Talk:Croatian language/Archive 4

Psenicna mekinja

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)

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.[1] — 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)

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)

Yada, yada. Your shaming language doesn't work here. Either provide evidence for your numerous statements which have been repeatedly refuted, or sod off back to Hrvatsko slovo, Stormfront Croatia or wherever your ilk congregates. BTW, I suggest that you read this book, which dispels many of the myths that you believe in. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 15:06, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

This "book" is a crap, as anyone knows: http://amac.hrvati-amac.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3653&Itemid=59 , and her "scientific" career is also nothing but a proliferation of verbal junk: http://www.hercegbosna.org/kultura/hrvatski-jezik/jezik-lingvistika-i-politika-posljednji-mohikanci-%C2%BBserbokroatizma%C2%AB-1812.html Mir Harven (talk) 10:28, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Why are we continuing with this discussion? You cannot reason with people who don't accept reason. I suggest that we wait for someone to provide RS evidence for these claims, which would be a basis for actually improving the article, and continue to revert all else as clutter. — kwami (talk) 11:27, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

FYI: WP:AE#Mir Harven. No such user (talk) 11:35, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Discretionary Sanctions

I've added the notice at the top of the talk page regarding this article subject to discretionary sanctions as part of an arbitration case. I would encourage all editors here to work together to resolve differences. In particular reversions should be discussed on this talk page and not in edit summaries. Also this is English Wikipedia and discussion and sources should be in English. Thanks. --WGFinley (talk) 13:56, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

phonology

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

Latest version of the lead

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I don't think that either of those suggestions is unambiguously true: " the crucial point that the different between it and Serbian is ethnic". No, it is not purely ethnic; it is ethnic in dialects/sociolects near the borders, but the "cores" of the languages as spoken in Belgrade and Zagreb (and much of Serbia and Croatia) are distinguishable. Second, the definition of a "language" is rather loose, as you well know: while I do advocate the statement that Croatian is part of Serbo-Croatian (as a language group, a polycentric language, or a cover term, you name it), and oppose the bunch of diachronical arguments put forward by Mir above, I can't go as far to say without reservations that "Croatian is just one of names for Serbo-Croatian language". If for anything, there are socio-political reasons, but there are more than that. The issue is complex, nuanced, and occasionally chaotic; the "Serbian" and "Croatian" had their periods of convergence and divergence, cannot be always cleanly separated indeed, and are mutually intelligible. See for example this Greenberg's attempt to summarize [2] (courtesy of I.Š). But I would avoid even trying to resolve all those fine points in the article lead, especially not with bold use of equivocal statements like yours. No such user (talk) 10:43, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where is the consensus?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Illyrian movement was not Serbian.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Opposite example:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(1) Try the paper I linked to below.

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

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

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

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

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

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

2003 Heaney Beginner's Serbo-Croatian

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

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

2009 Fortson Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction

2009 Stroik Locality in minimalist syntax

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

2009 Stassen Predicative possession

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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