, but it think that the discrepancy between standardized form of a language (the "standard Croatian"), the actually spoken language along the ethnic Croat line (the three dialects), and the all-covering usage of the term Serbo-Croatian, should be made more clear, and that the excessive conciseness of it only clouds the important complexity of the issue. The lead should OTOH simply be a summary of the main points of the rest of the article, and not something 100% neutral with respect to everyone's view point. Perhaps plainly stating that Croatian is a form of Serbo-Croatian spoken in Croatia is a bit disturbing to some of our fellow contributors of Croatian origin, but that is how the term is used and most commonly perceived by foreigners. "The language spoken by Yugoslavs but with Croatian characteristics." However, I see no problem wording it either way as long as the rest of the article illustrates the usage/perception problem more clearly. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 23:05, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Except that it's not just Croatia, but Bosnia and Austria and elsewhere. How about "Croatian is a form of Serbo-Croatian spoken by Croats"? That much more generally true than "in Croatia", where Serbian is also spoken. — kwami (talk) 00:10, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Listen Vput, your "activity" on English wikipedia proves only that you are one of Štambuk's reinforcments whom he calls when he needs it. So don't pretend that you really care about the subject of this conversation. Go off. By the way, I even suspect that you are one of Štambuk's sock puppets. Are you?--Jack Sparrow 3 (talk) 10:28, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

Hardly, Jack. Yet I see that nationalism has distorted your powers of reasoning. If you actually had bothered to dig deeper, you would have seen that I had heated arguments with IŠ on Serbo-Croatian (hint: look at the arguments I had with IŠ on his archived talk-page from the winter of 2009) where I shot holes in IŠ's old arguments about Croatian being a separate language and derided Brozović, Kačić and others of their ilk of being discredited on this topic by their unabashed Croatian nationalism. Then something happened in the interim in IŠ's thinking, and we started to agree on things starting in the summer of that year. Funny how things work, huh? There are actually Croats who are willing to reevaluate their thinking and look beyond the scribblings of linguists in Brozović, Kačić, Babić, Katičić, Moguš, Junković among others. Despite your thinking of my being called in by IŠ, it may frustrate you further that there are actually impartial Wikipedians who have no emotional ties to the Balkans but are interested in the languages themselves and care little for a certain speech community's perception of them. On the other hand, I cannot accuse YOU of being a designated reinforcement for the nationalists because I know that sooner or later others on the nationalist side jump in here just to lend their support without any explicit calls from other nationalists to defend "national honor". Again, thanks for coming out, Jack...Vput (talk) 14:12, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

1RR

This article has become another battleground. Enough is, quite frankly, enough of the edit warring, as the article is now protected for the fourth time since July due to it. We're going to try something new. Starting now, this article; under the discretionary sanctions authorised in Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Macedonia; is hereby placed on a 1RR restriction. This means one revert, per user, per day. This restriction is per person, not per account. The most obvious vandalism is excepted from this restriction, and I do mean obvious. This restriction applies to all users, and I will place an edit notice of this for the article. Any appeals should be directed towards my talk page in the first instance, or Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement in the second. Courcelles 11:52, 4 October 2025 (UTC)

The above timestamp has intentionally been moved forward 15 years, to stop automatic archival. True timestamp: Courcelles 11:53, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

But your "editing" concept, Courcelles, (I am refering to the joke of wikipedia being an "open encyclopedia") is also plain nonsense. For example, although I am of Spanish origins, I am a linguist, unlike the "editors" who hold the rights to decide what goes. And I see in the first paragraph a plain LIE. Not just an error, but a LIE. And one so sadly typcal for the croatian nationalists who are only capable of displaying stupidity and ignorance when a discussion is being held.

Here's the error: "Two dialects, Chakavian and Kajkavian, are exclusively Croatian..."

One has to be a moron and a croat igonrant motivated by his/her nationalist hatred for the rest of the world, as they are, to say something like that. Kajkavian is NOT exclusively croatian dialect because it is official language of Slovenia.

Fullstop.

Anyone wishing to debate this point is an idiot with no knowledge. In the light of that, the second part of the same erroneous sentence (the second sentence of the first paragraph of this joke of the page, is just as stupid: "and there are a few Croatian speakers of a third, Torlakian."

Croats speaking that dialect, by default live in, nowadays, different countries. Countries situated on the eastern side of the southeastern Europe. Torlakian is specific to the people Croatians hate so passionately and want to be disassociated from by inventing their own language.

So to say that Torlakian is the third "dialect" of non-existent "croatian" language, is only to promote political agendas.

This primitive and continuous "croatian" effort to re-write and re-design linguistic history of the language is what should be really sanctioned here. That is what the real problem is. These primitive ignorants are tryingto tell us, the real scientists, what is the politically correct "truth" so that they can point their finger at their own brothers and say: "We a re not like you!". And then go to church and declare themselves "Love thy neighbour", "christians"...

The good news is that wikipedia is, fortunately, not authority on linguistics and serious scientific studies. Not even a reference. So no matter how much peasants from Dinaric mountains, still chasing sheep (both serbs and croats) work on distorting the facts, the facts will not be distorted.

There's only one language and it cannot be named anything other than serbo-croatian, or croato-serbian, whichever way your political schizofrenia goes. That is the fact. Now all you "linguists" go on about your stupid efforts to invent your "languages", but in the real life, the one that is only based on cold hard scientific facts, your languages do NOT exist.

The sooner you accept that, the better for all, and your primitive and bestial nationalisms may even subside. Hopefully even get cured one day.

And Curcelles, please correct the above error and remove the statement that kajkavian is "exclusive" croatian dialect. Because it is not. It is also used in Slovenian. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 120.22.91.241 (talk) 00:18, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

It's not up to Courcelles to correct any error. It's up to the regular editors here to reach a consensus. They can then use {{edit protected}} to request that the agreed edit be made to a fully protected page. TFOWR 00:25, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Message by 120.22.91.241 is full of anti-Croat ethnic slurs. Kubura (talk) 02:53, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Obviously. There are bigots on all sides. — kwami (talk) 06:32, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Where is the consensus?

Where is the consensus on the content of this article?
Who are the users that agree with the current content and where are their arguments on the talkpages?
How many users disagree with the current content. Who ignored their arguments from the talkpages?
I don't see it on this talkpages, and I don't see it in the history of this article.
I see only imposed personal attitudes, with tagging any opponent as "nationalist".
That's not scientific dialogue. Kubura (talk) 02:58, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

The scientific consensus among linguists is that there is a single language known as Serbo-Croatian (will provide ample references if doubted). The country that constituted the home of that language broke apart and now each of the constituent countries wants to call that language by a different name. The political reality does not change the linguistic reality. --Taivo (talk) 03:15, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

References demonstrating common English usage of "Serbo-Croatian" for the single language that comprises "Bosnian", "Croatian", and "Serbian".

• David Dalby. 1999/2000. Linguasphere Register. Linguasphere Observatory. Pg 445, "53-AAA-g, Srpski + Hrvatski, Serbo-Croatian"
• Wayles Brown. 1993. "Serbo-Croat," The Slavonic Languages. Routledge. Pp. 306-387.
• Benjamin W. Fortson IV. 2010. Indo-European Language and Culture, An Introduction. 2nd ed. Blackwell. Pg 431, "Serbian and Croatian are mutually intelligible; but the differences have sometimes been exaggerated for political reasons....Because of their mutual intellgibility, Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian are usually thought of as constituting one language called Serbo-Croatian."
• Greville Corbett. 1990. "Serbo-Croat," The World's Major Languages. Oxford. Pp. 391-409.
• William Bright, ed. 1992. "Serbo-Croatian," International Encyclopedia of Linguistics. Oxford. Volume 3, pp. 422-425.
• Merritt Ruhlen. 1991. A Guide to the World's Languages, Volume 1: Classification. Stanford. Pg. 60, "South Slavic comprises four languages: Slovene, Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian, and Bulgarian. Slovene consists of a number of sharply differentiated dialects....The other three are fairly homogeneous."
• M. Paul Lewis, ed. 2009. Ethnologue. 16th edition. Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian have separate articles, but all are subsumed under the macrolanguage Serbo-Croatian. This is reflected as well in ISO 639-3.

That's just the stuff I have laying within arm's reach in my personal library. There are thousands of volumes in English on the Slavic languages, the languages of the Balkans, or Serbo-Croatian specifically that point to this language having the single name in English--"Serbo-Croatian". The very recent political division into "Croatian", "Bosnian", and "Serbian" has no linguistic reality--it is a boundary and ethnicity issue only. Here in Wikipedia, we satisfy the nationalistic aspirations of the Bosnians, the Croats, and the Serbs by having separate articles on each of the three forms of Serbo-Croatian, but to claim that there is no common identity, labelled "Serbo-Croatian", either historically or linguistically, is scientific falsehood. --Taivo (talk) 05:37, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't think that was the question. Kubura's seen all of that before, and more. It seems that he simply rejects it. — kwami (talk) 06:35, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

There is certainly no such common identity labelled "Serbo-Croatian", not historically not linguistically! There are no Serbo-Croatian people!!! This innovation comes from the end of the 19th century when a group of the Serbian nationalists wrote "Načertanije" - a kind of "ABC how to conquer the neighbor countries". Their main idea was that all South Slavs are Serbs. Now a group of Serbian extremists supported by a few ignorants work on silent occupation of Croatia by en.wiki! What failed in the 90's by weapon will be continued here by well known Serbian production of mythomania? This is party of those who have secret motivation supported by a bunch of dunces. This is Serbian fascism!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.131.67.175 (talk) 08:13, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, the Croats of the 19th century who chose to have a common standard with Serbs were fascists. I see you hate your own history.

The Illyrian movement was not Serbian.

If you want a separate Croatian language, start speaking Chakavian or Kajkavian and have that declared the Croatian standard. — kwami (talk) 08:22, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

You have no idea what you're talking about. If Serbs want their language to be labbeled Serbo-Croatian it is their problem. They had no litarture for centuries and weren't able to standardize their speeches so they simply stole from Montenegrins and Croats. It is not problem of Croats. We have our language and it is Croatian. Our standardization is based mostly on Shtokavian dialect of Croatian spoken in Dubrovnik. That dialect was defined as "Croatian language" (harvatski jezik) by its writers in the 18th century, not Serbo-Croatian or Serbian. Serbs have no continuation in speaking between their historical dialects and their modern standard. Do you know that Montenegro was occupied by Serbs in the 20th century? Do you know that Serbs tried to do the same with Bosnia and Croatia 20 years ago? Do you understand that you agitate for violent extremist nationalistic politics here? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.131.67.175 (talk) 11:26, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

What I meant has nothing to do with the Illyrian movement. Illyrian movement was positive by idea but impossible in practice, thanks to Serbs. Illyrianists were fighting for Slavic languages in general. Serbs were not able to jump into that train because of impossibility to standardize Serbian speeches. You don't know basic facts. What are you doing here? Are you someone else's puppy? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.131.67.175 (talk) 11:34, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

You have neither references nor a linguistic argument. Serbians, Croatians and Bosnians speak the same language. The English label for that language is "Serbo-Croatian". --Taivo (talk) 11:47, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

• Pavlović Bernardin, Dubrovnik, 1747.... Pripravljanje za dostojno reći svetu misu... u harvaski jezik pomnjivo i virno privedeno. Pokripljenje umirućih... u harvaski jezik popravi i prištampa... za korist naroda Harvaskoga... - he translated liturgy books from Latin to Croatian (harvaski). Everyone who understand South Slavic languages can see that this is Ikavian Shtokavian - never spoken by Serbs.

In history Croatian language was called by a few synonyms: harvatski, ilirski, slovinski, dalmatinski. Slovinski is Ikavian Croatian form of word Slavic.

• Sforza Ponzoni, 1620, "dalmatinski ali harvacki” - Dalmatian or Croatian

• Stjepan Cosmi (Cosmus), 1688, always translated illyricus as hrvatski (Clero Illyrico — klera harvaskoga; idiomo Illyrico —harvaskoga izgovora).

• Filip Grabovac, Venice, 1749: "Cvit razgovora naroda iliričkoga ali arvackoga" (Illyrian or croatian people). "U Dalmaciji... se i jezik zva, kakonoti ilirički, pak slovinski, potomtoga arvacki i evo i danas. Tri su imena a jedan je isti jezik." (In Dalmatia... language was called Illyrian, or Slavic, or Croatian, so still is. There are 3 names, but the language is one).

• Joakim Stulli, Dubrovnik, 1801, Lexicon latino-italico-illyricum, - word 'illyrice': “Slovinski, harvatski, hrovatski, horvatski”. Once again Illyrian is synonym for Croatian.

Serbian writers were translating from Croatian to Serbian until the 19th century.

• Georgij Mihajlović, 1803. Aždaja sedmoglava: "s dalmatinskoga jezika na slaveno-serbskij prečistjeno" (translated from Dalmatian to Serbo-Slavic). He didn't mention Vid Došen, a writer of the original book. Here Dalmatian is synonym for Croatian.

Opposite example:

• Ivan Ambrozović, 1808: "Proričje i narečenja, sa srbskog jezika na ilirički privedena, nadopunjena i složena" (...translated from Serbian language to Croatian...)

• Vuk Karadžić, Narodne srbske pesnarice, Vienna 1815: "Pesne su ove... jedne štampane po Hercegovačkom dijalektu, a druge po Sremačkom..., da sam sve pečatao Hercegovački (n. p. djevojka, djeca, vidjeti, lećeti, i dr.), onda bi rekli Sremci: pa šta ovaj nama sad nameće Horvatskij jezik". (These songs... some are written in Herzegovinian dialect, the others are in dialect of Srijem... if I wrote all in Herzegovinian (some ijekavian examples), people of Srijem (Serbs who moved to Srijem from Raška at the end of the 17th century) would say: why is he giving us Croatian language). So even V.K. who produced standard Serbian in the 18th century acknowledged here that he used Croatian language for Serbian standard.

There are tens, even hundreds of examples. Serbo-Croatian as you use here is political term from communist Yugoslavia, at moment used by Serbian extremists who have problems since Serbian historical literature is extremely poor one so they want to rename Croatian language into Serbo-Croatian to bridge a huge gap between Torlakian, Serbo-Slavic (the real Serbian speeches) and their standard (admixture of Montenegrin and Croatian)83.131.67.175 (talk) 12:57, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

You don't get it. None of these sources from the 18th and 19th centuries matter. In English, the single language that comprises Croatian, Serbian, and Bosnian is called "Serbo-Croatian" and that is well-documented and verifiable from modern linguistic sources. While this article deals specifically with issues concerning the Croatian variety of that language, it doesn't change the fact that Croatian is part of Serbo-Croatian. In the 17th-19th centuries, the dialect differences between Croatian and Serbian might have been more pronounced, but any differences that existed were significantly leveled during the 20th century by the use of a common Serbo-Croatian literary standard. Today's Croatian and Serbian (and Bosnian and Montenegrin) "languages" are virtually identical varieties of a single Serbo-Croatian language. The literary standards of all four are even based on the very same dialect of Serbo-Croatian, not even on different dialects. --Taivo (talk) 13:30, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

No; Croats, Bosnians and Serbs don't speak the same language. They are speaking three similar, but different languages: Croatian, Bosnian, and Serbian. And there is no "Serbo-Croatian" language. So called "Serbo-Croatian" is a linguistic Frankenstein's monster.--Jack Sparrow 3 (talk) 15:17, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

You are wrong, Jack Sparrow 3. Croatian, Serbian, and Bosnian are completely mutually intelligible, they are not different languages in the linguistic sense. Indeed, the literary standards are all derived from the same dialect of Serbo-Croatian. Serbo-Croatian is a very well-defined language that is described in great detail in thousands of books in English. You will find no references whatsoever in English scientific literature that say that "Serbo-Croatian" doesn't exist. --Taivo (talk) 15:25, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

You will teach me which language I speak? It'd be funny if it weren't so pathetic. When I watched Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, I perfectly understood when some Soviet soldier said "Za njim" (after him), when he chased Jones. That word has the same meaning in both Croatian and Russian; but does that proves that Croatian and Russian are the same languages? NO!--Jack Sparrow 3 (talk) 15:39, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

That isn't mutual intelligibility: It's not about whether a speaker of one language understands something of another, but whether a speaker of one language (variety) understands everything (give or take the occasional word) of another. The latter is the case for (standard) Croatian, Serbian, etc., but not for e.g. Croatian and Russian. The term "language" refers to those groups of language varieties that are mutually intelligible, and thus applies to Croatian, Serbian, etc. together. Due to lack of a non-compound term, (in English) people habitually refer to this language as Serbo-Croatian. --JorisvS (talk) 15:52, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm going to be the bad guy here. I'm not siding with Balkan nationalists, but I'd like to put forth some important issues:

1. Why are we restricting ourselves to English literature on the matter? I can understand the issue that English language editors can't read Croatian-language resources, but to exclude resources because they're not in English is tantamount to a point of view bias.
2. There is no such thing as complete mutual intelligibility. Even the measure of intelligibility is limiting as varieties can be different without impacting intelligibility (see our article on diaphoneme for some illustrations of this). This means that intervarietal exchanges occur at someplace between complete intelligiblity and complete unintelligibility. There is no way to use mutual unintelligibility (or any structural feature, for that matter) to objectively determine when two varieties are separate languages.
3. Even with the understanding that the classification of these varieties as separate languages comes from the political situation, we can't dismiss the politics. Not only is there such thing as nationalistic linguistics, but isn't it the case that this nationalistic classification is that used by the very people who speak these varieties? It's true that native speakers can't provide insight into certain features of languages (such as phonetics and etymology), but speaker attitudes about linguistic classification have weight. This is particularly salient if South Slavic linguists share this classification.
4. On top of that, because the political (and therefore social) situation is different than it was 20 years ago we have to take the classifications present in older sources with a grain of salt. Remember, the position that these varieties are all part of the same language is just as political as the one that they're different languages. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 20:19, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

— Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 20:19, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Here's my take on those points: (1) We don't need to restrict ourselves to English, but it's a way to filter out most of the propaganda. Many linguists in the Balkans serve state interests, and it would be very difficult for most editors to evaluate who's a RS. (2) True, but the dialectical diversity within Croatian is huge by Slavic standards, whereas standard Croatian and Serbian are mutually intelligible. If we have a set, {K, Č, Š}, where K and Č are Croatian and where Š is both Croatian and Serbian, then there is no formal way to divide the set into Croatian and Serbian subsets. (Unless you want redefine our terms to say that Serbian is a form of Croatian, or that all of Š is Serbian.) (3) True. That's why we have separate Serbian and Croatian articles. If it weren't for the sociolinguistics, we'd just have a single article and say that our language is shared by 2 or 3 or 4 ethnic groups. That's the approach of the ELL. (4) The ELL was published in 2006, and still takes the view that these are a single language. What we tend to get today is hedging on the name: calling it BCS or some such. Many sources will tell you that such names are inadequate but there is no good name that is politically acceptable. Perhaps it wouldn't be a bad idea to merge the articles under the name "Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian language" (The language known as Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, or Montenegrin is a South Slavic language spoken in ...). — kwami (talk) 23:34, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

1. I'm not a fan of the term propaganda. It's intellectually impoverishing as it allows one to disregard a message prejudicially; in my experience, it often simply means "a political message that I disagree with." That academic or scientific work might further political goals doesn't a priori exclude it from being a reliable source (think of all the work done on AAVE in the 60s and 70s to challenge the deficit model used against African American schoolchildren). This can very easily get into a tautology: "Croatian nationalist propaganda says that these are separate languages." "How do you know it's propaganda?" "Because it says that these are separate languages."
2. Yes, that does complicate the issue, particularly as we refer to {K, Č, Š} as separate dialects. However, {K, Č, Š} isn't the only measure of linguistic difference between these varieties. There is surely more than one isogloss here.
3. Because we have articles on Standard English, Standard French, Standard Mandarin, Standard German, Hindi, Urdu, and Modern Standard Arabic, it seems that the existence of separate articles is itself neutral to the language-dialect question (and, if the Silesian language article is a guide, this neutrality is present even with the word "language" in the article name).
4. I'm aware that there are more contemporary English-language sources that also describe the situation as being one language. However, Taivo's list of 7 sources has 5 that were written or published before the breakup of Yugoslavia. If we're going to stack the deck against "nationalists", it's only fair to consider sources written before the mid-nineties as outdated in regards to this question. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 00:23, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

(1) Try the paper I linked to below.

(2) AFAIK, there is no isogloss separating Croatian from Serbian, apart from divergent technical terminology as in the case of Hindi-Urdu.

(3) Those are language standards, apart from Urdu, which makes it clear that Hindi-Urdu are formally one language.

(4) Yes, which is why I quoted ELL2 from 2006 and other recent descriptions. — kwami (talk) 01:26, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

1997 Hawkesworth Colloquial Croatian and Serbian: the complete course for beginners

1998 Benson Standard English-SerboCroatian, SerboCroatian-English Dictionary: A Dictionary of Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian Standards

1999 [1965] US Dept. of State (FSI) Serbo-Croatian: Basic Course (written 1965, but name maintained)

2003 Heaney Beginner's Serbo-Croatian

2006 U. Wisconsin, Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, a grammar: with sociolinguistic commentary

2009 Halle & Nevins, "Rule Application in Phonology", in Raimy & Cairns eds. Contemporary views on architecture and representations in phonology (consistently uses SC)

2009 Fortson Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction

2009 Stroik Locality in minimalist syntax

2009 Haspelmath & Tadmor Loanwords in the World's Languages: A Comparative Handbook

2009 Stassen Predicative possession

1. Thank you for referring me to that source. While it's helpful in getting a more nuanced understanding of the situation, it doesn't really speak to "propaganda." If having an ax to grind (or a dog in the race) means one is disqualified from linguistic analysis, then there's a lot more disqualifiable work on other languages as well (I'm having difficulty seeing what national identity-motivated violations of truth or academic integrity Greenburg is talking about, so maybe you can point that part out for me).
2. The source you provided has a map with multiple isoglosses. Just as no single feature marks Southern American Speech as separate from General American, we needn't limit ourselves to one single isogloss to mark a separation of Serbian and Croatian. Dialect continua complicate languae-dialect issues particularly as they expose the occasional arbitrariness of language boundaries.
3. Yes, I may have muddled two separate things in my previous post. On the one hand, there's the language standards and on the other hand there's the body of regional varieties that are made commensurable, Greenburg points out, are made commensurable by diasystemic analyses. My point was that, even seeing the body of regional varieties in these countries as a single polycentric language, we would (or could) still have articles on the language standards. However, that would alter the scope from what they are right now, which includes dialects (and makes the issue a mess of repetition in the related articles)

— Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 15:03, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

But the point is that the isoglosses have nothing to do with the diff tween Croatian and Serbian. Anywhere you go on that map, Serbs speak "Serbian" and Croats speak "Croatian". That's quite different from GA and Southern US English, where Southern immigrants up north are said to speak Southern if they still have the accent, and Southern states like Florida speak GA. No-one with a Boston accent claims to speak Southern just because their ancestor fought for the South, but that's what we have with SC.

Take a look, for example, at the Croatian dialect map: File:Croatian dialects in Cro and BiH 1.PNG. Now, those dialect boundaries are isoglosses, or near enough. But the language boundary is not: the same subdialect occurs in the white areas, which aren't counted simply because they aren't ethnically Croat. That isn't a language in the formal sense.

Reducing these articles to Standard Croatian, Serbian, and Bosnian may be the way to go, but that would be a separate discussion. — kwami (talk) 19:11, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

What is there to stop a linguist from using isoglosses to back up an a priori impression? Isn't that what we've done with Southern American English? American linguists had an impression that people from a certain region speak Southern and used linguistic evidence to back it up, but there's nothing intrinsic about the body of features that were picked that requires us to associate them together; the only thing that makes the selection not arbitrary is the agreement it has with the preexisting conclusions (which come from sociocultural attitudes). I know it seems backwards (or unscientific) to go from your conclusion to the evidence, but that's the politics of language.

If the situation is as you say, then none of the 17 isoglosses Greenburg provides (as well as the 1.5 in the map you've linked to) can be used to mark one as speaking Serbian or Croatian and none of the features are seen as prototypically Serbian or Croatian. This is a testable claim. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 21:06, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

There's no consensus about the issues pertaining to this article! It's of no importance whether or not who disagrees with the content of the article, because it will be as Kwami wishes it to be (and only that way).
Everybody who objects to this will be labelled as a nationalist (and worse), while the brave fighters for "justice" and "truth™" which diminishes the Croatian language to a mere part of SC will be praised and glorified despite presenting obsolete sources, and despite complete disregard towards the sources written in Croatian and about the Croatian language.
And, in conclusion the most important part is this. Truth™ is being forcibly pushed by those whose personal beliefs taken the better of them, and that with no foundation in the current state of affairs (with regards to the Croatian language).--Sokac121 (talk) 23:07, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Ther is no Croatian version of Serbo-Croatian language. Serbo-Croatian language is artificial, funciful language wich existed from 1945 until 1990-is. The Croatian language is very old, and first document writen in Croatian is Bašćanska ploča from 1100 AD. Moreover, Croatian language is the oldest Slavic language, and as such Croatian language can not be just a version of fictional language as Serbo-Croatian.--Wustefuchs (talk) 12:30, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

The fact is, Croatian language is older then Serbo-Croatian and Serbian language. Except the fact it is older and richer then those two, Croatian language also have differences with Serbo-Croatian and Serbian. The truth is Serbo-Croatian language is Serbian language with ijekavian dialect, and I don't need to mention that Serbian language with ijekavian dialect was idea of Vuk Karadžić, famous Serbian nationalist and "father" of Serbian language. And who is nationalist now? People who whant to speak language they speak for thousends years, or guys who whant to destroy all what was writen in Croatian by speaking it was Serbo-Croatian (serbian) of Croatian version or just Serbo-Croatian, and sometimes, they go so far by calling Croatian with Serbian name.--Wustefuchs (talk) 12:38, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

It seems that everyone in the world knows more about Croatian language than Croats. This whole thing about Croatian being part of "Serbo-Croatian" looks like a bad joke.--Jack Sparrow 3 (talk) 13:25, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Request for comment

Should reference to Croatian being part of Serbo-Croatian be removed? --Taivo (talk) 15:18, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

• No. Thousands of linguistic and pedagogical references in English over the last century have called the single language that comprises Croatian, Serbian, and Bosnian "Serbo-Croatian" and it is listed in ISO 639-3 as the macrolanguage label encompassing all three. A brief list of references is here. Indeed, the literary varieties of Croatian, Serbian, and Bosnian are all even derived from the same dialect of Serbo-Croatian rather than from different dialects. English-speaking readers will be looking for references to "Serbo-Croatian" and not to "Croatian", "Serbian", or "Bosnian". In fact, as the lead is usually rewritten by the Croatian nationalists pushing their POV, they imply that "Croatian" is the proper cover term. By the dictates of WP:NCON, the most common English term based on English usage prevails, and that is "Serbo-Croatian". This is the unacceptable version denying the existence of Serbo-Croatian. This is the linguistically accurate version. --Taivo (talk) 15:18, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
• Yes, it should be removed. "Serbo-Croatian" haven't existed before Novi Sad Agreement. Croatian language is at least one thousand and two hundred years older than "Serbo-Croatian".--Jack Sparrow 3 (talk) 15:23, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
• No, the two varieties are closer than Bernese German and Zurich German. Of course the relationship between the languages has to be mentioned. Nationalism is in the wrong place here. I myself am rather irrationally nationalistic as far as my Swiss German language is concerned, but that doesn't make me barmy enough to deny that it is in fact German. Perfectly pointless to argue for a "Yes" here. Trigaranus (talk) 16:36, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
• No. Removing it would be lying. The linguistic reality of the situation is that there is such a thing which in English is called "Serbo-Croatian" and of which Croatian, Serbian, etc. form part, which is supported by our NPOV sources. Not mentioning this would be distorting the truth = lying. Note to the defenders from the Balkans: This issue has absolutely nothing to do with whether you should or should not have your own state. There are also Flemish nationalists, even though Flemish is a variety of Dutch and everyone acknowledges this. --JorisvS (talk) 16:55, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
• Comment (since I'm addressing the question behind the question, rather than the question itself) - This article and Serbo-Croatian language describe the situation as one wherein Croatian, etc. are dialects of a single Serbo-Croatian language as opposed to them being varieties of a Serbo-Croatian macrolanguage. There's no objective criterion for this distinction and if we have two conflicting viewpoints in academia--even if the conflicting viewpoint comes primarily from Balkan-language linguists in the last two decades--the information should be presented in a way that's neutral. The article is poorly sourced and largely presents the viewpoint of Croatian as a language that has been separate from other varieties for over a thousand years (I'm not sure if the articles on Bosnian and Serbian. also present this viewpoint). This is largely an WP:NPOV issue, though it can be addressed through citations. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 19:25, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

All three of the derivative articles seem to take the point-of-view that they are the "original" language and the other two are derivatives of it. The package is not well-conceived or executed. The Serbo-Croatian article is probably the most linguistically accurate of the lot. --Taivo (talk) 19:29, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

• No It should be made clear that Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian are languages in the sociolinguistic sense of ethnic identity, not formally or dialectologically, that they are not even separate dialects. Having separate articles suffices to indicate a distinct identity; the ELL2 doesn't even bother with that. Plenty of refs from ELL were posted on the SC talk page (archived here.)

As for which is the "original", SC seems to have originated in Croatia, where there is still the greatest dialectical diversity. (Much of the Shtokavian-speaking area--much of Serbia--is relatively recently settled by Slavs.) But that isn't the same as saying Croatian is original, because all SC dialects are called "Croatian" when they're spoken by Croats. If we're going to go on formal grounds, the only way for Croatian to be original is for SC to be a synonym of Croatian, in which case either Serbian is a form of Croatian and most Croats speak that form, Serbian (which indeed is what some nationalist Serbs of the past have said), or Serbian is not a language at all, but only Croatian as spoken by Serbs. The only way for Serbian to be original is if Chakavian and Kajkavian are Serbian, which I don't think even nationalist Serbs would claim. AFAIK, it's true that Illyrian & SC were an attempt by Serbs to assimilate Croats and Slovenes (and maybe Bulgarians?), as Croats have complained. However, it was also an attempt by Croats to forge a single language from Chakavian, Kajkavian, and Shtokavian. If we reject SC on historical grounds, then we're rejecting Croatian as a unitary language as well.

I'm reposting Ivan/NoSuchUser's link above.[2] Worth reading for the political/historical background of the debate. — kwami (talk) 20:16, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

• Yes The Croatian (Hrvatski) is a South Slavic language and it belongs to that group. One should not label it Serbo-Croatian in a manner that it over rules it's history. Croatian predates Serbo-Croatian. The Serbo-Croatian is a modern standard form that was created in the 19th Century. Croatian goes back centuries. It is unencyclopedic to do so--Sokac121 (talk) 21:45, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
• Yes - Serbo-Croatian is a political and a macrolinguistic construct, Croatian and Serbian existed long before and they still exist on their own now. Vodomar (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 23:54, 6 October 2010 (UTC).
• Comment. I am afraid that the positions in this dispute are being entrenched, and that the conflict escalates because nobody is seeking for compromise anymore, but only seeking for support for "their" version of the lead (interestingly, the body of the article, completely unsourced, is almost left untouched during the last few months). I am reluctant to participate in such atmosphere. I wish to echo Aeusoes1's comments, and state that more nuanced approach is called for: we should simply avoid unambiguously commencing ourselves to either of positions "Croatian is a form of Serbo-Croatian" or "Croatian is an independent south Slavic language", but seek for more NPOV and descriptive approach. It is a multi-faceted issue, and a black/white resolution is definitely not called for. If I must say: No, reference to Serbo-Croatian in the lead should not be removed, but I don't think that it was the right question to ask: sorry for being blunt, but it looks like one of loaded questions stated in various referendums prior to Yugoslav wars. No such user (talk) 06:37, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
• Yes - Because of Novi Sad Agreement. Because of all Croats, Serbs, and others that spend time in jail for not wanting to use SH language during existance of Jugoslavia. Because of wikipedia and facts, and not POV of some users that dont speak a single word of Croatian or speak a kvazi language Serbo-Croatian. --Domjanovich (talk) 08:33, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
• Yes This censnus gives a clear quantification Republic of Croatia - Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) Otherwize wiki presents only the POV of a few linguists. Due to this quantification 4.265.081 people speak croatian and 2.054 people speak "SC". --Croq (talk) 08:41, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

National censuses on language use that do not rely on third-party linguist census-takers, but on self-identification are famously unreliable. --Taivo (talk) 13:34, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

• Comment. I'm not wikipedian, so I cant't vote, but here is my answer on all those "completely mutually inteligible" definitions from a few mostly non-informed among you who are not even speakers of any of these languages.

"Hrvatski i srpski jezik razlikuju se na glasovnoj, morfološkoj, tvorbenoj, sintaktičkoj i najviše na leksičkoj i stilskoj razini, oko 20 posto" (S. Babić). Translation: Croatian and Serbian languages are different in phonetical, morphological, transformal, syntaxical and mostly lexical and stylish level, around 20%. This comment of linguist S. Babić, an author of "Croatian literar grammatics, (1992)" goes for differences between standard Croatian and standard Serbian.

Comparation:

Communication works because Spanish and Portuguese share around 80% of their vocabulary, and most of the same grammatical structures, things like the endings on nouns and verbs. [3]

So it is similar situation with Spanish and Portugese. If you can invent Serbo-Croatian, idiom spoken by noone, then you should invent Portugo-Spanish too. You can always defend it with "it is node between something and something". The real question is: what is your motivation to erase Croatian language which is existing and developing for more than 1.000 years? And replace it with ill-defined quazi-idiom which was always related only to political issues in the Balkans and Central Europe in last 100 years and never got "materialised" in form that can be spoken by anyone??? 78.0.139.158 (talk) 09:40, 7 October 2010 (UTC) One more detail: Serbian standard is based on Eastern Shtokavian, Croatian standard is Western Shtokavian. These Shtokavians are not the same! It's not one dialect as Kwami says. And Kwami doesn't even speak any of it! 78.0.139.158 (talk) 09:57, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Such claims have been refuted numerous times. All four standards, incl. Serbian and Croatian, are based on Eastern Herzegovinian Shtokavian, and we have other refs that contradict most of the supposed differences between these registers. What's left is almost entirely lexical, and then in learned vocab. Serbian allows both ijekavian and ekavian in the standard, whereas Croatian allows only ijekavian, but both languages have both reflexes outside the standard. — kwami (talk) 10:20, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

And all the linguists here know that, when measuring mutual intelligibility, there is a difference between two people who can't understand one another and two people who don't want to understand one another. --Taivo (talk) 12:55, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

• Yes. This can be understood as a provocation, and Wikipedia does not need that. I think everyone will be happy if that would change as it was before.--Wustefuchs (talk) 14:04, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

What is a provocation is the demand here that the common language of Croatians, Bosnians, and Serbians be called "Croatian". And, no, everyone will not be happy with a linguistically inaccurate article. --Taivo (talk) 14:57, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Well, it is not common language of Croats, Bosniaks (not Bosnians) and Serbians... it is only language of Croats. --Wustefuchs (talk) 20:21, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

• Yes. Serbo-croatian is nothing more than a failed experiment which tried to unite two much older languages, which in term have similarities because of historical (political) reasons.--Saxum (talk) 16:27, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

We're not talking about that Serbo-Croatian, we're talking about the other one. I know, having the linguistic concept and the failed Yugoslav (bi)standard both called Serbo-Croatian is quite confusing. --JorisvS (talk) 16:49, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Actually, name of the other one is very poorly chosen. ISO 639-3 standard therefore use hsb identification instead of old sh (srpsko-hrvatski, Serbo-Croatian in English), so there is nothing confusing, but poor choice of name for macrolanguage is so obvious that ISO 639-3 standard deprecated it's identifier. SpeedyGonsales (talk) 17:42, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

It having some language code is quite irrelevant to the issue here, we're not discussing those, were discussing the names, and having the same name for two distinct concepts easily confuses people. And actually, the name of the "other one" was in use long before the communist era. What is unfortunate is that the Yugoslav (bi)standard came to be known (also) under this same name and not merely under "Yugoslav(ian)" or something like that. --JorisvS (talk) 22:34, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

• Yes. So-called Serbo-Croatian is the political project, it started as political decision. No speaker until then called its mother tongue as SC. SC is an attempt to violently unify Serbian and Croatian, at the expense of Croatian. Linguistic submission of Croatian, degrading it to mere "regional dialect in Croatia". Things are worse since that project negates 2 other languages: Bosnian and Montenegrin, treating them as some Serbian dialect. Word "Croatian" in "Serbo-Croatian" is just a mask: that project obliterates Croatian, project of "Serbo-Croatian" is Greater Serbianist project. The last bastion of Yugocommunism, led by Greater Serb hegemonists. Greater Serbian (Milošević's) aggression on Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina from 1991 had its "scientific" preparation with "there's no special Croatian language, it's all the same language, Serbo-Croatian (since 1986 requests were more daring "it's all Serbian language")//"Croats are merely Čakavians and Kajkavians (sometimes Greater Serbianists directly declared Kajkavians as Slovenians)" "there're no Štokavian Croats" (or completely declaring all Croats as Serbs), with usurpation of Croatian cultural heritage through lies, misinterpretations, filtered information, hidden truths... About "common term in English": There's English-speaking world outside of USA and British Commonwealth. There's a good reason why many non-English scientific works have summary in English, or why many non-English-speaking countries have scientific magazines written in English. Wikipedia cannot ignore that just because "these aren't from USA and British Commonwealth". Otherwise, stinks like ethnic segregation. Is en.wiki "WASP sources only" "non-WASP sources forbidden"? If en.wiki is going to ignore the science of small peoples, if it intends to ignore the scientific approaches from the non-English-speaking world (remember that "brain drain" goes from Eastern Europe to the West, not the other way around), if it intends to stubbornly defend the scientific fallacies from 19th century and to selfsatisfiedly close itself in its dome of glass, it'll more and more lose any credit. Kubura (talk) 00:25, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

• No. In addition to the comments by Taivo, kwami, JorisvS and Trigaranus, detaching Croatian from Serbo-Croatian would distort the language history of the Balkans. A symbolic detachment has already been used as a prerequisite for Croats in insisting that their ethnic group had nothing to do with the codification efforts of the 19th century for Serbo-Croatian. Conversely it feeds well into the Croatian nationalist attitude of denigrating the Serbs and reducing Serbo-Croatian to an extension of Greater Serbianism. In addition, such a detachment also allows nationalist Croats to deny the contributions of some of their ancestors who were involved in something that was later held to contradict the Croatian historical narrative or ethnic consciousness. The Croatian nationalists want to cut their noses to spite their faces by basically covering up or minimizing the influence of Ludevit Gaj and especially Ivan Maretić, the latter of whom did much of the spade work in making sure that the Croats would even have a standard language which they use to this day. Vput (talk) 01:31, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

• Yes. According to <http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=292-16> Ethnologue, Croatian language is member of Western branch of south Slavic languages. Please respect that. --Roberta F. (talk) 08:56, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

• No, for the umpteenth time.. Even a number of Croatian linguist (before 1990, basically all of the Croatian linguists!) treat Croatian as a form of B/C/S/M complex, under the name of Serbo-Croatian or whatever. Modern national standards created in the last 20 years are all the same subdialect (Eastern Herzegovinian) of the same dialect (Shtokavian dialect). They cannot be "different languages" by definition. They especially cannot be "different languages" (being completely mutually intelligible and having 99% the same grammar) while at the same time Čakavian+Kajkavian+Croatian Štokavian are by some nationalist/ethnic criterion treated as "one language" ("Croatian"), and those 3 have very little in common and are not mutually intelligible. We need to depict reality as it is, not provide some politically correct coverage of it, wondering if it hurt someone's feelings. This article is already heavily slanted to Croatian PoV, and this is an important first step in disinfecting the article from nationalism that will hopefully in the near future usher in other major revamps. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 09:03, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

• Yes Serbo-Croatian is an invention which can be located in the first third of the 19th century (Grimm, Kopitar) & was accepted, with various degrees of (un)ease until the breakup of Yugoslavia. It's a dated concept which falsifies languages history-as in, say, August Leskien's primer to this hybrid "language", or in a few other obsolete textbooks. Since this is a vote, and perhaps a good part of voters hasn't heard rational arguments, I'll number a few:

1) Croatian and Serbian are intelligible to a high degree. But, Danish and Bokmal Norwegian are so to even higher degree, as are Hindi and Urdu. And yet, no one- except a few weirdos- tries to reduce them to offshoots of a single language (Dano-Norwegian, Urdu-Hindi).

2) languages can be considered both as systems of dialects and standard languages. As a system of dialects, Croatian is composed of three dialects (Čakavian, Kajkavian and Western parts of Štokavian); Serbian of one, Eastern subdialects of Štokavian plus peripheral Torlak. As far as standard languages go, Croatian and Serbian are typologically-structurally the same according to typological linguistics or linguistic typology (of course, not on dialectal level). And- this is also true for aforementioned languages (Bokmal Norwegian and Danish, Urdu and Hindi- one might add Indonesian and Malay)- yet, from various classifications, one can see that no one tries to put Malay and Indonesian, or Hindi and Urdu, under the "umbrella" of an "over-language" (macro-language). When I say no one, I don't take into consideration dated texts or some loonies that stick to these concepts for whoever knows reasons. So, we're done with typological linguistics. What about theoretical linguistics ? It is composed of- there is not consensus yet- phonetics, phonology, morphology, word-formation (in Slavic languages not reducible to morphology), syntax, stylistics, lexicology and, perhaps, semantics. For complete picture one might add script and accentuation. Across these various fields, Croatian and Serbian differ ca. 20-30%, most visibly in script, accentuation, word-formation, syntax, stylistics and lexicon.

3) one can frequently encounter deluding analogies for Croatian and Serbian (various standardized forms of English, Spanish, French, German,..). This is misleading since there hasn't ever been a "mother" language or cultural matrix out of which emerged these "variants" of policentric/pluricentric languages (as is the case with American and British English, Austrian and Swiss German,..). Croatian and Serbian are not variants of a policentric language-i.e.realizations of one language- but different languages (one might call them cultural, Ausbau, whatever..).John Milton and John Locke belong to both British, Australian and American English. Marko Marulić and Marin Držić belong only to Croatian language, not to Serbian.

I could write on and on, but this suffices. If someone is incapable of comprehending this- it's out of malevolence, not ignorance. Mir Harven (talk) 10:24, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Once a reader gets rid of the 20% of Mr Harven's response that is invective, they are left with half of the remainder being exaggeration and manipulation of unrelated facts, and the rest being unverifiable assertion. His claim that Serbian and Croatian differ by 20-30% is complete fabrication without any basis in fact. His claim that only "loonies" group Hindi and Urdu together is patently false and easily disproven. Those are only the two most egregious falsifications. --Taivo (talk) 13:42, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

This "comment" does not contain any argument. Pre-eminent Croatian linguists & lexicographers like Dalibor Brozović, Radoslav Katičić, Stjepan Babić and Tomislav Ladan have ascertained that Croatian and Serbian differ in ca. - minimum- 20% in their respective linguistic contents. And who are you to negate this ? Which are your sources that, perhaps, claim otherwise ? And what authority re Croatian language, its structure, history and the rest do these unnamed sources possess ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mir Harven (talk • contribs) 15:06, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

See: Argument from authority. Brozović, Katičić and co. are proven history fabricators. Just because they say something, it doesn't mean that it really is true. The differences among B/C/S standards are fairly trivial from a linguistic perspective: grammar is 99% the same (same phonology, accentuation, inflection, minor differences only in derivational morphology and a few particular syntactical constructs), and 99% of all real differences are completely regular and intuitively understood by all the native Serbo-Croatian speakers, and not greater in scope that differences between American ad British English. Your problem MH is that you only treat "proper" Croatian-only sources as authoritative, and rest are somehow "wrong".. We cannot simply follow such unilateral approach to such complex matter. Wikipedia regulations such as WP:NPOV require us to present it from a neutral perspective, and the main interpretation should follow the general consensus (not general Croatian consensus, but general consensus in the field worldwide). --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 13:21, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Commissary-talk here again, I see. Well, let's go: 1) it is true that authority per se is invalid in sciences. But- linguistics is not an exact science-like physics and chemistry- but a humanist discipline where things are not nearly as clear as in more exact fields. Einstein was wrong re gravitational constant; Kelvin about the age of the planet Earth; Wolfgang Pauli about Dirac's relativistic equation for electron. In each & every case their positions & arguments were shown to be false, and the results were published in peer-reviewed scientific journals and accepted-gradually- by virtually entire scientific community. 2) your claim that "Brozović, Katičić and co. are proven history fabricators" is, of course- a misinformation. First- who has "proven" this ? Second- this unnamed person who has, according to you, "proven" this- which are their credentials ? What have they published about Croatian language ? Which is the status of the published work of this unnamed person in linguistic community ? Which one ? Who in the world- outside of Croatia- is better informed about Croatian language than Croatian linguists ? Who are these people, and how did they acquire their knowledge of Croatian ? 3) Of course, the "99% similarity" is yet another nonsense. In some fields the difference is relatively easy to quantify, for instance in lexicon. One need only count the words. So, in 100.000 entries dictionary-putting aside Roman/Cyrillic difference, and ekavian/ijekavian spelling- the difference is ca. 30.000 words. Many are virtually unintelligible to the "other" speaker- for instance, the word for Bethlehem, which is Betlehem in Croatian, and Vitlejem in Serbian (not to mention scientific, technical or philosophical terminology). In the accentuation area the "difference" is hard to "measure", but it may be anywhere between 10% and 80%, which can be ascertained by boring counting of differently accentuated words in standard textbooks-of course, only these words which exist in both languages. As far as syntax goes- Serbian normative syntax, authored by Piper, Antonić et al., cannot even in theory be applied in Croatian elementary schools, since it abounds in syntactic structures ("Evo ga otac") which do not exist in Croatian language. But, as I've said- malevolence, malevolence,... Mir Harven (talk) 14:14, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

• Yes. Serb-Croatian is a constructed language. It was created in the 19th century. The history of the Croatian language should be respected. Sir Floyd (talk) 14:51, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
• Yes "Assume good faith," the Wikipedian recension of the Christian saying "Judge not and you won't be judged."

Your insistence on cold linguistics, dear fellow foreigners, does not speak in your favor -- or Wikipedia's. The question here is subtle and emotionally charged; the answer is not to be found in linguistics. It is well known by now that a language is a political thing. From west Poland to east Russia is a continuity of dialects ; the isoglosses are gradated. Still the Poles have their own state and language, the Ukrainians theirs (and try to tell them differently!) and the Russians theirs. Evidently this notion of language is not a weapon for extremists, the way you try to push it, but a thing of real and tangible value, and a matter of pride.

In view of this we must admit and understand that the separate articles for these varieties exist because their speakers, as a matter of national pride, separate themselves from each other. This is easy to understand, in view of the war. Not the fiercest enemy of "Serbo-Croatian" will ever in his heart deny that there is almost no difference between the way he and his neighbors speak; but he will claim the right to name his language as he pleases, and justly. Who are we to tell him different? If he wanted to write that Croatian is a part of Croato-Serbian, you could call him a nationalist; he wants nothing like that. Do we, who watched the war from the side, know better how to make peace than those who lived through it? Or are they so coarse that they need us to tell them what to feel?

It is academic frigidity, and rather undemocratic, to neglect this reality and push the linguistic circumstances to the fore. The war is over; it pertains to the locals to make the peace. Leave the body of the article alone; create a linguistic category where it belongs, in the language-tree, and call it "Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian" or whatsoever you please; but leave to these people their rights. --VKokielov (talk) 22:26, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

You'll say that all I've said is opinion. It is, and most of all this opinion ought to stand out: that it is condescending and undemocratic to trample the feelings of locals by pushing upon them our mentality, and that a dubious one -- dubious exactly because it tramples their feelings. --VKokielov (talk) 22:43, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Funny but also morbidly illuminating in its sincerity. Here we have an article dealing with language, yet there's the insistence that we must NOT use linguistics to inform the content, description or analysis. This is just like saying that an article dealing with a mathematical phenomenon should not be informed by relevant concepts in mathematical theory, but rather with psychology of users or even literary theory for example. Vput (talk) 22:50, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, Vput. Academic frigidity is also a sin, and has always been. Watch that Wikipedia doesn't become notorious for it. (And there is an evident difference between neutrality, which reconciles, and frigidity, which alienates.) --VKokielov (talk) 23:06, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

The opinion of linguists is frigid exactly because it doesn't take into account the FEELINGS of the people whom its conclusions directly concern and touch. --VKokielov (talk) 23:07, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

"Feelings", VKokielov, have nothing whatsoever to do with science. Do you want a psychologist designing your computer? No. This is a language article. The science that informs us about language is linguistics. We have reliable scientific references to back us up. Your tears are not sufficient counter argument. --Taivo (talk) 23:16, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

• @RfC: It should be removed. "SC" never really existed as a single language. Now described as a "macrolanguage" of Serbia (Ethnologue, 2006). Also, "SC" in "SFRY" existed only in SR Serbia - as the name for Serbian language. It was "official" in Serbia up to 2006. -- Ali Pasha (talk) 11:23, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

The user Ali Pasha is a single purpose account established just for the purpose of commenting here. See this. I suggest that an admin watching here check to see if this new user is a sock of another user here. --Taivo (talk) 12:00, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

• Wrong question. Time and time again, I see the same kind of silly flamewars, each with its own little pointless twist, based on whichever set of preconceptions. When an English-speaking reader comes to the page called Croatian language, we know only that they were looking for what "Croatian language" means. Ditto for Serbo-Croatian. Since this is not the simple English Wikipedia, rather it's the one that supports non-trivial sentences :) and given the topics' obvious intricate connection, to explain one without ever mentioning the other would be a problem, yet to explain one by simplistically reducing it to a version of the other would also be a problem. What the latest argument here really seems to be about is how exactly to phrase the lead section. How about we actually discuss that in a form less antagonistic than a yes/no poll? --Joy [shallot] (talk) 17:43, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Name Issue

I'm going to summarize what I see as the problem here.

• At the beginning of the 20th century there was a group of mutually intelligible dialects here that belonged to a language we'll call "X".
• There were religious divisions within these dialects into Catholic, Orthodox, and Muslim communities, but the religious boundaries did not coincide with dialect boundaries.
• Early in the 20th century, these dialects came to be spoken in a single united country--Yugoslavia.
• One of the dialects was chosen as a national literary standard and called "Serbo-Croatian".
• At the end of the 20th century, this single country was divided and the area of language "X" was divided between four countries--Bosnia, Croatia, Montenegro, and Serbia.
• The boundaries of these four countries do not coincide with any dialect boundaries of language "X".
• All four countries use as a literary standard the dialect chosen for "Serbo-Croatian".
• Each of the four countries has adopted a different name for the literary standard of that country--"Bosnian", "Croatian", "Montenegrin", and "Serbian".

So there is a language that needs a name. That language has several dialects that are mutually intelligible and is spoken in four different countries. The country boundaries do not coincide with any dialect boundaries and all four countries have chosen the same dialect as the literary standard. That language was named "Serbo-Croatian" in the 20th century and is still usually called that in English. So what do we call that language? That seems to be the fundamental question here. Common English usage is clearly "Serbo-Croatian". Mongrel forms are beginning to appear such as "Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian", etc. --Taivo (talk) 13:27, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

It's a pity the powers that be in all 4 countries didn't think of a suitable name at the time (Bocromoser?) but unfortunately we can't invent one.Fainites ^barleyscribs 21:33, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

I suppose that it's telling that the biggest point of dispute centers around the name. The original codifiers could find more agreement and compromise when deciding which features from Neo-Štokavian would be standardized. I would suggest "BC(M)S" or "Bosnian/Croatian/(Montenegrin)/Serbian" as an alternative since it appears to have some currency outside the Balkans as an alternative to "SC" or "Serbo-Croatian". What's also interesting is that these politically-correct terms are treated in the singular just like "Serbo-Croatian" (A construction such as "BCMS is spoken..." accurately treats the variants as really one language and strikes a compromise between recognizing standard languages and showing that the intra-variant differences are dwarfed by the similarities). Unfortunately adding Bosnian and Montenegrin to the mix extends the term, and also shows the effects of reconciling Balkanization with the findings of comparative Slavonic linguistics. This form of agglutination in the nomenclature could unwittingly be part of an analogy which could offend the very Croats who are presently so insistent on the separation from Serbian. There's nothing stopping speakers of other Štokavian sub-dialects from elevating their sub-dialects to standard languages that are insisted upon as being separate from (or mutually unintelligible to) the existing BC(M)S/SC. The Bunjevci of northern Serbia and Šokci of southern Hungary in theory could do such a thing if their regional allegiances would develop into more ambitious ones for statehood or at least greater autonomy. These scenarios would then likely upset Croats who subsume these people into their ethnos and thus speakers of Croatian dialects. BBCMSŠ anyone?

A term such as "Eastern Herzegovinian" is even better for me than BCMS, SC and similar terms as it's less associated to a nation-state or ethnic consciousness. Alas it's outside the public eye by being confined mainly to studies in Balkan dialectology and again incompatible with the 19th century ideal treasured by nationalists that there must be as many languages as nationalities. The refusal to admit the presence or even concept of a pluricentric language in the region is morbidly fascinating from a linguist's point of view and highlights a gulf between the outlook of influential linguists in the Balkans and that of their counterparts outside the Balkans. In other words, the impasse will remain as long as those outside the Balkans strive to adhere to "unsexy" but depoliticized means of classification using methods in genetic linguistic analysis while those in power (this includes people in education, for where else would children pick up these nationalist ideas?) in the Balkans strive to adhere to "sexy" but politicized means of classification as used in sociolinguistics.Vput (talk) 23:09, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Hmm. All in all it doesn't sound like "Bocromoser" is going to be a winner. I have been following this debate for a while and it is difficult to see how to reconcile nationalist and linguistic approaches.Fainites ^barleyscribs 21:14, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

1RR Warning

User:Jack Sparrow 3 has violated the 1RR restriction for this article. I placed a warning on his talk page. --Taivo (talk) 14:41, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Whither Now?

It is clear at this point that there is an impasse on what to call the language that comprises the range of mutually intelligible dialects spoken in the former Yugoslavian regions of Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, and Montenegro. ISO 639-3 calls that language "Serbo-Croatian" and gives separate identifiers to "Bosnian", "Croatian", and "Serbian". Croatian nationalists, however, refuse to recognize "Serbo-Croatian" as a cover term for that language. No other options have been offered by the nationalists for what to call that single language. Arbitration has been mentioned. Is that the next step? As a linguist, I'm willing to compromise on some construction other than "Serbo-Croatian" as long as it is reasonable and has at least some usage in contemporary English linguistic literature. But I'm not willing to treat Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian as if they were three independent and mutually unintelligible branches of South Slavic. They are not. --Taivo (talk) 15:07, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Actually standard ISO 639-3 is talking about hbs macrolanguage, not language per se, and hbs is actually new version of now obsolete sh identifier. Few remarks about above writing:

• mutually intelligible dialects - that can be talked about. A lot.
• Croatian nationalists - are you chauvinist or just plain POW pusher? How you dare to use derogatory terms for users who are not thinking same as you? Please check Wikipedia:Manual of Style (words to watch).
• But I'm not willing - nobody asked you what you are willing. Sources will tell how this article will look like, not any user of Wikipedia. Or at least that should be so if we will follow Five pillars of Wikipedia.

Please do not use rude or offensive language in future while in the same time trying to pose as mediator, thank you kindly. SpeedyGonsales (talk) 17:12, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

The problem is that there are two groups of editors involved here. There are those who are on the side of linguistic accuracy with linguistic references and there are those who are on the side of separating all things Croatian away from linkage with all things Serbian, including the term "Serbo-Croatian" or any wording that says Croatian and Serbian are differing national labels for the same language. Whatever we call the two opposing camps, the fact of the impasse remains. --Taivo (talk) 17:49, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Okay, to reword Taivo's post in a less objectionable way:

It is clear at this point that there is an impasse on what to call the macrolanguage that comprises the range of mutually intelligible varieties spoken in the former Yugoslavian regions of Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, and Montenegro. ISO 639-3 calls that macrolanguage "Serbo-Croatian" and gives separate identifiers to "Bosnian", "Croatian", and "Serbian." A number of Croats, however, dislike "Serbo-Croatian" as a cover term for that macrolanguage but no other options have been offered by said Croats. Arbitration has been mentioned. Is that the next step? As a linguist, I have no problem with a term other than "Serbo-Croatian" as long as it has at least some usage in contemporary English linguistic literature. But, as sources say otherwise, we can't treat Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian as if they were three independent and mutually unintelligible branches of South Slavic.

— Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 17:51, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, Aeusoes1. --Taivo (talk) 17:54, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

And concerning ISO 639-3, I only used that as a single example of a reliable linguistic source that uses a single name for the language that comprises Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian--there are hundreds, if not thousands, of others and most use the term "Serbo-Croatian". So don't get bound up with ISO 639-3 and whether it calls "Serbo-Croatian" a language or a macrolanguage. The point is that reliable and verifiable linguistic references use "Serbo-Croatian" as the label for the single language that comprises Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian. --Taivo (talk) 18:21, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Is this description of the situation from the Shtovakian dialect article generally considered to be accurate by the editors here? Fainites ^barleyscribs 21:53, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

The shorter answer is to treat that description of Štokavian with caution.

The longer answer lies below.

That description is only partially accurate as it reflects a Croatian slant so as to amplify (or even worse, to make up) differences between Štokavian used by Croats and that by Bosniaks and Serbs. The questionable parts involve the place of Neo-Štokavian as the basis of modern standard Croatian and then the influence of Chakavian and Kaykavian on the standard language. That description repeats uncritically the Croatian account that Štokavian would become the basis of standard Croatian as early as the 17th century. In other words, the intellectuals/writers of the 17th century somehow had the capacity to forsee the decisive standardization efforts of the 19th century in the Balkans which arose on impulses of Romantic nationalism of the 18th century. The timelines are thus jumbled but this is the only way for linguistic history to align with the Croatian historical narrative. What's more is that the choice to create a Štokavian-standard for the Croats in the 19th century was given the decisive and effective push by the de facto leader of the Croatian national revival (Ludevit Gaj) who himself was a native speaker of a Kaykavian dialect. Expediency in countering rising Hungarian nationalism and supporting Illyrianism rather than that temporally-incoherent trajectory of language history dictated Gaj's thinking. Even afterward, there were several unsuccessful attempts to incorporate features from Chakavian or Kaykavian dialects into this emerging Neo-Štokavian standard. An example of this was an unsuccessful insistence not to codify the declension in the dative, locative and instrumental plural on the Neo-Štokavian (more precisely, Eastern Herzegovinian) model but instead on features typical of certain Chakavian and Kaykavian sub-dialects at the time. These "rebels" were sometimes called the "Ahkavians" since they wanted to maintain the distinction between the locative plural and other peripheral plural cases on the model of these non-Štokavian dialects using the ending "-ah". In contrast the Neo-Štokavian dialects had already merged the old endings for the plural in dative, locative and instrumental (-ima/-ama). Therefore the Croatian insistence of Štokavian being the "obvious" choice for Croatian standardization long before the time of Gaj, Karadžić et al. (i.e. something without a Serbian connection) fails to hold water when recalling the efforts of the "Ahkavians" for one. Their resistance and efforts show that they didn't think that Štokavian was an obvious choice as the base for Croatian standardization.

The second part that is questionable or misleading is the description's statement that the influence of Chakavian and Kaykavian on standard Croatian has been growing over the past several decades. The truth is that Chakavian and Kaykavian sub-dialects today are confined to rural settings and what is sometimes passed off as "Chakavian" or "Kaykavian" by modern educated Croats (most of whom are now no longer native speakers of Chakavian or Kaykavian) is a stereotyped form of Chakavian or Kaykavian with heavy Štokavian influence. There are festivals (e.g. poetry readings, song festivals) that attempt to elevate these dialects to more prestigious entities but outside these feel-good festivals, the dialects are under overwhelming pressure from the Neo-Štokavian standard language which thanks to the educational system and official media is held as the model for emulation and also the effective means to ensure social, educational and professional advancement in the country. Croatian language planners have expressed greater openness over the past several years to incorporate Chakavian or Kaykavian elements into the standard but so far it has been all talk and no action. Not even the wave of nationalist purism in the 1990s brought an incorporation of Chakavian and Kaykavian elements into the standard language even though the incorporation of such elements would have also achieved the same nationalist goal of differentiating the Croatian standard from the older Serbo-Croatian standard. Indeed the differences between the standard language and Chakavian and Kaykavian have been maintained or even widened since the 1990s by the reinterpretation of the "yat" reflex (i.e. regular allowance of "ie" which had previously not occurred natively as a reflex of "yat" in Ekavian, IJEkavian, Ikavian or JEkavian), use of neologisms or Štokavianized calques, and reimposition of elements last attested in Štokavian literature of the 17th century from Dubrovnik. Vput (talk) 01:37, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

There're Chakavisms and Kaykavisms that had integrated into standard Croatian long ago. Even more, Chakavian and Kaykavian are even now influencing standard Croatian language. Kubura (talk) 05:29, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

In that case, Kubura, would you be so kind as to put money where your mouth is and give unambiguous examples of features (can be lexical, phonological or morphological) of demonstrably/verifiably Chakavian or Kaykavian origin that are frequently-used AND have been codified as acceptable (i.e. "correct") in the standard (Neo-Štokavian) Croatian language of 2010? These features cannot exist in standard Bosnian or standard Serbian, otherwise claims of Chakavian and Kaykavian being exclusively part of standard Croatian are invalidated further. Vput (talk) 05:52, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Hi, Vput. Here're some Kaykavisms that entered standard Croatian: kukac, tjedan, rubac some Chakavisms: klesar, spužva <ref>Faculty of Philosophy in Pula M. Samardžija: Raslojenost jezika (lectures)</ref><ref>[4]</ref> Kajkavisms are also vijak, puran, streha, krasan, hlače, udova, trh, skrb,... Linguist Tomo Maretić and his followers expelled all neologisms and kaykavisms from standard Croatian [5] (excerpts from the book by Miro Kačić: Jezikoslovna promišljanja), because that'd endanger "language unity" of Croats and Serbs. Čakavism is also spodoba, some all-Croatian words are now preserved mostly in Kajkavian, so one may find them as dialectism, like "podrapat" [6]. About the influences: Chakavian and Kaykavian (non) use of undetermined form of adjectives. I've read that previous month, I'll give you the source later. Remind me if I forget. Bye, Kubura (talk) 03:09, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Taivo: Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, and Montenegro are not "former Yugoslavian regions". They were consisting republics of Yugoslavia. They had the status of the state, explicitly declared in their Constitutions. Kubura (talk) 05:31, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Republic/region, it doesn't matter what you call them. What is important is that the boundaries of these areas did not (and still do not) coincide with any dialect boundary within "Serbo-Croatian" or "Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian". You're still just tap dancing around the fact that all of these "languages" are mutually intelligible variants of a single language. What do you want to call that language? And what are your verifiable reliable sources to back that up? --Taivo (talk) 05:38, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

From the 1974 constitution of the Socialist Republic of Croatia: U Socijalističkoj Republici Hrvatskoj u javnoj je upotrebi hrvatski književni jezik – standardni oblik narodnog jezika Hrvata i Srba u Hrvatskoj, koji se naziva hrvatski ili srpski. In translation: "In the Socialist Republic of Croatia, the language of public service is the Croatian literary language - a standardized form of people's language of Croats and Serbs of Croatia, also known as Croatian or Serbian." Croatian or Serbian was another (more cumbersome) name for Serbo-Croatian. So respect the history Kubura: the notion of Croatian as a "separate language" dates back only recently in history, after the secession of the administrative region of Croatia from Yugoslavia. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 09:19, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Taivo, anybody among us can say "I'm the linguist.". How many books in Croatian, Bosniac, Montenegrin and Serbian have you read? How many belletristic, how many scientific from various scientific fields, how many schoolbooks in those languages? How many works in those languages have you written? How many thousands of hours have you listened or even talked in those languages? In which science magazine have you published? "Wikipedia:WikiProject Linguistics"? Why don't you challenge "nationalist" linguists from Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro in their linguistic magazines? We'd gladly read your argumentation there. We'd gladly read when you answer the questions posed there, under the moderation of the true linguists and scientists, that require civil writing and expressing style, that don't allow etiquetting, personal attacks etc.. Or even better, challenge them in national daily newspapers from those countries. So you can enlighten those nations. Kubura (talk) 05:45, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

That's all irrelevant to the issue here, Kubura. I have asked a simple question and expect a straightforward answer. 1) There is a single language that people in various parts of the former Yugoslavia call "Serbian", "Croatian", and "Bosnian". 2) What do you want to call that language? 3) What are your scientific references to back up that name? It doesn't matter one bit whether I speak the language or you speak the language. All that matters in Wikipedia is verifiable reliable sources. If you want a scientific discussion then put up your references. Kwami and I have listed a score of references above discussing the issue. If you disagree with those sources, then where are your sources to counter? --Taivo (talk) 06:00, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Kubura, you and many other Croats continually miss the point. Native speakers of any language/dialect/idiom/variant are only preferred when it comes to USAGE (for example, I could ask YOU how to use futur drugi when communicating - there's little contest). However these same native speakers can harbour all sorts of linguistic misconceptions because the vast majority of them lack professional training as linguists equipped to deal with, analyze or understand matters of classification, dialectology, historical linguistics or even all of the reasons WHY what they speak/write/hear is in the condition that is. By your logic, if Serbs were to declare that THEIR language/dialect/variant were IDENTICAL to Croatian, then you as a native-speaker of Croatian would have to agree with the Serbs' claim because the Serbs would argue that their native command of their language/dialect/variant makes them the ultimate judges in determining the relationship of their language/dialect/variant with others.

The nationalist linguists in the former Yugoslavia have indeed been challenged by other linguists, so there's no need to widen the fight by adding Taivo (unless that's all you want to do). A recent example of scholarly challenge has come in Prof. Robert Greenberg's book "Language and Identity in the Balkans: Serbo-Croatian and its Disintegration" (2006) which describes the outrage and complaints of Croatian linguists who were initially scandalized by the book. Greenberg exposed Balkan linguistic myths and historical developments for what they were to the dismay of Croatian linguists. In addition, they weren't happy when he discussed the degree to which nationalism has infiltrated modern Croatian philological circles nor did they like his reluctance to side with them uncritically in their idiosyncratic reinterpretation of the development of Serbo-Croatian. Vput (talk) 06:14, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Hey, dear Vput, do you know what? I was, as I discovered, a professor of eugenics in my former life. I had all the qualifications -- I had a degree on the wall. I taught a sacred teaching: that the whites are better than the blacks and Jews. I thought I knew everything, and had the right to teach it -- though all along my conscience blamed me. But I didn't listen. And now I'm a stinking programmer, and a Jew to boot.  ;)

Forgive the way I express myself. The moral is that your linguists are heartless when they think they know better, and you oughtn't suppose that they have any right to meddle here because according to somebody's curriculum they were the best students in the world. --VKokielov (talk) 22:57, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

You are forgiven (incoherent though your analogy is). Incoherency notwithstanding, the insistence on discounting scientific rigor (I suppose this is what you mean by being "heartless") reduces any field of inquiry to nothing more than a process dependent wholly on Brownian motion or human fancy, lacking even more explanatory or predictive power. To keep on the topic of language, if the prevailing nationalist attitude of Hungarians in the 19th century would have taken precedence over the comparative linguistic analysis, then we would be saying that Hungarians speak a Turkic language, and that their language has a trivial connection to certain languages spoken in Siberia and northern Europe. Vput (talk) 23:10, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Ah, but you see, all this would be splendid, if you were arguing about substance. From the start you are arguing about names. Again and again you say that the rest of the world calls the language Serbocroatian. So it does. What of it? When a word evokes negative emotions among certain people, isn't it common courtesy never to use it in public? Here in America we have a word like that; it starts with N and raises half the hurricanes in the Atlantic. But it's only a word. Anywhere else in the world they would raise their eyebrows at us. Shall I make a redirect with that name? if I did, what do you think would happen?

as to the nearness itself, it merits no comment save that the languages are very close -- and that not in the introduction but in the body of the text, where it can stand modestly clothed, in lieu of glaring like the naked man in Times Square. --VKokielov (talk) 01:13, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

and what you call "nationalism" -- a blanket name, make note -- is only a reaction. A reaction of force, but a reaction nonetheless. This campaign has gone on unflagging since Wikipedia began, and always the front soldiers are not those who have an excuse to defend unity -- children of mixed marriages, devoted activists of peace, ... -- but foreigners. --VKokielov (talk) 01:19, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

whaddaya know. the "N" word has its own article. hallelujah. But then let the second sentence of Serbo-Croatian language run: "the name "Serbo-Croatian" has generally been a linguist's term, with speakers of the language calling it Serbian, Croatian, or Bosnian. Then cite Lockwood, as I will do presently here. --VKokielov (talk) 01:33, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Kubura, as per usual, derailing the discussion while spewing nationalist vitriol and ad hominems. Why are you not permablocked yet? --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 09:05, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

This assault and divertion of topic requires answer.
I do not tag my opponents as "nationalists", I do not accuse them for "spewing nationalist vitriol", I do not name my opponents as "PoV partisans" [7] and I do not say "sod off" [8] to my opponents. I do not tag whole wikiprojects as "nazi-pedia" [9]. I don't insult four nations on the national basis [10] "...not these ridiculous nationalist fabrications such as "Croatian language", "Serbian language" or "Bosnian language" (and soon-coming in the fall 2009 "Montenegrin language").". I do not put myself above scientific institutions by saying [11] "Vandalism by several IP address, in what appears to be several PoV pushers in Croatian academic institutions.". I do not violate WP:CRYSTAL with "Almost all of them would probably call their language srpskohrvatski, as it was officially called before 1991""[12]. I do not etiquette my opponents as "nationalist bigots" [13] (someone else was warned by admin because of that). I do not tell to co-discutant "you insolent nationalist troll" "bigoted nationalist" [14] "Proven hardline Croatian nationalist"[15]. I do not delete warnings from my talkpages (deleting 3.528 bytes of content), leaving them hidenn in archive's history [16]. I do not switch thesis, but you do call your co-discutant's words as "nationalist nonsenses" [17] for the things that were your very messages [18]. I do not blank whole referenced articles with mere redirect [19]. I do not call opponents contributions as "rubbish" [20]. I do not revert to "my" version after my opponent kindly asks me to not to do that [21] and invites me to discuss. I do not attack, and especially I do not attack after my opponent kindly asks me not to do that [22]. I do not name kind appeals as trolling [23]. Maybe I sound too biased, but even other users told you "but I think that you are treating this as a WP:BATTLEGROUND a bit too much. " [24]. I do not comprehend Wikipedia as WP:BATTLEGROUND and I do not proudly say that "Wikipedia is battleground"[25].
I do not badger every opponent of my idea on votings (with loooong messages)[26] [27] [28] [29] (how many times do you see "Ivan Štambuk"), badgering to every detail, that even the original abstainer changed attitude to oppose "So, dialog is impossible. Switching to oppose. --Millosh 13:40, 9 August 2009 (UTC) " (Millosh is steward).
Are these admins biased because they warned you on your attacking behaviour and namecalling, e.g. "When you start with "Croatian nationalist bigots, most admins just turn off and ignore you. Try looking a bit less biased in your namecalling." (Ricky81682) [30], "Please do not call other editors names, such as "troll". You can be blocked for making personal attacks by doing that" (A.B.) [31]. Or Kwamikagami: [32] "But if you can avoid calling them idiots, or other personal attacks, and maintain a professional attitude..." .
I do not accuse my opponents that they are "sockpuppeted/abused by multiple users" on discussions [33] with usual tagging as "troll". I do not name the person I find suspicious as sockpuppet (on discussions).
I do not invite/incite to ignoring of discussions by etiquetting the opponents as "trolls" [34].
I do not attack my opponents, after they answer me on the questions I've posed. Ivan did this question, my prompt answer and after that he said "Kubura you're simply trolling ..." [35].
How many ad hominems attacks WP:ATTACK, uncivility WP:CIVIL, etiquetting WP:ETIQ, violating of WP:BATTLEGROUND do you see here?
Having opposing attitude is your right. But Wikipedia in English isn't your property WP:OWN, on which you'll block your opponent that does not want to think the way you want. Wikipedia is not "permablock-per-wish" project.
After such Štambuk's behaviour (especially since recent incitation to permablock), I take very seriously the message Štambuk sent to this user, that opposed to his attitude "...trolling as usual. If I see you blocking "trolls" such as ..., you are so dead."[36]. Kubura (talk) 02:39, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

UN promotes language diversity, en.Wikipedia obliterates?

[37] "February 21 marks International Mother Language Day. The UN-sponsored event, observed every year since 2000, aims to promote linguistic diversity and protect the heritage of the world's 6,000 remaining languages".
As it seems, en.wiki does the opposite [38] [39] [40] [41]. Kubura (talk) 05:16, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

And from the same article: "Egon Fekete, a linguist in Belgrade, says most academics still say a single language is spoken in the Balkans -- albeit one with numerous dialects." --Taivo (talk) 06:07, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Kubura, if you wish to promote Croatian linguistic diversity, you should be working to save Chakavian and Kajkavian. They are in danger of extinction, and pretending that Shtokavian is a different language when spoken by Croats than by Serbs does nothing to preserve Croatia's linguistic and literary heritage.

You could start by developing the Chakavian dialect and Kajkavian dialect articles as befits their cultural and historical importance, rather than wasting time telling English speakers how to speak their language.

Hm, perhaps I could write a newspaper article, "Croatian nationalists obliterate Croatian language in favor of compromise with Serbs", illustrating how upon independence Croats prefered to continue with their supra-ethnic Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian dialect of Shtokavian rather than reviving those pure Croatian dialects. — kwami (talk) 06:13, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

If the Croats were so inclined to be high-minded, then lest they forget to preserve the Torlak used by the Krashovani, or the Štokavian sub-dialect of Bunjevac_dialect. There are even fewer speakers of these than of Chakavian or Kaykavian. Vput (talk) 06:29, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Vput, Bunjevac dialect is the very same Štokavian subdialect of Croats from Zagora, Lika, W. Herzegovina and parts of W. and Central Bosnia. Kubura (talk) 00:44, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Ummm... it goes a little beyond that as the map shows. [42]

Bunjevac is classified as a subdialect of Neo-Štokavian-Ikavian. PEOPLE living in Zagora (almost certainly self-declared Croats), Lika (this would include what few Croatian Serbs remain in the region, in addition to Croats), western Herzegovina (this would cover citizens who would consider themselves Bosniaks, in addition to Bosnian Croats), western and central Bosnia (same situation as in western Herzegovina) and Vojvodina (the Bunjevci) use this subdialect.

Another way to look at the same thing is to divide Štokavian-Ikavian into Old Štokavian Ikavian (in this case Slavonian whose native speakers are almost always Croats and may secondarily consider themselves Slavonians (Slavonci)) and New Štokavian-Ikavian (in this case Bosnian-Dalmatian whose native-speakers include Bosniaks, Bunjevci in addition to Croats. Croatian Serbs cannot be excluded outright either as native speakers of this sub-dialect because not all Croatian Serbs have disappeared from Lika since the 1990s.)

The bottom line is that it's simplistic to associate Neo-Štokavian-Ikavian exclusively with Croats, and to insinuate that because Bunjevci speak the same as some Croats living elsewhere, therefore the Bunjevci and their language are extensions of Croatdom. Funny, how if we do a similar sleight of hand with Croats and Serbs who natively speak Eastern Herzegovinian instead of Croats and Bunjevci natively speaking Bosnian-Dalmatian, some Croats come rushing in professing outrage at the nerve of an outsider finding links to a demonized neighbour. Vput (talk) 01:33, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Kwami, plese, take a better look at that article [43].
Look at the co-talkers. In the section "Similar, But Different" are from Croatia, linguist Živko Bjelanović (from Split) and academist August Kovačec. They told it so nicely "The people of Bosnia -- meaning Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs -- could each say they're speaking their own, individual language. They say that it's their national language, and that it's not for Europe, Belgrade, or Zagreb to decide differently...The same is true for Montenegrins. If they think Montenegrin is a distinct language, then basically it is. If on the other hand they decide to share a language with Serbs or Croats, that would work just as well. But the tendency here is to see each of these languages as special and distinct."
On the other hand, the co-talkers in the second section are from Serbia, linguist Egon Fekete (Belgrade) and Zoran Hamovic (director of ...Belgrade-based publishing house).
Compare these attitudes. Who says what. The authors of the article also had to ask Bosniac and Montenegrin scientists, to complete the picture. I hope this helps.
BTW, Kwami, you've told me above "You could start by developing ...rather than wasting time telling English speakers how to speak their language." But on the other hand, you find yourself competent to hold lectures (of the language you don't speak) to the mother tongue speakers of that very language? Interesting contradiction. Kubura (talk) 00:44, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

What you're pointing out is the difference between defining languages sociolinguistically and formally. See ausbausprache and abstandsprache. Sociolinguistically, Croatian is a separate language. That's why we have this article: the very existence of this article is confirmation of your POV. However, your POV isn't the totality of reality: formally Croatian is the same language as Serbian, and if you do not want to accept SC as a language, then there is no Croatian or Serbian, as the only viable languages are Chakavian, Kajkavian, and Shtokavian. That is, Croats speak three languages, one of which they share with the Serbs. But that would be OR, so we're back to Croats speaking one language which they share with the Serbs. Formally, that is, by abstandsprache.

No contradiction. I don't tell you what to call my language in Croatian (you could call it American, English, or British--I don't care), yet you're telling me how I must speak my own language. Sorry, that's not going to fly, and you haven't even provided an alternative, despite requests from many of us to do so. — kwami (talk) 01:51, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Clarifying the Issue (again)

A lot of bandwidth has been spilled above in tangential issues that are not exactly related to the issue at hand. This discussion:

• is not about whether or not Croatian should have its own article
• is not about whether or not Croatian should be called a "language" in its own right
• is not about the history of 19th and 20th century language policy in the Balkans
• is about what to call the (macro)language that comprises the mutually-intelligible Croatian, Bosnian, and Serbian speech-forms (whether we call them "languages", "dialects", whatever)

This article isn't going to go away, neither is the Serbo-Croatian language article or Serbian language or Bosnian language. But the disputed language name in the first sentence will be something acceptable to all. The fact that these speech-forms are mutually intelligible is well-sourced. The literary varieties are all derived from the same sub-dialect of this (macro)language. But the Croats keep avoiding the fundamental question--what do you want to call the (macro)language that comprises all these mutually-intelligible languages? Hindi and Urdu are called "Hindustani" in linguistic literature. Danish-Bokmal-Swedish are called "Dano-Norwegian" or "Dano-Swedish" or "East Scandinavian". What do you want to call this (macro)language? And "Croatian" isn't an option. Saying that "Croatian" is ancient is meaningless because all human languages (except Creoles) are "ancient" in the sense that they all go back in an unbroken chain to the first language in Africa. Saying "Croatian is the ancestor language" is like saying all Indo-European languages derive from Sanskrit or that English was the name of the first human language. Croatian today is not the same language spoken 1200 years ago in the Balkans that was probably close to Proto-West South Slavic anyway. Instead of ranting about "Serbo-Croatian", give us some referenced alternatives. --Taivo (talk) 16:00, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

I think it's been established that the only common SC term for the language, apart from various compounds, is naš jezik, which has the difficulty of not being used in English. AFAIK, the only non-jargon English terms are compounds like Serbo-Croatian (rarely if ever Croato-Serbian), Serbo-Croat, Serbian/Croatian, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian, Serbian-Croatian-Bosnian, Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian, Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian/Montenegrin, Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian/(Montenegrin), Croatian-Bosnian-Serbian, Croatian or Bosnian or Serbian, etc. There's also Central South Slavic and Middle South Slavic; cf. South Central Slavic, which includes Serbian, Croatian, Slovene, and Central Slovak (Russian language journal 54:177), and central South Slavic (lower case 'central'), which is Shtokavian (Heuvel & Siccama, 1992, The disintegration of Yugoslavia, p 5). — kwami (talk) 21:26, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

The vast majority of English speakers have absolutely noting against the term Serbo-Croatian. Even the majority of the Serbo-Croatian speakers have nothing against it (you don't see many Serbs, Bosniaks and Montenegrins opposing the term here, do you). The only ones who find the term "problematic" are some Croats - specifically Croatian right-wing nationalist extremist that are well-organized and recruited to "fight" here from Croatian wikipedia (if I translated some of the "motivational messages" in Croatian wikipedia's central discussion board that get regularly posted you wouldn't believe the amount of populist rhetoric it's filled with - the pro-SC apologists from this talkpage are frequently mentioned as "foreign mercenaries", and they openly discuss writing to the president to complain about their cause). Even within Croatia, there are a number of linguists and writers who openly endorse the term. The majority of the population of today's Croatia was taught in school for 8/12 years a subject called Serbo-Croatian language. The terminological dispute exists solely in their heads, because they subscribe to the old 19th century formula of language=nation=country. You can see that quite clearly e.g. in this comment: "There are no Serbo-Croatian people!". They truly earnestly believe that stating that Croatian language is a part of Serbo-Croatian clade (together with Serbian/Bosnian/Montenegrin) somehow implies that Croatian people (Croats) are somehow "genetically related" to Serbs/Bosniaks/Montenegrins, which invalidates their already quite fragile sense of identity. While you might be surprised with numerous references to history in their discourse, this comes as no surprise to anybody who has any in-depth knowledge of the region: the time is still in the Balkans, and these people quite literally live through history every day. What happened 15 or 65 years ago is more discussed than current events, and all the current events are perceived through the lens of history. Any attempts to reason the dispute from a neutral perspective are doomed to fail. They simply don't want to see anything Serbo- in the article and don't care if the rest of the planet doesn't share their isolationist sentiments. The fight for "separate Croatian language" translates in their mind to "fight from Serbian oppression", despite the fact that there are no Serbs here. We have all been "brainwashed", it's just that we don't know it! Anyways, the alternatives having any actual usage in the English literature are 1) Serbo-Croatian 2) BCSM. I vote for option 1) --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 21:15, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

You make it sound like you're a brave crusader against some sort of a redneck meme, but the current intro is just plain not mainstream. If you were just being contradicted by a handful of wacko Wikipedians, then the former would be the simple explanation, but there is ample documentation available to show that it's actually the majority of Croatians, including most Croatian linguists, who have various levels of discontent with the old language nomenclature, and in turn simply use the new nomenclature. For many people, their preference for the new terminology isn't a religious issue, it's simply based on the fact that it reminds more of the Danish vs. Norwegian situation than of the 1950s. Many if not most English speakers who have contact with Croatian in the real world will also use the new nomenclature, likely for the same reason. The article should document that. Trying to restore the old nomenclature serves little benefit and instead just incites endless flamewars. Give it a rest. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 12:54, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Have a look at Talk:Serbo-Croatian_language/Archive_3#.22SC.22_in_post-Yugoslav_English. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 12:20, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

How about this?

Croatian ([hrvatski] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help)) is the language of the Croatian people. It is spoken in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and neighbouring countries, as well as by the Croatian diaspora worldwide. The literary and standard language is based on the central dialect of Serbo-Croatian, Shtokavian, and more specifically on the Eastern Herzegovinian subdialect, which also forms the basis of the official standards of Serbian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin. Of the other Serbo-Croatian dialects, two, Chakavian and Kajkavian, are spoken exclusively by Croats, and there are a few Croatian speakers of a third, Torlakian; all dialects are called Croatian when spoken by Croats. More generally, these four dialects, and likewise the four national standards, are commonly subsumed under the term "Serbo-Croatian" in English, though this term is controversial because it reminds many Croats of the Serbian dominance of Yugoslavia, and paraphrases such as "Bosnian-Croatian-(Montenegrin-)Serbian" and "Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian/(Montenegrin)" are therefore sometimes used instead, especially in diplomatic circles.

— kwami (talk) 22:00, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

I would remove explicit mention of "Bosnia and Herzegovina" in the first sentence since using "and neighbouring countries" already includes B and H. Vput (talk) 22:13, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

I included Bosnia because a large number (17%) of Bosnians are Croats, whereas in other countries it's under 1%, and because one of the moieties of that country goes by the alt name of the "Bosniak-Croat Federation". AFAIK Herzegovina is seen as a core area of the Croat nation, whereas Croats in Serbia and Austria are seen as peripheral minorities not fundamental to Croat identity. — kwami (talk) 22:39, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

That paragraph works for me. And, Ivan, if the Croat editors here are "summoning the nation" to come here to fight the battle against the cold-hearted linguists, then that constitutes canvassing and leads to blocks and bans. It's not healthy for Wikipedia and they should be reported if that is, indeed, what is happening. --Taivo (talk) 23:10, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes it's good, though it could use a little copy-editing for those less familiar with the issues. For example, is this The literary and standard language is based on the central dialect of Serbo-Croatian, Shtokavian, and more specifically on the Eastern Herzegovinian subdialect, referrring to 4 separate dialects or one? Also, In one place you refer to Official standards. In the next you refer to national standards.Fainites ^barleyscribs 11:41, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

This is clearly more sensible than the current enforcing of the old nomenclature right in the first sentence. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 12:35, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

here is my variant of kwami's introduction, with the citation replaced by Lockwood. --VKokielov (talk) 02:15, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Croatian ([hrvatski] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help)) is the language of the Croatian people. It is spoken in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and neighbouring countries, as well as by the Croatian diaspora worldwide. Historical circumstances have had the result that Serbs, Bosniaks, and many Croats speak a linguistic unity which may be dispassionately called the Shtokavian dialect; the term "Serbo-Croatian" used by linguists and by the socialist Yugoslav government, is seen as controversial after the war and was never the usual name for any of the languages in the mouths of its speakers. Lockwood (1972), speaking of the socialist standard, writes: "But the new standard was at once affected by provincial peculiarities, morphological as well as lexical, associated with the two rival cultural centers, Belgrade and Zagreb (Agram). As a consequence, two somewhat differentiated forms of the literary language are found today, Serbian and Croatian. Speakers will normally declare themselves to be using one or the other fo these, the collective Serbo-Croatian being more a linguist's term than a popular name." Today, as before, the term our language (naš jezik) is used informally by speakers to refer to the speech of the Shtokavian area, whereas hrvatski refers to the national language of the State of Croatia and the official language of the Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Unfortunately, that is factually and implicationally incorrect in a number of points: Chakavian and Kajkavian are not part of the Shtokavian dialect. "Historical circumstances" is a meaningless but misleading phrase. "Serbo-Croatian" is more than a term used by linguists and the Yugoslav govt, just as "Croatian" or "jezik" are. (I assume you would object if I said "the term 'Croatian' is used by linguists and by the socialist Yugoslav government".) The controversy over the name, and certainly quotations, belong in the text, not the lead. Etc. The end result is that your version is an opinion piece that belongs in an editorial column, not an encyclopedia.

That said, the quote might be a good one to incorporate into the text. — kwami (talk) 05:22, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

map

Is this map from the dialect articles accurate?

File:Croatian dialects3.PNG

— kwami (talk) 19:50, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

A better, and more accurate (and sourced) map would be File:Serbo croatian dialects historical distribution.png. I suggest it be used as a replacement. Note that this is a map of dialects as of 5 centuries ago, prior to the gradual migrations of Štokavian speakers caused by Turkish incursions. I don't think however that it is of much relevance to this article, because at that period in history there was no Croatian state or national consciousness yet. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 20:50, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

I was thinking of its use in the dialect articles.

I added a modern dialect map to the infobox. I labeled it "Serbo-Croatian dialects in Croatia"; I didn't want to say "Croatian" because it includes Serbs in the east (also, I don't know in which way Shtokavian can be called a specifically Croatian dialect), but that might spark another edit war. — kwami (talk) 21:05, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

As Ivan has touched on, File:Croatian dialects3.PNG takes into account more recent geopolitical sensibilities. In Croatian descriptions it is common to divide Shtokavian geographically (and you can probably see where this is going. Bosnians and Croats are under "Western Shtokavian", Serbs are under "Eastern Shtokavian"), yet this method loses its power or accuracy when put under linguistic (particularly dialectological) analysis.

The starkest or most frequently-used linguistic divisions within Shtokavian are either accentual (Old Shtokavian stress can fall on any syllable while stress on the final syllable is unknown in New Shtokavian) or by reflexes of "yat" (which we know as "ekavian", "ikavian" or "(i)jekavian"). There are other isoglosses within Shtokavian such as the one that considers if older *-že- has changed to -re- or if all of the endings in the peripheral plural cases have syncretized or not, yet they are usually of interest to dialectologists and have not gained traction among native-speakers as ways to classify the sub-dialects. In any case this map eschews those forms of treatment and so I would treat it with some caution. I haven't been able to trace the source of the map apart from seeing that it's linked to the article on Shtokavian at hr.wikipedia.org. Coincidentally or not, this linguistic map also aligns rather neatly with the attitudes of people espousing "Greater Croatia" whereby virtually all of modern-day Bosnia-Herzegovina is by some "historical right" part of the Croatian nation-state. Vput (talk) 21:25, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, that's what I was worried about. I've replaced the map. — kwami (talk) 21:34, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

I bet that just as some see "Greater Croatia" on it, others see "Greater Serbia" (along the Karadžić's reasoning "all Štokavian speakers are Serbs"). I'm not really familiar with those differences between "Western Štokavian" and "Eastern Štokavian" of the 16th century, but those differences don't matter much today anyway because the dialectal picture is totally different. The whole purpose of that map is to show how Štokavian dialects have spread throughout the history at the expense of other dialects. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 09:36, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

File:Serbo croatian dialects historical distribution.png

Description English: Distribution of central South Slavic dialects before 16th century migrations.--Sokac121 (talk) 23:48, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

You keep saying "South Slavic", "South Slavic", as if anyone ever denied that it's South Slavic. Of course it's South Slavic. So what? — kwami (talk) 00:24, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

On this one I'd give Sokac121 a slight benefit of the doubt because of the appellation as "central South Slavic" (although even this is splitting hairs, because South Slavic is usually divided into eastern and western parts, with Slovenian and BCMS/SC making up the western part). Vput (talk) 00:48, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

I will answer Vput when I have a real keyboard. But understand that no one "canvassed" me. I am an enthusiast, and a foreigner like you. I came because I wanted to turn your attention to the essence of the dispute. You are arguing about names. Names are words, and like all words they may be deeply offensive. And you are frigid when you use linguistic arguments to defend a name, still more as an outsider to whom the name is a hollow sound. You have no part in this fight and no right to speak at this tribune. --97.238.214.37 (talk) 00:50, 9 October 2010 (UTC) --VKokielov (talk) 01:12, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Are you a lawyer or something? It has nothing to do with a "right" or a "tribune". We're talking about changes and content in an online encyclopedia article about a standard language, for crying out loud. Vput (talk) 01:05, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

now you've hit the nail on the head, it seems to me. To you that's all it is. To these people it is a degradation and a condescension. If that isn't obvious, read again what they wrote, and ask yourself why they wrote it, instead of writing them off as "nationalists". I would wager that these "nationalists" know more Serbs than you do. --VKokielov (talk) 01:12, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

But that's irrelevant. We don't adjust reality to accommodate people who have difficulties with it. Under Homo sapiens, we list the genus under primates regardless of the fact that many people find it extremely offensive to be told that they are apes. Some people may still find it offensive to be told that the Earth isn't the center of the universe, but we're not going to be wishy-washy about the wording of Solar System to accommodate them. Now, if those Croats with hurt feelings can come up with a compromise name for their shared language that makes sense in English, we'll take it under serious consideration, but, AFAIK, there is no such name.

Likewise, there are some supra-nationalists who insist that there is no such thing as Croatian, or Serbian, there's only the common language, but we don't accommodate them by deleting this article either, because sociolinguistically there is a Croatian language, even if it can't be defined cladistically. — kwami (talk) 01:36, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't have anything left to say -- you've snatched my words away. do you really suppose that the absolute truth in facts must be said, UP FRONT, there where it wounds the sight of people who've lost friends and relatives in the war? if you do, then only because you haven't penetrated the tragedy in all its proportions. do you think this is an argument about fancies or whims?! puh. God forbid a war like that should ever befall you.

if you want this article to be encyclopedic and at the same time sensible, arrange for an explanation. Explain in a periphrase that linguists consider the language part of Serbo-Croatian, and then make clear, as Lockwood writes, that "speakers will normally declare themselves to be using one or the other of these, the collective Serbo-Croatian being more of a linguist's term than a popular name." No one asks for more. --VKokielov (talk) 01:54, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

an absolute truth that, I add, is irrelevant to the question, because we are arguing about the name, not about the mutual intelligibility of Serbian and Croatian. --VKokielov (talk) 01:55, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

The question of naming is decided by what is common in English, and SC is common in English. It's not a linguistic term, but a popular one.

This is an encyclopedia. It's supposed to be the truth, not some watered-down approximation designed to avoid offending, or with the unsavory bits tucked in a corner where no-one will notice, no matter what atrocities people have experienced. If they're too traumatized to read it, then they shouldn't read it. I suppose we should water down instances of priests raping children, because otherwise it would be traumatic to the children who were raped? Just sweep it under the carpet so that no-one is offended? (Okay, that's not fair to the priests: what happened in the war was far far worse. But the ideal is the same.)

I agree that we should be clear that speakers generally identify themselves as speakers of C, S, or B. That is objectively true, and if it's not sufficiently clear, please try reworking the article accordingly. — kwami (talk) 02:03, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

In that case, VKokielov, it's all the more reason to stick to rigorous application of linguistic analysis and stick to things such as phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexis. The name isn't irrelevant and none of us here (not even the "cold-hearted" linguists) have a problem with "Croatian". The trouble arises when the names acquire more value than the things which they refer to, and some names get deprecated to suit political agendas. It also leaves us with the apparent inconsistency of many sources which have used the name without malice even before (or after) that very name has been deprecated by some people (see how many comparative linguists and language professionals use the term "Serbo-Croatian" or "Serbo-Croat" when dealing with apolitical topics such as translation, prosody, etymology or morphology). It's a lot less political and of use to someone who's trying to understand the structure of the language, rather than come out taking sides in a debate that has been ongoing for many decades. Who'da thunk it that an article on language stick to linguistics? The article Ukrainian_language is probably closer to your ideal of an article on a language with its meandering into historical events, and focus toward portraying Ukrainian (and implicitly its speech community) as a victim of Polonization and Russification. Interesting, but secondary in an article that's supposed to focus on Ukrainian as a language/dialect/variant/communicative code. Vput (talk) 02:06, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

It's interesting how you VKokielov think that everybody who has lost somebody in the war is against the term Serbo-Crotian. Well of all three nations involved, Croats suffered the least casualties, and yet they're by far the most vehement and vocal opposition here. How do you explain that? Could it simply be that we're not dealing with a general Croatian sentiment as regards the appellation Serbo-Croatian, but rather a tightly-knit group of well-organized individuals pushing for their particular (nationalist) agenda? --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 09:54, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Well, for what it's worth, I don't believe that "Serbo-Croatian" was deprecated after the end of Yugoslavia. I believe the Croats (and Bosniaks) when they say it was imposed at the beginning. Neither do I say you should delete the Serbo-Croatian article, though it would help to present things in perspective and without belittling the sentiments of the people who count in this discussion. I don't even want you to erase mention of "Serbo-Croatian." But I want it to stand further away, and, if it must be in the introduction -- if there's no getting around it -- then without a sales pitch and without making it look like we know better than they do. --VKokielov (talk) 02:22, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

and of course the Serbs minded it least of all; Belgrade was the capital and the numbers were theirs; not to mention that when the war got into full swing the Yugoslav units were full of Serbs and fighting for them. If the capital were Zagreb and the Bosniaks were counted Croats (as they had been, and not once before -- as during the second world war) then the Serbs would be arguing here instead of the Croats. --VKokielov (talk) 02:29, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

VKokielov, the only people "who count" in this discussion are the English speakers who will be reading this. That is our audience--our English-speaking readers. Not Croatians, unless they happen to be users of the English language Wikipedia. It doesn't matter one bit what Croatian speakers in Zagreb think about this. This is the English Wikipedia and will accurately use the common English terms for things. Wikipedia is not an arm of the Croatian government or any other government. It is a neutral encyclopedia, and as such, uses scientific accuracy as a measure of things, not "feelings". --Taivo (talk) 02:35, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

right. "scientific accuracy." again I raise it up: eugenics was also a science. do you really think there is such a thing as scientific accuracy in the humanities? hrh. --VKokielov (talk) 02:50, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

and lest someone take my hypothesis about Belgrade and the Serbs the wrong way: people are people. no one has the right to say he is holier: not the Serbs, not the Croats, not my Jews. but neither does anyone have the right to demean anyone else, and that is what you do when you don't take into account the motivation of the Croatian editors arguing against you here -- when you try to show them a fringe, a band of rascals who will overturn your sanctimonious, holy truth. They aren't; they are people who want to have a right to their own -- a people who have not had that right, except under that maniac Pavelic, for many, many centuries. --VKokielov (talk) 02:50, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Unless you have reliable sources and scientific references, VKokielov, then your comments are irrelevant. That's all there is to be said on the matter. Croatian emotions are not what Wikipedia, an encyclopedia with a neutral point of view, is based on. If Croatians are offended that the most common English term is used in the English Wikipedia, then they can go to the Croatian Wikipedia. --Taivo (talk) 04:00, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

There is no such things as "right for a language" VKokielov. Some Croats imagine that there is some kind of right for "linguistic self-determination" (much as there is a right for national self-determination), but there really isn't. It's imaginary, in their brainwashed heads. I've read about that pravo na jezik more times than you can possibly imagine, and haven't seen a shred of evidence supporting it. Snježana Kordić does an excellent job in dismantling that particular myth in her recent book Jezik i nacionalizam.

You speak about the term Serbo-Croatian being "deprecated" Really? You're a Russian, right? Last time I checked all the Russian Slavists and Slavic Studies departments on Russian universities were still abundantly using the term, as they have been continually for the last 2 centuries.

Your historical perspectives are also deeply flawed and biased. The term Serbo-Croatian originates in the early 19th century, long before Communist Yugoslavia was created in 1945. And even within Communist Yugoslavia numbers meant absolutely nothing - it was not a democracy, and rights of the constituent narodi/narodnosti were guaranteed by the federal/state constitutions. It was not possible for more numerous Serbs to "outvote" Croats or Bosniaks. Belgrade was chosen as the capital because it was the most populous city. I don't see how any of this has anything to do with this article though. But it's really interesting how you mention it to justify their actions. I wonder why don't you go a bit further down the history ladder and mention all those distinguished Croatian intellectuals of the 19th and early 20th century that were pivotal in the creation of Serbo-Croatian literary language as it is today? Why only mention these right-wingers who worship Pavelić/NDH and their purist separatism? We others are not "pure" Croats for you? --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 09:27, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

First of all: Wikipedia:Article titles (aka Wikipedia:NCON) regards only titles, not lede. This means that Taivo is way off course.
Also, the "SC" supporters just love Ethnologue, esp. 14th ed. when the publication listed "SRC" as "a language of Yugoslavia." This edition clouded the fact that that "Yugoslavia" was in fact Serbia and Montenegro.
The 16th ed. of said publication list the "language" (code: hbs) as "a macrolanguage of Serbia." Taivo simply omitted the fact that Serbo-Croatian was listed only under "Serbia". This means that some Serbian correspondents with SIL wanted to portray the Croatian language, as well as the Bosniak language as offshoots of "Serbo-Croatian" which is (as they see it) in fact the Serbian language. And what do you know, it's more than meets the eye. In the SFRY only SR Serbia used as the official language "SC", and continued to use it (constitutionally) up to 2006!
Who gave the right to Kwami to insist on false linguistic theories such as "macrolanguage" when he (or Štambuk) listed the Croatian language as part of "Serbo-Croatian" in the infobox? They like Ethnologue when it suits, but not when it presents the hard fact that Serbo-Croatian was only a name for the Serbian language (with some less internationalisms). They also just love that Croatia is as democratic as it is, so that every person had (in 2001 census) the right to declare its language as wished. But in the same time - deny any possibility to include the correct data in the pertaining article, while idly playing with figures and insting on 21 or even 23 million of alleged speakers of "SC".
Taivo lists some paper that were printed in times when the international community didn't know (or pretended to not know) what is going on. For up to 1999-03-25 the "SFRY" had its diplomatic representation in USA. The flag of "SFRY" was lowered in New York (in front of UN HQ) for the last time on 2000-11-01 (or the day before).
When would those "SC" supporter realise that what they advocate is completely false. WP:NCON has no bearings on the lede. The infobox contains fabrications. There was no proto-SC. Croats who started the notion of "Croatian or Serbian" haven't included Serbian words, but expressed political opinion (of that time frame). Ivan probably doesn't know that from 1965-04-05 at birth, citizens were registered at state offices - but without their nation listed, not even the nation of parents was listed. This practice existed even before that date, at employment, issuing of work permits, etc.
Would this mean that Croats (born between 1965-04-05 and 1990) aren't Croats? Obviously - it wouldn't, but for some discutants (here) everything goes. -- Ali Pasha (talk) 11:02, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Response from Suspected Sock Puppet

Note that Ali Pasha was just registered in Wikipedia as a single purpose account here. This response is clearly from someone who is an experienced user and not a new editor. Will one of the admins please examine this? It's clear that Ali Pasha is a sock puppet. --Taivo (talk) 12:06, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Taivo, please do not edit my contributions.

Taivo should stop. He knows what is the proper procedure, and if he believes that I am a sock of any of the users who participated in this discussion - he can ask to check - but in the appropriate place.

Furthermore, he should stop editing my edits (by placing them under headlines). Taivo is not the moderator of this discussion.--Ali Pasha (talk) 12:47, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

A majority of those who voted "yes" in the poll above were recruited from Croatian wikipedia, where there is a post inviting everyone to confirm their "Croatdom" by casting a vote here [44], and that under a thread that has been lingering in the central discussion board since July (administrators refuse to archive it so that they can recruit more "support"). If User:Ali Pasha is not somebody's sockpuppet (which I think it is), it's almost certainly somebody's associate canvassed here. The choice of a name Ali Pasha is indicative: perhaps they're trying to make it appear that he is a Bosniak by using an Oriental-sounding nickname, so that the excessive Croatian-only support for name change could be diluted. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 13:29, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Comment from a neutral party - Canvassing for support elsewhere will not help either side; please would participants in these discussions take note that simple strength of numbers will not decide this issue, only strength of arguments. Thank you. Keristrasza (talk) 13:59, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Comment - Štambuk is accusing us of extreme nationalism, but over the past year he has fought a vigorous campagin against the croatian language. Any person who does not share his point of view is met with a barrage of abusive words. He works like a man possesed, driven to wipe out any trace of the word Croatian as much as he can from en.wikipedia and from the wiktionary. Here is the list of words for which the defintions were destroyed by Ivan without consultation with others. --Roberta F. (talk) 16:51, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

about names

Ronelle Alexander, from Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian: a grammar, 2006, p. 385, "Novi Sad and beyond"

Although the signatories of the 1850 Vienna agreement concluded that Serbs and Croats spoke one language with one grammar written in two different alphabets, they did not specify a name for this one language. This lacuna was filled in Titoist Yugoslavia. According to the Novi Sad agreement of 1954 the language was again seen as one language with one grammar written in two different alphabets. Now, however, it also had two official names and two official pronunciations. The two alphabets were Cyrillic and Latin, of course; the two names were the mirror-image terms srpskohrvatski and hrvatskosrpski.

Let this dispel questions about the motivations behind the provenance of the name (for we are arguing about the name, aren't we?) and the date thereof. --VKokielov (talk) 17:00, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

The name Serbo-Croatian started to be used in the early 19th century, and by the turn of the century it became de facto the standard name for the language, also in English, German and Russian (which had the strongest Slavic studies circles), abundant evidence of which you can find on archive.org and books.google.com. The 1850 Vienna Literary Agreement was more like an informal meeting of prominent intellectuals on how to steer the ongoing Slavic national revival movements which were heavily regionally confined and diversified along dialectal lines (e.g. in Croatia there were also some Chakavian an Kajkavian literary circles). It had zero official/legal value. After two centuries of tradition, the picture of the term's usage today is much more clear than it was in 1850. At any case, it predates Titoist Yugoslavia by more than a century. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 18:50, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

even if the name appeared in earlier discourse -- as in Bosnia after the Austrian occupation -- yet, never without bitter discontent from the population. Please understand how difficult it was for the three religions to be reconciled there, when Petar Njegoš, the first man of Montenegro and renowned poet, wrote lines like this:

Докле Турци све њих савладају

многе ће се буле оцрнити;
борби нашој краја бити неће
до истраге турске али наше...

Until the Turks have conquered one and all,

Many a Turkish bride shall cover her face in black;
Our fight and war shall see no end
Till we have wiped out the Turks, or they us.
That was the spirit of the time among the nations; can you blame anybody from those parts from feeling the way he does? I can't -- my mouth won't open to do it. --VKokielov (talk) 17:52, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

You bet I can blame them, for it is them and you VKokielov that perpetuate this ethno-religous sense of identity which has under the blessing of statism been the cause of all the wars in the history. The murderous thug Njegoš that you cite in his most famous work The Mountain Wreath openly called for a genocide against "Turks" (a term which at that period also included Slavic Muslims that we call Bosniaks today). It's a typical Balkanic fairy tale that extols the culture of murder against "others", all of course under the righteous blessing of a religion. (Njegoš as a "Prince-Bishop" is reminiscent of certain ME theocracies). In the 1990s wars we also had popovi, hodže and fratri all blessing guns and tanks and preaching jihads against "others" worshiping the "wrong deity". Civilized societies have long evolved above the petty ethno tribalism, and the pitiful concept of a prisonlike entity called a "sovereign nation-state" has no future in the global society of tomorrow. You really seem keen on providing a background justification on some of the attitudes displayed, but I can see no justification for it as it is essentially without hard evidence supporting it and it boils down to a sense of identity, i.e. how one feels like when stating e.g. Croatian is a part of Serbo-Croatian clade, and what further implications does that statement bring upon the individual that thinks of himself as a Croat, and us being sufficiently concerned of their feelings. Why should we care anyway? --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 18:50, 9 October 2010 (UTC)