Differences between standard Croatian, Serbian and Bosnian

The standard Croatian, Serbian, and Bosnian languages differ in various aspects as outlined below. The various nuances do not present major obstacles to communication.

After the dissolution of Yugoslavia, the languages of Croats and Serbs went their own way, after being politically forcefully kept "together" since 1918 according to Croatian sources and views. [ [http://www.ihjj.hr/oHrJeziku-povijest-5.html Institut za hrvatski jezik i jezikoslovlje ] ]

In socialist Yugoslavia, the official policy was oriented toward "equalizing" and "merging" [http://www.ihjj.hr/oHrJeziku-ustav.html Institut za hrvatski jezik i jezikoslovlje ] ] the Croat and Serb language, which caused discontent among Croat common people, writers and poets. In other words, however, the language was regarded as one common language with different variants and dialects. The unity of the language was emphasized, making the differences not an indicator of linguistic divisions, but rather factors enriching the common language. In addition, Yugoslavia had two other official languages on federal level, Slovenian and Macedonian - reflecting Yugoslavia's acceptance of diversity with regards to language use. No attempts were made to assimilate those languages into the common Serbo-Croatian / Croato-Serbian language.

In socialist Yugoslavia, the official language definition was:
* in SR Croatia as the "croatian Literary language, standardised form of language of Croats and Serbs in Croatia, which is called croatian or serbian" ]

With the breakup of the Federation, in search of additional indicators of independent and separate national identities, language became a political instrument in virtually all the new republics. With a boom of neologisms in Croatia, an additional emphasis on turcisms in the Muslim parts of Bosnia and a privileged position of the Cyrilic script in Serb inhabited parts of the new states, every state and entity showed a 'nationalization' of the language.

In that context, the Bosnian language went into its independent development after the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina was proclaimed in 1992. Independent development of Montenegrin language became a topic among some Montenegrin academics in 1990s.

It should be noted that Serbian and Bosnian language standards tend to be "inclusive", i.e. to accept a wider range of idioms and to use loan-words, while the Croatian standard is more purist and prefers neologisms instead of loan-words, as well as re-use of neglected older words. These approaches are, again, due to different cultural, historical and political development of the three languages and the societies they belong to.

Outline

There are differing opinions between linguists as to whether the differences between the four languages (if the Montenegrin language is included) are substantial to justify their treatment as separate languages.

Croatian linguist Miro Kačić has given the following general overview of differences between the Croatian and Serbian languages"Croatian and Serbian: Delusions and Distortions", Miro Kačić, Novi Most, Zagreb 1997] . This blueprint can be, by extension, slightly modified to include Bosnian.

"In this book I have tried to present some of the fundamental delusions and distortions which have brought about the misconception, which is still present in world linguistics today, that Croatian and Serbian are one language. I have shown that Croatian and Serbian differ to a greater or lesser degree on all levels. These differences exist on the following ones:
#The level of literary language. There are two traditions of writing which are temporally and spatially separated due to the different historical, cultural and literary development of the two nations.
#The level of standard language. The two traditions of linguistic codification are completely disparate. The period of Croato-Serbian normative convergence, from the time of Croatian "Vukovians" to the imposed unification of these two languages in the former Yugoslavia, is only an interval in the development of the Croatian linguistic norm. As a turning point, this period was atypical with respect to three centuries of this development.
# The level of genetic relatedness. Croatian is based on three macrodialects, while Serbian is dominated by a single macrodialect . The interference between three Croatian dialects which provided the basis for Croatian writing and literature has uninterruptedly existed for centuries as a formative force in the codification of standard Croatian.
#The typological level. Differences exist on all levels of the linguistic system: phonetic/phonological, accentual, morphologic, word-formational, syntactic, semantic-pragmatic and lexical. Linguistic systems which differ on all these levels cannot be one language."

On the other hand, Ivo Pranjković, the author of "Grammar of Croatian Language" states that "On the level of standardology, Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian and even Montenegrin are different varieties, but of a same language. Thus, on purely linguistic level, or genetic level, on typological level, we're talking about one language and that must be clearly said. If anyone disagrees with that, let him present the arguments."hr icon [http://www.slobodnadalmacija.hr/20060207/kultura01.asp Interview with Ivo Pranjković] , Slobodna Dalmacija, February 7, 2006] Pranjković himself has stated in numerous cases (for instance in the language and culture paper "Vijenac", whose regular contributor he is) that "Ćorić (an opponent in a debate) does not, of course, agree with the contention I've stated at the beginning of my text, that Croatian and Serbian standard language, as far as they exist, function as separate standard languages". "hr icon [http://www.matica.hr/MH_Periodika/vijenac/1999/135/tekstovi/08.htm "Croatian language and the policy of language unity"] , Vijenac, 1998]

Writing

cript

Though all could theoretically use either, the scripts differ:
* Bosnian uses both Latin and the Cyrillic alphabet (the latter, however, only in Republika Srpska).
* Croatian uses strictly the Latin alphabet.
* Serbian uses both Cyrillic and Latin. (Cyrillic is in official use in Serbia and Republika Srpska. Latin script is also accepted as defined by laws, and used by a part of native speakers as the main script, although no official statistical records about it exist).

Historically, Croats had used "glagoljica", the Glagolitic alphabet, the first script used for writing a Slavic language.

There was another, less standardized script. It had more versions and names: "arvacko pismo" or "arvatica", meaning the script used by Croats; this name was used in Povaljska listina); "bosanica" or "bosančica", meaning the script of the region of Bosnia); and "begovica" (used by beys); "poljičica", meaning from the Poljica region of southern Croatia. In some regions of Croatia, this script was used until the late 1860s, while the Roman Catholic seminary in Omiš taught new priests in writing in that script ("arvacki šeminarij") .

Muslim populations in the areas of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia and Montenegro; who converted to Islam after the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans in the 15th century, also once used a modified Arabic script known as Arebica (pronounced aˈrabitsa). It remained in use from the 15th century until the early 20th century, primarily used by the literate, upper-class. The last known text published in Arebica was produced in 1941, after which the unification of Yugoslavia dictated that Cyrillic and Latin were the two official alphabets of all the Yugoslav Republics. It has all but fallen out of use as the number of people literate in Arebica today are minuscule.

Phonemes

All official languages have the same set of regular phonemes, so the Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian Latin and Serbian Cyrillic alphabets map 1:1. However, these letters/phonemes are not unknown to other South Slavic peoples.

In some regions of Croatia and Bosnia, the sounds "č" and "ć" and also "dž" and "đ" are either indistinct or pronounced as č and đ respectively. Then, in some regions of Croatia, sounds "č" and "ć" are spoken in "softer" version - "č" is pronounced between literary "č" and "ć", while "ć" is spoken much softer; somewhere it turns into "tj". Similar is with "dž" and "đ". In some regions in Croatia, "dž" is spoken as "đ" or "ž", while "đ" sounds the same way as in literary standard, or as a "dj". Again, that is not reflected in the official language.

Orthography

The official language in Croatia alphabetically transliterates foreign names (and sometimes words) even in children's books [but not from Russian, and all other languages using Cyrillic alphabet] while the official language in Serbia performs a phonetic transcription of them whenever possible, regardless of the alphabet. Officially, the Bosnian language follows the Croatian example, but many books and newspapers phonetically transcribe foreign names.

Also, when the subject of the future tense is omitted, producing a reversal of the infinitive and auxiliary "ću", only the final "i" of the infinitive is elided in Croatian, while in Serbian the two are merged into a single word. Bosnian accepts both variants:

* "Uradit ću to." (Croatian)
* "Uradiću to." (Serbian)

Regardless of spelling, the pronunciation is roughly the same.

peaking

Accentuation

In general, the Shtokavian dialects that represent the found of standard languages have four types of accent (a short falling, ı̏, short rising ì, long falling î, and a long rising, í). In addition, the unstressed vowels can be either be short or long (ī); the latter occurring only after the stressed syllable. In declension and verb conjugation, verb shifts, both by type and position, are very frequent.

The distinction between four accents and preserval of postaccent lengths is common in vernaculars of western Montenegro, Bosnia in Herzegovina (Including Bosniaks and Serbs, and to an extent Croats), in parts of Serbia, as well as in parts of Croatia with strong Serb immigration. In addition, a distinct characteristics of some vernaculars is stress shift to enclitics (e.g. phrase "u Bosni" ("in Bosnia") will be pronounced /ȕbosni/ instead of /ubȍsni/ as in northern parts of Serbia.

The northern vernaculars in Serbia also preserve the four-accent system, but the unstressed lengths have been shortened or disappeared in some positions. However, the shortening of postaccent lengths is in progress in all Shtokawian vernaculars, even in those most conservative in Montenegro. Stress shift to enclitics is, however, in northern Serbia rare and mostly limited to negative verb constructs ("ne znam" = "I don't know" -> /nȅznām/).

The situation in Croatia, is however, different. A large proportion of speakers of Croatian, especially those coming from Zagreb, do not distinguish between rising and falling accents. [http://seelrc.org:8080/grammar/mainframe.jsp?nLanguageID=1 A Handbook of Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian, Wayles Brown and Theresa Alt, SEELRC 2004] ] [http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0505b&L=linguist&P=734 Lexical, Pragmatic, and Positional Effects on Prosody in Two Dialects of Croatian and Serbian, Rajka Smiljanic] , Routledge, ISBN 0-415-97117-9 ] This is considered to be a feature of the Zagreb dialect rather than standard Croatian. [http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0505b&L=linguist&P=734 Review of Lexical, Pragmatic, and Positional Effects on Prosody in Two Dialects of Croatian and Serbian, Rajka Smiljanic] , Routledge, ISBN 0-415-97117-9 ]

In Croatian "official linguistics", most of the literature in circulation promotes the four-accent system. Serbian standard language is based on four-accent-system that is common in most of Serbian vernaculars. Both dialects that are considered to be base of standard Serbian language (East-Herzegowinian and Šumadija-Wojwodina dialects) have four accents. Bosnian language is officially founded on East-Bosnian dialects, which are of Old-Shtokavian type, but in practice the norm is Neo-Shtokavian accentuation just like in Croatian and Serbian. The situation in that language is not clear.

Phonetics

The Bosnian official language allows both variants, and ambiguities are resolved with preference to the Croatian variant; this is a general practice for Serbian-Croatian ambiguities.

Another example for phonetical differences is words which have h in Croatian and Bosnian, but v in Serbian:

Internationalisms

Also many internationalisms and transliterations are different:

Pronouns

In Serbian and Bosnian, pronoun "what" has form "što" when used as relative, but "šta" when used as interrogative; the latter applies also to relative sentences with interrogative meaning. Croatian uses "što" in all contexts.

Vocabulary

Examples

The greatest differences between the languages is in vocabulary. However, most words are well understood, or even occasionally used, in other languages; in most cases, common usage favors one variant while the other(s) are regarded as "imported", archaic, dialectal or simply, more rarely used. The preference for certain words depends on the speaker's geographic origin rather than ethnicity; for example, Serbs from Bosnia use "mrkva" and "hlače" rather than "šargarepa" and "pantalone".

International names of months are well understood in Croatia and several names of internationally important events are commonly known using the international name of the month: "1. maj", "1. april", "oktobarska revolucija".In spoken Croatian and Bosnian in western Bosnia (Bosanska Krajina) it is common to refer to a month by its number. Therefore some speakers of Croatian and Bosnian often say "peti mjesec" ("the fifth month").

Notes on comprehension

It is important to notice a few issues:

* Pronunciation and vocabulary differs among dialects spoken within Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia themselves. Each larger region has its own pronunciation and it is reasonably easy to guess where a speaker is from by their accent and/or vocabulary. Colloquial vocabulary can be particularly different from the official standards.
This is one of the arguments for claiming it is all one and the same language: there are more differences "within" the territories of the official languages themselves than there are "between" the standards (all of which inherit from the standards established in Yugoslavian times, when Serbo-Croatian was the official language). This is not surprising, of course, for if the lines between the languages were drawn not politically but linguistically, then there would be no borders at all. As Pavle Ivić explains, the continuous migration of Slavic populations during the five hundred years of Turkish rule has scattered the local dialects all around.

* When Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs talk amongst each other, the other speakers usually understand them completely, save for the odd word, and quite often, they will know what that means. Nevertheless, when communicating with each other, there is a habit to use terms that are familiar to everyone, with the intent to avoid not being understood and/or confusion.
For example, to avoid confusion with the names of the months, they can be referred to as the "first month", "second month" and so on which makes it perfectly understandable for everyone. In Serbia, the names of the months are the international ones so again they are understandable for anyone who knows English or another Western European language.

* Entire books and movies have been "translated" from one language to another. However, the translation of the Serbian movie "Rane (Wounds)" into Croatian for example turned it from a tragedy into a comedy, as the whole audience was laughing at the "translation". On the other hand: probably the most bizarre case is Swiss psychologist Jung's masterpiece "Psychology and Alchemy"; translated into Croatian in 1986, and retranslated, in late 1990s, into Serbian not from the original German, but from Croatian. A translation and "translation's translation"; differ on virtually every page— orthographically, lexically, syntactically and semantically. However, these translations were done during and after the Serbian military campaign in Croatia, and the translations were taken to extreme distances to diverge the languages as much as possible. Recently a Croatian firm placed job ads in Belgrade and Podgorica dailies, looking to employ freelance translators and interpreters from Serbian to a number of foreign languages and vice-versa. Among them, the company was looking for 10 translators for the Bosnian and Montenegrin languages.

Language sample

The following samples, taken from article 1 to 6 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, are "synonymous texts, translated as literally as possible" in the sense of Ammon [Ulrich Ammon, "Die deutsche Sprache in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz. Das Problem der nationalen Varietäten." Berlin, New York 1995, p. 6.] designed to demonstrate the differences between the standard varieties treated in this article in a continuous text.

ee also

* A language is a dialect with an army and navy
* Ausbausprache - Abstandsprache - Dachsprache
* Mutually intelligible languages
* Shtokavian dialect
* Declaration on the Status and Name of the Croatian Standard Language

References

External links

* [http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/lang/Jack_Chambers/globalisation.pdf Peter Trudgill, Glocalisation and the Ausbau sociolinguistics of modern Europe (2004)]