Talk:Serbian language

Kosovo and Metohija is a part of Serbia

Kosovo and Metohija is a part of Serbia and there's no need to mention that Serbian is official in Kosovo. You have mention it is official in Serbia. If you want to separate it, then mention Republika Srpska and other parts of other states!

That is a POV that will not be clear to all readers. Some will understand "Serbia" to include Kosovo, others will not. Regardless, Serbian is official in Kosovo, not (only) because Belgrade says it is, but because Pristina says it is. If we omit Kosovo, the reader will be left wondering if Serbian is recognized as official by Kosovo. Therefore it is clearer for us to explicitly list Kosovo. Perhaps we could word it "Serbia, including Kosovo" if you wish, though I'm sure that will spark an edit war as well. — kwami (talk) 07:45, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Serbian language is older than Serbo-Croatian

As you know, Serbo-Croatian is communist construction. It is well known that Croats adopted Serbian as literal language in 1850. by Vienna's agreement, so you can not mention that Serbian is dialect of Serbo-Croatian. Shame!!! And I have gone to page Croatian language. Why then there you hadn't mentioned that Croatian is a dialect of Serbo-Croatian? What are you doing in wikipedia???

The only problem is, that the notion of Serbo-Croatian predates Communist Yugoslavia by a century or thereabouts. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 15:11, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Serbian and Croatian language appears centuries before that. Serbo-Croatian has emerged as a fusion of existing language. As someone already said, why then there you hadn't mentioned that Croatian is a dialect of Serbo-Croatian? --Aca Srbin (talk) 21:13, 25 September 2010 (UTC+1)

We do. — kwami (talk) 19:49, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Serbian and Croatian languages were created long before the Serbo-Croatian and silly to say that Serbian is a standardized form of the Shtokavian dialect of Serbo-Croatian! In the articles dedicated to Serbo-Croatian language says that it came in the 19th century, the Serbian and Croatian are much earlier. Practically, it should say that the Serbo-Croatian has emerged as a fusion of these two languages, but no the opposite, as you consistently write. --Aca Srbin (talk) 00:41, 26 September 2010 (UTC+1)

None of them were created. The only things that were created were the standard languages, but this article is not just about the standard language.

There is a single language, or rather a series of dialects, which Serbs call "Serbian" and Croats call "Croatian". We call that language "Serbo-Croatian". If you think it's a fusion, please review your history. This has been covered ad nauseum at Talk:Croatian language, as it's generally Croats who object to an objective description of their language. — kwami (talk) 23:18, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

It's really not fair!!! I see no reason for discrimination against the Serbian language in Wikipedia. :S I think it's best to write to the Serbian language is one of the South Slavic languages, and then based on Stokavian dialect of Serbo-Croatian. So it is in Croatian language. I do not think that this is true, but obviously to emphasize it here. Practically, I have not deleted the fact that the modified version of Serbo-Croat, but I first say that it is the language, and then the details about it.

Indeed, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, "Croatian", "Bosnian", and "Serbian" are considered to be three names for the same official language. Also, I think this sentence is unnecessary, because the already mentioned a similar story with the Croatian and Bosnian earlier. Only a real crowd.--Aca Srbin (talk) 22:02, 28 September 2010 (UTC+1)

There's continual pressure from Croatian, and to a lesser extent Serbian, editors to pretend that Croatian and Serbian are independent SS langs, no closer to each other than they are to Slovene. That, of course, is false, and given all the attempts to convince people of that falsehood, a good article will make it very clear that they are one and the same language dialectologically, and only differ ethnically, politically, and (barely) in their standard forms. This is much like "Hindi" and Urdu: "Hindi" is just Urdu as spoken by Hindus or written in the devanagari script, or at the official level, a different standard form of the same language as Urdu. We shouldn't pretend that those are independent languages either. — kwami (talk) 23:48, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Vocabulary section

Hi, I was just wondering if anyone could edit the section on the vocabulary section, in particular the reference to the word "avlija". This is NOT a turkish word, but a Greek one. It entered Turkish as "avlu" from Greek "AVLE" (the E being the long Heta) and at the time of transmission pronounced as "i" as the "upsilon" after the initial "a" was pronouced as a bilabial fricative "V" as per the great vowel and consonant changes in Greek (see the Hellenestic Greek sound changes). The etymology means "courtyard" and the online etymology dictionary reference is here: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=curtain

or pasted as:

"1300, from O.Fr. cortine "curtain, tapestry, drape, blanket," from L.L. cortina "curtain," but in classical Latin "round vessel, cauldron," from L. cortem (older cohortem) "enclosure, courtyard" (see cohort). The confusion apparently begins in using cortina as a loan-translation for Gk. aulaia ("curtain") in the Vulgate (to render Heb. yeriah in Exodus xxvi:1, etc.) because the Greek word was connected to aule "court," perhaps because the "door" of a Greek house that led out to the courtyard was a hung cloth. The fig. sense in curtain call is from 1884. Curtains "the end" is 1912, originally from stage plays." NB: aule = courtyard. Garden would be Kepos.

The equivalent word in turkish for garden is "Bahçe". Whether or not the term entered into Turkish and transmitted by them or by the Greeks is a different story. What is important is that the word is etymologically Greek, just like many Persian words and Arabic words were transmitted to some European languages by the Turks who absorbed many different vocabularies for their daily use.

Thanks, Etymon. 128.250.254.122 (talk) 06:14, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

This was discussed at Talk:Serbian language/Archive 1#avlija. The compromise was to put a footnote -- which is still there, see note (15), about the ultimate Greek origin of the word. There are many other Arabic and Persian -- and, in this case, Greek -- loanwords in Turkish, but from Serbian perspective, it does not matter, as Turkish was the mediator and apparent origin. No such user (talk) 06:29, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

I dont' agree with that perspective at all. Etymologically it is not turkic. You yourself said that "from Serbian perspective, it does not matter, as Turkish was the mediator and apparent origin (sic)". Two things are wrong with this sentence, 1.) that it doesn't matter i.e. if it didn't you should then revert to the correct etymology and 2.) the apparent origin? Are you kidding??? The only thing original is ... well I'm struggling to see anything original that came from the turkic language regarding this word's etymology as the -ia (in Serbian's case -ija) ending is a PIE feminine marker! So what you're saying that the turks were the mediators... have you a source for that? I think Greek peasants were using Avli before the Turks arrived (and no it's not from middle Greek but has been in existence for far far longer even with the sound change!) and if you can prove this happened at the time of the ottomans then by all means say they mediated it but for goodness' sake don't say they were the originators of that word. A footnote will NOT suffice and as a linguist I'm deeply offended... I would edit but I'm relying on good faith of more experienced editors! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.214.116.14 (talk) 10:49, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, I fail to see the big deal, but here you go. All that the text says about the issue is, quote, "some 30–50 years ago avlija (авлија < Turkish avlı[15]) was a common word for courtyard or backyard in Belgrade[...]". Here's a reference for the origin: [1]. So, BCS word is indeed a loan from Turkish word, and it is pretty much irrelevant (esp. for the considerations about Turkish loanwords) who Turks loaned it from. Despite that irrelevance, there's a footnote about the ultimate Greek origin. The suffix "-ija" is common BCS reflex for Turkish final "ı", compare e.g. čaršija < çarşı [2], which is of ultimately Persian origin, but I haven't seen many Iranians protest on the talk page. We also have a lot of Greek loans, especially in church and related terminology, but they were not the focus of the paragraph in question. So I don't see why would we enter into too much detail, except perhaps to select a different example to keep Greek editors happy. No such user (talk) 11:22, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

As per wikipedia (original research policy and sourcing non-primary sources or rather in this case nationalistic sources) - this pages you quoted is from Hrvstka i.e. a Croatian website. This does not qualify as sourceable material. If you can please find a better source of that transmission (not on a natinoalist website without accredited linguistic/sociologic or statistical data sets) then all I can say is you have to remove the entire word altogether. That way you're not offending linguists. Again, the transmission is not done by the turks given that they themselves utilise the word "Bahçe". You could say it was transmitted through Turkish speakers (this way they could have been Greek, Serbian-Slavic, Bulgarian, but I doubt very much so as Turkish).

Thanks again. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.137.0.57 (talk) 11:37, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

HJP is the only online scientific etymological dictionary of Serbo-Croatian (see translated credentials), so it is the most convenient online source to quote. As a linguist, you certainly know that Serbian and Croatian share a large point of vocabulary, and this word is no exception (though it's rather archaic by now, except partly in Bosnia). Most of the Turkish loanwords did not enter BCS through modern Turkish, but through Ottoman Turkish language, which is characterized (among other things) by a larger number of non-Turkic loans. Avlija is most probably one of those. I certainly expect some WP:AGF on your side: we did not borrow the word directly from Greeks, one indirect proof being that it is most frequently used among Muslim Bosniaks, who generally keep the largest share of Turkisms. No such user (talk) 11:53, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

See also [3] quote: ‡ Od: I. avlija ‘1. dvor 2. ograda, yid okolu ku}ata’ od tur. avlı, avlu ‘dvor’ < gr~. aìl™ ‘dvor’;] or new Serbian Претраживач страних речи и изразa [авлија, -е ж, ген. мн. авлија [тур. avlı од нгрч. avlī од грч. [4] (limited preview). No such user (talk) 12:05, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Again not a valid source. Primary sources ONLY... this is conjecture and a Croatian site. The languages may be akin but Croatian and Serbian were different at that time (only under Tito did they merge to formulate one language). Different in the sense of who followed the Latinate or the Eastern/Greek rite. The fact that the Bosnians retained more foreign words lends credibility to the muli-ethnic nature of their words... Greek, Serbs, Croats and Turks all contributed. The point you are making is circular argumentation and not scholarly. I think you either state implicitly that it was inherited from Greek speech via the medium of Ottoman Turkish borderlessness thoughout the empire or you abrogate all ties to the etymology section. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.137.0.57 (talk) 12:18, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Jesus Christ. I give up. Do you want me to perhaps perform a belly dance for you? No such user (talk) 13:53, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

It's borrowed from Ottoman Turkish per numerous etymological dictionaries of Serbo-Croatian (Skok, Škaljić, Gluhak..). Your "protest" is a result of nationalist frustration that there is a significant layer of Turkish borrowings in Serbo-Croatian (at least 8000 recorded lexical units) resulting from 5 centuries of political domination of Ottomans on the Balkans. Grow up. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 16:54, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Again this has nothing to do with nationalistic frustration other than the word's etymological rendering. Using circular argumentation from Serbo-Croatian (sic) sources of 30 years ago is not a credible source, given it's conjecture. Where is the reference that states implicitly the "turks" were the transmitors, and I don't mean a hypothetical rendering of the word "avlija" from "avlu" which is from the Greek speech in the region ("avli"). From a pure linguistic perspective, it's impossible for the term to have been inherited from Turkish given it's pronunciation was "avlu" and if so, it would have been rendered as "avluja" not "avlija". If it is "avli" the transmitors would have been Greek speaking. Non sequitur. You're also forgetting that the trashumant population of the Vlachs (heavily influenced by Greek speech) were prob also speaking Turkish, Greek and Aromanian Vlach and were prob more responsible in the word's transmission. Political dominance of the Ottomans is a separate issue and has nothing to do with the word itself, unless you can prove beyound any reasonable doubt the Ottomans used "avlu" in the Middle Eastern provinces of Syria/Damascus and the rest of the Levant.

Suggested reading: User:Jnc/Astronomer vs Amateur. You were given 3 reliable sources, got informed opinion of 2 educated native speakers, but you chose to believe your own fictive etymology. I doubt that you're an educated linguist at all, judging on your attitude and statements. Good bye. No such user (talk) 06:44, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

I can assure you that the etymology is anything but "fictive" (do you mean fictitious?). The -ija suffix is not productive in Turkish with words ending in -u! Two native speakers who are no doubt anything but linguists themselves. Serbian and slavic languages aside your "nativeness" does not promulgate your own beliefs of the origins of the word avlija and more importantly on who transmitted it. My point is thus: had the word been transmitted by the Turks the word would have been "avlu" not "avlija" (the Greek form Avli with the -ija suffix so prominent in many Serbo-Croatian words). The term would have also been promoted in the Levant had it been the Turks who transmitted it and yet it seems to be suspiciously retained in the Balkans around the Jirecek line of influence and hence the Greek speaking/influenced parts. My point is your sources suspect it was transmitted and there is no evidence of it! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.219.244.84 (talk) 10:06, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Then, please do attempt to read properly the word that has been repeated at least 10 times in this discussion. The Turkish word ends in -ı, avlı. The BCS reflex of -ı is systematically -ija. I do not care which form was used in Levant, because it could not possibly influence BCS. I doubt that Ottoman Turkish was a monolythical language without significant regional variation. Now, if you have any reference that it was direct borrowing from Greek to BCS, please put it forward. I've had enough of your speculations. No such user (talk) 10:52, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Who are you dude? Some IP frustrated that Turkish language has contributed thousands upon thousands of words to their mother language. This is your reasoning: "From a pure linguistic perspective, it's impossible for the term to have been inherited from Turkish given it's pronunciation was "avlu" and if so, it would have been rendered as "avluja" not "avlija"." - Except that Turkish word was not avlu but avlı as No Such User has stated. Epic fail dude. You were given 3 perfectly credible etymological dictionaries as sources for Turkish etymon, and the only evidence that you gave in response was your personal opinion based on fallacious logic. Dude, read this analysis of Rumelian Turkish dialects spoken at the Balkans and pay special attention to point 1.41. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 11:39, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

And yet I am yet to find a record pointing out "avli" as turkish. Here http://books.google.com/books?id=QiGy8n8dKlUC&pg=PA27&dq=the+turkish+word+avli&hl=en&ei=_P6ATP3nDYamvgPYt4CGBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CD4Q6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=the%20turkish%20word%20avli&f=false

and unless you meant "avli = stocked with game" and not "avlu = courtyard" then you're the one with an EPIC FAIL. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.219.244.84 (talk) 14:04, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

No avlı is (was) an alternative form of the "courtyard" word, attested at least since the 16th century in that spelling. But regardless, either avlu or avlı in Western Balkans Rumelian Ottoman Turkish was rendered as [avli]. Read the link I gave above, page 3 point 1.41. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 14:22, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Number of speakers

I really hate the trend of population inflation per one's favorite ethnic group/city/country, but the Ethnologue data about Serbian are bullshit, pardon my French. (Actually, I'd say that most of Ethnologue data are bullshit, but that's another issue). According to the Serbian census 2002 [5], there are 6,212,838 ethnic Serbs in Serbia without Kosovo, which surpasses Ethnologue data for 1.7 million (and please don't tell me that not all of them declare that their mother tongue is Serbian). Add to that at least 1.5 million of Bosnian Serbs, some 500,000 of Croatian Serbs (200,000 still there+numerous refugees), and quite a few in USA, Germany, Austria and Australia, and you will easily get near the 10,000,000 mark. See [6]. Ethnologue figure simply cannot be true, no matter how one analyses it. No such user (talk) 09:37, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

You mean 4.5M, not 1.7M.

Yeah, that figure doesn't seem credible. If you subtract all the minority langs E. lists for Serbia, you're left with 6.5M, incl. Kosovo, for 8-9M total.

Another oddity is Montenegro, which has 0.2M Serb out of a pop. of 0.6M, and they don't count Montenegrin as a language.

I have no prob using other sources. Ethnologue is our default because it's impossible to find data on a lot of obscure langs otherwise. Do you have s.t. that gives a citable total? — kwami (talk) 10:34, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

I found one, although I'm not so sure about reliability (it's UCLA, but not the peet-reviewed stuff). Lots of 11-12 millions figures on the web, but no WP:RS as far as I can tell.

Here's an interesting stuff [7] (scroll to the bottom). Not a WP:RS, but it says: "Ethnologue estimates that there are over 11 million speakers of Serbian worldwide.". Apparently, Ethnologue "fixed" their entry at one point. I'm not sure if we can check what did it say in 2006, using Wayback machine or something? No such user (talk) 11:27, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

They don't update individual entries; the web version is a mirror of their print version. Their link to the 15th edition is here.[8] Note the 11M figure is from 1981, though. They also count 4M for Bosnian, which is the entire population. I don't think that ref is much good either.

Ah, the UCLA fig is just taken from Ethnologue 15. We should be able to do better than that.

The ELL doesn't give pop figs. Do you have census data from Bosnia? We should be able to cobble s.t. together in the absence of a RS. — kwami (talk) 11:50, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Census in Bosnia hasn't been held since 1981 (or maybe 1991); it's to be held in 2011. According to the CIA factbook, Serbs consist 37% of country's 4.6 milion ≅ 1.7 mil, which is probably overestimate; some 1.5 mil. would be more realistic.

There's a Google book search for "Serbian "12 million", of which the Lexicographica seems relevant; only snippet view though. No such user (talk) 12:13, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

ELL: 6.62M in Serbia sans Kosovo (88%). Bosnia: 37.1% of 4.01M estimate for 2004 = 1.49M (just what you thought). Croatia: 45k, not counting several 100k who've fled. Kosovo: 133k, not counting 300k "mostly" Serbs who've fled. (Are these being counted in the Serbian figure?) Montenegro: 400k (60%). Albania: few (< than other langs @ 50k). Macedonia: ? (E. says 33k). Romania: ? (E. says 27k.) So that would be what, about 9 million? (8.75M if all refugees were counted, maybe 9.25M if not.) — kwami (talk) 11:50, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Plus the diaspora in the Western World, but it's difficult to count. See references at Serbs. The catch is, there's quite large diaspora in Western Europe, esp. Germany, Austria and France, though many of those are "guest workers", which occasionally visit, and/or plan to return to Serbia (eventually), and might have one or both citizenships (thus, might or might not be counted twice at Serbian and foreign censuses). For those in USA and Australia, it's fairly safe to assume that they're not counted in Serbian censuses. In total, all of that should be some 0.8-1.5 million, probably closer to the lower figure. No such user (talk) 12:55, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Per Eth., 45k in the US, 50k in Canada, 39k Australia, not a huge difference. If Croatian and Kosovan refugees were counted in Serbia, and Euro guest workers as well, then we'd still be at 9M. For Euro, Eth. has 120k in Sweden, 142k Switzerland, but dn mention any in Germany, Austria, or France. Other countries @ < 10k. So maybe a max of 10M, if they weren't counted? Note the 21k Serbian speakers in Turkey (1980) are also called "Bosnians". — kwami (talk) 13:17, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Yep, I think 10 M is a realistic estimation. I've just removed Turkey from Serbs, because it's everyone's pet "nation inflation tool". Well, many modern Turks have an origin from the Balkans, ergo they still can be safely counted as "Bosniaks" or "Serbs" or "Albanians" and whatnot. All based on references like this. No such user (talk) 14:51, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

From the Ethnologue Editor

FYI,

Thank you for contacting the Ethnologue with your comments on Serbian [srp] in Serbia.
 
Based on the census statistics for 2002, we will change the population number for speakers of Serbian. 
Please note that any changes will not be made on the Ethnologue website until the 17th edition is published.

Sincerely,

<name withheld>
Managing Editor
www.ethnologue.com

No such user (talk) 06:45, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

It is NOT official in Montenegro. Montenegrin Constitution emphasizes the difference between the language that is official (Montenegrin) and languages that are in official use (e.g. in areas where minorities are concentrated) like Albanian, Serbian or Croat. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.33.223.6 (talk) 17:20, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

1RR under WP:ARBMAC?

Should this article be placed under the 1RR restrictions of WP:ARBMAC? There's been a Croatian POV pusher changing "Serbo-Croatian" to "Croatian" the last 24 hours. --Taivo (talk) 17:36, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

IMO that's not necessary. We can block that editor if need be, but there hasn't been much of a problem with this article. — kwami (talk) 22:51, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

This article has been destroyed. What is happening ?--KudySk (talk) 14:28, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Ambiguous punctuation

The article states:

"Although Serbian language authorities recognize the official status for both scripts in contemporary standard Serbian language for more than half of a century now, due to historical reasons, Cyrillic was made the official script of Serbia's administration by the 2006 Constitution."

Which part of the sentence "due to historical reasons" refer to? Do both scripts have an official status for historical reasons, or was Cyrillic made the official script for historical reasons? (And what kind of historical reasons are these? "Historical reasons" sound very broad to me...)

--Image of me (talk) 06:44, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

The due to historical reasons is linked with the rest of the sentence, meaning that the authorities recognise both scrypts for more than half century now, but, Cyrillic was made the official script of Serbia's administration by the 2006 Constitution, trying to reinforce it as the traditional scrypt because historically Serbs used Cyrillic, but just recently, since 1945, have been using both. The sentence could possibly be expanded. FkpCascais (talk) 06:58, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Kosovo usage in Wikipedia

Throughout Wikipedia (see Albanian language, for example), we list Kosovo as a separate state although in italics with a note as to its disputed status. This is the NPOV way to indicate it so that those readers who expect it to be separate see it separately and those readers who expect it to be not separate see it in italics. This has been discussed and agreed to in multiple places in Wikipedia. --Taivo (talk) 10:23, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Agree completely.HammerFilmFan (talk) 00:10, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Serbo-Croatian

This whole issue of Serbian as part of Serbo-Croatian has been hashed out with verifiable, reliable sources over and over again here, at Serbo-Croatian language, at Croatian language, etc. --Taivo (talk) 19:46, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

It's really only one-Croatian language. No such as "serbian".

Look at the facts on wikipedia about Croatian written documents centuries before so called "serbian". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.253.200.160 (talk) 23:02, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Nice to see that you know that Croatian is written with capital C, but you can´t even write Serbian with capital S... Is there anything to discuss here? Can we remove this thread? It is really about the most cruel nationalism... FkpCascais (talk) 03:23, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Mistakes in Serbian IPA

Given voices /ʒ ʃ tʃ dʒ/ don't exist in Serbian language and Serbian Ж, Ш, Ч, Џ (Ž, Š, Č, Dž) are /ʐ ʂ t͡ʂ d͡ʐ/. 79.101.199.185 (talk) 00:21, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

No, they're [ʃ ʒ tʃʷ dʒʷ]. — kwami (talk) 07:38, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Actually, IP is right, and Móren is wrong. As I added to Serbo-Croatian phonology:

In more detailed phonetic studies, post-alveolars (/ʃ/, /ʒ/, /tʃ/, /dʒ/) are described as apical ([ʃ̺] [ʒ̺], [t̺ʃ̺ʷ], [d̺ʒ̺ʷ]) or retroflex ([ʂ], [ʐ], [tʂ], [dʐ]).

In particular, Keating cites the thorough phonology Miletić R., (1960) Osnovi fonetike srpskog jezika, Naučna Knjiga, Beograd, written by a native phonologist, so I'm inclined to trust that (as well as my native ear). Serbo-Croatian retroflexes are virtually identical to Polish, (and not very similar to Chinese or Tamil), as they're apical (please see Keating, p. 35, for quite detailed explanation), as any native speaker will confirm listening to or .

I think this has been discussed somewhere already; IIRC I talked about it with aeusoes1. No such user (talk) 08:58, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Serbian: Official language in Croatia

It states in the head list of places that use serbian as an official language that serbian is an official language in croatia, but on the map,croatia is light green, meaning that serbian is a recignized language.

Which one is right??? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.229.82.211 (talk) 00:56, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Serbian is an official minoritarian language in Croatia. Some municipalities in Croatia give equal status for Croatian and Serbian (ex.: administrative use, street names in both languages, etc.). However, it is only limited locally to those municipalities, which mostly correspond to the ones where there is a strong presence of Serbian minority. This official document lists all municipalities case-by-case. FkpCascais (talk) 03:19, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Number of speakers - Confusing

According to the article Serbs there are 10.5 million of Serbs, with an higher estimate available, how come that speakers of the Serbian language have only 9 millions of speaker? Should`t be something similar to the number of Serbs?Adrian (talk) 19:31, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Some Serbs may use English as their native language - immigrants and what not - and not be too familiar with Serbian.

-True- but ... there is also a larger number of serbs in the world and besides that there are also second language speakers eventhough they arent mentioned in this article (or. number) that i have posted (majority of slovenians, a singificant number of kosovar albanians and ofc. macedonians)

dont forget that a vast majority of montenegrins around the world also declare serbian as their native language. and its said here that there are 12 million serbian speakers around the world (number includes republic of serbia) - which means it includes aprox. 7,2 million speakers exc. kosovo (despite ca. 6,5 mil. native speakers in the country)and ofc most of serbian diaspora and nabering country serbs (dont foget the foreigners who have left serbia and went into diaspora). ... so ca. 12 million speakers

http://www.rts.rs/page/stories/sr/story/125/Dru%C5%A1tvo/45760/Srpski+jezik+govori+12+miliona+ljudi+.html

the source should be reliable ... as its from national serbian television news (RTS - Radio televizija Srbije) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Правичност (talk • contribs) 00:54, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

I think it should be divided to standart, all and L2 language, same as here: German language. This should resolve yours dispute. Jirka.h23 (talk) 08:39, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Hmm that seems like a good idea, but it would be more complicated ... maybe if we would divide to only Native Serbian speakers and L2 speakers i think that would be great. because there are alot of serbian dialects (Rep. of Serbia (inc. Kosovo) Serbian (ekavian dialect), Bosnian Serbian, Montenegrin Serbian and Croatian/Krajina Serbian (jekavian and ikavian dialects)... and besides these there are also other languages (Croatian, Bosnian and newly made Montenegrin) that are similar to almost identical, so if we would categorize serbian under "all" we would just be making smaller and smaller unneccesary groups, as Serbian is (eventough a predocisor and older than serbo-croatian) in modern times already considered under the group of Serbo-Croatian languages which counts about 21 million native speakers (Serbian native: about 12 million , Croatian native about 5,5 - 6 million, Bosnian up to max. 3 million and Montenegrin 200.000+ and probably another 3-4 million L2 speakers (in Kosovo, the Kosovar Albanians, in Slovenia and Macedonia and also other peoples living in former Yugo states or outside). ... but our subject here is only Serbian language, the most numerous language and probably the oldest among here. So if number altogether it shows 12 million speakers around the world ... then we gotta count first of all only serbs by ethnicity or Maternal Serbian language speakers (Serbia 6,4 - 6,5 mil. (not all citizens of serbia consider serbian as their maternal language), Kosovo Serbs- 140 000, (while Kosovo Albanians will be counted as L2 speakers), Bosnia and Herzegovina 1,5 mil., Croatia 200.000, Montenegro ~266.000, and Serbian diaspora around 2 million (out of 3,5 million+ Serbs in the world). So we get about 11,2 to 11,3 million maternal Serbian speakers by total, add another aprox. 700.000+ citizens of Serbia (these are other ethnicites (Hungarians, Slovaks, Roma etc.) in serbia who ofcorse must use and speak serbian from their birth or even many generations) (as Serbia has up to 7,2 million citizens and in first count ive counted only maternal serbian speakers which counted up to ~6.5 mil. out of 7,2 mil. serbia total) ..

so enough with the complications as now we get a total number ... we get over 12 million Total Native speakers of Serbian and this is the most important info.

Now lets estimate L2 Serbian speakers, surveys in Slovenia stated that over 63% of Slovennians can speak or understand Serbian or Croatian, we also know that a minority of younger population, while a vast majority of older and mid-aged Albanian population in Kosovo still speak Serbian (as they learned and spoke Serbian as children in schools, jobs in times of former Yugoslavia and Serbia and Montenegro), we also know that a good number of Macedonian citizens can speak or understand Serbian (those are moslty older and mid-aged people) as they also had to use serbo-croatian or serbian in times of former yugoslavia.

So id estimate that over 1,1 million of Slovenians, over 1 million Albanians and up to 1 million Macedonians can speak/understand Serbian, + unknown number of thousands of others (foreigners who have volunteerly learned Serbian or who have lived, worked, studied in Serbia, Bosnia(Republika Srpska) or Montenegro). The whole number of L2 speakers would be over 3 million (3 million +).

though we have an issue here, as i dont know if we should add Croats, Bosniaks and "Montenegrin speaking Montenegrins" (eventough vast majority of people declared as Montenegrin, consider their native language to be Serbian) to these numbers, coz they call and categorize their languages differently, however if we would, we would have much higher number of L2 speakers (another 12 million alltogether). But this would be an issue, because alot of people from these 3 natonailites i numbered wouldnt consider or admit they can speak serbian or even understand it (because of nationalism in balkans) but most would certainly agree if we would categorize their "other knowledge of langauges" under "other serbo-croatian languages".

conclusion: so i would recommend we just stick with Serbian language, as Serbian language is our subject here and state in info box that besides 12 million native Serbian speakers, there are 3 million+ L2 speakers - which would make out a total of 15 million speakers alltogether (native and 2nd language/ L2). Правичност (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 18:03, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

I don`t know what is L2 speakers but I see that the article contains 12 million number which is fine and according to the ref you provided. I have inserted that ref in the article also just in case. Adrian (talk) 19:37, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Reverted because (a) the numbers don't add up, so we were misrepresenting the sources, (2) the ref does not specify native speakers, and (3) it's not a RS. (L2 BTW means 'second language' = not native. The ref says 12M total, and so presumably includes L2 speakers.) — kwami (talk) 22:57, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

I will answer by points. (a) I don`t know about the numbers because the first ref is not available online. (b) Agree, it doesn`t specify anything, it only states that there are 12 million of people using the Serbian language. Nothing about native or second language speakers. (3) I don`t agree here because RTS is a respectable media in Serbia. As far as I have seen, media, newspapers and similar are taken as RS. Thanks for the explanation about the L2. Greetings.Adrian (talk) 01:25, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

It may be fine. But newspapers are not generally reliable. They report claims, but often get them twisted. Also, people are constantly exaggerating the number of speakers of their languages; the fact that the article repeatedly emphasizes how admired the linguist they're citing is is a bit odd too - perhaps they do protest too much. Anyway, for linguistic claims we generally follow linguistic sources to hopefully avoid such problems. — kwami (talk) 03:37, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

My reply to this — Preceding unsigned comment added by Правичност (talk • contribs) 00:26, 13 December 2012 (UTC) Ty again adrian, btw... kwami i must say your wrong, i numbered only 9,3 million speakers in the balkans - wheres the rest of the world? theres a huge serbian diaspora out there, serbs are one of the most disperse european nations by settlement you should know that. The article really doesnt mention native speakers, but it probably included kosovar albanians (as their L2 language is definetly serbian) , while slovenians and macedoninas cant specify which language they actually speak (serbian or croatian or any other9 they refer to it as serbo-croatian. while albanians in kosovo were studying serbian from their childhood, so they probably have about 1 million speakers excluding youth who didnt have to learn language or didnt have to learn much considering they divided from serbia recently.

i will post 2 more articles to prove that data about 9 million total is wrong and add my counts again:

http://www.ritell.org/Resources/Documents/language%20project/Serbian.pdf

http://books.google.si/books?id=7oVNbsmOqWwC&pg=PA441&lpg=PA441&dq=serbian+11+million+native+speakers&source=bl&ots=BhSxitqzkP&sig=r4ybryYBO9By4FCAELGpZ7EJLFo&hl=sl&sa=X&ei=ww_JUNz-KITl4QT1m4DoAQ&ved=0CF4Q6AEwBw#v=onepage&q&f=false

i hope you can see this second source , it shows slavonic langauges and numbers of native speakers its from some book (Page 441) "What are the language families of the world?" ... then it says Polish 43 million, Serbian 11 million, Croatian 6 million, Czech etc....

i hope its a ok link....

now let me do the numbers again ...

number of serbian speakers:

Serbia (excluding kosovo) - ca. 7,186.000 (all citizens of serbia speak the language like all citizens of france speak french for example .. or lets just say 95% of the people in every "normal" country like that... if you dont agree with me on this?) (out of these ~7,2 mil. about 6,5 mil. consider it as mother tounge according to 2002 census)

Bosnia & Herz. - ca. 1,5 - 1,7 million speakers

Montenegro - almost 266.000 (check out latest 2011 montenegro census on linguistics)

Croatia - 201.000 Serbs

Kosovo - 140 000 Serbs

Slovenia - almost 39.000 , Macedonia over 35.000, Romania over 22.000, Albania 10 000, Hungary over 7 000 etc... = 110.000+

- count all of these numbers AGAIN and youll get almost 9,4 million serbian speakers just in balkans. and to make you feel better i didnt even use the highest estimate in bosnia 1,7 mil. , i used the llowest 1,5 mil. .... (and i ofcorse didnt count the L2 kosovar albanian speakers)

or to make you feel even better, at second counting i didnt count whole serbia, but just ethnic serbs or those who consider serbian as their maternal language 6.5 million according to census and added the smallest estimation again (bosnia 1,5) and i got 8.706 million ... so really you tell me now that everything related to serbian or serbs is overestimated, and that im wrong .. you know very well that serbia in total speaks serbian and all serbs in sorounding countries , and you know very well that 9 million is wrong....

and let me tell ya something more, i got family all over europe, i know 90% of serbs living in europe speak serbian, when you go to vienna for example you will hear sarcasticly said every second guy speak serbian there... soo many serbs live in vienna, im telling you that austria,germany and other european countries are swarming with serbs and all of them speak serbian. and that the number is believe me much higher, i jsut dont know why would it hurt so much to put the actual estimation on the infobox, not the smallest one when we are tlaking about serbs or serbian language...

there were 8.5 million serbs in former yugoslavia only AND dont forget that people in montenegro all had to declare as montenegrins (coz of unity and brotherhood for comunism times) so were talking about over 500 000 montenegrins out of which 265 000 declare their language as serbian today and in 2002 census that number was close to 400 000.

AND dont forget there were 1.2 million ppl who declared as yugoslavs in yugoslavia ... out of those 1.2 million yugoslavs 75% were serbs or of serbian partial heritage - ofcorse you can check up these datas for yourselves i saw it on some documentary and no wonder, the only remaining yugoslavs today reside in serbia as serbs were always the biggest yugoslavists or yugoslav nostalgics (sadly) ....

so if we coutn those 8.5 and + those peope who declared differently in yugoslavia alone we would get over 9.5 million people who are serbs... and i didnt even count serbs from sorounding countries and diaspora in those times.... and your gonna tell me that there are altogether 9 million serbian native speakers all over the world today???? what the hell PLEASE... did we all vanish from earth? i really got frustrated from this unjustice. if it will make you feel better you can lower the number of serbian language speakers and people to 5 million in time and i bet someone will.... with an explanation that from 1991 till today about 8 million serbs vanished from earth misteriously or just stopped speaking serbian.... excuse me but i see this as an act of anti-serbism and nothing else. because it is very unlogical... very... i really had to protest, somebody had to finally — Preceding unsigned comment added by Правичност (talk • contribs) 00:24, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Pravicnost a friendly advice. Please try to keep your posts concise and more right to the point. Simply state your sources and in one sentence(max two) explain what they represent. Anyone who is interested will easily check them. Like this, I doubt anyone will pay much notice. Adrian (talk) 01:28, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, see too long, didn't read. — kwami (talk) 03:37, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

data needs change

ok straight to the point then....

http://www.ritell.org/Resources/Documents/language%20project/Serbian.pdf

http://books.google.si/books?id=7oVNbsmOqWwC&pg=PA441&lpg=PA441&dq=serbian+11+million+native+speakers&source=bl&ots=BhSxitqzkP&sig=r4ybryYBO9By4FCAELGpZ7EJLFo&hl=sl&sa=X&ei=ww_JUNz-KITl4QT1m4DoAQ&ved=0CF4Q6AEwBw#v=onepage&q&f=false

number of serbian speakers in balkans alone(these numbers are correct check them up):

Serbia (excluding kosovo) - ca. 7,186.000 (all or over 95% of citizens of serbia speak the language like in every country people would speak the main and official language of the country. (out of these ~7,2 mil. about 6,5 mil. consider it as mother tounge according to 2002 census)

Bosnia & Herz. - ca. 1,5 - 1,7 million

Montenegro - almost 266.000 (check out latest 2011 montenegro census on linguistics)

Croatia - 201.000

Kosovo - 140 000 Serbs

Slovenia - almost 39.000 , Macedonia over 35.000, Romania over 22.000, Albania 10 000, Hungary over 7 000 etc... = 110.000+

Only by counting these you get over 9,4 million (not including huge serbian diaspora) ... and even when you count the datas of serbian native speakers on the already existing wiki page article .... you will get far over 9 million speakers... try for yourselves... the data about 9 million is false. true data would be 11 million native speakers and an additional 1 million+ of L2 speakers (mostly of these kosovo albanians). while we can only neutraly categorize slovenians ,macedonians and others as L2 serbo-croatian speakers only.

Правичност (talk) 21:23, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

If your sources were not adequate the first couple times, what makes you think they'll be adequate now? The one introductory linguistic ref you provide might be acceptable if that's all we had to go on, but we have the ELL, which is a more respected source. Maybe they're wrong, but you'll need to do better than this to demonstrate it. — kwami (talk) 21:48, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

hahah--- actually, according to the numbers, the calculations i did... i only used your own sources from the already existing serbian language article... either you dont wanna admit the numbers are correct, iether you are an anti-serb, sorry, but thats the way you appeal to me.... if the number goes high over 9 million only in balkans , (and wheres diaspora to be coutned yet heh) ... then why you always wanna degrade that number back to ~9 million. obviously something wrong. btw check yugoslavia 1991 demographics there were 8.5 million declared serbs (not counting montenegrin serbs and yugoslavs who eclared as same) ... are you saying that back then serbs didnt have diaspora yet , and those that left it forgot their lang. and ethnicity after the 90s? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Правичност (talk • contribs) 22:31, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Sources, please. That's all we ask. — kwami (talk) 23:29, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

http://www.rts.rs/page/stories/sr/story/125/Dru%C5%A1tvo/45760/Srpski+jezik+govori+12+miliona+ljudi+.html

But you got them — Preceding unsigned comment added by Правичност (talk • contribs) 01:39, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

If you're not going to read the responces we give, there's no point in us reading your claims. Goodbye. — kwami (talk) 07:37, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

I do read them, but i think your ignoring mines, well nevermind goodbye kwami Правичност (talk) 19:43, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

11 million speakers

your reference says this:

″Including, as of 2006, 6.62 million in Serbia sans Kosovo (88% of the population), 1.49 million in Bosnia (37.1%), 400,000 in Montenegro (60%), 133,000 in Kosovo and 45,000 in Croatia (not counting refugees), and perhaps a million in the diaspora. Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd ed.″

count all those numbers together and youll get around 9.688.000 ... so thats nearly 10 million, how does that make the number ~9 million then? ... - ive changed it to up to 11 million - eventough officials say there are 12 million, coz there are more speakers in diaspora also (and dont forget that not all speakers of serbia are counted in up to 600 000 more people, also in croatia (200 000 serbs)).. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Правичност (talk • contribs) 21:57, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

You used the old reference for new data. I don`t think that is valid. If you counted to the 9.688.000, why did`t you put aprox:9.688.000 and not 11 million. I am sorry, but I don`t see any valid reason for the 11 million number, nor more important the reference for it.Adrian (talk) 22:35, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

the data anyway is funny to me ... thats why i didnt wanna write nothing related to numbe r9, because i know its definetly over 10 ... i found a reference and will change it back again thank you Правичност (talk) 03:42, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

http://www.freelang.net/families/index.php

oh and btw sorry i mistakenly deleted the past source showing numbers of native speakers through balkan countries ... someone give that back, just dont change the number of total speakers please... as i added an adecvite soource showing the total number of speakers already... so no need to make any countings by country and to make estimations etc... as we know the last counting from that source was false by almost 700 000 and it was just an estimation not even including whole population of serbia but just ethnic serbs etc... so this is a reliable reference showin ga total numbe rof speakers (like many others show 11 mil.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Правичност (talk • contribs) 03:38, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

That website (freelang.net) is not a reliable source. On the one hand we have an authoritative linguistic encyclopedia, on the other a commercial non-linguistic website. It's not contest really. The published, scholarly, linguistic source wins. --Taivo (talk) 10:37, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

ok then write 9.688.000 speakers or up to 10 million instead of 9 million in infobox. dont degrade numbers of an already existing source. if someone wrote 9 million, he was counting .... but he done counting wrong by mor ethan half million which is discraceful... unless he was coutning from some other source? .... id also like to know why arent other ethnic group serbian speakers counted into this , but only ethnic serbs... as well as french is native to a black , arab, asian etc.. frenchman ... so is serbian native to a hungarian, slovak, roma etc... in serbia - as all live there for ages and ages... only a small minor percentage of citizens of any european country dont speak the coutnries main language (immigrants etc..) ... so id like you to define what kind of speakrs are those 9 million people- are they maternal sepakers? only ethnic serbs? or are they native speakers? -to those whom serbia (or rep. srpska in BiH) is a home coutnry or birth country, also ethnic serbs among them... or are those 9 million speakers 2nd language speakers? .... id like someone to describe me what does a native speaker mean? and how are other ethnic groups (born/raised/or became old in serbia) not native to serbian language or the other way around? (7,126 million people ) Правичност (talk) 22:33, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

The infobox already has an about sign (~) before 9, but unless you have an actual reliable source, we go with the source we have which says 9 million. --Taivo (talk) 23:10, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

ACTUALLY i found more than enough sources where it says serbian is being spoken by 12 million people around the globe, would you be so kind and please check them up the data is from recent times its not dated:

http://ec.europa.eu/languages/euromosaic/hu5_en.htm (this one is most reliable i think)

http://www.alsintl.com/resources/languages/Serbian/

http://www.europe-cities.com/en/666/serbia/history/language/

http://www.rts.rs/page/stories/sr/story/125/Dru%C5%A1tvo/45760/Srpski+jezik+govori+12+miliona+ljudi+.html (serbian national television news- interview with a respected linguist from serbia)

Правичност (talk) 02:41, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

About the other refs I don`t know, but for the ref from RTS (Serbian national TV) we already talked about. The ref is ok but very vague. It doesn`t specify the L2 speakers and as such I don`t think it can be used in this context. Adrian (talk) 09:54, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes i know about RTS, ... but well, could you/we on this page, consult about adding/replacing some of these sources, they are from 2010 - 2012 .. while the already existing source on this article is from 2006 estimation by some author. Id like we to change this data, as 9 million is too low and unrealistic to me. this is why im trying so hard. if there are 12 million speakers of serbian - it can only reffer to native speakers from serbia (~7,19. mil.) , serbian speakers from region (~2,12. mil.) and diaspora of serbs from whole region and also diaspora of serbia - country itself (~3-4 million)(http://www.novosti.rs/vesti/naslovna/aktuelno.239.html:377754-U-potrazi-za-poslom-i-u-najudaljenije-krajeve-sveta... as this source says) ---

so i recommend we input 12 million native speakers or just 12 million speakers ttp://ec.europa.eu/languages/euromosaic/hu5_en.htm as this eruopean comission sites says. (hardly anybody knows who can speak the L2 serbian trust me, atleast we cant find a source about that - and we cant classify anything serbian independently jsut as serbo-croatian reffering to those slovenians and macedonians who speak it, but we can the kosovo albanians only - as they were inside serbia till "yesterday" but they would only count up to 1 million l2 seerbian speakers more or less) Правичност (talk) 05:47, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

The problem with your sources is that none of them are specialized linguistic sources so it's hard to give them more weight that the source from 2006. It's also hard to imagine how 9 mill > 12 mill in just six years. That's an unbelievable growth rate. The 2006 source is not just "some author", it is one of the standard works in linguistics and is considered reliable in the field. Too many of these web site sources are not reliable because they don't rely on legitimate linguistic surveys, but on simple population counts. Until you can get a reliable linguistic source rather than just website estimates, I'm not in favor of making this change. We have a reliable source that is scientific (not political), linguistic (not general knowledge), and produced by a named expert in the field (not an anonymous website creator). Those are very strong endorsements for a piece of information. --Taivo (talk) 12:47, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Would changing it to "~9.5 million" be in line with the source? At least it would be in line with the accompanying note. --JorisvS (talk) 15:14, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Taivo actually it is not fast growth rate.. there are older estimations than 2006 which count 11 million speakers (remember about 9.5 million serbs lived only in former yugoslavia before breakup) and even back then there was a huge serbian diaspora. . . so thats why i ask my self the other way around - how come a number can fall for 2 million in few years, as i remember that 11 million number from school books as a kid. .. and if you check data from 1997 about serbocroatian languages - you will see there were 19 million native speakers - please remember that montenegrin wasnt invented back then yet (eventough thats just ca. 150-300.000 speakers), so we just count serbian, croatian and bosnian for back then... and the datas would say ca. over 5,5 million croatian speakers, up to 3 million bosnian speakers, so serbian can be only left with 11 million to fill up the 19 million total number... right?

and JorisvS if you really want to make an estimation in line with this source, as it is almost 9,7 when you count it ... i would recommend if we would input 9-10 million, or up to 10 million, or 9,5 - 10 million. that way we wouldnt downgrade the number, nor maximize, but just make a circulate estimate (not even the author cant be sure if its few hundered thosuand speakers more or less - eventough he ignored the rest of the rep. of serbia population in this count as he coutned only ethnic serbs or those who declared serbian as their maternal language, eventough other ethnic groups are also born and live and die in serbia (about up to 600.000 (out of nearly 7,2 mil. pop. of them not counted - vojvodina hungarians, slovaks, romani people, raška bosniaks etc..).. so do you agree with my recommendations? i think it would be most fair (p.s. do the count again pls). Правичност (talk) 18:04, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

We shouldn't be doing math here anyway. What we need is the precise number that the International Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics says. Doing math here is improper WP:SYN if our reliable source says "9 million". This reliable source has only 7 million, so we should use the precise number published in IELL, not an estimate based on our addition. --Taivo (talk) 21:40, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

But the source isnt saying 9 million, sorry , the source itself makes you do the countings, and its almost 9,7 million - thats way over 9 million... and about that other reliable source you have posted... i am sorry but that one is just redicioulus, i must say, it says there are 4,5 mil. speakers in serbia- while official census in 2002 in serbia had revealed that out of 7,5 million population over 6,5 million people consider it as a maternal language/mother tounge if thats the right word... i also found on that page they say there are over 200.000 serbian speakers in albania - while we know only up to 10.000 serbs and montenegrins live in albania - or maximumly estimated up to 30.000 with those who have serbian ancestry. so that source is redicioulus sorry... according to the source that is posted on this page (and it counts nearly 9,7 mil.) i recommend to put it 9-10 or up to 10 million... because i see no text saying that exact number is 9 million in this source, just numbers for each country and an estimation for diaspora... Правичност (talk) 23:26, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Are you holding the International Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics in your hand? If not, then you don't know what it says. You only know what some other editor wrote here in a footnote that may have been changed since it was originally written. In this case, we need to go back to the original source of the information and get clarification on exactly what it says. --Taivo (talk) 00:45, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

no im not, but id love to see if thats really written but i can believe you however... anyways, none of this still solves the problem ... but ok, oh well i guess they will keep systematically lowering number of serbs and serbian speakers year by year Правичност (talk) 01:02, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Find a copy of the International Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics and look up the number. I won't be close to a copy for a couple of weeks. Until then, we have to go with the reliable sources we have and none of your websites match the IELL for scientific accuracy or reliability. Until we check the actual source, the world will not end over how many Serbian speakers Wikipedia lists, but until we have a reliable source, the one reliable source we have takes precedence. There is, however, a fundamental problem in that many of these non-scientific websites simply take the population of Serbia and add a couple million. That is not an accurate count. The fact that Croatian, Serbian, and Bosnian are virtually the same language doesn't help the accuracy any. --Taivo (talk) 02:57, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

anyway... what if we add 12 million speakers under "all speakers" ... the sources i posted (even the one from european comission official site) says serbian is spoken by 12 million people around the world. and we can add a text to that number - saying - "estimation" or estimated 12 million speakers alltogether, while we leave native speakers on 9 million - or 9,5 as that author counted or 9,7 however much it is.... what you say? we have good enough sources to post an official estimation of a total number of serbian speakers around the world. (Правичност (talk) 23:57, 23 December 2012 (UTC))

We rarely post L2 speakers for minor languages like this because the numbers are virtually always inaccurate. What is your agenda? We have a very reliable source that we will check after the holidays to ensure that the 9 million is exactly what it says and that is the end of it. We don't list L2 speakers, we list a number from the most reliable scientific linguistic source we have, which is the IELL. --Taivo (talk) 04:14, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

http://ec.europa.eu/languages/euromosaic/hu5_en.htm

i believe you... but i cant calm down with that 9 million data... coz there are nearly 9 million speakers in balkans alone actually ... and i myself live in diaspora, got alot of family and friends in couple of countries, all of them speak serbian, and there are alot of serbs here too (im talkin about central europe) thats why i dont think only 500.000 people or 1 million only outside of balkans speak serbian ... i believe there are atleast 1,5 million - 2 million serbian speakers in diaspora... but anyway if you say you got most reliable source, then ok... but i also take a fact that all serbia speaks serbian not only 6,7 million people - 6,7 as maternal language yes, but serbias population is 7,2 million, so thats 0,5 mil speakers ignored, or atleast 95% of them (if you think they dont speak it)... however you hold the reliable sources in your hands. Правичност (talk) 19:57, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

You're going to have to "calm down". The world didn't end on the 21st and it's certainly not going to end before we can check the reliable source of the IELL. Go eat your Christmas feast. --Taivo (talk) 01:54, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Heheh, oh well... ty, but my Christmas is on 7th january (julian calendar - orthodox christian) but i can wish you a marry christmas. (Правичност (talk) 02:06, 25 December 2012 (UTC))

http://www.alsintl.com/resources/languages/Serbian/ ... btw i found another reliable source just in case (Правичност (talk) 18:52, 26 December 2012 (UTC))

A language learning service is not a reliable source. That article looks more like it's a mirror from somewhere else anyway and there's no reference as to where they got that number from--a sociolinguistic survey, national propaganda, thin air.... --Taivo (talk) 19:54, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

newer and newer problems

i got warned for edit warring here... eventough i was editing the number of native speakers only accompying to the refference.... (9.7 million). now suddenly somebody made a new change... he used "the most reliable source" refference (as all agreed here) to count serbian speakers in former yugoslavia. but he ignored the same which says theres perhaps 1 million speakers in diaspora, thus he added a new refference to data about speakers abroad which says there are half of million speakers abroad .... and this refference is ethnologue - let me remind you that this same ethnologue says there are 4.5 mil serbian speakers in serbia (eventough official serbian census in 2002 revealed 6.7 mil.) and also mentioned there are almost 300 000 serbian speakers in albania (eventough all datas you check reveal there are 2.000 to max. 30.000 both serbs and montenegrins in albania) ... this proves ethnologue is really "funny" in reliability.

I in meanwhile found alot of sources (revealing 11-12 million speakers) which were more reliable than ethnologue but was told that the links werent as reliable as the already existing refference (the one from 2006). And now it is suddenly okay to add ethnologue refference to make counts for diaspora community of serbian speakers... and another different reference to make a count for balkans community of serbian speakers... eventough the first existing "most reliable" refference already shows data of serbian speakers about both diaspora and ex-yugoslavia...

i dont see the logic here, but i think somebody is being favoured when lowering the number - (from 10 to 9, from 9.7 to 8.7, from ~1 million in diaspora (best source we have) to half of million (another source with strange and drastically false datas about speakers in serbia and albania already). (Правичност (talk) 06:11, 10 January 2013 (UTC))

Why don't you do the math how you could get 11–12 million to show that that figure is even possible? --JorisvS (talk) 11:38, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

None of your sources were reliable linguistic sources, pravichnost, they were general audience or political sources, not linguistic sources. Ethnologue is at least a scientific linguistic source. I'll try to get to the library today (no guarantees with a full teaching schedule) to take a look at the Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. --Taivo (talk) 11:46, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

I've already scanned it. The reason I used E16 for the expat pop was that I couldn't find anything in ELL2. The only thing I changed was omitting the Muslims Serbs of Albania in E16. They're not mentioned in ELL2, and I assume would count as Bosnians today. — kwami (talk) 19:58, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Joris let me tell you how... its a fact that 9.5 million Serbs (8.5 declared and more than a million back then declared as yugoslavs (1991: more than 1.2 mil declared as yugoslavs - estimates ~75% of these were Serbs) or montenegrins (1991: almost all citizens of montenegro declared as montenegrins) lived in former Yugoslavia alone, and even back then there was millions of Serbs in diaspora, that way my math is realistic, and out of estimated 3.5 - 4 millions Serbs in diaspora atleast 2 million can speak Serbian (mostly those living in Europe)for christ sake theres only 1 million Serbs in both Germany and Austria (serbian diaspora estimates about 800 000 in germany and 350 000 in austria), wheres the rest of europe and the rest of the world....

Taivo i realise that, but ethnologue is clearly unaccurate in numbers, thats clearly visual, you would agree if you check census datas, some numbers are "pumped up" while others are downgraded drastically. ... anyway that would be very nice and helpful if you could thank you. (Правичност (talk) 19:33, 10 January 2013 (UTC))

So is it only the number of speakers of Serbian in the diaspora that you are disputing, not the figures in the note itself? --JorisvS (talk) 20:50, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

---Figures anyway depend on the number of speakers in diaspora, i dispute the figure of number of native speakers in diaspora ofcorse, half of million people is really funny and unrealistic. More than 100.000 people speak Serbian in the city of Vienna alone (since between 120 and 180.000 Serbs live in that city according to estimations). Not mentioning rest of the cities, countries, continets... But i also dispute the note which reffers to that figure (ethnologue), idk why was the first refference removed on diaspora serbian speakers figure (this one said "serbian is native to perhaps million ppl in diaspora" - still not accurate - but still more reliable and better than the second newly added note), but kept as a note for balkan native serbian speakers figure.

I recommend a more simple figure, instead of writing a novel of how many speak it in diaspora ... i recommend we put a figure accompying to the first refference (which estimates ~9.7 million (eventough numbers of serbian refugees from Croatia and Kosovo(in 2002, 200.000+ kosovo serb refugees havent participated in serbia`s census) werent counted here and more than 600.000 serbian citizens and speakers of other nationalities/ethnicities were also not counted in; only ppl who chose serbian as maternal lang. on census in serbia were counted in)).

So taking a notice of these facts and that figure of 9.7 mil that the first refference (most reliable source here) pointed out - we should put a figure of ~10 million+ native serbian speakers. While total number of Serbian speakers around the world would be more than 12 million probably (including also L2 speakers etc.)

(Правичност (talk) 22:58, 10 January 2013 (UTC))

You're falsifying sources again. It's very very simple: Do you have a WP:Reliable source for these figures? If you do, provide it, and we'll change the box. If you do not, you're wasting everyone's time. — kwami (talk) 02:53, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Kwami is quite right. Without a reliable source, not a political source or a non-linguistic census, adding numbers together and guessing is pointless and a waste of time. --Taivo (talk) 05:48, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Falsifying? Kwami, Thats interesting.. but you have degraded the number like you always do, despite the original source od encylopedia that was here. Idk maybe it was you who deleted that part of text where it said "45.000 in croatia (not counting refugees)" and left it only with 45.000 ... and also replaced the text of "perhaps a million in the diaspora" with half a million in diaspora (useless data from ethnologue added into encyclopedia source). So youre proabably the one falsifying the sources. Im just trying to get the realistic numbers back as they were.

The source from encyclopedia itself says refugees arent counted (note Croatia), but i have also added Kosovo Serb refugees - displaced persons from Kosovo actually. The encyclopeida source reveals the figure of 6.6 m. serbian speakers in Serbia according to the 2002 census in serbia (6.6 million declared serbian as native out of 7.5 mil. populat.), while displaced persons from mainly Kosovo werent conducted in that census ad they count more than 200.000 as i said ... check this source (its reliable) http://www.pregled-rs.rs/article.php?pid=203&id=19215&lang=en&name=Refugees so yes im trying to put things together as they are. your encyclopeida source reveals estimated 9.7 million native speakers and it says it self (not counting refugees) .. so wheres the problem if its 9.7 not counting hundereds of thousand refugees, and if theres more speakers in diaspora than figured here... we get a circa 10 million easily... and btw Taivo, you had to put the numbers together anyway (that 8.7 million in balkans didnt come from the sky) had to be figured with maths ... only then interestingly- figure of 1 mil. speakers in diaspora was ignored from same source (encyclopedia) and replaced by a different source of ethnologue 8useless and fictional numbers as i said before)- probably to purposly downgrade the number- because thats whats always happening here, somebody ignores even already existing refference facts and downgrades numbers. (Правичност (talk) 21:05, 11 January 2013 (UTC))

You still have not presented a single, solitary linguistic survey or reliable source that is scientific and not just "counting Serbs". You can't count "Serbs" and call it "Serbian speakers". Life and linguistics don't work that way. They are two different things that are being counted. I went to college with several Croatians, but not a one of them spoke Croatian. Again, you need a reliable linguistic source. We've told you that time and time again, but you don't seem to understand the message. At this point, the only reliable linguistic source that has been presented is Ethnologue. And "reliable" doesn't mean you have to like the number. "Reliable" in Wikipedia means that it is academic in origin and recognized as a linguistic source based on linguistic science, not counting ethnic noses. --Taivo (talk) 21:22, 11 January 2013 (UTC))

I know what your trying to say, but i was talking about refugees living in Serbia, are you sure those Serbs dont speak it? But anyway i didnt even wanna ask that... But whatever i say here you also dont seem to understand. Do you think this one is academic? - http://www.ritell.org/Resources/Documents/language%20project/Serbian.pdf - probably not, coz its from some university... anyways... i found alot of stuff mentioned by respected linguists about 11 and 12 million serbian speakers on net... but its all in books, and unfortunately i didnt find ones that are downloadable etc.... but im not gonna protest here anymore.... keep lowering the figures ... someone is clearly anti serb on this article - or if not, then i am santa claus and further more in past 15 years, 4 million serbs mustve died or forgot to speak their native language in the balkans and another 2 million worldwide according to ethnologue... - btw if we already use ethnologue then we gotta point out these datas that only 7 million native serbian speakers exist on this planet (4,5m in serbia, 300 000 in albania- 290.000 probably immigrated there in past years) while serbian diaspora doesnt exist at all - and after all i as a santa claus return to north pole after christmas for a cheesecake and beer with elfs... (im just being sarcastic (ethnologue) :D)... my ambitions here are done... unless i really find some source by accident coz i wont be searching for any. (Правичност (talk) 00:17, 12 January 2013 (UTC))

You clearly haven't read a single, solitary word of Wikipedia's reliable source policy. That link is nothing more than class notes for a lecture, not a reliable published source. --Taivo (talk) 01:05, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

I know about reliable sources i took a peak ofcorse. Its credibility of these sources posted i cared about more, reality is far away from it. Not to mention falsifying datas from Enyclopedia source and downgrading numbers even more (i call that tactical work). (Правичност (talk) 23:36, 15 January 2013 (UTC))

No, you do not: You just falsified the population ref at Serbo-Croatian. It would be nice if you could contribute something worthwhile, but if you keep doing this, you'll be blocked, and then you won't get any of the changes you want. — kwami (talk) 02:42, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

I thought it was over 19 million so i just added a "plus" (+), didnt know that was so wrong, but okay. Anyway why dont you tell me who falsifed the refference from Encyclopedia on Serbian language? Overwriting text "perhaps one million in diaspora" with "half million abroad" and deleted text about "not counting refugees" at Croatia ... ? How can one part of figure be taken from encyclopedia, while another replaced with one from Ethnologue? Isnt that also free will editing? (Правичност (talk) 05:48, 16 January 2013 (UTC))

We report what the sources say. We don't change it to what we want them to say. Doing so is considered fraud.

The encyclopedia doesn't say how many speakers there are abroad. If you like, we can use Ethnologue for everything. That will mean reducing the total number of speakers to 7 million Serbian (6.7 million if you don't count Muslims in Albania) and 15 million Serbo-Croatian. — kwami (talk) 05:54, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

I know what it used to say earlier though. But yes if you want to you can reduce it to 7 million as ethnologue says, it already got reduced from 12,11 to 9, now 8,7 , why not reduce it to 7 and then in time to 4 or 5 million. Ive watched documentaries and read about Serbs in Albania alot and they never putted a figure larger than 10 - 30,000 Serbs and Montenegrins there, so that number of 300.000 is rediciolus even if you check census datas. There used to be numerous historical Serbian community in Shkoder(Skadar or Scutari) city area and in some northern parts in Albania, but they have been albanized through out hundereds of years till today, therefore, not more than 30.000 both serbs and montenegrins there today (you can check about my figures on google) im not saying propaganda, but i seriously take ethnologue as somekind of propaganda, 7 million speakers in world total heh funny (8.5 - 9.5 million serbs mustve dissapeared from balkans and another 3-4 million in diaspora throughout years back if that figure is 7 million). (Правичност (talk) 21:47, 16 January 2013 (UTC))

We've spend 20 pages indulging you, because you can't be bothered to learn how to use sources. I take it from this last comment that you aren't serious about doing any actual work, so talking with you is a complete waste of time. Goodbye. — kwami (talk) 02:07, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

I just wanted to state, that eventough these seem to be reliable sources to use for figures, they are not close to reality, not only by my personal opinion, but if you compare figures from ethnologue with dozens of others historical, scientific etc. figures, it is clear , that the figures are "funny". Thats what ive been trying to say and recommend that you use a better source for this rather than ethnologue. There is no way theres 300 000 speakers in albania (maybe 15 000 max.) and 500.000 in diaspora - coz theres probably more than 500.000 speakers only in germany alone. I agree we should stop indulging, but it would be alot better for this page to get a better and realistic source. Thats all. (Правичност (talk) 18:10, 19 January 2013 (UTC))

What we keep telling you is that you have presented no better source. You have presented political sources which are worthless linguistically. You have presented websites of questionable reliability. You have confused ethnicity with linguistic usage. You have done your own math. You have presented no reliable scientific linguistic sources. That's your problem--you don't understand what a reliable linguistic source is. In the absence of anything else, Ethnologue is still the only reliable scientific linguistic source, whether you like it or not. --Taivo (talk) 20:18, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, i was trying hard though, only because i dont see this source as justable and its not just a matter of personal point of view its a matter of knowledgement overview, if you are actually into this sort of knowledge then you know something is wrong with this data. And yes i didnt find and present reliable one enough, but this is why i recommend you try to find some other source if you can and have will to. If (FOR EXAMPLE) a respected linguist prof. Bugarski says there are more than 12 million serbian speakers worldwide including whole nowadays serbia population, then im sure he means/and that there is theres more than 11 million (or 10-11) native serbian speakers with perhaps ca. 1 million "others" inside(about 700.000) and outside of serbia speaking the language (Hungarian, Slovak, Albanian etc.. minorities). So is it possible that you find another reliable source (or "better" source)? (Правичност (talk) 14:46, 25 January 2013 (UTC))

page protection required to stop IP vandalizing number or speakers?

Both are from Belgrade. Considering the recent problems with WP:RS above ... ? Do the editors feel they can handle the current level of vandalism w/o an administrator protecting the page for a while? HammerFilmFan (talk) 02:45, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I believe there is a mistake with the number of speakers. I can`t check this references that are now present (not available online) but there is a source stating that there are 12 million of speakers [9]. Adrian (talk) 20:48, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Recent edit about the total number of speakers

I know this was discussed several times but in the light of a new source [10], where it states that there are 12 million of speakers I will make the change at the article. I see that it is not specified the L2 speakers, but I believe it can be used as a higher estimate. If there is any problem, please discuss it. Adrian (talk) 22:13, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

The EU commission on languages is not generally a reliable source for accurate linguistic surveys. It relies not on actual scientific surveys, but on numbers that are provided by the member states and that have serious political undertones. Until a neutral, non-political, scientific survey is done, Ethnologue remains the primary source. --Taivo (talk) 23:31, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Ok. I understand that in this case the European Commission source is not very adequate for this usage, but nor do I think we should dismiss it totally. But ok. If there is a source by an linguistic survey I will change the data. Greetings. Adrian (talk) 11:09, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

WRONG. The EU Commission is completely unscientific and must be dismissed with utter contempt. HammerFilmFan (talk) 06:10, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Saying that the EU commission is "completely unscientific and must be dismissed" without any arguments isn`t really an argument. If you believe this is the case, please present some valid arguments why with evidence. Adrian (talk) 14:04, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

Here is another source saying 12 million http://www.rts.rs/page/stories/sr/story/125/Dru%C5%A1tvo/45760/Srpski+jezik+govori+12+miliona+ljudi+.html - even tough its not linguistic, but its a statement from one of wide known linguists... i think there should be a higher estimation. I highly disagree with ethnologue "scientific studies" - it shows 4,5 million serbian speakers in Serbia - which is 2 million less than the previous censuses shown (and im not talking about whole of Serbia). then it states almost 300,000 speakers in Albania... how is that possible when there are probably only 2-4000 serbs and montenegrins left there? Did they count maybe Kosovo under Albania? Is that how they got 300,000 speakers? ... this source is very weird... also its weird that out of 2,5 - 3,5 million serbian diaspora only 500.000 speak the language... really weird studies... (Правичност (talk) 16:25, 14 May 2013 (UTC))

Actually, there is a number of Albanians (not Serbs/Montenegrins in Albania which are hardly any there) that speak Serbian, specially in the north and around Skadar. They don´t speak Serbian as mother tongue, but they know it. FkpCascais (talk) 13:46, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

"even tough its not linguistic". That says it all. It's not a reliable source for linguistic information. It doesn't matter whether your addition matches Ethnologue or not, Ethnologue is a reliable source for scientifically based linguistic information and you are not. Neither is a news article which quotes a guy. Has that specialist actually done a valid scientific linguistic survey of Serbian speakers? Or is he just talking off the top of his head? Either way, Ethnologue is still the only reliable linguistic source we have. --Taivo (talk) 18:19, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

you are mainly concentrating on the link i posted instead of what my opinion is; you cant missout 2 million people from serbian speakers, and ethnologue does that. If im not right, check serbia census... and you will find for example 127,000 macedonian speakers in serbia nowhere - instead of that there are something about 10-20,000. Hope a reliable source will appear soon somewhere on google. (Правичност (talk) 21:21, 14 May 2013 (UTC))

But I did, indeed, say what I thought of your opinion--it doesn't count. The Serbian census isn't a reliable source because it is not a scientific census focused on linguistics. Many people will say "I speak Serbian" because 1) they don't trust census takers to keep their information confidential, 2) they think there will some kind of reprisal if they say something besides Serbian, 3) they don't know that there's a choice. Linguists know how to get around these issues when they do a survey based solely on scientific linguistic methodology. --Taivo (talk) 06:38, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

Hold on Taivo. Since we all agreed that "Serbian" is a socio-political, not a linguistic construct, then the Serbian census is perfectly reliable source how many people (in Serbia) consider their language "Serbian". How else could you estimate number of "Serbian" speakers? And this is a perfectly normal census, people have the liberty to answer whatever they want, do not additionally speculate about their choices. You're making a moving target out of this.
As for Ethnologue "reliability", please just check the #Number of speakers thread above, from three years ago. Do you really believe they cross-check 50 sources and conduct surveys for each and every of ~5000 languages on their list?
I mean, I don't give a damn about the issue, but let us not pretend that estimating number of speakers is an exact science, where thousands of them (abroad) only speak a few words, other thousands don't have an attitude if it's "Serbian", "Bosnian", "Serbo-Croatian" or just "mine", for many others it is actually a second language, etc. Let us not mystify this whole "science" business. No such user (talk) 13:38, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

Since I see this discussion is reopened, I invite the users to check this source also [11], where it states that there are 12 million of speakers. As I said before, it is not the best scientific source but it is the EU commission after all and as such they write this reports based on facts not on peanuts. It is not some backwater village organization. It has credibility after all. Maybe this source can be used as a higher estimate? Adrian (talk) 14:04, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

Its true the Serbian census gave people free will to declare whatever language, ethnicity, religion they "feel like" or a will to not declare at all. Some numbers of Ethnologue are just redicilous, they count 1,6 million albanian speakers in serbia and about 300,000 serbian speakers in albania... so on one hand they recognized kosovo, but on the other they havent? or how they even came up with those numbers... god knows... i recently did a study of serbian declared speakers overseas: In Usa (187k), Can(73k) and Aus(69k) --- up to 330.000 people declared as Serbs (not counting Yugoslavs (cca. 400,000), out of which --- (Usa-47k, Can-55k, Aus 39k) about 140,000 declared they speak Serbian so thats roughly 50% of Serbs living in those 3 countries; thus it is far away from their homelands and culture in Europe. Now what would be the number if we counted Serbian speakers in Europe (outside of Balkans) where number of Serbs vary from 1,5 - 2 million and they are much closer to their homeland, culture and stronger serbian communities?... this all tells us that 500k speakers abroad is way degraded... Please also include that a significant percentage of Serbs declare their mother-tounge as Serbo-Croatian (for example in Slovenia rouglhly 10k out of 40k Serbs declared serbo-croatian, while the remaining 30k declared serbian as their maternal lang.). - I also think European Comission[12] cant report their studies based on nothing or no research at all, they have huge credibility, i also propose this number to be used instead of ethnologue figures... or as a higher estimate simply... it could be 9-12 million based on both estimates for example. (Правичност (talk) 15:35, 15 May 2013 (UTC))

The external link to Serbian Language and Culture Workshop

Dear editors, until some time ago, there was a link from this page to Serbian Language and Culture Workshop (www.srpskijezik.edu.rs). It is important to keep this link mainly because Serbian (Serbo-Croatian) is a less commonly taught language, the resources on learning it are very important, and Serbian Language and Culture Workshop is the only highly specialized institute in Serbia of that kind (not a language school that teaches English, French, etc, and some Serbian aside, nor a big faculty or university which runs only semesterial bachelor, master and PhD programs). Second, Serbian Language and Culture Workshop is not really a profitable organization - even though we charge for our programs, we have shared many scholarships and we have been supporting Serbian and Slavic studies in many universities around the world. Currently you have some strange external links, like learn-serbian.com - a totally commercial on-line language school from NY city. Now I don't have anything against these guys, but the question is how relevant is this link. Also some of those web sites which you linked with your article have not been updated for more than 5 years, or . I would like to recommend you to divide external links in couple of categories, like "on history of the language", "learning resources", "on-line dictionaries and libraries", etc. And please return the link to www.srpskijezik.edu.rs Best regards! SLCW team — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.148.165.244 (talk) 12:51, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Your issue has not been addressed yet - I don't know if the link you wish to restore is valid or some crackpot nationalistic site not supported by valid linguists or not. One of them needs to step in to answer you. It looks "okay" to me but it may have been deleted due to promoting a commercial website, which is not allowed on Wiki. HammerFilmFan (talk) 13:45, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

The topic of this article

Although we've been over this before (see Talk:Croatian language/Archive 10), I'll bring up again the topic of this article, and that of the parallel ones, at Talk:Croatian language#The topic of this article). --JorisvS (talk) 09:33, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Map of Serbian language - Kosovo

I have noticed someone painted land of Kosovo in light blue on a map showing countries where Serbian language is official or recognized as minority. This would mean Serbian is recognized as minority language in Kosovo - which is not the case in reality; eventough you are recognizing Kosovos self-proclaimed independence; you are providing false info about language statuses there. Serbian and Albanian are both official languages in their self proclaimed Rep. of Kosovo. This is why it should be painted dark blue; regardless wheter you want to show your compassion with their independece proclamation or wheter you arent. (Правичност (talk) 19:06, 18 December 2013 (UTC))

Do you have a Reliable Source to back up your claim? If you don't you are just wasting time here. HammerFilmFan (talk) 22:28, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Ofcourse i do have a claim. This map must be changed, here is the constitution of Rep. of Kosovo.( http://www.kryeministri-ks.net/repository/docs/Constitution1Kosovo.pdf ). Same is written on Rep. of Kos. wiki artlice. (Правичност (talk) 18:28, 21 December 2013 (UTC))

Inaccurate tagging of the talk page

Hi all. In an unrelated matter I ran a search of English-language book results of Serbo-Croatian language, Croatian language and Serbian language phrase search and came up with this:

Right now, there are 18,600 Google books search results containing phrase "Serbo Croatian language" and 13,000 results containing phrase "Serbo Croat language", contrasted by 19,700 results containing phrase "Serbian language" and 21,300 results containing phrase "Croatian language" while simultaneously excluding phrase "Serbo Croatian language", making a roughly 4 to 3 preference against "Serbo Croat(ian) language" being a WP:COMMONNAME in English language books. (All four searches exclude results linked to Wikipedia and Books LLC to avoid mirroring wiki per WP:CIRCULAR.) Granted, there are 1,140 results among above ones containing both "Croatian language" and "Serbian language" phrases (i.e. duplicating results in the two groups), but they are quite offset by 1,310 results for "Serb language" phrase search.

Given these results, I wonder if the notice at the top of this talk page saying: "Serbian is a standardized register of a language which is also spoken by Croats, Bosniaks, and Montenegrins. In English, this language is generally called "Serbo-Croat(ian)". Use of that term in English, which dates back at least to 1864 and was modeled on both Croatian and Serbian nationalists of the time, is not a political endorsement of Yugoslavia, but is simply a label. As long as it remains the common name of the language in English, it will continue to be used here on Wikipedia." is accurate or not in terms of Serbo-Croatian being the common name of "the language in English" as the note says. It is quite possible that the notice was well intended (and based in facts) when it was devised and likely the number books published in English noting one term instead of the other simply changed over time. There's a near identical notice at the top of Talk:Croatian language too. Regards.--Tomobe03 (talk) 15:38, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

I propose to centralize the discussion at Talk:Croatian language.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 15:57, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Number of results is really not relevant - what matter is what the linguists say. HammerFilmFan (talk) 23:50, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

No, HammerFilmFan, that's your arbitrary position, WP:COMMONNAME says something else explicitly. Ad, that's probably a good idea.--Tomobe03 (talk) 13:33, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Number of native speakers per country

@Kwamikagami:

Don't really get it why you changed my edit on number of speakers as I was reffering on the official figures from censuse held in 2011 in most of the respective countries (with exemption of Macedonia from which language data are derived from 2002 census, last one held there; and Bosnia and Herzegovina which is reffered by their census held in 1991). The official data is as follows:

Serbia (excluding Kosovo): 6,330,919 native Serbian speakers (88% of population) Bosnia and Herzegovina: 1,366,104 (31.2%) (data from 1991 census, data from 2013 census is yet to be published) Montenegro: 265,895 (42.8%) Croatia: 52,879 (1.23%) Slovenia: 31,329 (1.6%) Macedonia: 24,773 (1.22%) Romania: 16,805 (0.08%) Hungary: 9,465 (0.09%) TOTAL: 8,098,169 (+ cca 100.000 speakers in Kosovo)

So there's no way that there are more than 8.2 million native Serbian speakers not only in former Yugoslavia but also taking into account neighboring countries of Romania and Hungary as well. So that figure of 8.7 million in former Yugoslavia is overestimation not to mention the previous one which putted some ridiculously high figure of 13.7 million speakers of Serbian in former Yugosalvia!? User:Klačko

I think it's fine to change the figures with some discussion, but because of the bad history of this article, I revert anyone who changes things unilaterally. Also, your figure is not from 2011, as you claim in the info box.

What does everyone think about the new figure? — kwami (talk) 19:02, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Those are OFFICIAL figures from national censuses, most of which were held in 2011 (with exception of Macedonia in 2002 and Bosnia in 1991). Since Wikipedia is all about sources, for each and every one of these figures I provided most credible sources that one can think of (those from respective national statistics offices). I really can't see any problem with this, neither did you since your rationale for undoing that edit was some ambiguous argument about "need for discussion" for which I really don't see any reason since those data are, as I said, official data and therefore presumably correct only if someone prove those figures incorrect.

On the other side, figures that you are keeping reverting back are ones like those found in the section "Geographical distribution" where figures are total bullshit and gross overestimations, not to mention that none of those haven't been supported by any source whatsoever.

Therefore, I kindly ask you to stop reverting those changes.

Regards, Klačko (talk) 20:33, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

If the date is the only problem you have with that edit than propose date that could synthetize 4 census data from 2011, one from 2002, and one from 1991, rather than undoing the whole edit with all those official census figures. Regards, Klačko (talk) 20:38, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

First, get consensus when you're challenged. Read WP:BOLD. You're making the change, so it's up to you to get consensus, not to the ones reverting you.

Date: 1991–2011 would work. But we already have a figure from 2006. — kwami (talk) 20:46, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for suggestion to read WP:BOLD, but I would kindly ask you to read the following article: Wikipedia:Don't revert due solely to "no consensus". I will excerpt the first two paragraphs for you:

Sometimes editors will undo a change, justifying their revert merely by saying that there is "no consensus" for the change, or by simply asking the original editor to "first discuss". This is not very helpful or informative, and, except possibly on pages that describe long-standing Wikipedia policy, should probably be avoided. After all, that you reverted the edit already shows that there is no consensus. But you neglected to explain why you personally disagree with the edit, so you haven't given people a handle on how to build the consensus with you that you desire.

Next to that, the behaviour discourages bold contributions, which are essential to building Wikipedia. Moreover, if you can't point out an underlying problem with an edit, there is no good reason to immediately revert it. Finally, there may in fact exist silent consensus to keep the change. Consensus is not unanimity, and is thus not canceled by one editor's objection.

These two quoted paragraphs discredits your stance here. They are Wikipedia policy, after all. Regards, Klačko (talk) 20:57, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

They are not policy, and they do not discredit my stance. I'm asking for discussion, and I don't understand why you're so opposed to working with others. You're mixing dates and combining sources, which is arguably WP:SYNTH. That may all be fine, but it's worth discussing before you try forcing it through. — kwami (talk) 21:39, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

But old version is from 2006, that is quite old. What is wrong with that 2011 version? --Ąnαșταη (ταlκ) 23:18, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

The 2011 version dates back to 1991, which is even older. — kwami (talk) 07:34, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

As I said, of 7 countries concerned, 5 have data from 2011, one from 2002 (Macedonia), and one (Bosnia) from 1991. Those are all oficcial census data. Since the last held census in Bosnia was in 1991 and in Macedonia in 2002 we don't have more recent official data but only estimates. Neither the actual source in infobox (that from 2006) that Kwami defends, has actual number on speakers of Serbian in Bosnia, but only estimations, which accuracy can be argued about since the last official data are from 1991. If that year of 1991 is that much of a problem, well, we can find credible estimation for current number of speakers in Bosnia instead, but let the other official census figures from 2011 be included in the infobox data on native speakers.

Not even to mention that list in the "Geogrpahical section" also needs to be changed since those figures are non-verifiable because of a complete lack of any sources whatsoever putted for respective countries in that list that would back those figures. Common sense would say that those should be replaced with official census data.

Regards, Klačko (talk) 11:54, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Full protection

User:Adjwilley has fully protected this article. Semi-protection suffices, because the unsourced content was added by anons. --JorisvS (talk) 13:11, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, that was an error on my part. ~Adjwilley (talk) 18:13, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Requested edit

Dear Editor(s), I found on Wikipedia Interaction page that this is the best way to contact you. I would kindly like to ask if it is possible for other websites to be adder to this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbian_language, section: External links. These are the websites: https://www.facebook.com/groups/SerbianLanguage/ http://serbian-language.blogspot.com/ http://e-word.co/en Thank you, Ivana Marinkovic

 Not done. Wikipedia is not for such a random collection of links. The external links section is specifically for links to information that adds something above and beyond what is already in the article. --JorisvS (talk) 15:56, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 25 April 2014

Serbian language template needs to be added. Within, one would be able to find direct links to various subjects to do with the Serbian language, such as the features of the language, dialects, names, history and literature in the Serbian language, and other related topics. I feel that this is a necessary addition. Many other pages to do with language have this template, such as Croatian language. The question here isn't why, but rather, why not. It's a very useful addition. I have used the Croatian template as the framework to make the Serbian language template. This will, naturally, change with time. For now, it is suitable. Below I have added the template.

Kukulj (talk) 06:47, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

papar and paprika

There's a wrong statement in the text that the word paprika origins from Serbian word papar. There's no such word (papar) in Serbian, Bosnian or Montenegrin language. Black pepper (Piper nigrum) is called papar only in Croatia and only in Croatian language. In Slovenian language they call it poper (very similar to papar). In all other Southern Slavic languages they use word biber to refer to black pepper. So black peper is papar in Croatian and biber in Serbian, Bosnian and Montenegrin, hence the word paprika might only be a derivation of Croatian word papar.

papar and paprika

There's a wrong statement in the text that the word paprika origins from Serbian word papar. There's no such word (papar) in Serbian, Bosnian or Montenegrin language. Black pepper (Piper nigrum) is called papar only in Croatia and only in Croatian language. In Slovenian language they call it poper (very similar to papar). In all other Southern Slavic languages they use word biber to refer to black pepper. So black peper is papar in Croatian and biber in Serbian, Bosnian and Montenegrin, hence the word paprika might only be a derivation of Croatian word papar.

papar and paprika

There's a wrong statement in the text that the word paprika origins from Serbian word papar. There's no such word (papar) in Serbian, Bosnian or Montenegrin language. Black pepper (Piper nigrum) is called papar only in Croatia and only in Croatian language. In Slovenian language they call it poper (very similar to papar). In all other Southern Slavic languages they use word biber to refer to black pepper. So black peper is papar in Croatian and biber in Serbian, Bosnian and Montenegrin, hence the word paprika might only be a derivation of Croatian word papar. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Peregrin Falcon (talk • contribs) 16:14, 16 May 2014 (UTC) Peregrin Falcon (talk) 16:42, 16 May 2014 (UTC)