Talk:Croatian language

Ideology of Serbocroatism

This ideology should be addressed in more detail since outsiders to the field, proponents of the ideology and others are, by selectively quoting selective sources - knowingly or just following the old school stuff, effectively are doing the job of rejuvenation of a discarded concept: a "Serbo-Croatian language". Let's see what it was & is:

• the term "Serbo-Croatian" (in English, as well as in Italian, German, French etc.) had appeared ca. 1830s and gained ground in 1870s- 1900s, most notably with Pero Budmani's grammar of "Serbo-Croatian" in Italian (1867.), http://books.google.hr/books?id=MS0tAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA82&dq=Budmani&lr=&cd=28#v=onepage&q&f=false and August Leskien's grammar in 1914. (a limited preview),http://books.google.hr/books?id=RuQcAAAAMAAJ&dq=Leskien&lr=&source=gbs_book_other_versions As can be seen, these textbooks (one can check closely Budmani's grammar) teach two languages, Croatian and Serbian, under the "Serbo-Croatian" umbrella term. There is nothing especially "English" in this languages naming- it just reflected dominant Serbocroatist approach which had been established in Slavicist circles (mainly in central Europe) ca. 1850s onwards. This ideology had been dominant virtually until the dissolution of Yugoslavia in 1990s, with results:

a) it was virtually impossible to publish, especially in French, English, German etc. any serious linguistic study or book (dictionary, grammar, orthography, language history,..) on Croatian language as such. Political pressures kept the "SC" label as the normative term, and Croatian was either suppressed or marginalized. As is known, at the initiative of Serbian-Yugoslav king Alexander, US library of Congress had changed in 1930. separate Croatian and Serbian languages and literatures into one, "Serbo-Croatian". The eminent Croatian translator Mate Maras (who translated the complete Shakespeare and Rabelais) has written on this: http://www.matica.hr/Vijenac/vijenac392.nsf/AllWebDocs/Jos_o_priznanju_hrvatskoga_jezika [Kad sam 1999. počeo raditi u Hrvatskom veleposlanstvu kao kulturni ataše, u Kongresnoj su knjižnici radili Hrvati Šime Letina i Božo Bačak. Pripovijedali su mi koliko su se borili da se odmah uvedu čisti nacionalni kodovi. Navodili su i povijesni podatak da su se hrvatska i srpska književnost vodile pod nacionalnim imenima sve do godine 1930, kad je jugoslavenski kralj pismom zahtijevao od knjižnice da se umjesto tih dvaju jezika uvede srpsko-hrvatski. (Tu je činjenicu iznio i Radoslav Katičić nakon predavanja u Kongresnoj biblioteci koje je održao 1997.) Ali nije bilo uspjeha, višestruki otpori uvođenju oznake hrv još su bili prejaki.] (Who considers to intervene in Croatian language matters should understand what this means.) Alo, Croatian linguists were forced to publish works under "SC" title: examples are Josip Hamm's grammar in German: http://www.amazon.de/Grammatik-serbokroatischen-Sprache-Josip-Hamm/dp/3447008717 or Josip Matešić's dictionary: http://www.amazon.de/R%C3%BCckl%C3%A4ufiges-W%C3%B6rterbuch-Serbokroatischen-Halbbd-1/dp/B0000BSJ6K/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274096817&sr=1-7- significantly, the author changed the name of the language of his works in the thaw period of late 1980s: http://openlibrary.org/books/OL1517183M/Hrvatsko-njemački_frazeološki_rječnik (Croatian-German phraseological dictionary); http://www.sveznadar.com/knjiga.aspx?knjiga=72723 (German-Croatian Universal Dictionary)

it was virtually impossible to publish, especially in French, English, German etc. any serious linguistic study or book (dictionary, grammar, orthography, language history,..) on Croatian language as such. Political pressures kept the "SC" label as the normative term - You expect us to believe this BS? What kind of "pressure" could possibly Communist Yugoslavia or its predecessors (SHS Kingdom, Austria-Hungary etc.), during which the term SC was abundantly in use, exert on countries such as United States, Soviet Russia or pre-WW2 Germany? Do you realize how crazy your conspiracy theory sounds? --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 12:23, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Paranoia, eh ? Judging others from personal experiences ? Btw, where are guardians of civil discourse now ? Somehow I don't see anyone. Now, to address this little disruption: the term SC has become dominant in the period of the 2nd half of the 19th century, mainly as an effort of Austrian geopolitics which sought to unite Croatian (mainly called Illyrian (1830s, 1850s) and Croatian (1860s on); the only exception being Yugoslav Academy dictionary (1878.+) and Maretić's grammar (1899.) which used the term "Croatian or Serbian")- the term "Serbo-Croatian" wasn't in use in Croatia) and Serbian (generally named Serbian, with a few sporadic exceptions) into one language that would facilitate Austria's dominance (cultural, economic, political, commercial,..) in South-Eastern Europe area, linking Croatia and Bosnia & Herzegovina (within the borders of Habsburg empire) to the sovereign countries of Serbia and Montenegro. Since Austrian Slavic studies have been pre-eminent in Europe (and the world), the rest of the world simply accepted Austro-Hungarian (Habsburg) definitions & delineations of South Slavic languages which lay (mainly) within the A-U borders. Additional factor was the then dominant neo-grammarian philological school which used to look at languages from positivistic-empirical standpoint & tried to reduce languages to a few simple principles and descriptions, mainly phonetics and basic grammar. It didn't pay much attention to the subtleties that were later the defining notions of Ausbau or cultural languages- basic grammar was the beginning and the end of all. This had solidified the notion of one SC language in the period prior to WW1. During the interwar period & after the WW2, Yugoslavia- both the royalist and the Communist one- has been one of the pillars of the Versailles and Yalta Europe, and the dominant forces didn't want to perturb the stability of Yugoslavias. Hence, anything that would threaten- or seemed to threaten- Yugoslavia's "integrity" was either dismissed, minimized or glossed over, form Stjepan Radić's assassination to the Kosovo Albanian revolt(s). As far as culture was concerned, all steps that would seem to erode the perceived Yugoslav "unity" were spurned or blocked. One of the supposed "glues" of Yugoslavia was its (un)official language, SC (during royal Yugoslavia sometimes called Serbo-Croatian- Slovene) which has been treated by dominant policy planners, both "East" and "West", as one of the crucial elements of Yugoslav stability. Should this "language" dissolve or split (or ceased to be looked on as one language)- the perceived Yugoslav unity would be at stake. So, the combination of mid-19th century Habsburg politics and neo-grammarian philology has, in time, been given the status of scientific truth backed by ruling European powers which supported the established order. The mainstream linguistics just followed suit, giving "scientific" credence to the ideology of serbocroatism. This is described in German linguist Auburger's book on Croatian language and Serbocroatism, http://openlibrary.org/books/OL3615122M/kroatische_Sprache_und_der_Serbokroatismus Mir Harven (talk) 16:03, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

The only part of your extraordinarily prolific but unfortunately vacuous verbiage of answer relevant to my question is: mainly as an effort of Austrian geopolitics - which is I'm afraid simply nonsense. Austria had absolutely no geopolitical clout in the 19th century whatsoever, esp. not on Russian, British and American linguists who studied Serbo-Crotian first-hand. It was soon-to-be-dismantled abomination of a state. German-, English- and Russian-speaking Slavists of the period where more than conversant with Serbo-Croatian to see through any distorted picture of reality. They wrote their books on the basis of literature and speech that they studied personally (lots of which is available on the Internet Archive). Same goes for other European Slavists. The ludicrous conspiracy theory that you're alleging is the most bizarre type of reality deconstruction I've seen in my life. As if there is some kind of a "lie" transcending epochs, empires, world wars, from feudalism along communism to democracies, from monarchies to totalitarian states, all part of a "Greater Serbian" agenda that has been insidiously creeping under the deceitful visage of statism. Truly remarkable. Have a cookie with a HDZ logo on it. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 19:17, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

b) Croatian language was severely stifled in description & prescription. One can simply compare the number of Croatian grammars, dictionaries and language studies in the 19th century and those up to the collapse of Yugoslavia. Reprints of older Croatian grammars and dictionaries (16th to 18th centuries) have begun to appear simultaneously with the weakening of the Communist regime grip, which can be easily detected by checking the date of reprints: http://www.hrvatskiplus.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=338:markovic-gramatike&catid=41:bibliografije&Itemid=48, http://www.hrvatskiplus.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=340:markovic-rjecnici&catid=41:bibliografije&Itemid=48

All of which, if adequately referenced, could be added to the article. But it has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not Croatian is a variant of Serbo-Croatian, which it clearly is despite whatever insane politicking or oppression may have occurred.

Imagine if the Germans had won WWII, and imposed the German language on the UK, with the argument that English was just a dialect of German. There would now be English nationalists insisting that English is not a Germanic language, but a Romance language contaminated with German loan words that should be "purified". But no matter what atrocities the Nazis perpetrated in their occupation of Britain, and no matter how much people may want to believe otherwise, the fact would remain that English is a Germanic language, and that's what WP would need to say. — kwami (talk) 19:49, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

No. You're just rehashing the old notion that pre-1990s foreign linguists (let's take just them) are somehow "scientifically" motivated & Croatian linguists (from whom they've learnt- mainly) what they do know about Croatian language are, so to speak, "linguistic nationalists" (the implied statement). The fact, without further elaboration is as follows:

1. English-speaking Croatists (and Serbo-Croatists, whatever this may mean; also, Slavicists with this particular interest) learnt the craft- whatever degree- from Croatian linguists and their textbooks. Their process of learning (Magner's, Hawksworth's, Auty's, Brown's,..) hadn't happen in a vacuum. They started from Yugo-integralist ideology of Serbocroatism as a given & tried to accomodate the learnt facts to the ideology. Actually, they, after the collapse of Yugoslavia & Serbocroatist paradigm have shown the least interest to re-examine their discredited concepts and virtually no innovative ideas ("soul searching") other, more involved Slavicists and Croatists, have offered: the already mentioned Barbara Oczkowa: (Croats and their language);http://www.akademicka.pl/cgi-local/start.pl?kom=pokaz&isbn=83-89425-30-0&uid=0 http://www.hrvatskiplus.org/prilozi/dokumenti/anagram/Sesar_Oczkowa.pdf; Artur Bagdasarov: (Croatian literary langauge in the 2nd half of the 19th century):http://www.amazon.com/Khorvatskii-literaturnyi-poloviny-uchebnoe-posobie/dp/5747403060/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1274139279&sr=1-3-fkmr1; Georg Holzer: Historische Grammatik des Kroatischen: http://d-nb.info/gnd/132942607; Werner Lehfeldt: Morphologie des Kroatischen: http://www.daniel.buncic.de/krmorph.htm,..

2. the position of English-speaking Serbo-Croatists needs a further elaboration.

• Be as it may, one can easily draw the following conclusions:

1. regional and global institutions, as well as linguists, simply didn't know what to do with the post-1990 situation. It boiled down to: they thought that they had learned one language, a standard Serbo-Croatian. And now, all these Croatian linguists from whom they have acquired the knowledge of a small South Slavic language, are virtually unanimous in their explicit admission that Croatian language is the only true and individual language, while "SC" was a socio-political term covering, for reasons previously mentioned, two standard languages & a variety of dialects. Experts on the field, writers of dictionaries and grammars, linguistic studies, inventors of language-acquiring methods, mathematical linguists and classical philologists- all were claiming basically two things: a) Croatian and Serbian are two closely related languages; b) they are not one (policentric, pluricentric) language, nor have they ever been. Virtually all of them: Petar Guberina, Rudolf Filipović, Dalibor Brozović, Radoslav Katičić, Stjepan Babić, Marko Samardžija, Alemko Gluhak, Milica Mihaljević, Branka Tafra, Stjepan Damjanović, Ranko Matasović, Josip Silić, Ivo Pranjković, Dragica Malić, Dragutin Raguž, Marko Tadić, ... They- Croatian linguists- have, in time, did a nice job of analysing & presenting their native tongue: http://jthj.ffzg.hr/default_english.htm So- what's wrong ? Where did this SC they (Kenneth Naylor, Wayles Browne, Gerhard Newelkowsky,..) learned- actually "go" ?

2. the "foreign" (foreign to the imagined SC) linguists had to face hard facts.

a) Croatian language production was, from 1990s (and 1980s, but after the collapse of Communism & Yugoslavia) unanimous in re their language name. The following are representative examples:

http://www.globus.hr:8080/bookshop/Book.htm?sp=1024 (Babić, Brozović et al- Croatian phonetics, phonology and morphology, 597 p.)

http://www.globus.hr:8080/bookshop/Book.htm?sp=264 (Babić- Croatian word-formation (wider than morphology), 618 p)

http://www.globus.hr:8080/bookshop/Book.htm?sp=445 (Katičić- Croatian Syntax, 536 p)

http://www.globus.hr:8080/bookshop/Book.htm?sp=903 (Matešić et al.- German-Croatian Universal Dictionary, 2076 p)

http://www.globus.hr:8080/bookshop/Book.htm?sp=262 (Bujas- English-Croatian Dictionary, 1528 p)

http://www.sveznadar.com/knjiga.aspx?knjiga=58094 (Barić et al- Croatian grammar, 683 p)

http://www.sveznadar.com/knjiga.aspx?knjiga=58240 (IHJJ- Croatian language cousellor, 1659 p)

http://www.sveznadar.com/knjiga.aspx?knjiga=64911 (Šonje et al- Croatian dictionary, 1450 p)

http://www.sveznadar.com/knjiga.aspx?knjiga=67468 (Anić- Croatian dictionary, 1881 p)

http://www.sveznadar.com/knjiga.aspx?knjiga=72486 (Silić & Pranjković- Croatian grammar for high schools, 424 p)

http://www.sveznadar.com/knjiga.aspx?knjiga=74967 (Matasović- Comparative-historical grammar of Croatian language, 362 p)

http://www.sveznadar.com/knjiga.aspx?knjiga=58211 (Gluhak- Croatian Etymological dictionary, 832 p)

As far as I know, virtually only Croatian linguist who has used the term "Serbo-Croatian" is young ex-pat Snježana Kordić in her Serbo-Croatian and SerboKroatisch books: http://www.snjezana-kordic.de/snjezana_kordic.htm

b) Serbian language linguistic production was also voluminous, and also under- with one significant exception- under Serbian name. I'll put just a few titles:

http://www.knjizara.com/pls/sasa/knjizara.knjiga?k_id=116462 (Klajn- Serbian grammar for foreigners, 282 p)

http://www.knjizara.com/pls/sasa/knjizara.knjiga?k_id=19936 (Klajn- Serbian Word formation 1, 372 p)

http://www.knjizara.com/pls/sasa/knjizara.knjiga?k_id=110184 (Piper at al- Serbian syntax, 1165 p)

http://www.knjizara.com/pls/sasa/knjizara.knjiga?k_id=21527 (Simić et al- Serbian Syntax, 1424 p)

http://www.knjizara.com/pls/sasa/knjizara.knjiga?k_id=92343 (Loma et al- Serbian Etymological dictionary, pt. 1.)

http://www.knjizara.com/pls/sasa/knjizara.knjiga?k_id=120187 (Vujanić et al- Serbian dictionary, 1561 p)

Virtually the only significant exception is "Rečnik SANU", Serbo-Croatian dictionary of Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts- a project begun in 1950s and still being issued - tome 17. appeared in 2006.: http://www.knjizara.com/pls/sasa/knjizara.knjiga?k_id=118519 before dissatisfied & confused Serbian public)

So, what do we have up against this ?

We have a cited example of few English language textbooks on Croatian or Serbian or a medley of both languages (add a Bosnian, too). Let's see. These are elementary grammar textbooks & cannot serve the purpose of proving or disproving the status of Croatian as a standard language. In fact, they actually deprive the SC-or BSC- of this status by the very content of its material and presentation. What I've said, and what is amply illustrated in the list of voluminous dictionaries, grammars, syntaxes, specialised dictionaries, ... of Croatian and Serbian languages cited above: the "core" or basic grammar or typology of standard languages is the same. But- these languages' identities are not reducible to the linguistic typology of standard languages. I- or eminent Croatian linguists, whom I've read- do not deny that typologically-structurally BCSM have virtually the same basic grammar of standard languages. The point is that they differ, significantly, in other areas that are more vital for language identity than elementary textbook grammar, or as Dalibor Brozović had said- invoking a sort of Marxist metaphor- the base (essential grammar) is the same, but the superstructure (accentuation, word-formation, higher syntax, stylistics, greater part of the lexicon, especially scientific and technical terminology, phraseology,..) is different. The approach of the mentioned linguists (Wayles Browne, Ronelle Alexander,..) is a reductionist one- as if a human body anatomy and physiology would be reduced to the skeleton, dismissing endocrine, vascular, nervous,..systems. These BCSM languages, save the basic grammar, differ in other areas, from word formation to terminology, higher syntax and stylistics, which can be used in any normal human situation. As they speak, the speakers are clearly identified as being either X or Y; the same with written text, whether literary or scientific (mathematics, medicine, physics, psychology, linguistics,..). I'd sum the differences of the quoted linguists (Browne, Alexander, Greenberg,..) approach & position vis-a-vis mine (and mainly Croatian, Russian, German and Polish linguists - Oczkowa, Auburger, Bagdasarov, Rapacka, Vasiljeva, Newelkowsky,..): a) typologically-structurally BCSM is one "entity". One claim (Browne, Alexander,..) is that this entity, a "squeezed out" basic grammar, is a "language". I aver (and Bagdasarov, Auburger,..) that this is not a language, but an abstract entity common to the aforementioned languages, and that no text or speech can be written or spoken in this entity, without being written either as Croatian or Bosnian or Serbian. In short: this reductionist approach has stripped the notion of human language of any realistic content. What is an abstract umbrella covering true individual languages, here is presented as a true individual language. And, this is false. Language is not a basic grammar, neither for classification purposes only.

Here are these few instances of use of SC (or something similar) term:

• Rick Derksen (btw- interesting: Štambuk's edit) book Etymological Dictionary of the Slavic Inherited Lexicon. First: there are different Croatian and Serbian etymological dictionaries, both in the making, to disentangle the puzzle of Skok's "Etymological Dictionary of Croatian or Serbian" (Croatian out-of-print: http://www.sveznadar.com/knjiga.aspx?knjiga=58211; Croatian project-http://www.ihjj.hr/index_en.html#etrjecnik ; Serbian project- http://www.planeta.rs/10/etimoloski.htm ). So, here is work on two separate etymological dictionaries. But, now we come to the differentiating points: Derksen has used the term SC -perhaps- because it's a leftover from a previous era; but, structurally, it's dated because one can find in Croatian etymological dictionary Čakavian and Kajkavian words (ignored by Petar Skok's Štokavian purism in his magnum opus)- that's why Vojmir Vinja's "Supplement's of Adriatic Etymologies to Skok's dictionary"; http://www.profil.hr/knjiga/jadranske-etimologije-knjiga-1-ah/10705/ has had to appear, to counterbalance Skok's Štokavian purism which has partly falsified Croatian language history, as presented in his otherwise valuable work. Also, a 10.000 entries dictionary cannot be something that will "decide" on the status of these languages. The very name used in Dirksen's survey attests that this name (SC) is still sometimes used by some linguists. So what ? Neither by the majority, nor with reference to the etymological work of Croatian (and Serbian) linguists.

This is confusing a SC standard, which arguably is extinct, with SC as a branch of Slavic. Have S and C been reclassified to be equidistant from each other and other SS languages like Slovene? If not, then there's a node that includes S and C but not Slovene. The name of that node in English is SC. Period. All the politicking is utterly irrelevant. The ELL lumps the languages together for discussion, though under a more politically acceptable name. The US State Dept. teaches a single SC language. Etc etc etc. Whatever Croats feel about the translation of the term in Croatian is irrelevant to what we do in English. If you can argue that BCS is a more common term than SC, then we can shift to calling it BCS. But the node doesn't disappear just because we argue about the name for that node. That would be like saying we should delete all references to "Slavic" because I think it should be called "Slavonic".

As for dictionaries, so what? We have Canadian dictionaries. Does that mean that there is no such language as "English"? — kwami (talk) 17:46, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Serbo-Croatian language has been completely etymologized and these newer etymological dictionaries are simply trimmed-down versions of old ones, taking into account newer scholarship on Proto-Slavic, Balto-Slavic and Proto-Indo-European. Skok's dictionary primarily targeted literary Serbo-Croatian language, and did not "ignore" Čakavian and Kajkavian as a part of some "anti-Croatian plot"; it neglected them simply because it was out of the scope of the entire project (which was enormous in scope, eventually published posthumously after much editing). It contains lots of dialectal words, and regionalisms from all over the Croatia which are not part of the standard Croatian today. The new Croatian etymological dictionary that Matasović is writing also only contains the literary dialect (Neoštokavian). One can write separate etymological dictionaries of "Croatian" and "Serbian", but what exactly is the point if they'll be etymologizing the same words in the same manner? If one is writing comparative etymological dictionary of all Slavic languages, there is little point in separating B/C/S. This is how Derksen in his dictionary mentions his usage of the term Serbo-Croatian (from page 19):

The name “Serbo-Croatian” will occasionally be used as a generic designation for all varieties of the language spoken in Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina and Montenegro. The abbreviation “SCr.”, however, refers in principle to neo-Štokavian, i.e. to those Štokavian dialects that underwent the neo-Štokavian retraction of the stress. A prominent example is the language that was codified by Vuk Karadžić and Đžuro Daničić in the 19th century and subsequently became the basis of normative grammars and dictionaries, for instance the Rječnik hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika (RJA). The Serbo-Croatian (neo-Štokavian) forms presented in this dictionary usually conform to aforementioned normative tradition. In some cases I have quoted directly from Vuk Karadžić’s dictionary (abbreviated as “Vuk”).

The Čakavian dialects of Serbo-Croatian are mainly represented by Jurišić’s description of the Vrgada (Vrg.) dialect (1966-1973), Kalsbeek’s description of the dialect of Orbanići (Orb.) near Žminj (1998) and Belić’s description of the dialect of Novi (1909), which is the best-known description of a Čakavian dialect. In addition, I have occasionally added data from Hvar (Hraste 1937), Cres (Tentor 1909, 1950), and Orlec (Houtzagers 1985). The Kajkavian dialects are respresented by Jedvaj’s description of the Bednja dialect.

So in essence - this has nothing to do with politicking, and the the term Serbo-Croatian is still abundantly used in a strict linguistic sense: the same shared core of the three modern-day national standards, as well as the all-encompassing meaning of all the speeches (govori) spoken on the area, which have converged and have been mixed throughout the ages. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 20:08, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

• the very name of mentioned textbooks testifies about confusion. For instance, Magner's Introduction to the Croatian and Serbian Language (where is SC ?) or, even more, Alexander's |Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, a grammar: with sociolinguistic commentary, pose some questions:

a) which, on earth, is the name of this "language" they suppose to teach ? Croatian and Serbian ? Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian ? Bosnian, Croatian or Serbian ? Serbo- Croatian ? Croato- Serbian ? Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian and/or Montenegrin ? When is this farce going to end ?

b) on closer examination, one of these textbooks is very helpful, Ronelle Alexander's. Big chunks of it can be read on googlebooks page, http://books.google.com/books?id=uPxtwiVi6YsC&dq=Alexander+Bosnian+Croatian&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=r-v2S-yKBIWRONXJiZUM&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false And it is evident that it teaches three languages in one book. Every single page is studded with B, C, S notation for scores of words, phrases, syntactic structures (ie. "where" anything mentioned belongs to). It is a correct, fair (in attribution of words, sentences etc.)- and utterly clumsy way of teaching. On could construct similar textbooks for similar languages (say, Bulgarian and Macedonian, Hindi and Urdu, Norwegian and Danish,..)

c) with all due respect, linguists like Frederik Kortland and Wayles Browne, as well as language naming at IWoBA conference are hardly relevant. Orthoepy (still not satisfactorily resolved in standard Croatian) is not central to the description of Croatian, and language naming in works on such a wide field as Balto-Slavic accentuation is peripheral- these linguists have not contributed to the understanding of Croatian language beyond the textbook framework. They simply didn't do this, it's not their field & OK. And they cannot serve as reference point re the Croatian.

So where are we left with arguments for "Serbo-Croatian" umbrella term ?

Three elementary language textbooks, which have three different names for languages they purport to teach: Serbo-Croatian, Croatian and Serbian, Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian. The first one is minimally refurbished textbook from 1950s, a leftover of Yugo language policy and its adherents. The best among the textbooks, Alexander's, exemplifies, by its content and presentation, clearly that what's inside is well beyond "variations" of a language. This, plus a few references in linguistic journals and conferences.

On the other hand, virtually all modern linguistic literature (syntax, grammar, dictionaries both monolingual and bilingual), describing these languages does not use any of these terms- Serbo-Croatian, BCS, HBS, BCSM,... Because, finally freed from political pressures, grammarians and lexicographers can write normal language studies and works without resorting to clumsy & confusing two columns criss-cross references which leave a reader confounded on all levels, from accentuation to semantics. In-depth studies & works, not just the textbook level. Plus, true foreign experts on Croatian (already mentioned). Plus numerous "single name" learning tools for this elementary level: Norris & Ribnikar [1], Berlitz [2], .. Plus waning of "SC" term in other institutions, such as the US Congress Library, http://www.loc.gov/index.html - it's easy to type in the search window Croatian language, Serbo-Croatian language, Serbian language and check the results.

In short, this entire little affair is a grotesque. Like one should "prove" that one's language is a language and not a variant of a language. Utterly bizarre. As a Croatian linguist of younger generation Mato Kapović has remarked (http://www.matica.hr/kolo/kolo2009_1.nsf/AllWebDocs/Polozaj_hrvatskoga_jezika_u_svijetu_danas ): "Ako nam je stalo do toga da i stranci naš jezik zovu hrvatski, jedino je razumno rješenje pisati nove priručnike (gramatike, rječnike, monografije, članke...) koji će nositi hrvatsko (a ne srpskohrvatsko) ime – ne samo na hrvatskom, nego i na stranim jezicima. To dakako nije lako (kako primjerice napisati novi Akademijin rječnik?), ali je to jedini pravi put, s obzirom na to da u takvim slučajevima kukanje i plakanje malo pomažu. Posve je jasno i zašto je to pravi način. Jednostavno zato što će se malo tko usuditi, citirajući nešto iz knjige koja ima samo hrvatski u naslovu, citirati to kao srpskohrvatski. Ne samo zato što je to na neki način krivotvorenje podataka, nego i zato što malo tko od stranih stručnjaka može biti siguran da je primjerice neka sintaktička začkoljica, objavljena u kakvu opisu hrvatskoga jezika, doista tipična i za srpski jezik. Stoga je u takvim slučajevima najlakše i najsigurnije uvijek citirati jezik po tome kako je on nazvan na koricama same knjige, tj. rada. ". Let some of the participants of the discussion translate this passage, so that those who would like to arbitrate on this language position could comprehend what's been said. Mir Harven (talk) 21:42, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

A quote from the abovelinked article by Mate Kapović: Dijalekatski gledano, hrvatski su i srpski nedvojbeno jedan jezik. "From a dialectal viewpoint, Croatian and Serbian are doubtlessly one language". Sapienti sat. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 20:10, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Croatian linguist, member of Croatian Academy of Sciences (and five more European Academies of Sciences), worldwide eminent Slavist, Radoslav Katičić told for Mate Kapović that Kapović's attitudes are unacceptable and that he wouldn't like to discuss with such persons (Oprostite, s takvima ne bih htio raspravljati. To što on zastupa je neprihvatljivo). (Vijenac magazine, nr. 427-429, 15 July 2010, p. 5). Vijenac is the magazine of Matica hrvatska, Croatian top cultural institution.
Dialectally "one language"? Come on. Čakavian, Kajkavian, Western Newštokavian, Slavonic Oldštokavian, Dubrovnik's dialect as dialects of Serbian? Yeah, wright, so does cows fly. Kad na hrastu naranče narastu. Kubura (talk) 03:42, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

No-one said that, as you well know. — kwami (talk) 04:53, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Standard Croatian is the product of over nine hundred years of literature ...

I removed this paragraph:

Standard Croatian is the product of over nine hundred years of literature written in a mixture of Croatian Church Slavonic and the vernacular language. Croatian Church Slavonic was abandoned by the mid-15th century, and Croatian as embodied in a purely vernacular literature has existed for more than five centuries. (See Croatian literature.)

I'm sorry but this is simply nonsense. Church Slavonic as used until the 15th-16th century (and later on isolated areas) has absolutely nothing do with modern standard Croatian which is based on Neoštokavian dialect. Modern speakers can't understand a word of it. And neither does it have with vernacular literature "that has existed for more than five centuries", because such vernacular literature was mostly based on non-standard dialects (Kajkavian, Čakavian). In terms of grammar and lexis, contributions to modern standard Croatian are in both cases absolutely none. Modern standard Croatian is a direct continuation of "Western Serbo-Croatian", i.e. literary Neštokavian as standardized in the beginning-mid 19th century by Vuk Karadžić and his Croatian colleagues. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 16:32, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

I reverted your edit. --Ex13 (talk) 18:43, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

What Ivan wrote has also been my understanding. Sorry, but if you're going to restore challenged material, you're at the least going to need to come up with some convincing sources.

This has long since become a biased exposition of fancies about the Croatian language, so I'll just add- w/out further explanation- a remark: contemporary English is much more "removed" from Old English, than is Croatian from the mixture of Church Slavic and Croatian vernacular. So there is a project "Rječnik starohrvatskoga jezika"/A Dictionary of Old-Croatian Language, covering the period from 11th to, roughly, 1500: http://www.ihjj.hr/projekt_sr.html .Or, http://infoz.ffzg.hr/INFuture/2007/pdf/2-11%20Kapetanovic,%20Amir,%20Digitalizacija%20korpusa%20starohrvatskih%20tekstova%20i%20kritika%20teksta.pdf "Summary. Digitalization of Old Croatian texts was initiated within the framework of the project “The Old Croatian Dictionary”. The purpose of the initiative was to make a dictionary that would lexicographically describe the lexis of the oldest periods of Croatian literacy in the Croatian language (from first records to the end of the 15th century). Digitalization of Old Croatian texts is more complex than digitalization of contemporary texts, not only owing to predominantly non-authored corpus in manuscript form, but also owing to the fact that the collected Old-Čakavian / Old-Štokavian corpus, originally written in three scripts,first needs to be critically analyzed. The Croatian medieval texts have been published since the 19th century in different forms (photograph, transcript,transliteration, transcription), and the publications have varying degree of quality. In addition, some texts that may become integral parts of the corpus have not been published yet. The paper will present the corpus structure, and major issues and principles in corpus analysis and design.Key words: digitalization, corpus, the Old-Croatian language, Middle Ages, lexicography, textual criticism" I'll revert to the previous form since the change is based on false premises orf serbocroatism. Mir Harven (talk) 12:19, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

What you cite above has absolutely nothing to do with the statements in the paragraph I removed. The paragraph stated that modern Croatian standard is based on Church Slavonic and 9-century-old "vernacular literature", which is simply utter rubbish. That "Old Croatian" of CS and Old Čakavian has nothing to do with modern Croatian standard, which is Ijekavian Neoštokavian. It does't contribute to it grammatically or lexically. Not a single word. Old Čakvian works such as Judita or Ribanje i ribarsko prigovaranje, which are on mandatory high-school reading list in "Croatian language", are almost completely intelligible to the poor 15- and 16-year old, without those copious 40-page dictionaries of "old words" at their end. And are moreover usually read in "modernized" version [3] " Usporedo tekst izvornika i prijevod na suvremeni hrvatski jezik" - "parallel setoriginal and the translation to modern Croatian". If it was "the same language" with minor differences, as Sulejman preposterously claimes above, or a "pre-form of the modern standard", which the contentious paragraph asserts, there wouldn't be need for a "translation" would there? This "Old Croatian" that IHJJ is compiling dictionay of has absolutely nothing to do with modern Croatian standard. Its relation is comparatively the same as that of Slavoserbian to modern Serbian - obsolete literary language, unused for centuries. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 15:16, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

As usual, your writing is just a rehashing of old Slavic philology from the early 19th century. First- neoštokavian-ijekavian as the "basis" of Croatian is long since dismissed; as I said, it's stylized around it, not based. Second- Croatian word formation is heavily influenced by Church Slavic, even in the 20th century, since it prefers norm for nouns with suffix -telj over those with suffix- lac, which is a Štokavian norm (čitatelj/čitalac; nositelj/nosilac; prevoditelj/prevodilac).Other morphological and syntactical features of Church Slavic are prominent in contemporary Croatian, while they are completely absent from neoštokavian-ijekavian dialects (for instance, wide use of participles & Gerund). Third- Čakavian is completely comprehensive to the modern Croatian readers, which can be attested by oldest Čakavian texts, like the one from Šibenik cca. 1300- http://hr.wikisource.org/wiki/%C5%A0ibenska_molitva The point of intelligibillity has nothing to do with dialects, but with loan-words. Čakavian from 1500s with relatively few loan-words is much more comprehensible to the speaker of standard Croatian, then are the texts Štokavian texts saturated with foreign words that did not enter in standard vocabulary. Hanibal Lucić's Čakavian texts, http://hr.wikisource.org/wiki/Hanibal_Luci%C4%87, are much more intelligible than štokavian-ijekavian of Bosnian Muslim Muhamed Hevaju Uskufi, ca. 100 ys his junior: http://www.xs4all.nl/~eteia/kitabhana/Hevaji_Uskufi_Muhamed/Savjet_zhenama.html Therefore, revert, since your obsession with Štokavian dialect & neo-grammarian dated approach has only contributed to the falsification of Croatian language, both diachronically and synchronically.Mir Harven (talk) 12:37, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

The ELL2 says that SC lit dates back to the 11th century, when it's written on stone in Glagolitic and Cyrillic. Separate Croatian lexicography was not established until the 19th; there never has been a separate Croatian orthography. When is a distinction between Croatian and Serbian first documented? — kwami (talk) 19:33, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

There was no need for such questions, since Serbian and Croatian came into contact for the 1st time during the 2nd half of the 18th century & and the 1st half of the 19th century. Modern Serbian linguistics have done a pretty good job in tracing the changes of Serbian language (if you don't understand, find someone to translate it:http://www.politika.rs/rubrike/Kultura/Rechnik-koji-niko-nema.lt.html Mir Harven (talk) 12:12, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

And when and where was that they "came into contact" ? In the 18th century Croatian and Serbian literature was virtually non-existent, 99.9% of the populace was illiterate, and the territories belonging to today's sovereigns belonged to some half-a-dozen empires of the period. Until the mid-19th century, the official language in "Croatia" was Latin. No more lies, please. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 15:03, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but- are you mentally fit for this discussion ? You say that Serbian and Croatian literatures were virtually non-existent in the 18th century ? Croatian_literature. And you write "Croatia", as if did not exist ? Are those who support your claims aware of what you've written ? Mir Harven (talk) 12:41, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

You restored with the 'citation needed' tags deleted, so I reverted you. Deleting tags for questioned material has been considered vandalism; it's certainly not encyclopedic.

I'm reviewing the Croat Lit article. It doesn't say anything that would contradict Ivan. It covers Croatia as a geographic area, not the literature of the Croatian language. Perhaps the article is simply unclear?: medieval lit was in Latin and OCS; then it talks about Dalmatian lit; then Ribanje i ribarsko prigovaranje has been translated into Croatian, suggesting that it was not in Croatian; then the article is quite vague until Gaj. Was the earlier post-Dalmatian lit perhaps in Chakavian, and therefore unintelligible with modern Croatian until Gaj switched the standard to Shtokavian on the Serb model? I can't tell from the article you referred us to.

It says, "during the 17th century, when Dubrovnik became the literary center of the Croatian language". But AFAIK the language of Dubrovnik at the time was Dalmatian, not Croatian. What we need are refs of the point from which the vernacular lit uses dialects currently considered Croatian: Kajkavian, Chakavian, Shtokavian. Dalmatian, Latin, and OCS don't count.

One thing I'd object to, is that the connection between "Standard Croatian" (which dates from Gaj, correct?) and "900 years" seems completely arbitrary. Why not date it from the first Greek or Phoenician settlements on the Dalmatian coast, if we're dating from the introduction of literacy in the area? Or when the first Classical lit was read in the area? Why not date it from Sumerian, or Gilgamesh, and the invention of literacy, which Croatian is an heir to? Why is this date the one chosen for the beginnings of Croat lit?

IMO, the only objective date for the Croatian language (which after all is what this article is about) would be the first attestation of literature in the Croatian language, not some other language. And for Standard Croatian, it would be the first attestation of lit in Standard Croatian. Of course, we should mention where that influence came from (Latin, OCS, and Dalmatian?), but at that point we merely link to the relevant articles for the reader who wants to follow up those leads. — kwami (talk) 18:15, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

I don't think you even know what you're talking about. The name of the language is not the central point- Croatian literature had been written in "Illyrian" up until 1860s (http://www.hercegbosna.org/STARO/ostalo/jezik2.html ). As has been pointed out earlier- you simply don't know elementary things. "Standard Croatian" ? What are you talking about ? Beowulf was written in Old-English (not standard English we use now), and no rational person would question the existence of English language and literature in 1100s. As for standard Croatian, there is a consensus among Croatian linguists that it had not begun with Gaj, but somewhere between 1500 and 1700- language periodisation, be it English, Turkish, Persian, Czech, French or Croatian, is always a tricky issue. As is the case with Slovene, which wasn't called-primarily- "Slovene", nor was it standardized orthographically- which doesn't preclude Slovenes from attributing the beginning of Slovenian language and culture with Primož Trubar. Adding one link of older dictionaries, which are just another nail in the coffin of the serbocroatist ideology, http://crodip.ffzg.hr/default_e.aspx I'll revert & do away with superfluous and inaccurate SC label. Mir Harven (talk) 18:48, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Mir Harven you're writing nonsense and spreading lies. So called "standard Croatian" was invented less than 20 years ago, there was no "Croatian language" for centuries before that. People and literate writers used general-purpose designations such as "Slav", "Illyrian" etc. In the period 1500-1700 there was no such thing as "Croatian language", nor there was "Croatia" in any form similar to that of today. There were no "Croatian grammars", "Croatian dictionaries"....people used their local vernacular dialects as literary tongues. Standardization only started with Vuk Karadžić and his close friend Ludwig Gay who made Ijekavian Neoštokavian (at that time spoken by a small minority of Croats) standard Serbo-Croatian literary language. See Vienna Literary Agreement. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 19:09, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

I sincerely think you'll have to seek a help. Because your statements are in such a discrepancy with reality than one is left doubting what really is going on ? I'll just give a few university textbooks on Croatian language and literature (they all begin somewhere in 1000s):

• Hrvatska književnost do narodnog preporoda/Croatian literature up until Illyrian Revival, http://www.sveznadar.com/knjiga.aspx?knjiga=58112

• Povijest hrvatske književnosti 1, od početka do Krbavske bitke 1493./A history of Croatian literature, from the beginning to the 1493., http://www.sveznadar.com/knjiga.aspx?knjiga=63705

• Povijest hrvatske književnosti 2., od humanističkih početaka-1604/A history of Croatian literature, from humanist beginnings to 1604., http://www.sveznadar.com/knjiga.aspx?knjiga=63706

• Povijest hrvatske književnosti 3, od Gundulićeva "Poroda od tmine" do Kačićeva "Razgovora ugodnog"/A history of Croatian literature, from Ivan Gundulić to Andrija Kačić Miošić, http://www.sveznadar.com/knjiga.aspx?knjiga=63707

Actually, your claims- as I interpret them- are that Croatian language did not exist until 1850s & then suddenly appeared, out of thin air ? My, my,....

So- these lists of Croatian grammars (Zagreb school of Slavonic studies): http://www.hrvatskiplus.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=338:markovic-gramatike&catid=41:bibliografije&Itemid=75,

and Croatian dictionaries: http://www.hrvatskiplus.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=340:markovic-rjecnici&catid=41:bibliografije&Itemid=48 are- false ? Since, until 1850s: no Croatian language, no Croatian literature ? Interesting. Revert. 18:27, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Look at the names of those dictionaries: it's always "Slavic" or "Illyrian" or "Dalmatian"...It's as much "Croatian" as it's "Serbian" or "Bosnian". And those old works - interestingly most of them have no ethnic self-designation at all. This has lead to many fierce disputes about ethnic classification of prominent old writers (such as Gundulić), who don't call their language neither "Croatian" nor "Serbian", and were thus called either "Croatian" or "Serbian" depending on who wrote the history books. Same with those "Histories of Croatian literatures" that you link above - written by nationalists from a skewed nationalist perspective. They do not necessarily present the real state of affairs. Croatian and Serbian national consciousness roughly corresponds with the establishment of Serbo-Croatian literary language - not without a reason! --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 22:17, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

This is nonsense, and the author of the post knows it. 1) even "inert" points of reference,such as Britannica, do not deny the existence of Croatian and Serbian literatures: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/143624/Croatian-literature & http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/535385/Serbian-literature 2) the name of the language is not essential- contemporary Croatian could be called Illyrian as well. So Italian was frequently called Tuscan, Farsi Iranian, Persian and whatnot, Slovene Carinthian,..Russia Muscovy, Byzantine Greeks Romans, Poles Lithuanians etc etc What is essential is that: a) these grammars and dictionaries belong to the Croatian, and only Croatian lexicography and grammaticology- and not Bosniak or Serbian, which don't consider grammars and dictionaries of Kašić, Della Bella, Belostenec, Mikalja, Habdelić, Lanosović, Reljković, Stulli,... to be part of their own cultural and philological tradition. b) Moreover, these works perfectly exemplify uniquely Croatian mixture of dialects, since (mainly) Štokavian dictionaries like Mikalja's and Kašić's contain numerous Čakavian entries, and mainly Kajkavian works like Belostenec's and Jambrešić's dictionaries contain explicitly Štokavian words and phrases. c) Slavic studies have established long since that in the field of language and letters, "Illyrian" equals "Croatian"- for instance in the work of Prague University professor Matija Murko: Die Bedeutung der Refomation.., 1927. (The Meaning of Reformation in South Slavic lands", p. 106: "Odustajem od daljnjih navoda i priloga za hrvatsko ime u 16. do 18. stoljeća, jer već dosada izneseni dovoljnim su dokazom, da se ime ilirsko, slovinsko i hrvatsko upotrebljavalo kao sinonim"/"I give up further notifications and supplements for Croatian name from 16. to 18. centuries, because heretofore given examples suffice to support the claim that the Illyrian, Slovin and Croatian names have been used synonymously" , http://www.hercegbosna.org/STARO/ostalo/jezik2.html . Also, Croatian dictionaries like Mikalja and Stulli explicitly state that "Illyrian" is "Croatian":http://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Govori_o_hrvatskom_jeziku . 4) As for "nationalists" who write Croatian literature histories from "nationalist perspective"- these are all University textbooks in circulation for cca. 70 ys, the authoritative being Kombol, Ježić, Liber edition, Frangeš,..: http://www.mvpei.hr/MVP.asp?pcpid=202 . It seems that Mr. Štambuk entertains the notion that everything Croatian is "nationalist" (in his interpretation bad, bad, bad,..). This is a mindset better suited to a Communist commissary or censor, than encyclopaedia contributor.Mir Harven (talk) 12:22, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Ludwig Gay... oh my... maybe then we need to call Vuk Karadžić Wolf Fuckerich. Ivan Štambuk you make me laugh, with all that nonsense that you spread here or on en.wiktionary (tzv. vikcionar)--Ex13 (talk) 20:27, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

What I "spread" are substantiated facts, as opposed to almost everything that the nationalist clique emits. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 06:48, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Okay, if we can move past the ad hominem attacks, here are my 2c: Old Čakavian literature can be considered the basis of Croatian lit, since Chakavian is considered a dialect of Croatian, and it's studied in Croatian schools just as Chaucer is studied in English schools. However, it's hardly the basis of the modern standard, nor does it date back 9 centuries, as that paragraph claims. So although I object to the current paragraph as being at best disingenuous, I think the topics touched upon are relevant to the article. Perhaps we can say s.t. along the following (could either be shorter or longer):

Croatian literature began with an epic poem written in Old Chakavian and modeled after Dalmatian/OCS/Latin [or whatever] lit in 1501. [Maybe mention Illyrian movement.] A Shtokavian standard shared with Serbian was established by Gaj ca. 1830. After a period of forced unification with Serbian during the Yugoslav era, a renewal of Croatian literature followed the independence of Croatia.

I'm sure I've got the details wrong, but s.t. along those lines would strike me as reasonable. — kwami (talk) 07:07, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

No. Because imaginary Čakavian -Štokavian supposed disputes reflect the dated reasoning of the early 19th century philologists (Kollar, Šafarik,..) who couldn't understand- from their national revival perspective which identified people with a language (in this case dialect)- the Croat situation where from the beginning all three dialects, variously centred, constitute Croatian literacy (Church Slavic and Čakavian in the case of Baška Tablet, Church Slavic and Štokavian, in the case of Humac tablet), and literature- mainly Čakavian "Judita" authored by Marko Marulić in 1501., and mainly Štokavian Džore Držić and Šiško Menčetić in 1480-1500. Štokavian intransigence is the result of an obsolete philology & diehard Yugoslav serbocroatism. Mir Harven (talk) 18:43, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Does that mean you agree with me, or disagree with me? — kwami (talk) 22:13, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

About what ? For existence of a national literature, it's irrelevant which dialects some of its part have been written in (cf. ancient Greek and Ionic, Aeolic etc. dialects- Sappho, who wrote in Aeolic, is not less Greek writer because her native dialect didn't succeed to become the basis of Greek koine. All this Čakavian- Štokavian etc. stuff is simply a hangover from the 19th century Slavic philology and useless. Mir Harven (talk) 12:30, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

However, language≠literature. To reduct your thesis ad absurdum, there exist a vast body of literature by ethnic Croatian (chiefly coastal) authors written in Venetian, Latin and Italian. Do you want to claim that those are also Croatian dialects? Do you want to claim that Croatian belongs to Romance languages family on that point?
The fact is, modern Croatian has approximately zero (0, nada, zilch) traces of Chakavian and Kajkavian morphology, vocabulary and grammar -- things that usually constitute the common understanding of a language. You may deny a hundred times that standard modern Croatian is much closer to standard modern Serbian than to any selected flavor of Chakavian and Kajkavian, but that cannot disprove the fact that it is. And it is not our fault that we selected not to close the eyes to that fact, like you did... (for apparently political reasons).
No one here is denying that Chakavian and Kajkavian are Croatian dialects, and that the literature written in those dialects belongs to Croatian cultural heritage. But those dialects did not become the standard and, as in many modern societies, are subjected to gradual fading and marginalization. If one of them had became a standard, we would probably not discuss these issues here, but the dialect that prevailed was basically the same that is the basis for modern Serbian.
To be fair, I support the inclusion of a reference to Chakavian and Kajkavian literature in the lead section, but not in the current wording ("Standard Croatian is the product of over nine hundred years of literature written in a mixture..."), which is misleading in many ways. No such user (talk) 12:58, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Mir Harven: can we simply agree that modern-day, standard literary Croatian language of the 21st century has basically no Čakavian and Kajkavian components?

In that light, can we also agree that it's a bit misleading to state that the modern-day standard draws on literary traditions of dialects that do not make up a significant part of it?

Sure that they were literary traditions of the past...in various scripts and dialects and traditions, but they're gradually gone extinct, and the inception of literary Serbo-Croatian in the early 19th century was pretty abrupt, from both Croatian and Serbian perspective! --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 22:12, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

No. If you personly can not read or understand old croatian literary that is your personal issue. Most of Croatians can. Do you realy want to arrgue that Kašić's gramar has nothing to do with today's Croatian?

Also, I do not see why do you repeatedly comparing standard Croatian with standard Serbian. Those two are seperated standards (as Norwegian is to Danish or Swedish, or Portuguese to Spanish, or Czekh to Slovakian or Ukrainian and Bielorussian to Russian, or Dutch is to German). Croatian language is consisted of 3 sets of dialects, kajkavian (Quaquauian, Caicawian, Kaikavian), čakavian (Chakavian, Tshakavian, Chacawian, Chaquawian) and štokavian (Shtokavian, Stocawian) which's developed from šćakavian(Shchakawian) .

So basicaly we have western dialects Caicawian and Chakawian where some parts of Chakawian/Tshakawian in middle ages developed in Shtokawian.

So basicly formula for croatian dialects is Caicawian,Chakawian and Shtokawian(which comes from Shchtakawian).

I intentionaly used english phonetics to underline similarities between Croatian dialects. As for Serbian (or Bosnian or montenegrin), they have their's standard and we must respect that, no?

Also, other two Croatian dialects Chakawian (which is spoken in Istria, islands and seaside/Western and Southern Croatia) and Caicawian(which is spoken in Central and Northern Croatia) also gave a lot of words to standard Croatian dictionary (Croatian words are not only from Eastern herzegowian Shtokawian dialect).

If Luxemburgish is an admited language why is so hard to you to comprehend that Croatian is one (with it's one grammar, phonology and dictionary) ? Čeha (razgovor) 13:34, 16 June 2010 (UTC).

The difference with the other closely related standards is that they're based on different dialects of the same dialect continuum. Croat and Serb, however, are based on the same dialect. That makes them AFAIK like only Urdu and Hindi among the other languages of the world. Urdu and Hindi are a single Abstand dialect, Khariboli Hindustani, with two Ausbau language standards. Croat and Serb are likewise a single Abstand dialect, Shtokavian Serbo-Croatian, with three (four?) Ausbau language standards.

"where some parts of Chakawian/Tshakawian in middle ages developed in Shtokawian.". If that's the case, the Chakavian is also Serbian, because standard Serbian is Shtokavian. But Chakavian is never considered Serbian. So you've got two choices: either standard Croatian is not based on Chakavian, or Chakavian is a dialect of Serbian. — kwami (talk) 19:28, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Let me see... Correct answer is NO. I'll try to explain it to you; Languages change over time, no?

Today's croatian and serbian dialects started to show it's characteristics in 12th century. In Croatian at that time existed dialects of Caicawian, Chakawian/Tshakawian and Shchakawian which became from Chakawian and developed in today's Shtokawian. That dialect (šćakavian) was/is also present in the 20th century in talks of towns of Virovitica, Hrv.Kostajnica and eastern bosnian speaches (that is probably past tense by now). Croatian Shtokawian developed from that Shchakawian.

At the time of 12th century serbian (eastern) Shtokawian was very much different from what is now. It had different words, rules etc. languages change over time.

At time of turkish wars both languages mixed new variteis of old dialects appeared. In 19th century Croats (and Serbs) took for standard dialect one border dialect (eastern Herzegovian), for Croats it was because it was close to litterature made by writters from Dubrovnik and older works, for Serbs it was perhaps a political decission as a large part of people which spoke that dialeckt considered themselves Serbs (eastern herzegovina and Banja Luka region). That standard (new shtokawian ijekavian) was never fully acepted amongs the Serbs (standard Serbian dialect is new shtokawian ekawian from Vojvodina, so called eastern variant of imaginary SC with long e as in Beeograd). Croatian standard (new shtokawian ijekavian from eastern Herzegovina/Dubrovnik) is something which has old history (developed from šćakavian/shchakawian) and different development then Serbian standard. Perhaps today (due to the long history as neighbours and living in common states) they have some percentage of common words, but that's going to change; in Croatian dictionary is shared with other dialects and possibly a gramar to (half caicawian/kajkawian dialect of Zagreb is very present in media and Futur II is frequent in every part of Croatia in informal talk in place of Futur I tense, while in Serbian future is primarly explained in construction "da"+present. Croatian and Serbian have a different language traditions and no matter for simmilarities in 20-30 years time they will probably be far from each other as Bulgarian is from Serbian, or Slovenian is from Croatian.

One more example; english word shopingholic in Croatian is Shopping-holičarka, while in Serbian is Kupoholičarka.

Capisci? :)

Čeha (razgovor) 18:17, 18 June 2010 (UTC).

"20-30 years time they will probably be far from each other as Bulgarian is from Serbian". See WP:Crystal ball. As of now, Serbian and Croatian and different literary standards of the same dialect. — kwami (talk) 19:30, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

How? Standard Croatian is based on eastern Herzegovian (Mostar's) dialect and standard Serbian is based on Šumadija-Vojvodina (Novi Sad/Beograd's) dialect. Difrent dialects, different standards... Čeha (razgovor) 16:48, 19 June 2010 (UTC).

Those two sub-dialects are both classified as the Shtokavian dialect. The terminology used in the works on Croatian dialectology that I have read define Shtokavian as a dialect whereas East Herzegov. and Šumadija-Vojvodina varieties are seen as "speeches" (govori) of said dialect. Vuurbeek (talk) 19:25, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

The English word for that is accent. — kwami (talk) 20:44, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Ok, Standards are based on different subdialects of Shtokavian dialect, addherit different grammar use (future making is just one example) and differs in the dictionary (only part of dictionary is common). What is the differance between standard Norwegian[[4]], Danish and Croatian and Serbian? Croatian uses new shtokavian ijekavian eastern herzegovian subdialect as standard, while Serbian uses new shtokavian ekavian Šumadija-Vojvodina (without talking of the historical development)? Čeha (razgovor) 10:53, 20 June 2010 (UTC).

Standard Croatian doesn't have even that much difference. Norwegian has two written standards, Dano-Norwegian (Bokmal) and native Norwegian (Nynorsk). Dano-Norwegian, though based on Danish, has been modified to accord better with Norwegian; it's as if Croats had taken Shtokavian and modified it to correspond more closely with Zagreb. Nynorsk is as if Croats had taken Zagreb directly as a second standard. The Serbo-Croatian situation really is quite unusual; only Hindi-Urdu seems to be comparable. — kwami (talk) 07:51, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Hm, are you realy calling Bokmal Dano-Norwegian? It is a language in which 85% of Norwegian communicate and is de facto synonim for Norwegian (as you can easily see on any linguistic map). Bokmal is based on south Norway speaches, as Croatian is based on Eastern Herzegovian (Mostar speaches), while standard Serbian is based on Vojvodina-Šumadija Novi Sad-Belgrade speaches. Dictionary for standard Croatian is taken from all of Croatian dialects (Kajkavian, Cakavian and Western Shtokavian) while dictionary for standard Serbian is taken from only eastern Shtokavian.

And there is nothing quite unusual in Croatian and Serbian languages; similar situation can be found in Scots/English, Leonese-Asturian/Castilian Spanish, modern Norwegian (Bokmal)/Danish, Karelian/Finish, Czech/Slovakian even German(Saxon)/Dutch and Spanish/Portuguese. It is a thing which happen to many nations which lived in common states--> shared parts of dictionary.

P.S. It is interesting why did you chose to compare Croatian with Norwegian and not to Danish, as standard Croatian uses west Shtokavian dialect which was originaly a dialect of wich in 19th century Croato-Serbian was inteded to be built.Čeha (razgovor) 11:55, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

P.P.S. Modern Montenegrin will be based (at least judging from the info on the wikipedia) on Zeta-subdialect, which makes it closer to standard Croatian and Bosniak(western Shtokavian) than Serbian (eastern Shtokavian), but also different subdialect. Čeha (razgovor) 12:21, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

It seems to me this is an unsuccessful attempt to talk, about Croatian language, to some people who would- for various purposes- try to present Croatian language as a derivative of an imagined Serbo-Croatian hybrid. Their main arguments have been rebutted, but since they show no respect for logic I'll just reiterate old stuff, revert the page & do this in future also, without addressing this page (in case nothing new appears).

• Croatian is both a standard language and a cluster of three dialects. Unlike Serbian or Bosnian, it is not based, but crystallized/stylized around corpus of literature written in štokavian-ijekavian & štokavian-ikavian (Andrija Kačić Miošić, Ivan Gundulić, Matija Divković, with significant imports from Čakavian and Kajkavian, mainly on lexical and phraseological levels. Croatian phraseology is three dialectal, as is vocabulary, and sometimes, word-formation (already mentioned examples of Kajkavian prefix "protu" as against Štokavian "protiv"- protutenkovski/anti-tank, protuustavno/anti-constitutional,...). From the beginning in the 1500s, Croatian štokavian literary language that was destined to become standard, ie. that we can find in works of Marin Držić, Dinko Ranjina, Dinko Zlatarić, Ivan Gundulić,..,have been mainly Štokavian -Ijekavian with significant import of Čakavian words [jur, zač, gospoje,..]. These words continue to be used in poetic speech- I've given contemporary translation of Torquato Tasso's major poem, replete with Čakavian words & phrases:http://www.matica.hr/www/wwwizd2.nsf/AllWebDocs/tasso/$File/Tasso-Trece%20pjevanje.pdf/Tasso-Trece%20pjevanje.pdf ; also, other contemporary Croatian translations use Ragusan idiom of mixed Štokavian-Čakavian- among others, translation of Francois Villon complete work:http://www.naklada-jurcic.hr/izdanja.php?kateg=16&sub=0 Also, contemporary Croatian literature remains to be written in Čakavian and Kajkavian literary languages: Miljenko Smoje: Velo misto, a novel (Split Čakavian: http://www.profil.hr/knjiga/velo-misto-prvi-dil/27989/ ), Pero Budak: I norija je meštrija, a novel in Kajkavian, http://arhiva.net.hr/kultura/page/2008/12/04/0520006.html

So- both Čakavian and Kajkavian literary languages continue to be vital parts of Croatian literature; and as the standard language is concerned, they- mainly Čakavian- tend to provide significant, and in some cases almost complete terminology: for instance, Croatian maritime & piscatorial terminology is almost completely Čakavian-sometimes derived from Italian and French assimilated terms- in origin, as attested by 2 volumes of Vojmir Vinja's Adriatic supplements to Petar Skok's etymological dictionary: http://www.profil.hr/autor/vojmir-vinja/3086/

And- these are the facts. There is no way one can pretend that:

a) only abstract standard language stylized around Štokavian grammar and basic lexis matters, since Croatian has been developed for centuries as a process in which Kajkavian and Čakavian augmented, lexically, phraseologically and stylistically, the Croatian Štokavian norm- unlike Bosnian, Montenegrin or Serbian

b) historically, a great part of Croatian literary heritage, does not belong, structurally, to the contemporary norm- a situation similar to the Greek koine, where some Greek literary dialects, like Aeolic, didn't become the nucleus for common Greek language, unlike Attic Greek. But, Greek literature is unimaginable without Sappho, who wrote in Aeolic, as is Croatian without Pavao Ritter Vitezović and Ivan Belostenec- who both wrote in a mixture of Čakavian, Kajkavian and Štokavian. And they lie completely outside of Serbian or Bosnian language norm and heritage.

c) even more important is Croatian linguistic purism- which has nothing to do with dialects as such-; a tendency for word-coinage, mainly from older Croatian- say, 13-15th century- and Church Slavic words. Croatian dictionaries like Mažuranić's "Prinosi za hrvatski pravno povjestni rječnik"/Contributions for a Croatian Historical Dictionary, cca.1800 pages, http://www.antikvarijat-studio.hr/shop/product_info.php?manufacturers_id=16304&products_id=79880 contain the Croatian legal terminology rooted in documents written in three dialects sprinkled with Church Slavic.

Proponents of the term "Serbo-Croatian" simply ignore the fact that their "language" has not one official name: sometimes, they give examples for Serbo-Croatian. Then, without further explanation, a Croatian and Serbian designation appears. In yet another circumstance, they present Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian. Such a protean name for a -so they say- living standard language is another example of political philology. Reverted. Mir Harven (talk) 19:22, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

"Croatian is both a standard language and a cluster of three dialects"

True. Do any of us dispute that?

"with significant imports from Čakavian and Kajkavian"

That's been disputed and I see no evidence for it. I guess that depends on what one takes to be "significant"; many of your examples are poetic, which could just be taken for separate C & S poetic traditions. But even if we take it as true, it does not alter the result.

"contemporary Croatian literature remains to be written in Čakavian and Kajkavian"

But we agree that those dialects are Croatian, and in any case, that does not deal with the C standard.

"only abstract standard language stylized around Štokavian grammar and basic lexis matters, since Croatian has been developed for centuries as a process in which Kajkavian and Čakavian"

Again, I'd like to see a RS that this is a significant part of everyday C speech, and that those daily elements have not found their way into B or S.

"Greek literature is unimaginable without Sappho"

Literary tradition is of course important. But again, how does that affect the language which people speak today?

"Croatian linguistic purism"

Yes, there was a big push for that a couple decades ago. However, just as with other attempts at top-to-bottom language reform, few of the proposals stuck, and since independence the desire for such reform seems to have abated.

"Proponents of the term "Serbo-Croatian" simply ignore the fact that their "language" has not one official name"

True, this is a problem. We have a language, of which Shtokavian is a dialect. The dialect, and therefore this language, includes BCMS. Now, it would be nice if there were a simple, well-known, and uncontroversial name for it, but there isn't. So we make do with the best available in English, which is SC.

But you're doing more than just replacing the term SC with some more neutral term like BCMS: you're deleting any reference to its existence. A Greek may legitimately dispute the "right" of Macedonia to use that name. But he can't erase the country from the map just because he doesn't like its name! You implied claim is that Shtokavian is a dialect of more than one language, which is linguistic nonsense. Croats and Serbs speak different standards of a polycentric language. Debate all you want about what we should call that language, but don't erase it from the map. — kwami (talk) 21:27, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it is like talking with a brick wall. It is interesting to see the proponents of so called SC, how do they explain the name (always SC, never CS), how they explain the fact that Serbian language is based on Vojvodina-Šumadija ekavian neoŠtokavian dialect, different dictionary etc.

Kwamikagami, maybe some people in serbia call their language sc, but majority of persons in Croatia, BiH and a lot in Montenegro call their languages by their national names. There exist Roman dialect continum and yet nowbody calls Spanish and Portuguese or Italian the same language (same thing whith Germanic languages in Netherlands/Germany or Scandinavia). If you speak about standards there is a clear difference between standard Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian/k and Montenegrin.

Only Serbian is basen on eastern neoShtokavian. Montenegrin is based on Zeta (sub)dialect of western neoShtokavian, while Croatian and Bosnian/k are based on eastern Herzegovian (Mostar's accent) of western neoShtokavian. There are substantional differences in accentuation between those parts of Shtokavian, and the difences in dictionary are large. Standard Croatian and Bosnian/k have also monosyllable ie, which is absent in standard Serbian and present as disyllablle in Montenegrin (wich even has sounds which are nonexistent in other standard languages like Ś Ź).

Dictionary in standard Croatian borows hevily from other local dialects (for example Serbs asked for subtitles of popular show of Gruntovčani, even as it is filmed in transitional dialect of Podravina wich Croats can understand without difficulty), in Bosnian/k from Turkish/Arabic literature, etc...

If Croatian and Bosnian/k were based on border dialect which members of other nations speak, that does not makes it the same language.

As I said before, majority of persons in Croatia (and neighbouring countries) call their language with it's national name (see the census of 2001), I do not know what are you trying to prove? What up-down changes? In Croatia mother's language of majority people is Croatian. There exist transitory subdialects (kajkavo-čakavian, kajkavo-štokavian,čakavo-štokavian and kajkavo-čakavo-štokavian), standard lanugage is something which was based on Mostar's dialect with some changes (like sound H) and in media dominant dialect is Zagreb's where majority of Croats live. Short summary; not trace of imaginary SC, which is the term wich may be popular in Serbia or between Bosnian Serbs (as they speek in dialect wich is closer to Croatian standard in accentuasation than standard Serbian).Čeha (razgovor) 09:18, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Now you are trying to introduce terms "western" and "eastern Shtokavian", for which I'm not sure how are defined, and I don't think are widespread in literature, because the are too vague. In terms that I'm familiar width, "Western Shtokavian"="ijekavian" and "Eastern Shtokavian"="ekavian".

For the most part, standard Serbian is based on (or, as Mir would prefer, stylized around) an amalgam of ekavian Šumadija-Vojvodina and ijekavian Eastern Herzegovinian dialect (which is the Vuk's dialect). Both being neo-shtokavian, their accentuation systems are more or less identical, but unstressed length in Šumadija-Vojvodina is not phonemic (well, as is the case in most Croatian vernaculars). Obviously, they differ in the jat reflex. All dictionaries, Croatian ones included, use 99% identical (Vukovian) accentuation with unstressed lengths pronounced, so your argument about different standardization basis is not exactly accurate. As a matter of fact, such standard accentuation is not always reflected in idiolects, even of professional speakers, and that deviation is largest in Croatian (Zagreb accent is a heavily influenced by kajkavian, and because of its dominant position it tends to spread). Still, those other accentuation systems are not standardized, and accent is still a relatively minor aspect of the language.

"Dictionary in standard Croatian borows hevily from other local dialects (for example Serbs asked for subtitles of popular show of Gruntovčani)" -- you call the language of Gruntovčani (for the uninitiated: a TV Series in authentic Kajkavian) "standard Croatian"?! I think that even residents of Dalmatia asked for subtitles of that, but you already knew that. I can tell you, however, that Serbs asked for subtitles of Zona Zamfirova as well, and nobody is trying to assert that it was "Standard Serbian".

Still, I don't know what you're arguing with, but a strawman. We all agree that majority of people, Serbs included, call their language by their national names. We all agree that there is no such thing as "Standard Serbo-Croatian". What I say, and 1.9 million of Google hits confirms, is that the term Serbo-Croatian, at least in English language, is not so imaginary, and is still used to denote all four national languages as a collectivity, with all their shared grammar, morphology and vocabulary. No such user (talk) 12:05, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Those terms "eastern" and "western" can have two separate applications in this case, which may produce some confusion, so it might not be bad to delineate some basic facts here, though I'm sure that participants in this discussion are familiar with them. There are two major dialects of Shtokavian:

1) Staroštokavski ("Old Shtokavian"), spoken in eastern Serbia, which could be designated as eastern, and

2) Novoštokavski ("NeoShtokavian"), spoken in the rest of the Shtokavian territory, which could be designated as western.

Both of these major dialects have subdialects or varieties. The inception of standard Serbo-Croatian (srpskohrvatski, hrvatskosrpski, hrvatski ili srpski, etc.) has been marked by the Vienna Literary Agreement of 1850, declaring that the language should be based on the "southern dialect", which is basically the eastern-Herzegovina variety or subdialect of NeoShtokavian (the native vernacular of Vuk Karadžić). This "southern dialect" has the ijekavian pronunciation of the old vowel ѣ (Yat). Another subdialect of NeoShtokavian is the Šumadija-Vojvodina variety (with the ekavian pronunciation of Yat), spoken in northern Serbia and Vojvodina. Since that territory contains the capital Belgrade, this subdialect is of a considerable influence in Serbia, but the accepted standard (official, literary) language has been the "southern dialect" (eastern-Herzegovina variety of NeoShtokavian) since the 19th century. A notable influence of the Šumadija-Vojvodina subdialect on the standard language in Serbia is the ekavian pronunciation of the standard. So, the ekavian (eastern) variant of standard Serbo-Croatian (and of course of standard Serbian today) is essentailly the ekavian pronunciation of the eastern-Herzegovina subdialect. The ekavian variant of standard Serbian should not be confused with the Šumadija-Vojvodina subdialect, which is in all of its three subvarieties (Šumadija, Valjevo-Mačva, and Vojvodina) distinct from the ekavian standard. This standard is used in most of Serbia, while the ijekavian (western) variant of standard Serbian is used in Montenegro and Republika Srpska, plus the rest of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia (in places where Serbs are still present there since 1995), but also in some parts of western Serbia, though nowadays rather marginally. Vladimir (talk) 16:02, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

To [5] While Croatian [6] has 86.200.000, and Serbian [7] 82.800.000 results, Bosnian [8] 13.200.000, Bosniak [Bosniak] 207.000, Montenegrin [9] 902.000 on google (all togheter 183.309.000) which is 100 times more than google entries about sc (of which majorty speaks about diferencess or history because official language in ex-Yu was CS or SC) should be more than enough to put imaginary sc to its resting place.

Second, both you and VVladimir are wrong about western and eastern SC. You both speak about that imagionary language, without fully knowing what it is :) A great joke. Here it is [10]. Before Novi Sad agreement in Yugoslavia existed two indipendent standards; Croatian and Serbian. See conclusion one in The text of the Novi Sad Agreement. How can somebody speak about something without the knowledge of its basics? That is a problem with all the proponents of SC/CS, lack of education on the matter.

In dialectology western Shtokavian includes Slavonian, East Bosnian (wich both are Shchakavian dialets), Bosnian-Dalimatian(western Ikavian) eastern Herzegovian and Zeta-South Sandžak, while eastern Shtokavian includes Šumadija-Vojvodina and Kosovo-Resava (somethimes and Timok-Prizren if Torlakian is counted as shtokavian). It is a difference based on historical differences as western Shtokavian developed from ShChakavian and eastern Shtokavian developed from Shtakavian, but in main most of the west shokavian dialects are ijekavian, jekavian and ikavian (virovitica and Podravina dialects are ekavian, as in Croatia Zagorje, but it is surface different) while eastern Shtokavian dialeckts use ekavian. Both eastern and western Shtokavian have neoShtokavian and old Shtokavian dialects(it can be seen from the maps, see maps [11] VVVladimir).

As for Serbian, majority of its users outside Serbia use ijekavian standard (if realy Standard Serbian has two standards, and not just one), all other languages are based from western Shtokavian (Croatian and Bosnian/k eastern Herzegovina, while montenegrin uses Zeta subdialect)

As for Gruntovčani, they spoke in Podravian dialect which is translational kajkavian to shtokavian, they are large numbers of words wich are used only coloqually and is very easy for any speaker of any croatian dialect to understand. So, there were no request for subtitles in Dalmatia (nor other parts of Croatia, just Serbia). Čeha (razgovor) 12:02, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

It is sometimes silly when persons which do not know nothing about Croatian Shtokavian dialect speak about its history, standard, etc :) This book is nice to start [12] Čeha (razgovor) 12:13, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes you should read it, because majority of what you wrote above is simply nonsense refuted in that very book.

should be more than enough to put imaginary sc to its resting place. - Wikipdia doesn't use Google hits as an "argument". Obviously you're very young and not versed in academic discourse.

Before Novi Sad agreement in Yugoslavia existed two indipendent standards; Croatian and Serbian. - Nonsense. By the tome of Novi Sad agreement literary Serbo-Croatian was in use for more than a century. There was a single standard with two literary varieties (separated chiefly by script and jat reflex), the same dictionaries and grammar books. NSA only codified existing practice to provide little space for nationalist deviations, such as the ones unsuccessfully enforced during NDH with Hrvatski državni ured za jezik.

It is a difference based on historical differences as western Shtokavian developed from ShChakavian and eastern Shtokavian developed from Shtakavian - that's also nonsense. "Western" and "Eastern" Štokavian are simply geographical designations, and those terms came into the with Croatian nationalist starting to use them to draw an artificial difference between "them" (Serbs, Eastern) and "us" (Croats, West). They're most certainly not diachronically justified. One can group isoglosses into dialect clusters an basically any arbitrary criteria. But what you're doing here with: "Both eastern and western Shtokavian have neoShtokavian and old Shtokavian dialects(it can be seen from the maps," - that just doesn't make sense at all. Neoštokavian dialects developed from Old Štokavian dialects (hence "neo" :). You're first classifying all the Štokavian dialects on the basis of some arbitrary geographical grouping into "West" and "East" (underlying the alleged ethno-national justification supporting such classification, despite the fact that these dialects developed 5-7 centuries ago when neither Croats nor Serbs, or their states, existed), and then dividing each of those groups into both Old Štokavian and Neoštokavian. It makes no sense whatsoever :)

As for Serbian, majority of its users outside Serbia use ijekavian standard (if realy Standard Serbian has two standards, and not just one), - Yes, Serbian has two standards, or one standard in two varieties if you will. Perhaps you should pay a visit to Republika Srpska and see it for yourself? :) It's very hard to patriotic Croats to come to terms with the fact that Ijekavian Neoštokavian is not exclusively "theirs".

all other languages are based from western Shtokavian - No, all of them are based on the same Neoštokavian, Eastern-Herzegovinian, istočnohercegovačko-krajiški... dialectal basis. You can call it "a form of Western Štokavian", but it's the same thing :) Citing from Ranko Matasović, Poredbenopovijesna gramatika hrvatskoga jezika, p. 34 hrvatski je suvremeni standardni jezik, službeni jezik Republike Hrvatske, koji se razvio na temelju samo jednoga narječja kojim govore Hrvati, i to narječja koje su kao osnovu za standardizaciju, u drugim povijesnim okolnostima, odabrali i drugi narodi (Srbi, Bošnjaci i Crnogorci). Mate Kapović [13]: Dijalekatski gledano, hrvatski su i srpski nedvojbeno jedan jezik. Josip Lisac, Hrvatska dijalektologija 1, štokavsko i torlačko narječje, p. 23: novoštokavski govori, idiomi koji su dijalekatnom osnovicom hrvatskoga književnog jezika. Oni pripadaju ikavskomu novoštokavskom dijalektu (ili zapadnom) i (i)jekavskomu obično zvanom istočnohercegovačkim (bolje: istočnohercegovačko-krajiškim) dijalektom.. Do we really need more evidence? :) --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 15:11, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Also, the paragrafh from the begining of this discussion should be returned back. If somebody which speaks another language does not see continuation in Standard Croatian from Bašćanska ploča to this days it is his/hers problem. If notthing this discussion showed folly of calling some language another name than it's own. Standard Croatian developed from Chakavian, Shchakavian to Shtokavian with inclusions from all other Croatian dialects (Chakavian-Kajkavian was standard of Croatian nobility in 17th century, in 18th and first half of 19th century it was standard Kajkavian on one third of Croatia around Zagreb and northwest border, when it was replaced by wider Croatian standard). All of this form are mutualy comprenhensible to today standard (as differences in old/middle/to days english). Claiming that Croatian language is something which begins only in 19th century as dialect of another language is gross falsificate and insult to reason. Čeha (razgovor) 13:47, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Modern standard Croatian has absolutely nothing to do with the language of Baščanska ploča. It's a direct continuation of former Western Serbo-Croatian standard, ultimately drawing on 19th century standardization efforts to create one literary language for all South Slavs on Easter Herzegovinian Štokavian dialectal basis. Chakavian-Kajkavian was never a "standard"; you don't seem to understand what that term means in sociolinuistics. As literary language, Čakavian and Kajkavian have been dead for centuries. There was never ever "standard Kajkavian" or "standard Čakavian", but various local dialects were used, that were very different from one another, in very different orthographies.

Claiming that Croatian language is something which begins only in 19th century as dialect of another language is gross falsificate and insult to reason. - You've been indoctrinated with infantile nationalism to the point that you cannot comprehend reality. I strongly suggest that you actually read some pre-19th literature as it was written. There is no "Croatian" in there. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 14:34, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

This is usual serbocroatist nonsense that has nothing to do with reality, as has pre-eminent contemporary Croatian linguist Radoslav Katičić testified in a recent interview: http://www.matica.hr/Vijenac/vijenac427.nsf/AllWebDocs/Srpski_jezik_nije_stokavski Mir Harven (talk) 19:12, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Katičić spewing nationalist nonsenses as usual. He has to justify that 5-figure paychack that the governments hands him out every month, courtesy of the taxpayers. "Serbian language is not Štokavian" - ROTFL. High temperatures must have played the role in frying his brain! Another link for you: [14] -Ivan Štambuk (talk) 08:15, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Katičić is the greatest living Croatian linguist, and, perhaps, one of 3-5 greatest Croatian philologists of all time. And you- you're either insane or a self-hating Croatophobic Yugo phrase-monger beyond remedy. Mir Harven (talk) 19:56, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

The greatest living Croatian linguist by far is Ranko Matasović (not that he has many competition though). He is no philosopher whatsoever. The statement that Serbian language is not Štokavian is absolutely ridiculous to anybody who has any knowledge about the subject whatsoever. That is the problem with you nationalists: you don't believe in scientific method. You are like the religious people: there is only the "authority", and whatever the "authority" claims it is, it is. Even if the authority is self-contradictory at times (just like the Bible!), which is the case with Katičić as anyone can see, who a few years back claimed that Serbian and Croatian are one language in the link I provided. When he was paid by the Communists, this particular conviction was even more pronounced. In his 1988 book Jezik, srpskohrvatski / hrvatskosrpski, hrvatski ili srpski, co-written with his Serbian comrade Pavle Ivić, he calls the language "Serbo-Croatian, Serbian or Croatian", and states that it is "jezik Crnogoraca, Hrvata, Muslimana, Srba", glorifying "domete naše serbokroatistike". He's nothing but petty, fickle and opportunist ideologue of whomever pays him the most. I strongly suggest that you study other perspectives beside the nationalist one, e.g. the recently published Jezik i nacionalizam by the brilliant S. Kordić. You're living in the last century dude. Tuđman is dead and so are his isolationist world views. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 12:49, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Not only paranoia, but an ill-informed paranoia. It was not Katičić, but Dalibor Brozović who had authored a study, along with Pavle Ivić, in 1980s (Katičić is not a co-author of any book or article with Pavle Ivić). Second- Brozović's theses can be understood in the context of Communist "linguistics", where individual linguists had to play by the rules of the Yugo-Communist "one language" (SC, CS, whatecer) policy (which, btw., you seem to appreciate. Not just the concept, but the environment that had given the limits of what could have been said.). Third- your "election" of Ranko Matasović to the status of foremost Croatian linguist would have amused the Croatian linguistic community, not the least Matasović himself. Fourth- you're so bogged & mired that the best therapeutic enterprise for you would be: put your SC language nonsense on paper, present it to the major contemporary Croatian linguists - say, 30-40 people- and wait what will they say about your idees fixes. Somehow I think I know the answer. Mir Harven (talk) 16:14, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

The majority of the Croatian linguists and paid by Croatian government, which is their only source of income. As a result, they views are completely biased towards the view that is being propagandized at the kroatistika department of FFZG and related institutions that produce an army of indoctrinated mediocre and sub-average "linguists". Matsović, in comparison to them, at least has some sorts of international credibility, manifested in forms of books and papers printed by foreign publishers, who wouldn't accept any kind of junk written by Katičić and his ilk.

That Serbo-Croatian is one and singular standard language is an immutable fact of reality. That you personally cannot come to terms with it, as well as many other Croats, does not refute or change that fact. To fight it, you resort to name-calling and shaming (by labeling your interlocutors as "Yugounitarists", "Croatophobes", etc.), as well as to deceptive propaganda such as stating that Serbian national variety of Serbo-Croatian is not based on Štokavian dialect (a bizarre statement that cannot be further from the truth), or that even Croatian national variety of Serbo-Croatian is not based on Štokavian dialect, which is likewise pure nonsense that you personally added to Croatian pedia article on Croatian language in this edit, after the article stated for 6 years that the Croatian national variety is based on ijekavian Neoštokavian.

Your efforts to bend the reality according to your nationalist convictions are ineffectual and pointless. Stop wasting everyone's time and get real. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 11:44, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

I think this is all getting a bit personal and argumentative. I would like to make a point so basic and obvious that I don't see how it can be contradicted (or considered to be OR or SYN) and then use that as a basis for some questions and comments that might point us in a more productive direction.

(Begin very obvious point)

It is obvious to me that two languages that are mutually intelligible to eachother's speakers and which differ only in a small number of matters, mostly minor, must be very closely connected in a way that non-mutually intelligible languages are not.

(End very obvious point)

The alternative, that two separate languages just happened to evolve from significantly different roots to become mutually intelligible, is simply too ludicrous to contemplate. You might as well claim that American English is derived from native American languages and that its similarity to British English is purely coincidental or a result of later convergence.

Now I won't claim to know the history of Serbian or Croatian languages but I strongly suspect it is analogous to British and American English in that it has diverged somewhat from a relatively recent common point due to geographical separation and different external and cultural influences while maintaining mutual intelligibility due to shared literature and the practicalities of trade. The common point could itself be a Mixed language of made of older and more distinct languages (I am not saying that it is, only that it could be without invalidating my argument) but, once mixed, languages can't be unpicked without losing mutual intelligibility, they can only drift apart maintaining their common roots. It seems to me that the common point can not be denied and any successor languages can't legitimately claim roots that ignore the common point. The real questions we should be addressing concern the correct name, age and classification of that common language.

Now I have no desire to deny the Croats their 900 years of literature but I would be interested to know what the 900 year old Croatian language of that literature was like? Would a modern Croat be able to read it in its original form, or would it be as incomprehensible to them as the original text of Beowulf is to me? Would it bother them if it was, or would they still be able to embrace it as their national literature? Why does this have to be so politicised? Can't we find some good unbiased sources and get to the truth of the matter? --DanielRigal (talk) 16:33, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

As an outsider, you have standard misconceptions (plus one correct obvious point) re Croatian language. I'll try, for umpteenth time, to write down the basics:

$ the situation with Croatian, Serbian etc. is not comparable to the British & American English case. Before any English settlement in Northern America, there was English language, spoken in England & in the south of Scotland. In next 3-4 centuries, the English-speaking settlers brought this language to the what will become the US, and this language, in the course of time, has undergone some changes which did not alter its structure & identity. Therefore, the common heritage of American & British language (Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, John Milton, John Locke,..) is the same, and this makes English language a pluricentric language, as are other "colonial" languages (Spanish, Portuguese, French,..).

$ in contradistinction to this situation, Croatian and Serbian do not have a common "ancestor language". They are not variants of a pluricentric language, but different Ausbau languages or cultural languages. The closest example is the one with Urdu and Hindi and various Scandinavian languages (Swedish, Danish, Norwegian,..). There is not a common "ancestor language" for Croatian and Serbian (nor for Urdu and Hindi); the mutual intelligibility (to the very high degree) is the result of similar dialectal structure in both languages. So, there is no case that there had ever existed one, "Serbo-Croatian" (or you can use whichever name you want) language that had branched off or split into Croatian and Serbian at any moment in history. There was not one entity-language which dissolved into two (or more) entities- languages. This "one language" has never existed- although, for political reasons, not a few writers, linguists, politicians .. thought it did. They were confronted with a puzzle: they almost completely understood the "other" language (Serbian, Croatian); but, this other language was just this- other, not this one, foreign at all levels (script, language history, phraseology, vocabulary, scientific, cultural & technical terminology,...). In short- other.

$ briefly- Croatian and Serbian have converged- but have not fused- in the 19th century. Up to this, Croatian has had a few regional vernacular literary languages, interfering during ca. 4 centuries, out of which one in particular (enriched by other regional literary languages) emerged as a unified national language; Serbian, on the other hand, as was the case with other languages of Eastern Orthodox Slavic peoples, was written until the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th, in mixture of Church Slavic and Serbian vernacular, plus a component of Russian language from the late 17th century on. Croatian is language written in three vernacular dialectal literary languages, from 14th century on, with final unification completed in the 19th century on one, Štokavian literary language. It is not "based" on any dialect, but stylized around mainly Štokavian literary language infused by other Croatian literary (not standard) languages. Contrary to this situation, Serbian is based on Štokavian dialect, without written corpus in the vernacular, and without the influence of other, Croatian, dialects and lexical-civilizational layers (in Croatian case, Catholic and marginally Protestant; in Serbian, Eastern Orthodox). Simplistically- Urdu is a "Muslim" language, Hindi a "Hindu" language; Croatian is a "Western Christian" language, Serbian an "Eastern Christian" language.

There you are. Mir Harven (talk) 20:24, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

That's more a political presentation than a linguistic one. From a dialectological POV, standard Hindi and Urdu are two official registers of a single dialect (Khari Boli) of one language, which goes by the labels Hindi-Urdu and Hindustani. Similarly, standard Serbian and Croatian are two official registers of a single dialect (Shtokavian) of one language, which goes by the labels Serbo-Croatian and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian. Yugoslavia posited a SC standard (or really bi-standard), and many nationalists cannot seem to move past that political history. But while relevant to the history and sociology of the language, it's irrelevant to its classification. If, for example, Hindi and Urdu had chosen Awadi and Dakkini as their standard forms, there would be little problem calling them separate languages. Likewise, if Croatian and Serbian had chosen Chakavian and Torlokian as their standards, there would be little problem calling them separate languages (this is basically what you have with Macedonian and Bulgarian). But Hindi and Urdu are both based on Khari Boli, and are completely mutually intelligible; likewise, Croatian and Serbian are both based on (not "stylized around", whatever that odd phrase is supposed to mean) Shtokavian, and are also completely mutually intelligible. Dialectologically, both cases are unitary languages, even if sociolinguistically they are distinct. Thus, while we have separate articles for Hindi, Urdu, Croatian, and Serbian, as befits them sociolinguistically, we unify them in non-socio contexts: Hindi-Urdu phonology, Hindi-Urdu grammar, WP:IPA for Hindi and Urdu, Serbo-Croatian phonology, Serbo-Croatian grammar, WP:IPA for Serbo-Croatian. — kwami (talk) 08:16, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

You're hopelessly entangled in the web of your own preconceptions.

1) there is no such thing as "political" presentation of a language, and especially confronted to the "linguistic one". For reality of language status and description is something beyond politics, sociology, linguistics and whatnot. The language (any) is a commonly accepted reality, and first and foremost, determined by those who speak it. The consensus of the community of a language speakers is the ultimate say on the status of a language. And for dialectological POV- what about it ? It- I suppose you mean linguistic typology- is just one strand in the description of a status of language- which is given primarily by a consensus of its speakers (Chinese language, where linguists opinions of whether these are dialects of a language of different languages is of not much importance- the power of 4.000 years of Chinese history is stronger than some scholastic prescriptions European linguists tried to concoct in order to make their field sound more "scientific" (which, of course, is not when compared to the exact sciences). I've seen your unsupported reiterations before; I've seen your evasions of arguments you simply couldn't answer (for instance, my deprecation of dialects obsession in the case of Greek language and Aeolic and Ionic.

2) so, just a reiteration that will not change much. Wiki dogmatists will continue until this project has been eroded; Croatian language & its status, happily, do not depend, in the slightest degree, on some Web scribbling.

$ Macedonian language and Bulgarian language are both "closer", more mutually intelligible and the rest, then are Croatian and Serbian- never mind the slightly different dialectal structure of both languages. But- how would you know ? You don't know: Croatian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Macedonian,. Here we have a case of a virgin in a role of a sex counsellor.

$ Language is not a dialect, which is something anyone with even the slightest knowledge of this discipline, linguistics, should know. What you try to say is that according to linguistic typology, or typological linguistics, Croatian and Serbian have the same structure. Fine, no one disputes this. Just- this is a) not the criterion for languages classification, just one among many. Second- this criterion is not respected in other cases (which shows that this supposedly impartial criterion- whatever its worth- is, as are other endeavors in humanist disciplines, pretty flawed: there is not one "supra-language" in numerous classifications of Hindi and Urdu, no macro-language Hindi-Urdu, while there is a macro-language "Serbo-Croatian", or hbs, or whatever its name. So- a glaring inconsistency). Third- this is just one strand in the description of a language profile, other including theoretical linguistics disciplines from phonology to stylistics and semantics. In short- linguistic typology describes a skeleton of a language. Other disciplines, from syntax to lexicon, from phraseology to word-formation (not to be confused with morphology) give the equivalents of a gland system, CNS, circulatory system etc.

$ at the end: which are your qualifications and capacity to decide and edit a part of encyclopaedia on such complex matters ? You don't know a thing about Croatian and Serbian & you're absolutely incapable of deciding what' right & what's wrong. How many phonemes does Croatian have ? Is the standard Croatian based on some Štokavian dialect or not ? Of course, you don't know, since you can't read- and even didn't hear about linguists who worked hardly on this question, like Josip Vončina, Branka Tafra, Radoslav Katičić, Miro Kačić,.. Or- although some older linguistic books did have lump together Hindi and Urdu in a Hindi-Urdu/Urdu-Hindi "language", no serious works do this any more. So- how have you the temerity to put together these two languages, on the wiki which is- at least formally- against original research ? Does this original research include dated conceptual frameworks, for instance Aristotelian physics or Hindi-Urdu grammar ? Too much questions & barely an answer (aside from usual "nationalist" mantras). You've mixed up virtually everything: reduction of a status of a language to the linguistic typology (which you referred to, wrongly, as dialectology); dialectal structure of the Croatian language; mutual intelligibility and dialectal structure; theoretical linguistics and the description of a language (and its impotence in describing a language status); confusing and contradictory status of a macro-language, which in the case of Croatian and Serbian, supposedly, exists, and in the case of Urdu and Hindi- does not.

Anyway, a waste of time.Mir Harven (talk) 20:46, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

"The consensus of the community of a language speakers is the ultimate say on the status of a language" - This is essentially what your "argument" boils down to. You ignore all the scientific (linguistic) evidence, and present the opinion of speakers as an ultimate arbiter on "what decides a language". Croatian nationalism has infected your brain to the point that you are ready to disregard all dissenting opinions (foreign, neighboring Bosnian and Serbian, historical and even contemporary Croatian). You fail to understand that this viewpoint is just another viewpoint, not the ultimate Truth that we are bound to blindly follow. That point of view certainly deserves to be mentioned, but from the objective perspective of the ultimate observer (per WP:NPOV), not as a fact of reality per se. Croats don't "own" the language they speak. There is no such thing as "linguistic self-determination" or "linguistic sovereignty". You cannot unilaterally ignore centuries of history, or worse - the opinions of the rest of the world. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 14:36, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

I would suggest that you cease "answering" (if this is the description) my posts, since I've stopped reading anything you sign. Some time before, I thought your opinions to have been a valid- wrong, but valid- take on languages identities question. After all has been said, all the distortions you've made, all the lies (re differences with Croatian and Serbian languages percentages; your negation of Croatian language existence in past 2, 6, 8,.. centuries; your dogmatic rehashing of dated Slavic philology of early 1800s & equally outmoded fixation on dialectology; your vulgar & completely unfounded accusations of moral and scientific integrity of leading Croatian linguists; your behind-the scenes manoeuvres in trying to forcibly lump different languages under the umbrella term of a "language" spoken nowhere in the world (and trying to justify this by a few basic textbooks written by authors whose Croatian language skills are nowhere near to the authors' you've vilified in your ramblings; your completely irrational effort to rewrite the history of Croatian language & put it into the Procrustean bed by chopping ideologically undesirable hands and legs; as if valuable first class Croatian language studies, grammars, dictionaries, ...are not worked upon the very moment I'm writing this (http://zprojekti.mzos.hr/page.aspx?pid=97&lid=1&progID=382&projID=494 , http://zprojekti.mzos.hr/public/c2prikaz.asp?cid=1&psid=32, http://zprojekti.mzos.hr/public/c2prikaz.asp?cid=2&psid=32 )- this is meaningless. I don't consider you to be a person of moral integrity, mental capability & fundamental fairness, to bother anymore with anything you post. Mir Harven (talk) 20:43, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

You're like child: sticking fingers in your ears and singing "lalala, I don't hear you", whenever somebody refutes the essence of your arguments. I know you very well MH, your nationalist self-victimizing psyche and fallacious methods of discussing. You are nothing. Constantly disparaging your interlocutors and invoking the Holy Argument of Speaker's Self-Identity means nothing. You're no different than the Communist propagandists who accused every dissident of being agent provocateur, paid by "foreign capital" to spread discord and hatred. We are not stupid, and have crystal-clear bird's eye view on your activities. Paid Croatian state propagandists will never change the nature of reality, no matter how many times you reiterate the "Croatian is a separate language" mantra. Croatian will never be a separate language, as long as it shares the same Eastern Herzegovinian dialectal basis with Serbian/Bosnian. Your efforts are futile. You can reprint all the old Serbo-Croatian dictionaries and grammars, but this time titled as "Croatian" dictionaries/grammars, but as long as the content is the same, it means nothing. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 11:46, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for common sense input Daniel! Just a few remarks:

• Now I won't claim to know the history of Serbian or Croatian languages but I strongly suspect it is analogous to British and American English in that it has diverged somewhat from a relatively recent common point due to geographical separation and different external and cultural influences while maintaining mutual intelligibility due to shared literature and the practicalities of trade. - Actually, it's not directly comparable to the situation with Englishes around the globe, and the situation is even more simple. First, if you look at the map, you'll see that there is no geographical separation at all. It's all one giant dialect continuum, inseparable along ethnic lines. You can also see that countries such as Croatia and entities such as Republika Srpska have a very weird shape, which results from the fact that they were created along some imaginary criteria such as the ethnicity of the people inhabiting those areas when these border lines where drawn/carved in a war. Now, if you look at the dialect map for Štokavian dialect, you'll see that the subdialect that all of the modern-day countries used to codify their "national standard", and what is labeled as "East Herzegovinian" on the map, is shared across both national and ethnic borders. (And it is no accident that the only dialect that is shared byall the ethnicities was chosen as the literary standard in the 19th century...although today the nationalists would claim that it was an "independent choice", which is ridiculous). So in essence, there is no real "separation" in linguistic terms, like there exists for Englishes (which evolved in separate routes along the centuries due to real geographic separation, and which caused differences in word meanings, different vocabulary, different pronunciation of words despite the same shared orthography etc.) : there is only the imagination that what "we" speak is one kind of entity, and what the "others" (the other two ethnicities) speak is some other kind of entity, and that "we" have a "right" to call our speech X language, regardless how different/same is it to what others speak and call their speech. Modern Englishes are much different than B/C/S varieties. I have an international edition of Oxford Advanced Learner's dictionary which I use, and basically in every other headword there are meanings/spellings/variant forms that are labeled for a specific English variety (NA, UK, NZ, AU, CA). In modern SC national varieties the differences are much less pronounced.
• Would a modern Croat be able to read it in its original form, or would it be as incomprehensible to them as the original text of Beowulf is to me? - Baška tablet is taught in Croatian schools, and in many cases pupils need to memorize that trivial document by heart. I can assure you they they understand it as much as they would understand any other distant Slavic language (eg. Russian, Polish). It's completley beyond their grasp to read it and understand it. Every single word of it has either phonemes that died out centuries ago (e.g. yers, yat, nasal vowels) and which they don't have a clue what they mean and how they are read, or inflectional endings that also died out centuries ago. Yes it's pretty much comparable to Beowolf or Chaucer from the perspective of modern English speaker. You could with some luck even discern every other or third word, but hardly the whole meaning of a sentence. This observation is also valid for an entire body of historical "Croatian literature". In high school kids are forced to read literary junk such as Judita or Ribanje i ribarsko prigovaranje which were written only 4-5 centuries ago, and which they can barely understand, so these old works are usually published with sizable dictionaries accompanying them. Or, for example, with side-by-side original and the translation to modern language, such as in this version of Judita published by the foremost Croatian cultural institution Matica hrvatska. One should also keep in mind that the majority of Croats are not particularly literate or educated (~7% have college education), and that such works are usually an instrument of attention of overpaid smug nationalist-philologists working in various state-sponsored institutes or agencies. This historical woks however do not have the same status as e.g. Shakespeare in English, not by any criteria. They're not read by ordinary people at all, and their authors are being treated as some mythical figures from the past that nobody gives a damn about today.
• Would it bother them if it was, or would they still be able to embrace it as their national literature? In the Balkans, nationalism is the most powerful force governing the society. They don't care if they don't understand a single word, if the related literary work is of paramount importance in nationalist self-identification. This leads to scenarios where the works of some writers such as Ivo Andrić are classified both as "Croatian writers" and "Serbian writers" (see the categories), depending on the nationalist viewpoint. It has absolutely nothing to do with language. There is a host of Croatian linguists and writers that have over 2 centuries openly embraced the common literary standard on Eastern Herzegovinian dialect, and which are despite that classified here (on English pedia) as "Croatian writers". This has more to do with the willingness to isolate from your "neighbors" and to embrace under your fragile identity umbrella as much as you can from the history, rather than with some objective criteria of classification such as the intelligibility of the writings.
• Why does this have to be so politicised? Because these new "languages" have been created de facto by a political decree. They don't exist by any objective scientific criteria. Negating their isolationist existence amounts to an "attack" on people's fragile ethnic/national identities. Bosniaks/Croats/Serbs are so "similar" in language, customs, appearance (genetic makeup)...that ridiculing or ignoring the over-emphasized minor differences among them amounts to a full-blown attack on their separte existence in the first place. There is also this 19th century nation-building myth of country=language=people, that is still very much alive in the region, fueling the entire debate. You'll hear repeated statements of how "people have a right to their language", as if there exists some "linguistic self-determination" granted by a UN charter ^_^
• Can't we find some good unbiased sources and get to the truth of the matter? - Sure, and many of them have been provided here many times. But the natives don't think that foreign sources are reliable enough, and think of them as "obsolete" (see the above comment by Mir Harven: "rehashing of old Slavic philology from the early 19th century"). According to them, the only sources presenting the "real" truth are the ones published by the nationalist institutions. They don't even want to account for domestic dissidents ridiculing their views. Their are many modern Croatian linguists that do see and accept B/C/S as de facto one language linguistically, but they are "traitors"... :) And I mentioned Mir Harven above the just recently published book by S. Kordić, which is a landmark contribution in the critique of Croatian linguistic nationalism and isolationism, but he conveniently ignored it. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 12:53, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

page protection

Discussion, which had seemed promising, has ceased, and we're back to nationalist edit warring to deny the obvious. The sanctions agreed to at WP:ARBMAC would seem to be relevant. Another possibility is increasing the 'pending changes' page protection so that edits do not go through unless approved by a reviewer. The first would target problematic editors, but might prevent them from contributing elsewhere. Higher page protection would affect everyone, but under pending changes, they'd still be able to contribute. Any opinions? — kwami (talk) 02:12, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Asked at RFPP and they agreed. Now PC2. Noted that some of the editors here and at SC ~ SS might earn topic bans if they keep it up.[15] — kwami (talk) 18:58, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Why do you try to establish greater serbian nationalistic "serbocroatian" that as a never standardized language existed? --192.194.85.130 (talk) 15:49, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Please read the article. We've never claimed that SC was ever a unified standard language. You're translating from Croatian, and taking offense from that, but the article is not in Croatian. — kwami (talk) 19:45, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

But you do insist on impossible categorization: you list Croatian lang. as one of the Serbo-Croatian languages, in the same time you don't list Slovene as S-C! Now watch this: there are 3 dialects of Croatian - Čakavian, Kajkavian and Štokavian. Čakavian and Kajkavian was spoken by 70-80% of the Croats until 100 years ago. Čakavian was also first Croatian language at all, from the first inscriptions in the 9th century. This dialect was never spoken by Serbs or Slovenes, only by Croats. But what is important Čakavian is much closer to Slovene Kajkavian than to Croatian Štokavian! When you list Cro as S-C lang. it encompasses Čakavian too. If Čakavian is S-C (no way!) than Slovene must be S-C too!!! Don't you see. This S-C categorization is just a fake. By introducing it you will never be able to list and categoricize South Slavic languages properly. That's what happens when politics interfere where only science should be. What are you doing here is starting neverending editwarring, because there will always be normal people who will want to make corrections of something which doesn't exist: S-C as SS family language. 78.0.154.106 (talk) 09:56, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

More page protection

I have just protected this page for 3 days. This edit war has been going on between bouts of protection since at least June. Can you please try and agree on some form of dispute resolution to resolve this as repeated reverts isn't getting anybody anywhere.Fainites ^barleyscribs 22:48, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

The agreement will come when the promoters of "Serbocroatist" paradigm stop their information warfare- trying to subsume Croatian language under non-existent Serbo-Croatian.Mir Harven (talk) 19:06, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Mir Harven. Croatian nationalists will only stop edit warring if the rest of us, including the actual linguists, give in to their alternate take on reality. Or, perhaps, if Croatia agrees to accept a common term for BCS because the EU refuses to accept the expense of four additional official languages which are all effectively a single language, but that's years away, if it ever happens. The only current solutions I see are (1) permanent PC2 protection, as agreed to by RFPP above, perhaps together with standard level-1 protection; (2) blocking or topic banning all nationalist editors edit warring on this page per ARBMAC, as happened with Croq and perhaps will with Mir Harven, together with permanent standard level-1 or PC2 protection. — kwami (talk) 19:43, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

The above post is an indicator into what kind of worthless agitprop parts of English language wikipedia has turned. This kwami (whatever) 1) doesn't speak Croatian, but, hey, he's "devoted" to policing page on Croatian language, the language he's clueless about, 2) has a record of duplicitous behavior re data which contradict his bias and openly hostile attitude towards Croatian language as a symbol of Croatian identity. This person has frequently deleted or marginalized data on Croatian language (Croatian census of 2001 shows that more than 95% of Croatia's inhabitants speak Croatian, and less than 1% Serbo-Croatian);has called- in what is written above- the foremost Croatian linguists( Radoslav Katičić, Stjepan Babić, Ranko Matasović,..) "nationalists" because they all agree that: 1) Croatian language is not an offshoot of any supra-language, be it called Serbo-Croatian, BCS or whatever, 2) There has never existed anything like Serbo-Croatian language. Something that didn't exist, couldn't dissolve.

So, where we are ? With a wiki commissary who tries to impose his fixations: a) that those who deny the existence of "Serbo-Croatian" or BCS are terrible Croatian nationalists (i.e. all Croatian linguists) b) that Croatia will be the only would-be EU country to renounce the right to use her national language. The first is plainly an example of commissary-like label, the second wishful thinking. In the meantime, those who are, unlike user kwami .., conversant with Croatian, can refresh their memory re Croatian pre-eminent linguists' stance towards Croatian: http://www.matica.hr/Vijenac/vijenac427.nsf/AllWebDocs/Srpski_jezik_nije_stokavski , http://www.matica.hr/Vijenac/vijenac383.nsf/AllWebDocs/Srpsko_hrvatski_nikada_nije_ostvaren__jer_nije_postojao , ..and as far as ex-pat pamphleteer Snježana Kordić's Barnum-like promotion in Croatian media lately is concerned, the two links will suffice: http://slobodnadalmacija.hr/Spektar/tabid/94/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/113188/Default.aspx , http://www.hercegbosna.org/kultura/hrvatski-jezik/jezik-lingvistika-i-politika-posljednji-mohikanci-%C2%BBserbokroatiz-1812.html

And, yes. The letter, in Croatian-well, this is the page on Croatian after all,, right ? This piece, published in Croatian monthly "Globus", written by a Croatian linguist Zvonko Pandžić (resident in Germany), succinctly demolishes the myth of Serbocroatism, along with it's most vociferous contemporary devotee.

Jezik srpski, nacionalizam hrvatski

Globus od 20. 08. 2010., slično drugim izdanjima EPH (Jutarnji list, Slobodna Dalmacija) i nekim jugonostalgičarskim niskotiražnim balkanskim tiskovinama (Javnost, Slobodna Bosna) poklanja čak četiri stranice Snježani Kordić kako bi ona reklamirala vlastitu knjigu Jezik i nacionalizam (Zagreb 2010). Autoricu Globus predstavlja i kao znanstvenicu “briljantne karijere” s uspjesima prije svega u Njemačkoj. Činjenice su ipak malčice drugačije. Kordićeva već godinama ne radi u struci, pa ni kao obična lektorica bilo kojega jezika, barem ne u Njemačkoj. Ovdje je naime njezina “znanost” prepoznata kao prozelitsko ideologiziranje, onkraj bilo koje suvisle jezikoslovne teorije. Nije prošla ni njezina priča da je u Hrvatskoj “progonjena na jezičnoj osnovi”, e da bi joj stoga Nijemci, mislila je, dali azil, respective kakvu profesuru za “srpskohrvatski jezik”.

Rečena knjiga, zapravo reciklaža starijih polemika iz Književne republike, treba danas, nakon što je autorica zakazala u Njemačkoj, medijski pripremiti povratak “svjetski poznate znanstvenice” u Hrvatsku na neku sinekuricu, gdje bi predavala svoju propalu teoriju o “srpskohrvatskome jeziku”. U orkestriranu akciju, pored nekih profesora s Filozofskoga fakulteta u Zagrebu i nekih medija, uključilo se i Ministarstvo kulture Republike Hrvatske, pa je za tisak toga pamfleta, u Hrvatskoj inače „progonjene” Snježane Kordić, izdvojilo lijep novac. U tiskanom izdanju knjige ne piše koja su to dva jezikoslovca za Ministarstvo kulture napisali pozitivno mišljenje o istom uradku, ali me ne bi čudilo kada bi jedan od tih bio i Miloš Kovačević iz „Srpskoga Sarajeva“, pisac Slova o srpskom jeziku (1998.), znanstveni intimus i veliki obožavatelj gospođe Kordić i njezine kongenijalne lingvistike. Sa “slovopiscima” Kordićeva i inače dijeli mišljenje da je štokavski jezik jedan, ma kako da se zavao. Oni doduše vele da se zove srpski i da se prostire do Karlovca, Karlobaga i Virovitice, dočim Kordićeva tvrdi da se jezik zove “srpskohrvatski” i da se određuje, kao i kod slovopisaca, štokavskim dijalektom, na kojemu da je taj njezin jedini jezik “srpskohrvatski” standardiziran. Međutim, dok joj nacija povijesno nastaje u međusobnom diskursu ljudi na određenom terenu, jezik joj se, nasuprot tome, određuje isključivo po genetskim kriterijima, tj. tek po nekim osobinama štokavskoga dijalekta. Drugim riječima, jezik joj nije ni povijesna ni socijalna realnost, iako je svaki jezik u zbiljnosti, poglavito njegov književni (standardni) oblik, gledano i sinkrono i dijakrono, u svojoj biti diskurs (konvencija) par excellence, uvijek određenih ljudi na određeneom prostoru. Vrla jezikoslovka nikako dakle da shvati da su i jezici, a ne samo nacije, nastali u diskursu određenih ljudi kroz povijest. Istina, ponekad su neki već oblikovani književni jezici bili izvezeni, recimo u Južnu ili Sjevernu Ameriku (engleski, španjolski, itd.), ili se razvijali iz više centara (njemački), ali i imenom i sadržajem bili su s vremenom prihvaćeni od određenih novooblikovanih nacija i(li) država, i to davno prije formiranja modernoga pojma nacije.

Prebacivati dakle razvoj takvih “policentričnih” jezika kao model na “srpskohrvatski” jezik, iako su se hrvatski i srpski stoljećima “standardizirali” na posvema različit, da ne kažem antagonističan način, kako to čini Kordićeva, doista je posve apsurdno. Pokušaj stvaranja zajedničkoga “srpskohrvatskoga” jezika u zajedničkoj državi od 1918. do 1989. propao je konačno upravo stoga što su Hrvati već stoljećima ranije svoj književni jezik razvijali (diskurzirali) u drugome smjeru od srpskoga, pa su jezik (i naciju) kroz povijest formirali na drugi način od Srba. Dakle, sasvim je svejedno koliko srpski i hrvatski jezik danas imaju zajedničkih dijalekata, slova, riječi ili sintaktičkih pravila, oni su različiti svojim stoljećima prakticiranim prepoznatljivim književnom i komunikacijskom ustrojem i svrhom. Dakle, proces nastanka hrvatskoga (književnoga/standardnoga) jezika bio je i ostao u službi određene jezične, književne, pravne i nacionalne zajednice, one zajednice koja svoj jezik u javnosti i privatno uvijek prepoznaje, javno ga zapisuje i govori.

Dabome, kao sredstvo komunikacije Srbi i Hrvati mogu izabrati bilo koji jezik (engleski ili urdu, esperanto ili latinski), ali svoj materinji književni jezik ne mogu dokinuti, jer jezik nije samo sredstvo komunikacije o stvarima s određenom, izvana definiranom opredmetljenom strukturom, kako bi to htjela Kordićeva, nego i izraz zajedništva, kulture i svekolikoga socijalnog napretka određenoga naroda, i to dijakrono i sinkrono. Upravo o tome zbore filozofija jezika i sociolingvistika: bez određene ljudske zajednice nema ni jezika, a ako nema zajedničkoga jezika (diskursa) nema ni stvaranja povijesnih nacija. Nadalje, koji jezik odgovara kojoj zajednici znati će ona sama, dakako, uvijek iz povijesne perspektive svoga kulturnoga razvoja. Amerikancima će tako odgovarati engleski, Kolumbijcima španjolski, itd., dočim su Hrvati, bez obzira gdje žive i kojim dijalektom inače kod kuće govore, kao književni (prestižni) jezik (u Crkvi najprije), izabrali štokavsko-jekavski idiom (zvao se on hrvatski, ilirski ili slovinski), koji njeguju stoljećima prije Srba (od vremena Džore Držića do Matije Divkovića i nas danas). Srbi su opet svoj književni/standardni jezik ustrojili na štokavsko-ekavskoj osnovi 1868. uzevši i novu varijantu Karadžićeve ćirilice, čime je zauvijek markiran različit i budući razvoj ta dva jezika, pa ga nisu mogle ujediniti nikakve (pri)sile i hokus-pokus jezikoslovne teorije iz prošlosti. Ne zabrinjava dakle uopće što Kordićeva, upravo zbog niske razine njezine znanstvene apstrakcije, svoju sakatu, u Njemačkoj propalu teoriju, danas prodaje nekim zadrtim jugoslavenima u Zagrebu (Durieux, Književna republika), takvi se emocionalno očito još nisu odlijepili od “srpskohrvatskoga” jezika, ali zabrinjava mogućnost da bi ona takvo što uskoro mogla predavati hrvatskim studentima, i to sada kada su je njemački odbili. Zajednički jezik u demokratskome diskursu nije uspio Hrvatima nametnuti nitko, pa čak ni onda kada su neke hrvatske veličine potpisivale jedinstvo “nacije i jezika”, hrvatskoga i srpskoga (Beč), odnosno (samo) jezika hrvatskoga i srpskoga (Novi Sad). Hrvatski narod u prestižnoj praksi nije slijedio te svoje navodne veličine, duboko je ipak njegov jezik već bio ukorijenjen u vlastitoj književnosti, u tiskanim djelima, u Crkvi, u narodnim pjesmama, sekundarnoj usmenosti, itd.

Nasuprot vremenima tuđinskih diktatura, današnja je situacija ipak daleko povoljnija za hrvatski jezik i narod. U naše vrijeme tako, pa čak i u olovnim komunističkim vremenima, velika većina hrvatskih jezikoslovaca, na čelu s Katičićem i Babićem, slijedi volju svoga naroda i komunicira s njime. Tako svi hrvatski jezikoslovci, osim rijetkih iznimki, razmišljaju danas slično i o svome jeziku i o naciji i državi, dočim su Kordićeva i pokoji osamljeni professor s Filozofskoga fakulteta u Zagrebu danas tek recidivi jedne već odavno izumrle vrste, koja je svoj narod uvijek htjela podučavati a ne osluškivati i analizirati jezik kojim on govori i piše. Stoga će, ne treba se čuditi, Kordićeva i njezini malobrojni trabanti, nakon što joj je teorija skrahirala u Njemačkoj, i ubuduće još glasnije svakoga onoga proglašavati nacionalistom koji govori o posebnome hrvatskom jeziku (quod erat demonstrandum), dočim će joj srpski ili srpskohrvatski jezik uvijek izgledati tako prirodan, blizak i po sebi razumljiv. Jezičnoga nacionalizma moći će se tako i ubuduće naći samo kod Hrvata. Kordićeva, znakovito i dosljedno, “znanstvenu” sveštokavsku balistiku i artiljeriju Slova o srpskom jeziku kod Karlovca i Karlobaga nije tako ni spomenula u čitavoj knjizi, dočim su navodno hrvatski “purizam” i “nacionalizam”, uključujući i sve hrvatske jezikoslovce koji ne prihvaćaju smušenu nazovi lingvistiku Snježane Kordić, prije svih naravno Stjepan Babić i Radoslav Katičić, na skoro svakoj stranici ubrojeni u “nacionalsocijaliste” i “Hitlerove sljedbenike”. Bijedna žena, još bjednije teorije.

Zvonko Pandžić, Oberstudienrat (Viši studijski savjetnik), Würzburg, Njema Mir Harven (talk) 21:45, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Quite a piece of nationalist denunciation full of hate Mir, well done! Sounds like written by yourself personally. I'm not sure if it violates WP:COPYRIGHT, but it certainly violates WP:BLP.

For our foreign friends who, quote, "doesn't speak Croatian, but, hey, [are] "devoted" to policing page on Croatian language, the language [they are] clueless about", here is a translation of few juicy parts at the end:

As opposed to the times of foreign dictatorships, the today's situation is much better for Croatian language and people. So, in our times, and even in the dark communist ages, the sheer majority of Croatian linguists, lead by Katičić and Babić, follows the will of their people and communicates with it. So all Croatian linguists, but for rare exceptions, today think similarly about their language and nation and state [ Blut und Boden, I suppose?], while Kordić and a few lonely professors from Zagreb Faculty of Phylosophy are today just recidives of a long died-out species, which wanted to condescend their people, instead of listening and analysing the language they speak and write. Thus, one should not wonder, Kordić and her few trabants, after her theory crashed in Germany, will continue to proclaim a nationalist of all the ones who advocate Croatian as a separate language (quod erat demonstrandum), while to her Serbian or Serbo-Croatian will always look so close, natural and comprehensible by itself. She is able to find linguistic nationalism only in Croats.[...]A miserable woman, still more miserable teories.

In the press you read, they publish stuff like that? No such user (talk) 07:37, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Wrong assumptions, commie name calling & defamation techniques unworthy of an answer. http://hakave.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6662:jezik-srpski-nacionalizam-hrvatski&catid=44:prilozi-graana&Itemid=82 , http://www.croatia.ch/kultura/knjizevnost/080415a.php , http://www.matica.hr/Vijenac/vijenac404.nsf/AllWebDocs/Nova_Maruliceva_djela , http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/jbp/hl/2004/00000031/00000001/art00002 ....Mir Harven (talk) 17:04, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

• Pandžić is a deranged nationalist spewing tiresome tirades in an attempt to discredit anybody who disagrees with his fascist dogmas. Judging by his "review", he didn't even read Kordić's book, which BTW received stellar accolades in a bunch of Croatian newspapers. Angry and bitter old man who cannot cope with reality existing outside his parochial bubble. Kordić's book was funded by Croatian Ministry of Culture, while Pandžić is rotting away in radical-right institutions such as HKV which nobody gives a damn about. And this is just the beginning: Soon EU will order your over-indebted puppet-government to incorporate that material into schoolbooks... You know that it's coming. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 10:49, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Yawn... Pandžić is a well-situated linguist in Germany, with permanent professorship status; Kordić is actually jobless in past two years (her political campaign has not payed much, it seems. Germans have seen her through. Authoress of one primer on "Serbo-Croatian", polemical squabble later patched together in a book Croatian Ministry of Culture (who runs this place, anyway ? Biškupić should have long since been booted.), in one of their not so rare moments of servility & masochism, found "impelled" to subsidize. They also subsidized Greater Serbian "poetic" anthology- so much of the moral stamina & intellectual capacity prevalent in this ministry. So, here we are: Pandžić, re-evaluator, editor of fundamental works of Marulić, Kašić, Divković,..author of broad range of subjects, as can be seen in his http://www.benjamins.nl/cgi-bin/t_articles.cgi?bookid=HL%2031%3A1&artid=42049185 , http://hrcak.srce.hr/search/?q=%22Zvonko+Pand%C5%BEi%C4%87%22 ,. In short, Pandžić has published numerous valuable studies and books wherein he analyses works of preeminent Croatian men of letters in 16th and 17th centuries- in Croatian and Latin. Pandžić's professional position in Germany is secure- unlike Kordić's, so some Croatian linguists still infected with Yugo malaise have participated in concentrated media aggression (Globus, Književna republika, Nacional, Slobodna Dalmacija, Jutarnji list, Novi list) which tried to promote a worthless ideological patchwork of her "book" -in order to secure her a chair in Zagreb Philosophical Faculty. To no avail, because the junk science- like Kordić's- is easily dismantled as a fraud. The rest of the poster's "text" (puppet government, over-indebted.... never mind this is not true, but- what this misinformation has to do with the subject ? Except to show Štambuk's hatred towards Croatian national suzerainty and integrity, in all fields, be they economic or cultural.) Well, Pandžić is "old man" in his 50s, he doesn't work for Hakave, he lives and works in Germany, ..and this poster, as I see it, is on the verge of desperation because his little Serbocroatian obsession, still heavily guarded in "democratic" wiki halls, is falling apart and going to pieces everywhere (in those aspects it hasn't vanished so far). Good riddance: http://www.hercegbosna.org/preuzimanja/jezik--kultura--religija/zvonko-pandzic-od-galileja-do-zlatne-pticice--o-posmrtnoj-mutaciji-%C2%BBsrpskohrvatskoga%C2%AB-jezika--303-kb-1811.html Mir Harven (talk) 16:11, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

And Pandžić's nationalistic vitriol was published where exactly? On some obscure ultra-right website/magazine. Kordić's book's has been OTOH positively reviewed in every single mainstream Croatian newspaper, including all the major Internet portals. According to commonsense reasoning, Pandžić is an outlier, and his extremist viewpoints are not shared in the general public.

Your attempts to discredit Kordić and glorify this Pandžić guy are just ridiculous. Let him publish a billion papers on obscure 16th Christian propaganda manuscripts that nobody gives a damn about today. What Kordić writes about is modern sociolinguistics, something outside the mind of people like Pandžić and youself, who still live X centuries in the history. Every dissenting opionion is to you a form of "Greater Serbian attack". That dogmatic thinking is typical of totalitarian regime of Tuđman, but those days are long gone. You're unable to engage in a constructive discourse so you launch into personal attacks and slander. Even the well-received reviews of a publication that goes against your dogmas is a form of "concentrated media aggression". Have you any idea how crazy that sounds?

"Yugo-malaise" has nothing to do with it. Modern standard literary Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian and Montenegrin are a single language - Neoštokavian. That simple fact of nature cannot be changed not by fabricating new phonemes ("ie"), new spellings of words that nobody uses apart for the well-paid folks who write new orthographies all the time, or nationalist NewSpeak of gazilion neologisms used only internally in a tiny circle of rightist publications. Yugoslavia, Karadžić, Kašić, abbot Držiha...don't matter. What matters is how these national "languages" of today relate to each other. History is completely irrelevant. And they relate to each other as being instances of one pluricentric standard. Which in no way invalidates nationalities, national sovereigns or ethnicities withing their respective countries! That's the whole point of what Kordić is saying. There is no need for one "central standard" for a language to exist in that way. Nobody tries o impose anything, or resurrect the "standard of Yugoslavia" like you or Pandžić have been continually claiming. It's abut describing the situation as it is now.

BTW I don't "hate" Croatian anything - I'm just saying you of things how they are. In particular, I don't give a shit about Croatia or any other country for that matter. As a globocrat, I find joy in the destruction of those imaginary entities that we call "sovereigns" and their corresponding ethno-religious-linguistic tribalism. If you cannot see the cues and connect the dots..well, good for you.

The "paper" that you link to on your website is bunch of extreme personal attacks and nationalist make-believe. It's not even funny (the way Kordić ridicules Croatian nationalist-linguists): just pure, unbridled hatred. Pandžić is undoubtedly very angry and disappointed man. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 19:03, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Actually history IS relevant, if only in a way that actually destroys further the nationalist claims of a tri-dialectal base for standard Croatian, or that the neo-Shtokavian standardization was part of a Serbian linguistic conspiracy personified by Maretić and Broz. It was because of the historical and political situation of the 19th century that guided the Illyrian movement into ensuring that neo-Shtokavian would become the base for modern standard Croatian - basically consigning Chakavian and Kajkavian to mainly philological curiosities or showpieces in some feel-good festivals. Note also the failure of the "ahkavians" who on the model of non-Shtokavian dialects tried to introduce plural locative endings that would have been distinct from the instrumental and dative plural in modern standard Croatian. The large-scale merging of dative, locative and instrumental has traditionally been typical of speech in Herzegovina and points further east. Virtually every ex-Yugoslav also knows that the case-merging is stronger the further east one goes to the point where Macedonians merge almost all declension into the nominative.

The Croatian nationalist claim that historic documents of "Croatian" by Kašić or Marulić justify calling modern standard Croatian a distinct "language" from Bosnian, Montenegrin and Serbian show deliberate mismatching of undoubted literary output with an independent language planning decision from a few centuries later. It evades the glaringly obvious fact that BCMS in 2010 is still based on East Hercegovinian neo-Shtokavian to the point of keeping the places of Chakavian, Kajkavian and Torlakian as sociolinguistically-inferior dialects. Not even the most nationalist Croat today would even dare to advance socially or professionally by relying only on Chakavian or Kajakvian which are supposedly such integral parts of the Croatian language. It wouldn't surprise me that the same nationalist Croats who insist on the sanctity of a tri-dialectal basis for Croatian would be the first to ridicule a Croat who used more than a few Chakavianisms or Kajkavianisms in a professional capacity on the grounds that they weren't speaking "proper Croatian". Blatant hypocrisy. In a similar way not even the most nationalist Serb today would dare to get ahead professionally by insisting on using Torlakian even though according to Croatian nationalists Torlakian is part of the bi-dialectal basis of Serbian - which is as dishonest and false as prattling about Croatian's tri-dialectal basis. Vput (talk) 00:24, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Real categorization

Slovene:

• Kajkavian - Ekavian

Croatian:

• Čakavian - Ikavian / Ekavian (only Croatian dialect and original one, close to Kajkavian dialects of Slovene and Croatian)

• Kajkavian - Ekavian (Croatian variant close to Slovene & Čakavian Cro)

• Štokavian - Ikavian / Ijekavian (Ijekavian used for standard Croatian, although Ikavian Štokavian uses a lot of Kaj, Ča vocabulary)

Serbian:

• Štokavian - Ekavian / Ijekavian (Ekavian used for standard Serbian)

What is important here that Serbian language has connections only to Štokavian Croatian. If you want to invent and introduce S-C in categorization, it can work only for Štokavian dialects of Croatian and Serbian. It can't work for Čakavian and Kajkavian Croatian, in this case you should invent Croato-Slovene language too! Categorization you use is false. 78.0.154.106 (talk) 10:44, 1 September 2010 (UTC) But if there would be Croato-Serbian nad Croato-Slovene then there should be also Serbo-Macedonian! The Serbs have used Croatian language as model for standardization in the 19th century and borrowed a lot, but the most of Serbian vocabulary remained the same and that's one share with the Macedonians. So Slovene would be S.S. and Croato-Slovene, Croatian would be S.S and Croato-Slovene & Croato-Serbian, Serbian would be S.S. and Croato-Serbian & Serbo-Macedonian, Macedonian would be S.S. & Serbo-Macedonian. LOL Completely useless but anyway it's incomparably more accurate than insisting on only some Serbo-Croatian. 78.0.154.106 (talk) 12:28, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

You misunderstand the usage of the term SC in English. It is used for all S & C dialects.

If your argument were correct, then dialectologically, SC would be Shtokavian, and there would be no Serbian or Croatian language. Serbian and Croatian would only mean 'relating to Serbs / Croats', in language or anything else. But there would still be a node which contains Shto, Kaj, and Cha, which would not have a name.

Another name for SC should clarify: BCS. That doesn't mean just the Shtokavian dialect of B, C, and S, but all of B, C, and S. SC / BCS includes Cha, Kaj, Shto, and Torlakian. It's called "Croatian" when spoken by Croats, and "Serbian" when spoken by Serbs. — kwami (talk) 18:27, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

No kwami, sorry but you are completely wrong. I can see that you deal with philology and linguistics in wide area, but in your comment I can see that your knowledge and understanding about the South Slavic languages equals zero. Nothing personally but that's what I see. I guess you've been massively misinformed and fooled by someone. Probably someone whose only motivation is politics, in this case extremely negative one.

You wrote: You misunderstand the usage of the term SC in English. It is used for all S & C dialects.

It is impossible. You see all dialects within area conditionally named SC are not dialects of the same or similar language. Term SC is 100% discrimination.

Problem with SC is that it really tries to eat Štokavians, make use of Što standardizations and ignore existence of the real languages in area. Problem is that from the very first appearance SC was only political term, invented by the Austrians in the 19th century in order to hide ethnic specialties of Croats whose country was politically divided among Italians, Austrians and Hungarians. They were afraid of Croatian national resurrection and unification so they were systematically ignoring Croatian name in the documents, in the most cases Croats were just „Slavs“, and sometimes the Austrians made use of existence of Serbian minority in Croatia so population was simply "Serbo-Croats". Pure politics. In the 20th century this term was adopted by Serbian hegemonists whose idea was that all South Slavs were Serbs. That's why Serbian king (who was awarded with Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia by the European political forces after collapse of Austrian Monarchy) invented "srpsko-hrvatsko-slovenački" language (Serbo-Croato-Slovene) and erased historical municipal and other borders to erase ethnic specialties and differences among these peoples in his Yugoslavia between 2 WWs. They were all supposed to become Serbs. Of course, this SCS lang. never existed as well as SC never existed, only term was invented, not an idiom. This monstrous politic ended in bloody confrontations between Croats and Serbs in WWII. After WWII totalitarian communist regime in SFRJ adopted SC term to erase antagonism between Croats and Serbs, but it never worked. Croats were speaking Croatian, Serbs were speaking Serbian. Probably only Bosniaks spoke some kind of SC, since S and C were mixing in Bosnia. However since the authorities were insisting on term SC in Serbia and Croatia too, they explained that 2 languages still remained 2 languages but like variances of SC group. Of course this was never reality. I'm a Croat and my grammar book 40 years ago was pure Croatian. Grammar books in Serbia were Serbian. In communication with the administration anyone was free to self-identify as a speaker of any, C, S, or SC. So it appeared that SC speakers 'officially' were usually those from mixed marriages or those engaged in the communist regime, no matter if their speech was one or the other in reality. Official language in JNA (Yugoslav Army) was SC by official definition, but it was pure Serbian in practice. The most of the Croats were still identifying themselves as the speakers of Croatian, while the most of the Serbs as the speakers of Serbian. So even in times when term SC was the most often used in Yugoslavia it was not truly defined. It remained political term. However this term became popular also outside of SFRJ and that's how it entered in the English language, thanks to ex-Yugoslav institutions and pan-Slavistic communist propaganda. And this episode also resulted with bloody war 2 decades ago. Now, when we finally can rest from ill-defined SC and take the real thing – languages with their dialects, we are faced with SC zombies who still spread this propaganda of the past in our modern age and moment. Term SC is not used anymore in ex-Yugoslav countries, but SC zombies are now trying to resurrect it through international literature and en.wikipedia here – practically they make a use of international ignorance and non-understanding considering history, meaning and usage of term SC. At home they have no chance, it's a joke nobody wants to listen to.

So there is no meaning of SC in English different to meaning of SC in any other language. SC exists or it doesn't exist. According to Croatian and Serbian academies it doesn't exist. We got free from that dogma of the past. According to some individual authors and their supporters it exists as a language group, but this statement is based only on the misusage of the Neo-Štokavian standardizations in the last few centuries, where similarities are presented as characteristics of the same language, while differences are completely ignored.

You wrote: If your argument were correct, then dialectologically, SC would be Shtokavian, and there would be no Serbian or Croatian language. Serbian and Croatian would only mean 'relating to Serbs / Croats', in language or anything else.

Sorry, but I don't think that you know what is Ča, Kaj and Što! Now I must write a few words about Slavic languages in general. You surely know about 3 groups: Eastern (ES), Western (WS) and Southern (SS).

ES languages are the most homogenous and this classification works the best. WS languages are result of Balto-Slavic migration to the south-west. They still show some degree of homogeneity but not like ES, however term WS still works good. SS languages are the most heterogeneous, in such degree that it is reasonable to say that this group is defined almost only by geography. SS languages don't have the same ancestor. More precisely the only ancestor of all SS languages is proto-Slavic. Nothing newer by age. But proto-Slavic is ancestor of all Slavic languages in general, ES, WS and SS. You see Slovene and Croatian language has relations to WS languages, while Serbian, Montenegrin, Macedonian and Bulgarian have not. Furthermore, some additional historical division of SS in its development was Western-proto-SS and Eastern-proto-SS. Today people like to simplify and say that only Macedonian and Bulgarian are Eastern while all the others are Western. This is also wrong since Serbian is based on speeches that belonged to the both sides. Torlakian was Eastern. Moment when Serbian became closer to the Western group was their standardization for what Montenegrin Štokavian was used as basis and portions were borrowed from Croatian. That's how Serbian is sitting on parts of both glossaries today, Western and Eastern proto-SS.

Now how Croatian language is formed historically and today? Kajkavian/Čakavian formed special word pool (a little bit familiar to WS languages) and never had any relations to the most of the Štokavians. This word pool truly is what was supposed to be Western-proto-SS, in its core. The only Štokavians who were also using that word pool were historical Ikavian Ščakavians who developed into Crotian Ikavian and Ijekavian Štokavians. Ikavian speech is solely Croatian characteristic which connects Croatian Štokavians with Čakavians and Kajkavians. This actually means that Štokavian dialect is not precisely defined dialect at all in all this area. You see, Russians are Štokavians too, Ukrainians too, as well as Macedonians. This characteristic is much wider in Slavic languages and doesn't represent some precisely defined dialect or speech. Here in the Western Balkans we truly have at least 3 different groups of original Štokavians: 1. Croats (Ikavian in Bosnia&Herzegovina and southern Dalmatia – they were Ijekavianized lately), 2. Montenegrins & Serbs (Ijekavian, Ekavian) and 3. Macedonians (Ekavian).

How Croatian language was standardized? Everybody says Ijekavian Neo-Štokavian. Yes, but it doesn't define that standardization at all. The main structure is Neo-Štokavian, but vocabulary is Kaj / Ča / Cro Što (historically Ikavian based). Serbian Što is standardized by main Ekavian Neo-Štokavian structure which means a little bit different grammar but also vocabulary is largely different, they have no Kaj/Ča vocabulary at all and overlapping goes only for a part of Neo-Štokavian word pool. They use a lot of Eastern-proto-SS word pool. In result modern Serbian Neo-Štokavians can easily understand modern Croatian Neo-Štokavians. But Ikavian Štokavian is already somewhat distant to them (not only because Ikavianism but rather because of Ča/Kaj word pool involved) and they can't understand Kajkavians and Čakavians at all. It's the other world to them. That's why there can be no SC to join Croatian and Serbian into the same group with sharing dialects. Croatian and Serbian languages don't share dialects. Just one where they are meeting in both structure and vocabulary – Neo-Štokavian Ijekavian.

I've made a little tablet to show you what I'm talking about. You can see that I've used some extremely simple sentences and phrases, since nothing more is needed to present how deep and far is a strait between Kaj/Ča and modern Cro and Serb standards.

English: Where are you going?
Slovene - Kaj: Kam greš?
Croatian - Ča: Di greš? Kamo greš?
Croatian - Što: Gdje ideš?
Serbian - Što: Gde ideš?

English: I am going to the west.
Slovene - Kaj: Grem proti zahodu.
Croatian - Ča: Gren va zahod.
Croatian - Što: Idem na zapad.
Serbian - Što: Idem na zapad.

English: What are you doing?
Slovene - Kaj: Kaj delaš?
Croatian - Ča: Ča dilaš (delaš)? Ča činiš?
Croatian - Što: Što radiš?
Serbian - Što: Šta radiš?

English: I'm sleeping in the bed.
Slovene - Kaj: Spim v postelji.
Croatian - Ča: Spim u posteji.
Croatian - Što: Spavam u krevetu.
Serbian - Što: Spavam u krevetu.

English: Light the fire.
Slovene - Kaj: Zažgej ogenj.
Croatian - Ča: Užgi oganj.
Croatian - Što: Upali vatru.
Serbian - Što: Upali vatru.

English: My word is saying...
Slovene - Kaj: Moja beseda poveda...
Croatian - Ča: Moja besida povida...
Croatian - Što: Moja riječ govori...
Serbian - Što: Moja reč govori...

I've used Slovene Kajkavian as the most western SS lang., Čakavian Croatian as the Adriatic Sea representative, I've dropped Kajkavian Croatian since it's their closest relative. Ikavian Štokavian is a third ring in historical Croatian language chain also not shown in the table. That last one makes connection to the other Štokavians: its development was Ijekavization, so it ended in Ijekavian Croatian (standard). The other Štokavians are - Ijekavian B/S/C in Bosnia&Herzegovina, - Ijekavian Montenegrin, - Ekavian Serbian (standard) and - Ekavian Macedonian.

As you can see Kaj/Ča is completely different language and word pool, while Neo-Što in C and S variances looks almost completely identical. That's what few extremely short and simple phrases suggest from the first sight. You don't have to be an expert to see it. To show Što differences we should make more tablets to show other similarities and differences between different Što dialects and standards, historical and modern…

So back to your comment, yes, that's what SC zombies want. They want to introduce SC instead of real languages, Croatian and Serbian, and they argument it with similarities in Neo-Štokavian variances of both. It automatically annuls origins, histories, separate developments, etc. of both languages. More directly it erases Ča and Kaj dialects and vocabulary, so practically Croatian language and its rich historical literature never existed. So we're deeply back in politics. You see, there's no way to introduce SC on scientific level, it was and will always be just politics.

You wrote: But there would still be a node which contains Shto, Kaj and Cha, which would not have a name.

Yes, and it has very accurate name, it's Croatian language. And only one of its dialects is partly shared with Serbian, which is not enough to form SC group. Do you know what are differences between Spanish and Portugese? It is very similar case, but noone wants to create SP language group.

You wrote: Another name for SC should clarify: BCS. That doesn't mean just the Shtokavian dialect of B, C, and S, but all of B, C, and S. SC / BCS includes Cha, Kaj, Shto, and Torlakian. It's called „Croatian“ when spoken by Croats, and „Serbian“ when spoken by Serbs.

Complete catastrophe to read something like this. Unbelievable. I've already shown you that SC is political and not scientific term. I've also explained you that such term can be truly attached only to portions of Neo-Štokavian variances of different languages. Now you want to expand it to BCS. It only proves what I say. Ča and Kaj have nothing to do with Serbs, Bosniaks and others. They practically don't understand it very well, or sometimes they don't understand it at all. Even Cro Neo-Štokavians have problems in understanding it. I'm native Čakavian so I completely understand the both and that’s why I understand Slovene, almost completely, without any studying. You see, Ča is dialect of Croatian solely and Kaj is dialect of both Croatian and Slovene and these 2 Cro dialects make solid bridge between Croatian and Slovene languages, as well as historical relation to Western Slavic languages. If SC / BCS term misuses Neo-Što standards (I hope I've successfully shown you it does) it would mean that Kaj and Ča are dialects of Neo-Štokavian modern SS standards! How stupid to say something like that! Only Croatian Što standard uses Kaj/Ča word pool. That's what makes the main difference. Kaj and Ča are not dialects of Što!!! As well as Neo-Što is not a language or languages!!! The same goes for Torlakian. Torlakian has nothing to do with Croatian language. If there is a group of Croats in Serbia who speak Torlakian, it means that they speak dialect of Serbian language. No need to lie and make a mess of it. Even if there is "Croatian" variance of Torlakian just because a group of Croats brought some Cro characteristic in that speech, it still doesn't form a dialect of Croatian language, since it doesn't have characteristics of Cro language at all. It remains what it is: historical Serbian dialect whose elements are included in Serbian Što standard. Otherwise, it would mean that if I'm a Croat and I speak English, English is Croatian. No way. What's more if you want to have SC / BCS with all those dialects together then you should add Slovenian, Macedonian, Montenegrin and Bulgarian and really expand this BCS to BCSMSMB! Since Kaj/Ča can be dialects of only Croatian or some Croatian-Slovene group! These dialects have nothing to do with the others. Cro Neo-Što standard is closer to Slovene by vocabulary thanks to Kaj/Ča, while closer to the others structurally thanks to basic Neo-Što structure! And BCSMSMB would be South Slavic languages. CS / BCS goes only for basic Neo-Što structure of a few languages. It's not a language, language group, nor a dialect. It's nothing. This S-C paraidiom creature is like some special squad jumping from the bushes or road bandit in action. Excuse me but it seems that, according to this template, line between S and C in S-C largely helps S to take whatever from C, even if it for centuries belongs only to C and was for centuries much closer to Slovene S and not Serbian S. What is S-C for anyway? Rebirth of SFRJ dogma used by communist agitators lost in space and time and used by Serbian nationalists in their long-term plans against the Croats? Nothing else.

It's called "Croatian" when spoken by Croats, and "Serbian" when spoken by Serbs.

This is completely crazy. If you have any philological knowledge or education, how can you say something like this? Here in the Western Balkans we immediately know what is Croatian and what is Serbian language! We don't have to check who is who in the documents! Why don't you introduce Portugalo-Spanish? So you can list some Spanish dialect as PS which is "Spanish" if spoken by the Spaniards or "Portuguese" if spoken by the Portugueses, or opposite. Insane.

Now please, take all this into consideration, think a while: what is going on here? Don't you see that this SC / BCS mania makes a problem here. There will never be peace in these pages until you, objective wikipedians (I truly hope you are the one), block and stop this over-politicized shit. Maniacs like Ivan Štambuk shouldn't get anyone's support here. His capability to use expert terminology doesn’t prove his position. Don’t be naïve. Simply do whatever you do in other pages about languages. Use official policies of the seating academies and not personal policies of the individuals. Use SS languages and their natural dialects and not artificial politicized hybrids invented by those who are lost in space, frustrated by the past or have some secret mission. Beauty lies in differences, differences attract each other, I feel sorry for idiots who don't see it. We all should keep and accentuate our own specialties and only then we can respect the other ones. Exactly violent and non-real equations of different ethnological specialties in the Western Balkans resulted in bloody confrontations and wars in the 20th century between peoples who were close by the languages, but not the same. Now the same stupid war is ongoing here in en.wikipedia in the same manner. Term SC / BCS is discrimination towards all of South Slavic languages and technically invalid. There is no place for BCS in classification of the South Slavic languages! There is no place for hegemonistic and violent politics in philology!

Sincerly, Baby Alien from Croatia. 78.3.120.82 (talk) 06:11, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

You're confusing Standard SC, the official register of Yugoslavia, with SC as a language. I could make many of the same arguments about Croatian, by sometimes equating it with the standard language, and sometimes with all Croatian dialects. — kwami (talk) 07:11, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm not confusing anything. There is no SC language. What is SC anyway? What you do here is OR. That's how you call it don't you? You should act like encyclopedists here, but you took position of researchers! Who gives you right to distort and erase one European language? Standard Croatian language is built of its dialects, Ča, Kaj and Što. Neo-Štokavian is only main structure. You are completely non-competent. Now I'm sure. Baby Alien. 78.3.120.82 (talk) 07:29, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, but this long rant of yours is a waste of your time if you do not have WP:Reliable sources to back it up. We have plenty of such sources for the view we have taken, regardless of how many Croatian nationalists might object. — kwami (talk) 07:40, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, but a lot of sources were already presented here by wikipedians but you keep on ignoring it. What's the use? Your view is based mainly on works of politically led authors from SFRJ. Your view is against positions of the modern academies. Your work here is OR of the worst kind. Shame. 78.3.120.82 (talk) 07:52, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Please be merciful and see WP:TLDR. I admit I did not have the patience to read all of the above. Still, I'll try to succinctly make a couple of refutements:

1. Throwing Chakavian and Kajkavian in the equation is a red herring, i.e. a distraction from the original dispute. As I get it, the "pro-Croatian" (i.e. your) thesis is as follows: "1. Serbo-Croatian=Shtokavian. 2. Chakavian and Kajkavian ≠ Shtokavian. 3. However, Croatian =Kajkavian+Chakavian+Shtokavian. 4. Therefore, Croatian⊄Serbo-Croatian." The logic is apparently fine, however the premise that "Croatian=Kajkavian+Chakavian+Shtokavian" is rather shaky. Historically, yes, Kaj+Cha were important dialects, whose literature makes a significant part of Croatian heritage. The problem is, modern standard Croatian has virtually no grammatical, morphological, and lexical influences of Chakavian and Kajkavian. None. Nada. Please enumerate 10 (ten) features of Cha and Kaj each, which are part of modern Croatian. Modern standard Croatian is closer to modern standard Serbian than to Kajkavian and Chakavian. Kajkavian and Chakavian are fairly different languages than Shtokavian; however, they never reached the socio-linguistic status of a language, and are on a slow path to extinction. The question you keep on asking: "are Kajkavian and Chakavian part of the 'fictitious' Serbo-Croatian" is irrelevant. The answer is mu; I don't know. Some think they are, some think they're not. It simply does not matter. Serbs used "serbo-slavjanski" as a literary language before 19th century so what?
2. The selection of Neo-Shtokavian as the Croatian standard language was not imposed by "Serbian hegemonists", but was voluntarily chosen by Croatian Illyrians in early 19th century. It is true that several factions since wanted to change that decision. Still, the fact is that those attempts mostly failed, at least so far.
3. It is really doubtful if there is "standard Serbo-Croatian". There certainly were attempts to create it and impose it in the 1920-1990 period. I, for one, am not claiming there is standard Serbo-Croatian. I use the term for the polycentric language, which has up to four national standards.
4. Ergo, there are somewhat different standard Croatian, standard Serbian, standard Bosnian and emerging standard Montenegrin. However, they all share the same grammar, morphology and a lot of vocabulary, and are 100% mutually intelligible.

To conclude: no one here is barring you or anyone to call your language "Croatian" and use the term wherever appropriate. See the sheer number of incoming links Special:Whatlinkshere/Croatian language. We are, however, bothered by the nationalist attempt, and apparent synchronized campaign outside of Wikipedia, of eradication of the term Serbo-Croatian, especially in the context of linguistic articles. Your last sentence, " There is no place for hegemonistic and violent politics in philology", reveals the battleground and camp mentality behind that campaign. The truth is, the world does not care. The unfortunate term encompasses all four standard languages and is still in use in linguistics, despite all your dislike for it. If there was a term "Shtokavian language(s)" we would probably use it. However, it is not widely used in the real world, and Wikipedia follows the usage, does not create it. No such user (talk) 08:05, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

I've generally seen SC used to mean one of two things: (1) the Yugoslav bi-standard (I agree, it never seems to have become a single standard), and (2) a cover term for Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, etc. in all their variety. The latter is how the term is generally used when not speaking of Yugoslavia: the language of the Serbs and Croats. That is, there is South Slavic; within SS there are a group of lects with a long history of identity and mutual influence (i.e., what is commonly considered a "language"), called Serbo-Croatian; and those dialects are Cha, Kaj, Shto, & maybe Torlakian, regardless of the ethnicity of the speaker. That is, if X is a dialect of Croatian, then X is a dialect of SC, since Croatian is a component of SC. If someone could show me that is not a proper use of the term SC, we would still need some other term to cover it. ("Central SS diasystem" and BCS/BCMS are the only ones I'm aware of.) Dialectologically, Serbian and Croatian are not distinct langs, since they share Shto; they are only distinct (barely) through their standards. Sociolinguistically, they are distinct languages, but now we're discussing ethnicity as much as actual language.

As for identity, sure, call your language whatever you like. That's the approach the Bosnian language law took: one official language, called Croatian, Bosnian, or Serbian per speaker preference. That's too awkward to use in English though. — kwami (talk) 08:30, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Reply to No such user.

There is no unique Štokavian dialect in the Western Balkans. Supporters of SC never admit it. They ignore it. Croatian Što standard is based on results of developement of Ikavian Ščakavian: B&H Ikavian Štokavian and Dubrovnik's Ijekavian Štokavian. The last one was used for a standard.

modern standard Croatian has virtually no grammatical, morphological, and lexical influences of Chakavian and Kajkavian - !? - this is lie- Half of Cro standard glossary is Kaj and Ča word pool, the one that makes difference to other Štokavians. The same goes for grammatics. There are differences in grammatics (you said there are none?).

Small example:

English: I want to go.

Cro Ča: Želin pojti.

Cro Što: Želim ići.

Serb/Montenegr Što: Želim da idem.

Kajkavian and Chakavian are fairly different languages than Shtokavian; however, they never reached the socio-linguistic status of a language, and are on a slow path to extinction.

This is lie too. In fact Croatian Čakavian was standardized in the 13th century BC along with Croatian Glagolithic script and was used in Croatian literature for centuries! Problem here is that you don't know it.

reveals the battleground and camp mentality behind that campaign - you want to present as there is some campaign of the Croatian nationalists here. But it's contrary: here is already campaign against Croatian language.

Reply to kwami

Sociolinguistically, they are distinct languages, but now we're discussing ethnicity as much as actual language - that's what SC supporters want in the end.

Baby Alien 78.3.120.82 (talk) 09:06, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

"this is lie- Half of Cro standard glossary is Kaj and Ča word pool, the one that makes difference to other Štokavians." putting the other nonsense in your post aside, we have been waiting for last 6 months for someone to prove this false assertion, and all we get is its repeating ad nauseam. I asked for mere 10 examples of each dialect influence, and nobody has been able to present any. The Croatian infinitive (as opposed to Serbian "dakanje") has nothing to do with Kajkavian and Chakavian, but is actually the original Neo-shtokavian form, so you're throwing these red herrings around again. Your signal to noise ratio is fairly low. Anyway, I don't know why I'm entering those pointless discussions with people who obviously have an agenda, so I think I'll just respecfully shut up. No such user (talk) 11:05, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Croatian Što standard is based on results of developement of Ikavian Ščakavian: B&H Ikavian Štokavian and Dubrovnik's Ijekavian Štokavian. -That's pure nonsense. Croatian literary language is exclusively Ijekavian Neoštokavian with 0 Ikavian elements. Dubrovnikan speech is a part of the Neoštokavian system.

Half of Cro standard glossary is Kaj and Ča word pool - Again, a bunch of nationalist make-believe. You either don't have a clue what you're taking abut, or are deliberately spreading lies. I bet you couldn't list 10 words in standard Croatian that are Čakvianisms/Kajkavianisms. Even those very few that have entered the standard, are usually regionally confined, denoting some obscure tool or activity, and phonetically Štokavianised.

In fact Croatian Čakavian was standardized in the 13th century BC along with Croatian Glagolithic script and was used in Croatian literature for centuries - This is BS of epic proportions. There was never ever a codified form of literary Čakavian. There has always been a bunch of very different, regionally-confined literary traditions. Preserved Glagolitic MSS are 99% Church Slavonic with some local lexical admixtures. Čakavian and Kajkavian speeches are mutually unintelligible, and both are today on the verge of extinction. 95% of Croats don't understand a word of them, apart from ča and kaj interrogatives themselves.

You are obviously very young and ill-informed. I suggest that you educate yourself outside the framework of those myths that have been shoved down your throat through government schooling (=indoctrination). You don't appear to know that there is "Ekavian Čakavian", that Serbian is also standardized on Ijekavian Neoštokavian (Bosnian Serbs, hello?), or that Croatian Torlakian speeches are commonly treated as "Croatian dialects" along ethnic lines (thus putting another nail in the coffin of oft-repeated mythologem "Croatian=Ča+Kaj+Što"). --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 11:24, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

I.Š. you are obviously Greater Serbian nationalist in special mission: attack on Croatian culture and language. We all know what is prime goal of Greater Serbian politics for a century, by now. To erase Croatian language, its history, Croatian culture, etc. so you can erase Croats as nation. Seen in your statement: Croatian literary language is exclusively Ijekavian Neoštokavian with 0 Ikavian elements. haha Neoštokavian... Croqatian glagolithic script and Neo-Štokavian in Medieval?!?! haha Yes, you lie in almost every sentence. By the way, I'm not young at all, I'm over 50. I'm not a wikipedian and I don't have free time to spend here. My idea was to give some info not to you and your pet - Not such user, I want others who are supposed to be neutral to get a picture who they are dealing with here. A bunch of chetniks in action. However your mission in en.wikipedia has no chance in future, it' opposite to academical positions and sooner or later, this artificial construction will fall apart. Bye bye. Baby Alien. 78.3.120.82 (talk) 11:44, 3 September 2010 (UTC)