Talk:Serbo-Croatian

"Serbo-Croat"?

Where I live (the UK) this language was almost always referred to as "Serbo-Croat" rather than "Serbo-Croatian". For example, I recently found three old language-learning books in a second-hand bookshop and all used "Serbo-Croat". Is this just a British thing, or was "Serbo-Croat" used elsewhere? Loganberry (Talk) 02:16, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't think I've ever heard "Serbo-Croat" in the US, so perhaps it is. — kwami (talk) 23:42, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

I second Loganberry. I've only ever heard of "Serbo-Croat". I think the introduction of the article should be changed to reflect what a lot of native English speakers call the language.Iain (talk) 12:27, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Done. — kwami (talk) 17:35, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Breakup of Yugoslavia and languages

The statement "With the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, its languages followed suit and Croatian, Serbian, and Bosnian became separate standard languages" is false. The languages in question were a basis for the so called Serbo-Croat language (what is mentioned in the article) and therefore existed as separate languages before Serbo-Croat was formed in an effort to unify them. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.221.15.100 (talk) 16:17, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Serbo-Croatian was standardized in the early 19th century, and these new "standard languages" by the respective nationalist forces in the 1990s. They didn't exist before that except nominally in some people's imagination. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 02:52, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Quite wrong logic. The sole name of the language (SC) tells us what is written above, that it was a language created on the base of two languages; Serbian and Croatian. They existed for sure before and during the existance of this mixture.85.178.149.235 (talk) 23:06, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

"Serbo-Croatian" was formed by this guy back in the 19th century. Before that Yugoslavs spoke something similar to present day Ukrainian or Russian in that it was not spelled the same way it sounded and the spoken language sounded entirely differently. There was neither a Serbian nor Croatian before that, at least not the way it sounds now, there was a Servian used in Rascia and medieval Serbia and a mixture of Slavonian and Dalmatian (similar to Italian) was used in what is now Croatia though the country wasn't united and didn't exist the way it does today. The "Serbo-Croatian" language is an artificial creation of the reforms of the 19th century instigated by man mentioned previous, thus languages such as "Bosnian, Montenegrin, Kosovan" and whatever else you think up (Vojno-Kraijnan?) don't exist. 99.236.221.124 (talk) 04:04, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Merge

It's a bit silly to have the same phonological and grammatical info at Serbian, Croatian, Serbo-Croatian, and Bosnian, and presumably soon again at Montenegrin. This violates WP:Fork, and is difficult to maintain. If we can't agree to merge them under this name, how about a separate article we can agree on? Serbian and Croatian are the two oldest standards, so how about "Serbian and Croatian grammar" or some such? kwami (talk) 10:20, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

I've just discovered that User:Ivan Štambuk created the article Serbo-Croatian grammar back in August, but for some reason did not link it anywhere, although it is reasonably comprehensive. I suppose it should be revived and prominently linked, and Ivan given an appropriate barnstar. The articles on individual B, C, M and S (and SC) languages should be reworked so that they focus only on history, literature and socio-linguistic aspects. I think there are few more articles lurking around, which should be merged there or renamed: Serbian grammar, Serbian nouns, Croatian grammar. Oh my goodness, how much duplicated effort... No such user (talk) 12:19, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes, if people object to the name, we can always debate what it should be called. IMO, BCS and CWSS are awkward and Shtokavian obscure, but maybe s.o. can come up with a compromise. OTOH, English speakers all know what SC is. kwami (talk) 17:57, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree, of course. However, be warned: the nationalism-inspired resistance to this will be immense. The vast majority of Croats would find any merge offensive to the extreme and a direct attack on their national identity. I cannot emphasize this enough. The idea is logical, sensible, and natural, but none of that has anything to do with (ultra)nationalism. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 18:06, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

I know. You should see the reams of impassioned-if-rather-empty debate on what to call Yue Chinese/Cantonese. That's why I didn't want to attempt this on my own. I've proposed at WP:WikiProject Linguistics.

BTW, there's also Serbian nouns. kwami (talk) 19:00, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

"Reinforcements" are a good idea. As for the name itself, I don't think there's any doubt that "Serbo-Croatian (grammar)" is the most common name. In addition, let me assure everyone here that using "Serbian and Croatian" will not make it more "acceptable" to the opposition in the slightest measure. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 22:02, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

This is plain false - English speakers simply do not all know what SC is, just like they don't know what is C, S, etc are. This discussion in general looks like it is based on non-encyclopedic premises - the encyclopedia is here to describe, not to prescribe. If the present-day real-world situation provides reliable sources for the term "Serbo-Croatian grammar" and does not provide reliable sources for the term "Serbian grammar" or "Croatian grammar" (or provides them in comparatively minor amount), then that clearly merits a merge. But if we're talking about what you might call "parallel universes", the encyclopedia needs to describe that, it cannot try to change that. This would not only provoke a nationalist backlash, but a backlash from people who would not understand why would someone want to falsely describe the reality they live in. If you want to be able to counter such arguments, your "reinforcements" must be based on valid encyclopedic criteria, not wishful thinking. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 12:56, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

All right, I exaggerated slightly. Sheesh! My point is that "SC" is well known in English, whereas "Shtokavian" is practically unheard of. The reason for the merger is that the grammar is duplicated, with violates WP:fork. WP:Common is only pertinent to naming the merged article; it's irrelevant for whether the articles should be merged. If "Serbian" and "Croatian" were rarely used in English, but their grammars were markedly different, then we would split the SC grammar article despite common usage. — kwami (talk) 19:53, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

WP:FORK is something else, you mean Wikipedia:Content forking. The problem here is that we can't instantly decide the separated grammar articles constitute a policy violation if the content forking is already done in the real world, in otherwise reliable sources. When a fork is done merely in Wikipedia articles, then that's easy, but in this kind of a case, a merge is all too easily considered a POV act in itself. To resolve this kind of a fork/merge conflict, I think we need to get back to the basics and create an overview of all these sources, determine which are the most accurate and the most pertinent, and then make a set of editorial decisions that resolves or at least alleviates the NPOV dispute. Right now we are fairly slim on the matter of sources. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 13:28, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

What common English speakers know, think, or you imagine them to know or thing is immaterial. There is enough sources in English language by professional linguists that describe Serbo-Croatian as a single language, dating in an uninterrupted sequence of traditions all the way from the 19th century. There has been several generations of world Slavists that treat and analyze Serbo-Croatian as one language, and nothing has changed just because a bunch of nationalists decided unilaterally to change terminology. Just because there are some books titled Croatian grammar or Serbian grammar or Bosnian grammar, it doesn't mean that all three describe different entities, and that all three should be treated independently as describing different entities. In fact - we could do exactly that, but since both of us very know that Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian grammar is basically the same, there would be immense amount of multiplication that would look ridiculous. It would in fact be more confusing for an ignorant Wikipedia reader because it would imply that these 3 have nothing in common, which is far from the truth. Your terminological argument on the number of references for a particular term, instead of arguing what these terms mean and how those references would project to actual articles, is simply absurd. Terminology is irrelevant, it's content that matters. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 12:47, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, this kind of an argument by way of endless assertions is simply not encyclopedic or conducive to a good atmosphere, whether it comes from this camp or from the opposed camp. When a view is overwhelmingly substantiated in the real world, then it stands to reason that it's easy to provide more than a handful of decent reliable references that support it outright. That is the way to compose an encyclopedia article. Do that. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 13:28, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree with the merger but only after the article on SC grammar is sufficiently comphrehensive so that it includes all the information contained in those separate articles. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 02:58, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Of course, the matter must be properly merged or there can be no merge; and WP:COMMONAME pretty much settles the issue of the title. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 16:15, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

split the article?

At talk:Croatian language, I suggested we split off Standard Serbo-Croatian, which would cover the defunct Yugoslav standard, and retool this article to cover the common language of Croats, Bosnians, Serbs, and Montenegrins. I don't know if that would help or not with the politics, but it might help with the focus of this article. — kwami (talk) 06:06, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

• Never was there a standard language of Croats and Serbs, to have always been two standard languages in the Yugoslav period 1954-1991 called Zagreb or variants west (the language that are standardized Croats in Zagreb, Croatia) and Belgrade and the eastern variant (the languages standardize Serbs Belgrade). The Croatian standard language and affect kajkavian Cakavian on torlačko Serbian dialect, dialectal differences that affect the standard differences. Croats are Catholics and Orthodox Serbs to influence on the different cultural influences that are reflected in language. Conclusion, it was never a standard language although zza time Yugoslavia was trying to uniformization these two different national standards, these standards are now receding faster than the approximative!

Dialectal difference! Historical differences! Cultural differences! National differences! Voice difference!

There has been a common standard since the 1850s based on the Neoštokavian dialect. Kajkavian, Čakavian and Torlakian are not literay dialects and are thus irrelevant, and their influence on the respective standard idiom is infinitesimal/non-existent. Croats are not "Catholics", and Serbs are not "Orthodox" - ethnic and religious affiliation are mutually completely orthogonal, and Croatia and Serbia are both constitutionally secular states. Most of young Croats and Serbs today are atheist anyway. Differences among modern-day standards are minor and hardly justify the notion of "separate languages". --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 12:35, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

@Ivan Štambuk if you are an atheist, it does not mean that other people think the same... It seems more to me that you are trying to misuse wiki for political work... But your party has lost in 1995... Wiki won´t help... --Croq (talk) 20:41, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

It's certainly a valid point that not all Croats are Catholics, not all Serbs are Orthodox, and not all Bosniaks are Muslim, just as not all Yugoslavs were atheists. If you define language by religion, then we'd have to say that atheist Croats don't speak Croatian. — kwami (talk) 01:43, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

TIs article about a controversal language is POV!!! There are different opinions about that "pseudeo-language" Please insert a POV sign! --Modzzak (talk) 21:55, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Croq, I was still a child in 1995, and I've never voted in my life (nor do I plan to - that would implicitly bestow legitimacy to the corrupted democratic system). I don't see how that's relevant to the discussion anyway. I was merely remarking that religious, national and political affiliation has nothing to do with linguistic affiliation. The first is a result of an individual's free choice (well, mostly), the second is something outside his sphere of influence, and established on well-defined scientific methods. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 12:40, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

You are writing about "a corrupted democratic system".Is somebody paying you for working so hard in wiki for not existing language? Who takes care about standardization of so called "serbocroatian" ? You are wasting time... It won´t work.. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.8.228.231 (talk) 18:18, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Well kudos, Ivane, I don't vote either. :) Seems pointless and silly... --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 12:01, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

"SC" in post-Yugoslav English.

Since there have been objections that SC no longer exists, I thought that I would post some excerpts from the 2006 (2nd) edition of the Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. This brings together numerous linguists, and so is fairly representative. SC is treated in ways similar to our objectors in articles on language politics and sociolinguistics. And of course lexicography: there are, after all, Canadian dictionaries, Australian dictionaries, etc., and each English-speaking country has its own vocab and pronunciation. But in articles on grammar, phonology, and cladistics, the language is simply SC. Some authors hedge, speaking of the language which 'used to be known as' SC and the like, or BCS; many others simply continue to use the term SC. There isn't even an article for Croatian: the reader is simply redirected to BCS. I've ignored biographies as not being current usage. When no author is given, it was the editors of the encyclopedia themselves. — kwami (talk) 10:42, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

• Albania: Language Situation [from now on 'LS']

"Macedonian and Serbo-Croatian are spoken by fewer people."

• Areal Linguistics. L. Campbell

"The languages of the Balkans are Greek, Albanian, Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Romanian"

• Austria: LS. JR Rennison

"there are now probably far fewer speakers of Czech in Austria than of Serbo-Croatian and Turkish." (the same author spoke of "Croatian" a paragraph earlier)

• Bosnia and Herzegovina: LS

"The term ‘Bosnian’ refers to the languages spoken by Bosnian Serbs, Bosnian Croats, and Bosnian Bosniacs (formerly referred to as Bosnian Muslims), although the Croats and the Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina call their language Croatian and Serbian, respectively. Bosnian is used to refer to the language of the Bosniac group. All three languages – Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian – are dialects of the standard version of Central-South Slavic, formerly and still frequently called Serbo-Croatian."

• Clitics. AD Caink (UK)

"To some extent, this is true of Serbo-Croatian, a language whose second [clitic] position has attracted much debate in recent years (Bosˇkovic´, 2001: 12)"

"Recent research on Serbo-Croatian demonstrates that the clitic cluster is restricted from intervening within some initial constituents, that there is substantial native speaker variation, and that the size of the clitic cluster is a factor (see Bosˇkovic´ , 2001: Chap. 2)."

"Pronominal clitics in many Indo-European languages are similarly restricted to appearing on a verb (as in Bulgarian (9) and French (10)), but this contrasts with Serbo-Croatian pronominal clitics, which do not distinguish between the category of host (see (5) and (7))."

"This holds true of most clitics, but recent evidence suggests that for some speakers at least, pronominal clitics in Serbo-Croatian may undergo ellipsis [...] (Franks and King, 2000: 336)."

• Coreference: Identity and Similarity. Y Huang (UK)

"to express a bound-variable anaphoric relation between a matrix subject and an embedded subject, while English normally allows neither gaps (or empty categories) nor reflexives, Serbo-Croatian allows gaps (or empty categories), Marathi allows reflexives, and Chinese allows both. [...] (Serbo-Croatian cited in Huang, 2000: 6)"

• Croatia: LS

"The official language of Croatia is Croatian (Serbo-Croatian). The writing system is based on an adopted version of the Roman alphabet. The same language is referred to by different names, Serbian (srpski), Serbo-Croat (in Croatia: hrvatsko-srpski), Bosnian (bosanski), based on political and ethnical grounds."

"Language politics have been heavily involved in the numerous ethnical conflicts that took place from 1990 to 1996, and it is still a very sensitive issue in the whole area of the Balkans. The language situation in Croatia has undergone a twofold change in the following period. First, there was a very active engagement of the government and other national institutions trying to stress the differences between the Croatian and other varieties of Serbo-Croat."

"One linguistic consequence of the political and ethnical processes during the 1990s is that the language that used to be officially called Serbo-Croat has gotten several new ethnically and politically based names. Thus, the names Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian are politically determined and refer to the same language with possible slight variations. The language has two major dialects, the Ekavian and Ijekavian, the former being spoken by the majority of Croatians. Still, these dialects do not coincide with the ethnically motivated names, because they both are spoken by more than one ethnic group."

• Croatian: See: Serbian–Croatian–Bosnian Linguistic Complex.

• Croatian Lexicography. M Tadic´ (Zagreb)

"the most influential Croatian philologists at the end of 19th century called themselves ‘Croatian Vukovians,’ thus opening the gates for the attempts at amalgamation of Croatian and Serbian – two languages that are genetically close but have completely different cultural traditions. The compiling and publishing of Rjecˇnik hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika (Dictionary of the Croatian or Serbian language) started in 1880 in Zagreb at the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts, giving an example of this amalgamation in the very name of the dictionary. This process was highly asymmetrical. With the establishment of Yugoslavia after World War I, the political center of the country in Belgrade banned the usage of ‘separate’ Croatian and even Slovenian language names, calling the official language of the country ‘Serbo-Croato-Slovenian.’ Although it was given a single language name, the Hrvatski rjecˇnik (Broz and Ivekovic´, 1901) in its preface subscribed completely to this newly established ideology. This ‘equal situation’ (with the ‘state language’ named Serbo-Croatian but in fact predominantly Serbian) was perpetuated after World War II in Communist Yugoslavia, culminating in severe opposition to Rjecˇnik hrvatskosrpskoga knjizˇevnog jezika (Declaration of the name and status of the Croatian literary language, 1967), which was compiled by Croatian writers, linguists, lexicographers, and the general public. It was only after the Republic of Croatia left the Yugoslav Federation that another general-purpose Croatian dictionary could be published under its natural name."

• Europe as a Linguistic Area. T Stolz (Germany)

"Figure 1 SCR = Serbo-Croatian"

"The next layer, with five shared features, is also exclusively Slavic, namely the west Slavic phylum plus Serbo–Croatian."

• Germany: LS. JMY Simpson

"These [guest workers] included speakers of, among others, Arabic, Greek, Serbo-Croat, Spanish, and Turkish."

• Intonation. M Grice (Germany)

"Languages [with systems] under development are Italian (IToBI), Greek (GrToBI), Serbo-Croation, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Spanish."

[That is, Mandarin and Cantonese are distinct languages from the point of view of computer representation of intonation, but Serbian and Croatian are not.]

• Italian. AL & G Lepschy (UK) [similarly Italy: LS]

"the linguistic minorities within the boundaries of the Italian republic (speakers of German, ca. 280 000, mainly in South Tyrol; of Occitan and Franco–Provenc¸al, ca. 115 000; of Slovene, ca. 53 000; of Serbo–Croatian, ca. 3000; of Albanian, ca. 100 000; of Greek, ca. 30 000; of Catalan, ca. 15 000)"

[that is, French, Occitan, and Catalan are separate languages, but S and C are not]

• Language Change and Language Contact. S Thomason (USA)

"when the source language and the receiving language are very closely related, with essentially no typological distance separating them and largely shared lexicon and structural features, structural diffusion from one to the other often happens without any morphemic exchange. This is perhaps most obvious in cases of dialect borrowing, as for instance when a Standard Serbo-Croatian pattern of syncretism in plural oblique cases (genitive vs. dative/instrumental/locative) replaced the naive syncretic pattern of the Hvar dialect (genitive/locative vs. dative/instrumental), though Hvar speakers retained their own case suffixes, which differ from those of the standard dialect (Hraste, 1935: 17–25).

[note the use here of 'standard' SC as opposed to dialect]

• Language Development: Morphology. H Behrens (Netherlands)

"The acquisition of morphology is related to language type. Slobin (1973) demonstrated that agglutinative languages like Turkish with very regular form-function matches provide the fewest problems, as opposed to more irregular inflectional languages like Serbo-Croatian."

• Language Development: Overview. E Lieven (Max Planck, Germany)

"Other languages present more difficulty – those in which the morphemes are: [...] (2) distributed (e.g., marked with a free form and an inflection, Serbo-Croatian locative markers)"

• Language Policies: Policies on Language in Europe. R de Cillia and B Busch (Vienna)

"The central role that language policy still plays in the process of affirmation of nation states or in the construction of national identities is shown in the example of former Yugoslavia, where the break-up of the federal state into individual states was accompanied by the deconstruction of the umbrella language of Serbo-Croatian and the establishment of the three languages Serbian (Serbo-Croatian), Croatian, and Bosnian as state languages in the three respective states (Bugarski, 2004)."

• Macedonia: LS. V.A. Friedman (U. Chicago)

"In the two post-independence Macedonian censuses (1994 and 2002), six languages were in official use: Macedonian, Albanian, Turkish, Romani, Serbian (Serbo-Croatian), and Aromanian."

[in the mother-tongue census, SC were pooled together; in the nationality censuses, they were not]

• Morphology in Parallel Distributed Processing. M.S. Seidenberg (USA)

"Mirkovicˇ et al. (in press), for example, developed a model of Serbo–Croatian that has inflections for number, case, and gender."

• Oral Traditions and Spoken Discourse. A Varvaro (Naples)

"An analogous mechanism was discovered by Milman Parry who looked at Serbo-Croatian poets. This case was described in a famous book, The singer of tales, by Albert Lord, and is now so widely known that it seems pointless to summarize it here."

• Periphrasis. A Spencer (UK)

"Serbo-Croatian provides an interesting instance. One (somewhat formal) way of forming the future is to use present tense forms of the auxiliary verb ht(j)eti (hoc´u, hoc´esˇ, etc.) together with the infinitive of the lexical verb"

• Reconstruction, Morphological. B Fortson (USA)

"Each Slavic language today has a different system. In Russian, all noun classes participate in it; in Novi Serbo-Croatian, only o-stems do."

• Reconstruction, Syntactic. S Thomason (USA)

"the concept of regular sound change that has guided applications of the Comparative Method for over a century: regular sound change is form-based only, while analogic change is both form- and meaning-based (as seen, for instance, in certain analogic leveling processes in Serbo-Croatian that affect noun declension but not adjective declension – Thomason, 1976)."

• Religion: Overview. E Fudge (UK)

"Social divisions or enmity on grounds of religion often arise within a single language community: in Northern Ireland, for example, despite wide-ranging differences in religious vocabulary, Catholics and Protestants have English as a common language. Serbo-Croatian (Serbo-Croat) is generally held to be a single language, despite religious vocabulary differences and a difference in writing system"

• Romanian. J Augerot (USA)

"there is no final devoicing of consonants as in Bulgarian and Russian and no contrastive vowel length as in Slovak, Hungarian, and Serbian (Serbo-Croatian)."

• Rule Borrowing. S Thomason (USA)

"One striking example is the development of a stress pattern, in a dialect of Croatian spoken near the Hungarian border, that is unique in all of Serbo-Croatian."

"A morphological example that also belongs in this category is found in the Serbo-Croatian dialect of Hvar, as described by Hraste (1935: 17–25). [...] But under the influence of Standard Serbo-Croatian, younger Hvar speakers had replaced this pattern with the Standard one [...]"

• Serbia and Montenegro: SL. B Arsenijevic (Netherlands)

"One linguistic consequence of the political and ethnic processes of the 1990s is that the language that used to be officially called ‘Serbo-Croat’ has received several new ethnically and politically based names. Thus, the names ‘Serbian,’ ‘Croatian,’ and ‘Bosnian’ are politically determined and refer to the same language with possible slight variations."

"The official language of the Republic of Montenegro is Serbian, but there are recent tendencies to introduce the name ‘Montenegrin,’ either parallel to or instead of the name ‘Serbian.’ Just as with Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian, this term refers to the same language that used to be called Serbo-Croat, and is rather a matter of political decisions and convictions."

• Serbian Lexicography. D Sˇipka (USA)

"The Serbo-Croatian phase was initiated by the 1818 Srpski rjecˇnik by Vuk Stefanovic´ Karadzˇic´, which was enlarged and corrected in 1852. These two editions promoted the Sˇ to-dialect common to Serbs and Croats, which after decades of polemics was finally accepted in the second half of the 19th century. In terms of its microstructure, this trilingual Serbian-Latin-German dictionary for the most part follows the tradition established by the earlier Croatian lexicography while having almost no connection with the Serbian tradition of that period. [...] The Serbo-Croatian phase ended with the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s."

• Serbian-Croatian-Bosnian Linguistic Complex. E C Hawkesworth (UK)

(Already quoted extensively, but here are a couple new ones)

"The language formerly known as Serbo-Croat belongs, with Bulgarian, Slovene, and Macedonian, to the South Slav branch of the Slavonic language family."

"The language spoken in these countries is now officially known as Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian, respectively. In linguistic terms, the standard language remains essentially the same, but the sociopolitical reality is that it no longer has a single name. [...] For the purposes of the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, it is known as BCS. University departments in Europe where it is taught refer to it variously as Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (Austria, Norway); Serbo-Croatian (Denmark); Serbo-Croat (France); South Slavic (Finland); Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian (Sweden); Serbian and Croatian (UK). In the absence of an entirely satisfactory solution, in this volume the term ‘Serbian-Croatian-Bosnian linguistic complex’ has been adopted as a clumsy but accurate description."

• Slavic Languages. L A Janda (USA)

"The Slavic language group contains three subfamilies: [...] (3) South Slavic, consisting of Bulgarian, Macedonian, Slovene (Slovenian), and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (BCS; formerly known as Serbo-Croatian).

• Slovene. ML Greenberg

"Together with Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian (Serbo-Croatian), Slovene makes up theWestern subgroup of the South Slavic branch of the Slavic languages (Indo-European). Slovene transitions to the Cˇakavian and Kajkavian dialects of Croatian. It is less close to the Sˇtokavian dialect, the basis for the Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian standard languages."

"Historical influences on Slovene have come from Friulian, German (Standard German) (especially the Bavarian and Tyrolean dialects), Hungarian and Croatian (Serbo-Croatian)," etc.

• Society and Language: Overview. R Mesthrie (Cape Town)

"The same has happened in what was formerly Yugoslavia, where Serbian and Croatian did not have independent status but were considered as ‘eastern’ and ‘western’ variants of the same language called Croato-Serbian (or Serbo-Croatian). With the bloody conflict that accompanied the breakup of the federation in the 1990s, differences between the two varieties were emphasized, and each of them have come to be considered independent ‘languages.’"

[note the scare quotes]

• Speech Synthesis. H C Nusbaum & H Shintel (U Chicago)

"TheMBROLAsynthesizer is based on diphone concatenation and free databases for different languages are currently available or under development including, but not limited to, Estonian, Hindi, Hebrew, Croatian (Serbo-Croatian), and Telugu,"

• Switzerland: LS. H Bickel (Switz.)

"Around 20% of Switzerland’s population is foreign (including nonnaturalized Swiss-born descendants of immigrants), which accounts for the fact that some foreign languages (e.g., Serbo-Croatian and Turkish) are more strongly represented than the national language Romansch."

• Syntactic Development. E L Bavin (Australia)

"Slobin (1982) compared the ages at which children acquiring English, Turkish, Serbo-Croatian, or Italian could interpret transitive sentences appropriately."

• Syntax-Phonology Interface. S Inkelas (UC Berkeley)

"In English, Hausa, and Serbo-Croatian, for example, phonological phrase formation has been shown [...] An example is Serbo-Croatian topicalization [...] This is illustrated for Serbo-Croatian by (6a) and (6b), which both mean ‘that man presented her with it’ and show that in Serbo-Croatian, second position clitics [...]"

• Variation in First Language Acquisition. E Lieven (Max Planck)

"There are reports of children varying in their relative dependence on case marking or word order in learning Finnish, Japanese, Korean, Serbo-Croatian, and Hungarian."

• Variation in German. S Barbour (UK)

"Such continua may include several languages, for example, Western Romance (including French, Catalan [Catalan-Valencian-Balear], Castilian Spanish [Spanish], Italian, Portuguese, Occitan [Auvergnat, Gascon, Languedocien, Limousin], and others) or South Slavonic (including Slovene [Slovenian], Croatian [Serbo-Croatian], Serbian [Serbo-Croatian], Macedonian, and Bulgarian)."

[brackets in the original]

SC no longer exists? LoL, perhaps if one asked the Serbian and Croatian governments - fortunately their "politicized" corruption of reality has no authority over the international scientific community. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 12:04, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

SC exists? LoL,LOL lOL. Who takes care about that fiction of a language nowadays??? Who takes care about standardization???? That language existed in ex Yugoslav Dictatures - but that corrupt an brutal regime is defeated. RIP SC, and never come back --Croq (talk) 19:20, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

This article folow the POV that the SC exits. But that is very controversal. So the article is not encyclopedical--Croq (talk) 19:42, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Languages do not exist or cease to exist by decree of governments or political parties. Who standardizes the English language? The Croatian or Bosnian or American governments do not have the authority to order linguists to follow their political views. The very idea is totalitarian in nature... The point here is to establish the view of the international scientific community. Whether or not you or someone in the Balkans is personally offended by it is insignificant. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 20:20, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Oh, yes languages are created by governments and cease by their decrees. Majority of wastern languages are standardised by the governmental act. Examples are Italian or German... There were dozens of different languages spoken in Ger. and Ita. before the governmental act and decision on the name and standard form of the language. Similar case is with the name of the Ilyrian language which was named by the respective government and ceased the same way.85.178.149.235 (talk) 23:12, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps you're unaware of the fact that thereare thousands of languages spoken on this planet, and only 200-something governments. Perhaps you're also unaware that in Europe alone there are a dozen or so of sovereigns who have no "official language". There was no such thing as Illyrian language; today that term refers to the ancient IE language of the Balkans, but in the 19th century it was a generic term covering several Slavic languages/dialects, including some artificial literary ones that were very short-lived. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 21:52, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

@Director, Stambuk and Kwamikagami: that´s trolling-behaviour.Not serious encyclopedic work. I guess you are wasting time here.That is no Standard language!!! --Croq (talk) 23:20, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Trolling? Are you kidding? :P

Let me put it this way: governments can declare the existence of languages or the cessation of their existence. However, it is up to the scientific community to follow that decree or not. They usually do, but not always.

Some languages are officially standardized by a central institution, others are not. This does not impact their existence.

Finally, your argument is self-defeating. If as you say, languages only exist when countries decree and standardize them, then the Croatian language did not exist until 1990 (In Austria-Hungary - "Croatian or Serbian" not standardized by any official institution, in Yugoslavia - Serbo-Croatian). Since your argument so far seems to be entirely "based" in nationalist sentiment, I sincerely doubt you will apply your own rigorous "standards" of language existence to the "sacred Croatian language" as well. :) --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 00:19, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Anon, who's talking about a standard language? I've heard arguments that standardized SC was a farce, and maybe it was. But that's rather irrelevant apart from the section of this article about Yugoslavia and standardization.

Meanwhile, we speak of the Shtokavian dialect. "Dialects" are subdivisions of languages: Glasgow dialect is a dialect of English, for example. So, which language is Shtokavian a dialect of? Not of Croatian, for that would mean it's not Serbian, which it is. Not Serbian, for that would mean it's not Croatian. So, what is it? The term in English for this language is SC. Some people use other names, like BCS, to avoid offending people's sensibilities. But, as they say, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet: whatever you call it, it's the same language. It's possible that some day we will move this article to a better name, but that won't change the fact that it describes a language with several standardized forms, of which Standard Croatian and Standard Serbian are the most developed. — kwami (talk) 04:44, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

In a few years Croatian language wil be a official language in the EU. Those people who try to establish "SC" will be responsible that these students will not be able to find somebody who will employ them, because they do not know Croatian langue. Keep in mind, you will remember my words. Why do you try to establish that lie here in the wiki? It has nothing to do with reality.--Croq (talk) 08:04, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Um, no-one is trying to "establish" anything.

If you know SC, you know Croatian, so no problem. Perhaps some new words to learn if you concentrated on the Serbian variant, just as you'd have some adjustments to make if you learn US English and end up being hired for UK English.

The EU has already said they don't want to recognize Croatian as a distinct language. Perhaps they will, or perhaps they'll recognize SC under a different name like "Shtokavian" or "Nash-yezik". Who knows; that's a political question, not a linguistic one. — kwami (talk) 08:11, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

But it is not only some new words. It´s not only in two variants. And the EU will recognize, you will see. Some people that seem to be under a similar influence as you are in doubt, but as that is no wikipedia but real life with real experts they will have to accept reality. SC is a political and not linguistic product. You have diaclectal continuums in the most area in Europe with slavic speaking countries, that is not the question (same as in german language speking contries). One day you will condemn the people that made you believe in this what you are fighting for in this wiki. --Croq (talk) 11:36, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

All four standards are based on a single dialect. Linguistically, such things are not 'languages', but 'registers'. Since we're an encyclopedia, we should use technical terms correctly. Of course, a 'language' in the non-technical sense can have all sorts of meanings ('the language of love', 'the language of Nature', etc.), so there's nothing wrong with calling Croatian a 'language', just as long as we're clear on the details.

And if it turns out that every linguistics book I've ever read is wrong, I'm certainly not going to "condemn" any of the authors. That would just be silly. — kwami (talk) 20:21, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

More accurately, those standards are called Autonomous languages (or Ausbausprachen, within a different framework). No such user (talk) 23:20, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

I've never heard the term 'autonomous language', but yeah, Ausbausprache, standard language, etc. — kwami (talk) 01:30, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

In the border area bewteen Poland and Czech Republic, the local dialect on both sides is similar. Same in the aera betweeg Germany and Netherlands, and in so many other countries. These dialectal continuums are probably in so many countries. But nobody says german-netherlands language, polish-czech, german-luxembourgian.... and so on. I hope now you will understand this problem. It´s just a matter of fairness.--Croq (talk) 06:54, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, we all know about dialect continua. Czech-Polish is called "West Slavic". German-Dutch is called "West Germanic". If this were a matter of Carinthian, Prekmurian, Chakavian, Shtokavian, Torlakian, Rup, and Macedonian, then you'd be correct: there would be no need to posit a "Serbo-Croatian language". However, there would be no need to posit a "Croatian language" either. Should we therefore delete the Croatian language article and restrict ourselves to the "Shtokavian language"? — kwami (talk) 07:53, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

False and inaccurate discussion!

Why are they removed all disputes and written nonsense! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.131.47.51 (talk) 08:31, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for posting this, that seems to have an article at Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics and as an encyclopedia it can be useful as a tertiary source. I suppose the individual texts could be treated as secondary sources. It looks certain that the stance of that encylopedia has not been to revert to "Serbo-Croatian language" as before, but to adjust to the new situation in the relevant places and avoid excess controversy. I have just reverted your edit on the Gaj alphabet article for the same reason. Now, it would be helpful if actual relevant article references were created from this. Particularly pertinent to this one seems to be the E. Celia Hawkesworth description. It's not really helpful that she doesn't have an article, and a new one might have a WP:PROF problem. In relation to this topic, that might even be looked upon as a view coming from the disintegrationist side of the aisle, given the author has published separate books on Croatian and Serbian vernacular. :) --Joy [shallot] (talk) 08:24, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

My concern is that, in bending backwards to avoid offending anyone by using the term SC, we imply that the language itself does not exist. We shouldn't avoid mentioning a topic at all just because we can't all agree on what to call it. In fact, much of the opposition to the term isn't to the name itself, but to the concept, and by avoiding it we play into the hands of this delusion. Hawkesworth uses an admittedly awkward workaround, and IMO it's not really satisfactory, but in any case it fails our CommonName criteria. The common name in English is still SC, no matter how much that may offend some people. That doesn't mean that Croatian or Serbian or Bosnian aren't "real" languages, only that they are part of something larger, but smaller than South Slavic.

I agree with you that the name Serbo-Croatian is still in fairly common use and that it's wholly pointless to eliminate it or replace it in all possible contexts. Nevertheless I don't think it's necessary or prudent to go about mass-replacing or re-inserting references to it in articles that already use the separate-standard-language style, which seems to have been happening for a while now. It occurs to me that -- while comparisons with English are generally ill-advised in this context -- there is one guideline whose spirit it would be nice to apply in this situation - Wikipedia:Manual of Style#National varieties of English - internal consistency, strong ties of a topic, retaining the existing variety, and opportunities for commonality. This is indeed the sensible manner in which many historical articles have been written already - for example numerous articles about the topics from the relevant periods carry the adjectives "Habsburg", "Venetian", "Yugoslav" together with "Croatian" or "Serbian" or whatever. Similarly, when discussing the Novi Sad Agreement it's perfectly pertinent to talk of Serbo-Croatian, but not so when discussing e.g. Bartol Kašić. On the hot topic of categorizing Croatian language in its infobox - that's another place where it's plain old advisable to avoid contradicting the local interpretation, but use a compromise, because having something looking somewhat cumbersome is much preferable to having a perpetual edit war. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 10:26, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Then what designation should we use when discussing Bartol Kašić? He didn't called his language Croatian. For him it was "Illyrian", and he explicitly mentions that language being expanded into lands populated by non-Catholics :) The only reason why it should be mentioned as belonging to "Croatian", is because Kašić is appropriated into modern-day perception of "Croatian literary tradition". Which is chiefly a result of nationalist fiction, because there was not Croatian state resembling anything of today, and Croatian nationalist consciousness, at that period (15th, 16th century). Wikipedia needs to be impartial, objective and equidistant from all nationalist/statist viewpoints. Using the term Serbo-Croatian is as close as we can get to that. The facts that certain writers are today usually classified as "Croatian", "Serbian", "Bosniak" or "Montenegrin" should be mentioned orthogonally to that - as ex post facto statist propaganda. For all the pre-19th century writers we should simply strip all national designation from the lead and text, except in a certain subsection discussing modern-day national and ethnic context. Like we already have for articles such as Ruđer Bošković, Nikola Tesla etc. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 11:19, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

How can you say that using "Serbo-Croatian" is something that is not based on any biased propaganda - when it was promoted by the local pan-Slavists and the Yugoslav state? You think that they're more accurate, so that somehow makes their terminology neutral and devoid of a bias? By way of... magic? I'm sorry, but this is just plain illogical and just goes to show that you are utterly biased in favor of Serbo-Croatian. One could almost call you a Yugoslav nationalist. Just in case it needs saying - please feel free to espouse such views, it's fine by me, but don't try to pretend that they have basis only in science and have no relation to any of that filthy nationalist stuff that you love to talk so pejoratively about. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 11:43, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

"Yugoslav nationalism" is contradiction in terms. Yes, the term Serbo-Croatian has absolutely nothing to do with petty Balkanic ethno-tribalism. In fact, it's exactly the opposite ! Yes some of those who participated in the standardization efforts of literary Serbo-Croatian in the 19th century were arduous Pan-Slavists, but the term itself was (is) completely devoid of ethnic classification. The problem is that some nationalists cannot cope with the fact that different nations/ethnicities could share essentially the same language. That's the insidious remnant of the 19th-century state-building theories, at odds with 21st-century perspective of globalization and multiculturalism. So what? Do foreigners using the term think that Croats=Serbs=Bosniaks? No they don't. It's what some of the nationalists expressing their objections here imagine them t beieve, scared to the bones of the loss of their fragile identities. It's also what some of them deceitfully propagandize, in pitiful efforts to reinforce the isolationist convictions that they entertain ("Serbs, Bosniaks and Croats are 3 completely different people that have nothing to do with each other"). For an objective, ultimate observer, the term is perfectly fine and historically justified in usage. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 21:48, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

So, for example, in Gaj's alphabet, the old wording implied that it was the Croatian alphabet, and happened to be used incidentally elsewhere, when in fact it is an alphabet of all four SC standards.

It's a question of interpretation - when you say the alphabet "of" all four, does that then relate primarily to the historical origin, or the present-day situation, or even some sort of perceived ownership? Anyway please see latest section on Talk:Gaj's Latin Alphabet. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 10:26, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

It's difficult to clearly present material when we're afraid to mention a central element of the topic under discussion. That's the reason I keep pushing the term; if we later decide that some other term is more appropriate, we can always use a bot to replace SC with that new term; if we hem and haw and skirt around the issue, then we'll have to rewrite the articles, and in the meanwhile their factual accuracy will suffer.

Also, I do avoid the phrase "SC language", as I can see how that would imply that the component parts are not languages, and I don't mean to do that. I've been using phrases like "SC standards", "SC standard languages", etc. Please suggest any other wording you think would be more appropriate. — kwami (talk) 09:07, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

I sympathize with the attempt to push a uniform solution for the simple purpose of clarity, but at the same time I don't believe we're doing the encyclopedia a favor if that means en masse sidestepping an existing real-world lack of uniformity on the topic. The encyclopedia describes, it does not prescribe... --Joy [shallot] (talk) 10:26, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

I guess that after Croatian language will be an official language in the EU this terrible dispute will end:All the peple that are studyin "SC" will get no job there..., not able to get a job... Then the can send protest notes to ... --Croq (talk) 20:28, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, right. As if, if the US were to start referring to its national language as "American", you'd no longer be able to get a job there, because you studied "English" in school. Give me a break. — kwami (talk) 22:11, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

While I try to steer clear of answering posts that amount to trolling for the simple purpose of conserving time and effort for more worthwhile endeavours, this time I'll bite: first of all, there is no terrible dispute, only a fairly straightforward, reasonably rational debate on what essentially amounts to issues of nomenclature and categorization. Trying to ignore the debate by way of some magic wand is tantamount to ignoring history - which usually leads to it eventually coming back and biting you in the ass. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 10:37, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Statistics

Someone gave this link [1] as a source for the number of "21 million speakers".
Where did they get that number?
Croatian census 2001 [2] shows 4,961 declared speakers of "Serbian-Croatian". And there 2,054 persons that make difference with that, and they declare their language as "Croatian-Serbian".
Serbian census 2002 (old links [3] [4]) [5] shows no declared speakers of "Serbian-Croatian" nor "Croatian-Serbian". Kubura (talk) 04:31, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, should be 16M.[6] — kwami (talk) 05:53, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

As far as I can tell the first link Kubura mentioned is counting not only populations of B&H, Cro, Sr and MN but also the various South Slavic minorities in other countries. And Kwamis link seems to be counting only the populations of B&H, Cro and Sr (although I'm not very sure about that one). Basically if someone identifies themselves as talking Serbo-Croatian or not, they still technically are talking that language as long as they attended primary schools in any of these countries. So for the purposes of this article all of the numbers in the Serbian, Croatian, Serbo-Croatian, Montenegrin, Croato-Serbian and Bosnian categories mentioned in Kubura's other links should be added up. Or are you really suggesting a kid growing up in one of our countries is quatrilingual (I think I just made up that word, but it sounds cool, take that all you bilingual kids)? Since it's pretty obvious we understand each other perfectly and with minor efforts can even change our dialects if we practice or have the incentive to do so (I for one after studying in Rijeka started talking with a lot of Chakavian phrases). 89.172.46.57 (talk) 05:25, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

The figure for 16M is for all countries. — kwami (talk) 15:57, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

No, it proves that [7] gave wrong information.
It's just Kwami's personal point of view.
National statistics, first-hand information are explicitly showing the true information.
Argument about "easy understandable" is not the argument. Slavic languages are easy to learn for other speakers of Slavic languages. Slovaks learn Croatian much quicker than native English speakers. Even the grannies in Croatia don't have problem learning Polish or Belorussian. They learn it much easier than English. Kubura (talk) 23:55, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

There are around 16,500,000 Serbo-Croatian speakers. The term "Serbo-Croatian" naturally encompasses all Croatian, Serbian, and Bosnian language speakers. You guys can probably stop trying to establish that its spoken by 200 people or whatever nonsense you're getting at here. The source is valid and relevant and certainly supersedes any politicized publication from Serbia or Croatia - this is the English Wikipedia. It has been conclusively established on this talkpage that the majority of linguists do not recognize those three languages as separate. Frankly I don't know what the guys from WikiProject Languages are waiting for... the only talk we ever hear on this talkpage is about grannies and how Ukranian is just as mutually intelligible as Serbian or some other unsubstantiated nonsense.

Kubura I know you probably feel very strongly about this, just like the majority of Croats admittedly do. Let me ask you this, though: why does the Croatian television translate Ukranian for its viewers, and even Slovene or Macedonian, but not Bosnian, Serbian, or Montenegrin? Could it be that their viewers understand the languages without translation? Could it be that if they did try to "translate" Bosnian they'd be laughed at by the whole country? --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 07:51, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Even the grannies in Croatia don't have problem learning Polish or Belorussian. - I'm sorry but that's just nonsense. Polish and Belarusian are very different from Serbo-Croatian. Polish itself is the most divergent Slavic languages of all and no (Serbo-)Croatian speaker is able to understand a word of spoken Polish without previous exposure/training. Please don't spread misinformation. Yes lots of Slavic languages are mutually intelligible to some degree, especially those from the same group (South, West, East), but they've been diverging for more than a thousand years now, and are as mutually different at least as major Germanic or Romance languages are from one another. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 21:30, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

@Director: The time of totalitarisms and their totalitaristic pseudo-languages has gone. You and your wiki activities will not be helpful for rebirth of "SRC". You are wasting your time... Better to check what the guys in the Croatian and Serbian wikis are writing about that subject.That´s much more ecyclopedic that that what you wrote there during the last months... --Croq (talk) 11:02, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

LoL :) What in the world are you talking about? And the day anyone starts looking to Croats and Serbs for guidance on nationalist issues will be a sad day indeed... --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 13:20, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

@Kubura - "easy understanding"? Are you kidding me? It's complete and perfect mutual intelligibility without the need for speakers of Croatian to formally learn Serbian/Montenegrin/Bosnian or vice versa. Something you don't have between Croatian and Ukranian, or even Croatian (especially the non kajkavian dialects) and Slovenian. So please get a grip lol, nationalist ideas can only go so far, they can't (no matter how hard they try) alter reality. Director's translating example perfectly illustrates why these "four languages" are in fact one with slight variations. 83.131.59.10 (talk) 13:44, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

@ Director: The whole world saw what Yugoslaw nationalism and their "Yugoslaw Army" did during 1990ies. Democrtacy has won, Yugounitarism has lost. bye bye--Croq (talk) 13:55, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

NPOV

This curent version is still according to the personal opinion of some authors. That has nothing to do with an encyclopedic article. As long as we don´t find a consensus there should be the NPOV sign. --Croq (talk) 08:33, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

You don't get to just place an {{NPOV}} tenplate to comfort you. You're supposed to actively discuss as well. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 08:36, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

There are so many postings. Do you really think that this article as non disputed? --Croq (talk) 10:39, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Again: you do not get to place an {{NPOV}} tag to feel better about yourself. If you place a tag, list the neutrality issues and start discussing ways to resolve them. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 13:18, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

This article includes so much POV statements. I tryed to remove some of them. Perhaps best would be to make a stub, or to ask for a mediation --Croq (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 14:06, 11 July 2010 (UTC).

Coordinated nationalist response

...is inevitable and should be expected. Nobody should be surprised if we see nationalist canvassing on the Croatian and perhaps Serbian wikis for the recruitment of meatpuppets to oppose any changes here. All out-mobilization, in fact. :) Numbers, however, do not mean much on Wiki. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 13:23, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Yugoslav Nationalsm

Please stop with that Yugoslaw nationalism. There is no way back... Croatians, Montenegrins, Bosniaks and Serbians are on the way back to normal relationship. Finally we have democracy, freedom - and Yugoslaw Serbocroatian are a sysonym for dictatorship, language discrimination. --Croq (talk) 13:58, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Language discrimination? In fact this is quite the opposite and more importantly has much less to do with politics and a lot more to do with linguistics. 83.131.59.10 (talk) 14:37, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

IP does not know about language discrimination? But in Croatia is well known that Yugoslav Nationalsists installed linguistical censorship, printmedia and linguistical discrimination against those who did not want to write "SRC". Is was dangerous to say or write anything against it. --213.103.161.171 (talk) 15:19, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Except we're not talking about politics but linguistics here, which some people tend to completely forget. No matter what happened during second Yugoslavia, these languages have been a very cohesive mutually intelligible unit since early 19th century. 83.131.59.10 (talk) 17:14, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

That's a common myth: the linguistic basis (ijekavian Neoštokavian dialect) of modern standard Croatian predates Communist Yugoslavia by at least century. Vienna Literary Agreement happened in 1850! --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 21:13, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Croq, don't you think that the phrase Yugoslav nationalism is a bit oxymoronic? I mean, Yugoslavia had a Communist regime that openly vilified nationalism and imprisoned lots of self-professed nationalists. Not that the people were forbidden to express "positive" nationalism; in fact, only a tiny minority of population in censi even claimed to have the nationality of Yugoslavs (usually those from mixed marriages and ardent Communists). The phrase Yugoslav nationalists is equally bizarre. Lets keep politics out of this, aye? --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 21:13, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

This is about linguistics not politics. In the Balkans linguistics (and science in general) are consistently influenced by politics, communist or nationalist to equal extent. Local publications are therefore to be disregarded without exception, both from the pre-1990 or post-1990 periods.
Croq, your ideological references and borderline personal attacks serve only to apparently satisfy you, other than that I cannot imagine any effect. Don't let me stop you though... --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 17:17, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Croq has now done exactly the same edit twice, even though it was reverted the first time. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 19:27, 11 July 2010 (UTC)

Croq changed in every edit some details. But you are reverting everytime without discussion. Same as it happened in Ex Yugoslavia when the communists tryed to establish their "Yugoslav Language". Really interesting POV pushing team here.. --Croq (talk) 10:48, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm sure we'd all be glad to play the bad guys in your glorious crusade here, but I'm afraid Wikipedia is not the venue. You have been reverted, your edits are opposed, and you are engaged in a WP:EDIT WAR. In accordance with Wiki guidelines I am formally warning you to cease attempting to push your opposed edit via edit-warring, and achieve consensus on the talkpage via discussion prior to restoring any of it again. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 11:02, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Apparently we are a bunch of POV pushing vandals. Croq is threatening to report me to admins for POV pushing on my talk page, probably in response to me warning him. Besides, I didn't see any major changes in any of the edits Croq made. They all pretty much said the same things, such as "hybrid language" and "communist yugoslavia" that were blatant POV pushing. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 17:10, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

There are so many reasons why this article is pure POV: You removed that this language is controversial (and everybody knows very well that this is a fact), the sentence with the Novi Sad Agreement of and so many other things. This pseudo-language is a part of history of Yugoslavia when the dictators tried to establish a "Yugoslav Language". It ended in the same way as their general Ratko Mladic, Slobodan Milosevic and so many others ended. Please accept that the history is not written by the guys like them and that democracy and freedom has won against tyranism. --Croq (talk) 17:29, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Removing mentioning its controversial status within former Yugoslavia, especially Croatia, is, of course, POV. However, trying to deny its factual existence is equally POV: speakers of both (standard) Croatian and Serbian can easily understand eachother, making SC a language from a linguistic-scientific perspective; such things do not cease to be (or come to be) when the political situation changes. As an encyclopedia we have an obligation to report this (and the other) facts, no matter the sensitivities. (We thus must also report dictators' abuses concerning the language.) Also note that SC≠Yugoslav language here. --JorisvS (talk) 17:57, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, JorisvS, we agree that the the status is controversal. By the way not only in "Ex-YU" but also other lingists. So lets put it in the article in the beginning. --Croq (talk) 13:34, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

The language is not "controversial" in ex-Yugoslavia - its existence is simply not an issue. Each state promotes its own centralized standard language, and adherence to the ever-changing standard is not an issue of debate. Serbo-Croatian is considered not to be in existence in any form and is simply not a subject of controversy at all.

That is not truth, it contoversal there, too. The people know very well there which language they speak. In the croatian or serbian wikipedia such a discussion is not necessary.´--Croq (talk) 13:34, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Oh laugh-out-loud what nonsense... you're actually opposing me while agreeing with me. :D Very telling, I think, about the usefullness of any discussion along these lines. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 15:10, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

In other words, in ex-Yugoslavia a language's existence is generally considered to be defined by its standardization. Since no political organization or institution standardizes Serbo-Croatian, it is considered "not to exist" simply because of that, and since the myriad nationalist political institutions of each state institute each their own language, these are considered to be in existence (no matter how absurd their separation may be, e.g. Bosnian language, Montenegrin language, etc.) The above is evident from the responses of the opposing parties. Wikipedia, just like the scientific community, is not to be influenced by political institutions. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 18:31, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

No, Director. We know very well the phasis of political tryal to create a "Yugoslav Language" thert SC should become. But it ended in the same way as the whole country. And stop calling poeple that do not share your unitartistic opinion as "nationalists". By the way ist is the same way like comunists called those who oppose their dictatoirship and fought for freedom in their countries as dissidents. --Croq (talk) 13:34, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

"Crusade, crusade, communists, freedom, unitarianists," etc... I see no sense in responding to such rot. Croq, you are not getting the message, please read the following very carefully and please do not ignore it in future posts: this issue has nothing to do with politics and history. Nothing. You seem not to know what matters on Wikipedia. If you want to be taken seriously you should cease writing these utterly pointless essays and start referring to the international scientific community... or you could just keep posting these insulting pretentious proclamations, I don't know... this is not the backwater dump that is hrWiki. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 15:10, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

On a side note, Croq's only valid point of the language being politically controversial is thoroughly covered in the HUUUGE Present situation section. 83.131.49.180 (talk) 18:02, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

SC is not only political controversal. Thats´s only one point. The second one is also that it i POV pushing that Croatian, Serbian, Bosniak, Montenegrin are the same languages. They are similar but not the same. I guess for not native speakers maybe difficult to understand (same as if a native english speaker would start teaching me about something) but not accespting that Croats, Serbs, Montenegrins and Bosniaks do not know it is very arrogant. --Croq (talk) 20:57, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

No, they're not the same. They just happen to be 99% the same by the fact that they are all standardized on the same subdialect of the same dialect. Modern standard Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian have the same phonology, the same complex accentual system, same complex inflection, almost the same syntax... The only relevant differences are in some 5% of lexis of which majority are systematic and intuitively predictable (in Croatia they prefer -telj where sometimes in Serbia they prefer -lac, and similar). You need to stop downplaying obvious commonalities/similarities among the standards and dispense with abusive political name-calling. Your personal nationalist identity is of no concern us. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 21:24, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

No Mr Stambuk, you personal non qualification is so obvious for native speakers that you can sell you wisedom only to wikipedians who are not native speakers. Forget it, don´t play here with percentages, they don´t keep water. You are wasting time with your personal wiki project.--213.103.160.194 (talk) 22:04, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Per wikipedia policy, unqualified average serbs/croats/bosniks/montenegrins (sorry if denonyms are slightly off) would probably hold less water on this article than others, due to an inherent POV. That is not to say that their opinions are not important. And percentages do keep water, they are base facts. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 22:23, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Just to be perfectly clear: the languages are completely mutually intelligible. The Slovene language is a separate South Slavic language very similar to Serbo-Croatian, and a Serbo-Croatian speaker may understand some Slovene words, perhaps even the general meaning of what the Slovene-speaker is trying to say. On the other hand, a Serb and a Croat may often not even realize they (supposedly) speak "different languages". In other words, its much easier to list the very few differences than the completely common grammar between Croatian and Serbian. Anyone demanding "translation" from Croatian to Serbian or vice versa would not be understood as being serious and would literally be laughed at (as was actually the case during a trial in Bosnia and Herzegovina).

The absurdities go on and on... Croatian supposedly has two secondary dialects, Chakavian and Kajkavian, the differences between standard Croatian and its two dialects are vastly and incomparably greater than those between standard Croatian and standard Serbian (as both are based on Shtokavian), to the point its not even debatable. I'm not kidding - pure Kajkavian and Chakavian are virtually unintelligible to a standard Croatian speaker, with very different syntax and a LOT more different words than you'll find comparing Serbian or Croatian. The absurdity is this: Croq will undoubtedly tell you that Chakavian and Kajkavian are the same language as Croatian, but will exclaim that Serbian is "much too different" to be the same language. And not just him, most people from Croatia will tell you the same :P --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 23:34, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

I would just like to add - Kajkavian (especially the versions spoken around the Gorski kotar area, probably those in Medjimurje too) is actually more similar to Slovene and probably easier to understand for a native Slovene speaker than for a native (stokavian) speaker of Croatian. 89.172.55.34 (talk) 00:06, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Exactly, which further blurs the language differences: if Kajkavian is a Serbo-Croatian dialect, then Slovene can also be considered as part of the single "Serbo-Croato-Slovene language", which was official 1918-1943/45. This of course is an out of date concept today, and generally more debatable. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 01:04, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Jimbo's talk

Oh lolz, would you get this :) --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 19:40, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

L-O-L, someone is really desperate:P. --JorisvS (talk) 19:45, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

He forgot his four tildes. You know, I can't even understand what's being said in that. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 20:19, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

And of course: Jimbo removed it [8]. --JorisvS (talk) 13:02, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Your change of Croatian Grammar to SC Grammar was a desperate act. LOL. --Croq (talk) 21:31, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Proof of "Serbocroatian" existence!!!

Serbocroatian exists. I have the proof: According to the census 2001 in Croatia 2.054 people said that they speak serbocroatian!!!. "Only" 4.265.081 said that they speak croatian (total number was 4.437.460 people). O,05 % speakers are serbocroatian language speakers. Ash to my head ... LOL LOL lOL. Census2001. --Croq (talk) 21:24, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

And now seriously: This article makes those who are no "SC" speakers to idiots who don´t know what they speak??? Wel I think that we are no idiots. But we should change something in the article asap! No tolerance to Yugoslav Nationalism! --Croq (talk) 21:29, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Well, the fact that some croatians do say they speak it is evidence of existence. You are correct. And yes, this article will not tolerate yugoslav nationalism, or any politics at all. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 21:32, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Why isn't this guy banned already (or blocked, or whatever you call it on Wikipedia)? This is just pure trolling and his horrible English "skills" make it all the worse. At least "proper" trolls use some form of leet speak or AIM talk or something. His texts are just completely incomprehensible. Other than his anger over four mutually intelligible languages being called Serbo-Croatian I really don't understand anything else. What exactly is the problem with this article anyway, except one editor misunderstanding that linguistic equivalence doesn't have anything to do with political issues? 89.172.55.34 (talk) 22:30, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

They are not banned because they smartly took into account the warning to stop edit warring. While his english skills are bad, he is obviously croatian, so probably not his fault. There is no major problem, which is why nothing is being changed. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 22:38, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Croq is indeed Croatian, which is why he doesn't seem able to separate this issue from ideology or politics.

Just a side note: "Yugoslav nationalism", as separate from or opposing Croatian or Serbian nationalism, is a completely invented non-existent term - simply because there is no such thing as a "Yugoslav nation" (or even a concept of something like it). "Yugoslav nationalism", if used at all, refers to the collective phenomenon of nationalism within Yugoslavia, i.e. Serbian nationalism + Croatian nationalism + Bosnian nationalism, etc. In the context used by Croq on this talkpage, the term is basically his own personal word construct specifically designed for polemic purposes (e.g. "You're a Croatian nationalist!" "Oh yeah? Well you're a 'Yugoslav nationalist' then!" :) I thought it might be useful to note. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 23:03, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, we don't normally block people for political rants on talk pages, as long as they're not attacking anyone. Though if the rant is irrelevant to the article, we sometimes just delete it. — kwami (talk) 23:13, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Following that side note, I thought that you could have a form of Yugoslav nationalism. I always thought that someone from Yugoslavia was a slav, and thus slavic nationalism (or south slavic) would be considered Yugoslav nationalism. Is that mistaken? Chipmunkdavis (talk) 06:26, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Not really, as I said, it can be used as a collective term for Slavic nationalism in (ex-)Yugoslavia. Its usage in Croq's context is completely incorrect, however, as he is displaying it as a "new" nationalist ideology separate from, or even opposed to, Croatian and Serbian nationalism. Additionally, Yugoslavia was a socialist federal union, nationalism within Yugoslavia was and is fundamentally opposed to Yugoslavia itself. Think of it like someone starting to use the term "Soviet nationalism" as something new and opposed to Russian nationalism, its wrong on two levels. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 08:08, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Imagine two Germans arguing about the EU, one says "You're a German nationalist!", the other responds "Well you're a European Union nationalist!". :) Now imagine the EU is a socialist entity who's political ideology is inherently anti-nationalist... --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 15:22, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

@Chipmunkdavis: Please google for "ORJUNA" ("Organization of Yugoslav Nationalists") for example. On case of the controversity of this present version this article is much more neutral on wiki: http://www.fact-index.com/s/se/serbo_croatian_language.html .You can alco check for Yugoslavian unitarianism in google (also a aspect of that). --Croq (talk) 15:36, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Got it DIREKTOR, thanks. Sort of like (Sticking with Germany) Barvarian nationalism would be part of German nationalism? And croq (and whoever), I suppose that is just the extreme of Yugophoria right? Chipmunkdavis (talk) 19:46, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

No Chipmunkdavis, I tried to put your attention to the Yugounitarism. --Croq (talk) 21:10, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Croatian Census 2001

An exellent source is the census 2001 in Croatia where the people declare which language they speak. Census2001 Obviously Director ans Stmbuk are two who belong to the 0,005 % who declared that they speak SC. Why do you remove this from the article? But 0,005 % is not so bad, isn´t it? Does anybody know about census in the other countries? Tht would be very interesting. Or does Director/Stambuk think that this people do not know which language they speak? --Croq (talk) 05:58, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Don't play dumb. You know there's a difference between SC as the Yugoslav standard, and SC as the diasystem which includes SCBM. — kwami (talk) 07:50, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Additionally, the way you inserted it just made it plain hard to read. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 08:17, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

A-Ha: Diasystem! Can we change the first sentences? --Croq (talk) 21:26, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Those same people 20 years earlier all claimed to be speaking Serbo-Croatian during the Yugoslav censi. There is a different between

• Reality as it actually is
• Reality as they perceive it to be

Additionally, there is no difference even if none of the actual SC speakers called their mother tongue or national standard Serbo-Croatian. It's not up to them to decide how their language can be classified or analyzed. They don't "own" it. Yes it's an important part of identity, but not everyone cares about their identity. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 09:05, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Oh no, that is not truth. Do you have any link who could proof that at the census 1991 it was different? And: Same as I respect that a few people in Croata say that the speak serbocroatian, you have to respect that 99,xx % speak Croatian language. They surely know best which language they speak.--Croq (talk) 22:34, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

I'll just copy-paste what I said a few weeks ago on this matter - are you really suggesting a kid growing up in one of our countries is quatrilingual? Because they're not, although I would really like it if I were able to put - speaks 6 languages in my CV, looks waaay better than - speaks 3 languages. :D Maybe I would finally get a job then... 83.131.59.229 (talk) 23:51, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

I don´t know what to advise you to find a job, but if you don´t know about the differences between languages maybe a improval of education would be helpful for you to find something. --Croq (talk) 21:29, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

If by improving my education (hint improval is not a word) you mean accepting silly nationalistic sentiment about non-existent differences between several versions of the same language, then I'd rather stay dumb thank you very much. 83.131.53.245 (talk) 22:29, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

On this census, everybodo had the chance to declare free which language is his mother language. I really respect the two thousand SC speakers, but why don´t Stamby, Direx, Kwami and Chipmonk repsect that 98 % of the pople knoiw very well which language they speak. And theat they are able to see the difference between that terms? So if you don´t respect that you are discriminating all this people. And I hope somebody of the wiki stewards will see what happens here.--Croq (talk) 22:34, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

I do respect the people there, and I know they speak Croatian. I do see the difference between Croatian and Serbo-Croat, however, you don't, apparently. And I think at this moment I shall move to WP:SHUN, sorry. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 22:49, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

And why do you remove everytime the result of the census. I can not understand this behaviour. --Croq (talk) 07:59, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Censorship

I have added some interesting data and other informations with relevant sources. Now I don´t understand, why Director is trying with his censorship? --Croq (talk) 21:10, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

I think the number could be added, for as long as the total number of speakers (declared or otherwise) and a description of the reasons behind the discrepancy are mentioned alongside it (it could illustrate the reasons behind all the discussion on this and related pages, I think), otherwise it's quite POV. Also, I'm uncertain as to its appropriateness in the lead. --JorisvS (talk) 21:31, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

OK, please add it in the article. I think that this data is very important. Whatevery I do is being censored/revertet by Chip and Director. --Croq (talk) 21:33, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Well, more and more I think we will need a mediation. Everything I edit is just being revertet by POV pushers. --Croq (talk) 21:42, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, your edits are as they stand now very POV pushy. Those undoing them are merely protecting the encyclopedic neutrality of the article. --JorisvS (talk) 21:46, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Ingredients

On each food product by law are listed the ingedients of the products. Also in Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro. I guess Chipmunk and Kwami have never been there to see how it looks like. Stambuk and Direkcor know that very well. If you would print on a produsct "SC" a lot of people would not understand the ingredients. So we are talking about a language that many poeple would not understand. That´s the reason why on every product are written these things in different languages. --Croq (talk) 21:26, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Lol, ok I'll bite - the reason why they do that on products (and only those that are exported) is because those products are being sold in the markets of the countries whose international sign precedes it. But tbh even that is a pretty far fetched and biased example especially considering that most products you're probably thinking of here are originally from one of the ex-Yu countries. A real test would be to see what manufacturers from other areas of the world exporting to two or more ex-Yu countries write. I'm guessing it would be the same as with German write-ups being marked DE-AT-CH sometimes, this would be HR-SRB-BiH, or something like it. Also I would suspect it depends on how many different distributor companies they use. Either way such a thing is nothing compared to linguistics experts and common sense, which both categorize the three (or four) standards as the same language 83.131.53.245 (talk) 22:13, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

@IP, you make me laugh. Same language? But why are the words/expressions so different??? I hope Chip and the other who support Director-Stambuk would come to spend some days of holidays in Croatia to see by the way what is written on the ingredients of the products here. LOL. --Croq (talk) 22:21, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

I've seen croatian packaging. Honestly, I don't speak the language, so I have no idea what the way it is written means at all :) Sorry. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 22:24, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

OK, now I understand your pont od view. You don´t speak the languages. Mabye that´s one of the reasons why the wiki project is sometimes not a serious source. I would prefer to discuss with experts abot that article. --Croq (talk) 22:36, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

An example for people not speaking the languages (took this off a cookie box). SRB - Sastojci: pšenično i raženo brašno, šećer, med, dekstroza, mešavina začina, sredstva za dizanje testa, regulator kiselosti, kiseline: mlečna i limunska, voćno punjenje, čokoladni preliv

HR - Sastojci: pšenično i raženo brašno, šećer, med, dekstroza, mješavina začina, tvari za rahljenje, regulator kiselosti, kiseline: mliječna i limunska, voćno punjenje, čokoladni preljev

As you can see everything is the same except for one phrase which is basically a synonym, and the differences in the jat reflex which are covered by this article. 83.131.53.245 (talk) 22:47, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

It does look the same to me. As a side note, just because I don't speak the language doesn't mean I can't discuss it. I'm sure linguists do not speak all the languages they study. Alternatively, I find that native speakers actually know less about the language then others. For example, people I know who learned english come up to me with all this stuff about tense and describe the grammar of english in ways I've never heard before. I however, do use these ways, but its natural for me. They studied it. So being native may actually make you less knowledgeable about how your language works. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 22:52, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Also here's an example I had today in person - I play a certain online RPG in a guild with members from Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia and Slovenia (our only Slovenian member is also a native speaker of Serbo-Croatian but we'd probably understand 90%+ even if he talked in Slovenian only). We normally understand each other no problem, but from time to time there comes a word or phrase we have to explain more thoroughly. It's so rare that I remember the last two cases clearly - two or three months ago one of our members from Serbia said lebac, I was a bit confused by it, but when he said hleb instead I understood what it was (basically he used a colloquial term for the word hleb which means bread and also has a synonym which is more often used in Croatia and Bosnia - kruh, which added to my confusion). Today a member from Croatia said kamatar and this time one of our Serbian members didn't understand him, but after saying it's the same as utjerivac dugova he understood it perfectly (kamatar/utjerivac dugova is a debt collector or more specifically a loan shark). I'm saying this just to illustrate that, even though each of us speak in different dialects most noticeably different by the jat reflex, we understand each other so clearly that these sort of purely linguistic misunderstandings are more of an anecdote than something posing as a real problem to our communication. 83.131.53.245 (talk) 23:53, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Sounds like when I first moved from Australia, and started talking to yanks. Different vocabulary was used for many items, though all of us definitely spoke english. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 18:32, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

IP forgot to write the ingredients in Slovenan, Bulgarian or Slovak languages. Especially this words that he had chosen are similar. Perhaps IPStamby prepares "SlovenoSerboCroatiBulgariRussiMontenegriBosnianlanguage". Basic words are in German, Roamn and so many other languages similar. --Croq (talk) 22:03, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Nationalist edit-warring

I suppose it was only a matter of time before Croq attempted to push his ideas with edit-warring. How in the world he got the idea that revert-warring would "force" any changes in the article is beyond me, something must be done to stop him from continuously vandalizing the article. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 21:44, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Well, I use sources. You remove everything. Difflink. I don´t understand why?--Croq (talk) 21:47, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

I am not going to play this game. The reason your edits are opposed has been explained in detail. The inadequacy of your sources has also been explained. I see no reason to continuously repeat the same things over and over again to someone unwilling to alter his position in the slightest, particularly if such immobility is inspired by nationalism or "patriotism" (as is indisputably the case here). I see an imminent block in your future should you continue this sort of behavior (if indeed, you manage to somehow escape one now). --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 21:51, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Aha, interesting. For you this official result of a census "nationalistic". So you are discriminating 99 % of the citizens who took part on the census. And that is discrimination! People who are discriminating other people should be blocked! --Croq (talk) 21:57, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Irrelevant. On Wikipedia, we use WP:secondary sources, not primary sources such as censuses. — kwami (talk) 22:01, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

You make me laugh. You really think that a result of a census should be secondary source? That should be no problem. Let´s google it...--Croq (talk) 22:04, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

I cannot believe I am going to repeat this. Croatian is an ethno-political variant of Serbo-Croatian. Obviously what that census shows is that 99% of the inhabitants of Croatia speak the Serbo-Croatian language, referring to it by either the name of the variant standardized in Croatia, or the one in Serbia, or the one in Bosnia, or the general term for all three/four. Its not an issue of primary or secondary source. The issue here is not what people call their language, everyone accepts that Croats primarily refer to the language they speak as "Croatian", Serbs as "Serbian", etc. Congratulations for proving the obvious. The fact we are discussing here is that those three are, in obvious fact - one language.

And for the last time - NO the general public does not get to "decide" whether they speak the same language as someone else or a different one. Obviously because people are generally uneducated in languages, and decide on things based on whether or not they personally "like" the idea of speaking one language as some other nation they despise or have been at war with. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 22:20, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

In addition to previous warnings by administrators, the account User:Croq has been formally informed of WP:ARBMAC [9], and has chosen to continue his behavior [10][11][12]. He has also on an increasing number of occasions insulted other editors without provocation ("you make me laugh"?). --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 22:07, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Heh, my favorite article discussion on Wikipedia is still not over? Weird I thought that several of us having said the same things 10 times over would've made it clear for Croq. I see he's been vandalizing the article for several hours today. Getting kind of boring. I almost feel like making an account just to help you guys in reverting his drivel. 89.172.60.61 (talk) 22:30, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

"Almost"? :) --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 22:31, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Not until Director-Stambuks POV Pushing will stop.--Croq (talk) 21:59, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Recent edits

For the record I recently entered the full name of the language ("Serbo-Croatian or Croato-Serbian") into the lead, adding the Serbo-Croatian native name for the language in brackets, and listed the states and standardized languages with respect to population size, rather than alphabetical order (seemed more appropriate). --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 22:30, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

It seems more logical by population size. Should you add Serbo-Croat if you're adding commonly used names in English? And as a side edit to new edits, I do think that the census Croq has been pushing has some value (although not where and how they used it). Probably in the Present Situation section, showing that people in Croatia mainly use Croatian, but a minority still call is Serbo-Croatian? Chipmunkdavis (talk) 22:59, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, that's relevant to the naming issue. — kwami (talk) 23:03, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

With all respect to usage "Serbo-Croat" is I think grammatically incorrect. (A) "Croat" is a person of Croatian nationality, not an adjective (like "Croatian"). So "Serbo-Croat" instead of "Serbo-Croatian" is something like "French-Englishman" instead of "French-English". :) --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 23:12, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Well Direktor, Serbo-croat is not rooted off croat. It's a basic shortening of Serbian-Croatian, with both words being equally diminished. It's the english language, it's not exactly supposed to make sense! :) Chipmunkdavis (talk) 07:33, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

The OED lists 'Serbo-Croat' before 'Serbo-Croatian', though I've never heard the term in the US. — kwami (talk) 08:15, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

If it's in the OED, that is pretty official. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 08:47, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

The OED uses "Serbo-Croat" in 18 entries (17 of which use it in the etymology section, + 1 for the def. of the term itself; it is not illustrated by any citations) and "Serbo-Croatian" in 12 entries (8 in etym. sect., 3 entries have it in 9 quotations, + 1 for the term itself), and "Croato-Serbian" in one (the etymology of 'cravat'; "Croato-Serbian" was evidently not worth making an entry for). — kwami (talk) 09:15, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

I've actually never heard of Croato-Serbian before now. Sounds like some Croatian trying to stick his country first to me, although I'm probably mistaken. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 09:18, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

I've never heard it either, except listed as an alternate to SC. The OED would seem to confirm that it's rare, or at least was rare, as those entries may be dated. (The one instance was under the entry for 'cravat', where it has, "a[dopted from] F[rench] cravate (1652 in Hatzfeld), an application of the national name Cravate Croat, Croatian, a[dopted from] G[erman] Krabate (Flem[ish] Krawaat), ad[aptation of] Croato-Serbian Khrvat, Hrvat, OSlav. Khrŭvat, of which Croat is another modification".

I've modified the lede to reflect English usage. AFAIK "Serbo-Croat" is confined to the Commonwealth, whereas "Serbo-Croatian" appears to be used everywhere, even if "Serbo-Croat" may be preferred in some areas. — kwami (talk) 09:27, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

The commonwealth is pretty big though, so that's not much of an argument. In any case though, Wikipedia policy dictates that we use the name which can be understood by Commonwealth English speakers and by US English speakers if possible, and those who know what Serbo-Croat is will easily understand Serbo-Croatian, so leave that as the main one I think. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 09:32, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

I meant that AFAIK SC is restricted to the Commonwealth, whereas SCian is found both within and without the Commonwealth, and so appears to be the more widespread term.

As for CS being due to Croats wanting to put their lang. first, I don't think so. Both terms were used in Yugoslavia, and apparently given equal legal footing, indicating that C and S were equal under the law. But AFAIK the term CS never caught on in English, where the older SC prevails: from what I've seen, the term CS is generally used only as an alternate by non-Croatian authors, and as a main term by Croatian authors, though I'm sure that's not 100%. — kwami (talk) 09:41, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Stop POV pushing in this article

I tried to make the headline more neutral and to show different points of view. Kwami, Director In IP-Stambuk: It would be very kind of you to stop your POV-pushing. --Croq (talk) 21:57, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

LOL! I would have asked the same thing of you, if I thought it would do any good. I reverted your bizarre edits, of course. Please show me one linguist who thinks SC does not exist. I suppose everyone in the ex-Yugoslavia speaks Albanian? — kwami (talk) 23:05, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Mer dita Kwami, I don´t think that it makes any sense to discuss with somebody who has no elemaentary knowledge about this subject. Is it a joke or don´t you really know that there are a lot of linguitsts who do not share your personal opinion?? unbelievable. --Croq (talk) 22:04, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Why does DIRECTOR remove this sencence with reliable source? I guess because it not due to his POV pushinG? Difflink --Croq (talk) 09:29, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

The sentence you are trying to add the way it is written is very POV. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 20:17, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

I have added a reputable source. So where is the problem?--Croq (talk) 22:01, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

The problems are position in the document, and style of writing. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 22:02, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Please change the position and sytle of writing.If that is the only problem, why do you delete it? And another thing: What about German and sources in other languages? --Croq (talk) 22:12, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

NPOV Tag

1. Result of the census in Croatia 2001. We shoud put the number of SC speakers out of the article. The citation of this census is a proof tthat this number cannot be right and that as the people know very well which language they speak.--Croq (talk) 10:16, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

2. Citation of not english sources: No more removal of eg. german sources who show that this article is POV--Croq (talk) 10:16, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

All that is necessary to explain this has already been said. And anyway there is no amount of text we can write here that will avail to counter nationalist preconceptions grounded in the blind worship of the "Holy Croatian Language". (Yes, that's how some like to call it. :) Trust me folks, no point at all.

I'll be blunt since this is just getting downright stupid.

1. Forget it.

2. Cherry-picked, misrepresented sources inserted incorrectly contrary to consensus to push a silly POV will be removed without fail or exception.

Have a nice day :) --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 10:25, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

@Director, who speaks hear about any holy language? Do you call it like this? Or who does it? I never heard that. You alsway repeat phrases about "Balkan nationalists", don´t you have any other arguments? It´s a little boring. Are the 98 percent of people all nationalists and the two thousands are the good guys who declared in the way that Director likes? Why do you remove all the edits and sitations who dont agree with your pont of view? --Croq (talk) 14:13, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

[edit conflict] Any edits you attempt to push into the article without achieving full consensus on the talkpage (WP:BRD) will be reverted instantly and without fail. Revert-warring to push your edits will get you blocked, I assure you. Frankly, I am sure I am not the only one who is amazed you're still around after the repeated insults and the incessant edit-warring of the past week. I shall have to devote more time it seems to putting an end to this nonsense.

Please, feel free to discuss - just not with me, I know better. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 14:31, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Director says that he knows it better?! That ´s why you have chosen this name ?? Interesting style of discussing.--Croq (talk) 21:05, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Okay, this is getting ridiculous. Is the neutrality of the article disputed? Of course it is. It's about the Balkans. It seems everything about the Balkans is disputed. As such, the NPOV tag is utterly meaningless. Let's not get into edit wars over such minor points. It's not going to hurt to leave it up for a while, and then if Croq does no better in presenting his case than he has up till now, we take it down again. — kwami (talk) 14:22, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

No its not... its just Croq's objections (straight out of the 90s) without any arguments. Its silly to degrade the article in any way over no-account ideas that the number of speakers should be stated as being "2,000" or some such nonsense. I must admit I am amazed this isn't over by now. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 14:35, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Like Kwami I thought I'd just leave it there for awhile. I personally do think that the information of the survey would be very useful in this article (though it would be best if we could find a secondary source analyzing it or it would have to be worded very carefully to avoid WP:SYNTH). Chipmunkdavis (talk) 14:43, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Well, Director you say that my objections are straight from 90ies. May I inform you that your style is like in the time of dictature 1945-1991. I think you were born a little too late... And by the way you can find a lot of reputable links that "Serbocroatian" was a semi unified and official language in Yugoslavia from 1945-1991. So where is the problem? It is semi-unified a historical language. --Croq (talk) 21:05, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Croq, please don't play stupid. You know that we all agree "Serbocroatian" was a semi unified and official language in Yugoslavia from 1945-1991. The problem is that it's also been the English name of the language of the Serbs and Croats since the 19th century. E.g., The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1888 edition, speaks of the Serbo-Croatian language as being the language of Hercegovina, the The universal anthology: a collection of the best literature... from 1899 speaks of Serbo-Croatian (literature), as does Macmillan's magazine of 1884 (vol. 49) and Transactions of the Philological Society of 1885, all well before the union of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1918. Morfill's Simplified grammar of the Serbian language of 1887 alternately calls the language 'Serbian' and 'Serbo-Croatian', and states that it is the language of the Kingdom of Serbia, Turkish Old Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Istria, Monenegro, Austrian Croatia, Slavonia, Syrmia, & part of Carniola, Banat, and South Hungary. He notes an earlier, unsuccessful attempt by Gaj to fuse "Slovenish and Serbo-Croatian". And although the term has fallen somewhat out of use, relatively speaking, it still is in common use, as we've shown you numerous times. Again, if you have a better name for the article, please provide one. — kwami (talk) 21:56, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Kwami, I am really surprised: everything that you wrote in this passus is from my point of view absoultely correct! But why is it not possible tomake the first passus more ore less like what you wrote there? Just a little bit of this what you wrote (like semi unified...oficial language in YU until 1991 and so on? In English literature this term is as is as you say - you are absolutely correct, but that mus be written in the article. Wiki means globalization of knowledge. So the english and also probably literature in other countries from the time before 1991 perhaps no more acutual.

If an stupid person as me reads that article in the present version, he thinks that this is the native language in the countries there. And now seem to consider that this is not truth. The name of the article is ok, but there mus be more aspects of that what this term means. So as I can understand not so bad in english but not abloe to write so good as you can. So please support this wiki project to have a good article. This present version is everything but NPOV. Also when you write the total number of speakters. Who know that how many people speak SC? It is POV to write 18 milions. The fact that it is based on neostokavian and that serbian and croatian are similar-similar as indonesian and malayan, -hindi and urdu, bulgarian and macedonian, norvegian and danish is absolutely no question. But it is not necesary to say that only "balcan nationalsts" are people who say that this language never existed and was a product of totalitaristic dictatures that tried to create new languages. --Croq (talk) 22:27, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Croq, I'm not saying you're stupid. I thought you were purposefully making an argument out of something we agree with, which I'd say is "playing (falsely) stupid". If you were not, my apologies.

Or, at least I think we agree. Because at the end you say the opposite again, claiming the language does not exist--or am I misreading you?

Yes, reading a foreign language as if it's your own can cause problems. Japanese and Swahili have borrowed many English words, which no longer mean the same thing as in English, and this can lead to misunderstanding.

Also, IMO language politics do not belong in the very beginning of the article. The most important aspects of a language belong at the top. Arguments over naming are not the most important thing. We already say at the end of the lede that the term SC is controversial, which IMO is where it belongs.

As for going into more detail, we already have a huge section--how much more do you want? As Chipmunkdavis said, please present your ideas here, and we can work on them until everyone is happy.

As for the population, this article is about the language of the Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, and Montenegrins. Therefore the speaking population is the number of Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, and Montenegrins. That's pretty straightforward, just as the number of Slavic speakers is the total number of Russians, Poles, Czechs, Bulgarians, .... As for the number of speakers who use any particular name, what does that have to do with it? It's the same language regardless, and in any case those figures are in the Serbian, Croatian, etc. articles, where they're most relevant. The language is called both SC and BCS. We can't have one figure for SC and a different figure for BCS; they're the same thing. As they say, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. If we change the name of the article, that shouldn't affect the facts of the language.

Also, it would probably help if we are clear whether we mean an ausbau language or an abstand language. SC as an ausbau language was the official standard of Yugoslavia, and I agree, it would seem that it no longer really exists, and perhaps it never did (AFAIK it was a bi-standard, never a single, unified standard under Yugoslavia; I don't know about Gaj's era). I think we're clear about that. However, as an abstand language, it is the language that you and many of the other editors here speak; it's existed ever since the expansion of Shtokavian gave a unity to the Serbian and Croatian dialects that set them apart from Slovenian and Bulgarian. Of course, one can argue that there are no real dividing lines between the South Slavic dialects, so SC is imaginary, but by that argument Croatian is also imaginary, as are French, Spanish, Italian, German, Polish, and Russian. Should we say that Croatian, French, and Russian are "controversial", because some linguists say they "don't exist"? (If I looked hard enough, I could find linguists who say just that: that these are parts of dialect continuums, and so "don't exist" as discrete languages.)

— kwami (talk) 23:08, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

@I'm from the "1945-1991" period? Well if you mean my mindset is that of a time of comparative prosperity before the war and imbecilic destruction, when petty nationalism (laughable to any foreigner) was considered an affliction of the primitive and stupid, when courts of law were not a downright joke, when rock'n'roll was more popular than the primitive folk noise - then yes :). If you mean socialism - then no. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 23:33, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

"laughable to any foreigner": I watched the news coverage of the destruction of Dubrovnik. I wasn't laughing.

"primitive and stupid": yeah, that's a little closer. I wouldn't be that polite. — kwami (talk) 00:00, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Croq (and friends) I am tired of spamming on talk page of article Srpskohrvatski jezik on sh wikipedia and so.....

You are speaking about census in Croatia 2001 so I am having question.

In all official documents of Croatian citizens it is writen that birth state (država rođenja) is Croatia, but they are born in Yugoslavia. Can you please explain me how this is possible ??

My personal thinking is that population is saying "right" answer or in another words on question about language in census from 2001 they are saying that language is Croatian because this is "right" answer.

What is your thinking about that ?

Can somebody please stop, end discussion about Serbo-Croatian language before this will become cross wiki problem ?? --Rjecina (talk) 05:56, 24 July 2010 (UTC)