Image talk:Cpw10ct.gif

What is the origin of this map, who made it? Other than the previously discussed issues (in Talk:History of Bosnia and Herzegovina), it names the areas of Banat as "Pannonia" which is somewhat... inconsistent with what an Eastern Roman Emperor should know about the borders of a Western Roman province. --Shallot 19:54, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Much happened at the history of Bosnia page since I wrote this... it's amusing how Nikola Smolenski adopted this propagandist map and included it on the pages on Serbs and the History of Serbia. --Joy [shallot] 20:31, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

• There is a map very similar to this one, published in 1972 in a book titled "Constantine Porphyrogenitus and His World" by medieval Oxford scholar Arnold Joseph Toynbee (ISBN: 019215253X).

So? Does it explain the issue of the western border, or anything else? --Joy [shallot] 09:54, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• Western border of inland Serbia (Transmontana; comprising of Raska and Bosnia) is 'montem Pini', which is referring to the peeks of the present day Dinara mountain, also serving as the present day south-western border of Bosnia-Herzegovina towards Croatia close to the Una river. You have 40+ pages of comparative referencing through various historical sources on montem Pini as the Dinara mountain in: Novakovic, Relja. Gde Se Nalazila Srbija od VII-IX Veka. (Istorijski Institut, Beograd. 1981). I am not sure if the book is available in English, but it is out there. As far as 'anything else' goes, have a read for yourself: one of the good English translations of DAI is by R.J.H. Jenkins (ISBN 0-88402-021-5).

Even if I take you word for Mons Pini being Dinara, this is still text from the Chronicle of the Priest of Duklja, not De Administrando Imperio! And with regard to that, it says that Bosna reaches "usque ad" mount Pini, meaning that it goes as far as Mt. Pini. And that's just about the northwestern tip of what is drawn on the picture as Zahumlje, the inclusion of the whole Bosanska Krajina and whatnot is simply not supported by the quoted text, that's mere extrapolation, to put it mildly. --Joy [shallot] 19:47, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I've uploaded a new version with some markings added to the original: locations of Dinara, Drina and the lines between their various endpoints. --Joy [shallot] 20:18, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Further, the relevant quotes from the document, quoted at Wikiquote, says:

From Ragusa begins the domain of the Zachlumi and stretches along as far as the river Orontius ; and on the side of the coast it is neighbour to the Pagani, but on the side of the mountain country it is neighbour to the Croats on the north and to Serbia at the front.

I don't know which is Orontius, but I'll presume that it's Rama, as marked on the map.

the country of Croatia [...] at Tzentina and Chlebena becomes neighbour to the country of Serbia. For the country of Serbia is at the front of all the rest of the countries, but on the north is neighbour to Croatia

I think that the notion of "at the front" of something must mean to the northeast, I see no other explanation for this phrase. So if we were to trust this map, then Croatia at the time would be located to the north of the Serbia as drawn, and therefore include today's Slavonia. Combine that with how Croatia looks today, and you'll see the reason to (mis)interpret things that way... I fail to see how a country shaped like a horseshoe would work back in that time. And then there's the general unreliability of the Emperor-this-Emperor-that language. The holes in this whole story are just too numerous to miss... --Joy [shallot]

• What Montem Pini actually represents is a very old historical discussion, resolved in the early eighties. Another thing: in early medieval sources (such as the ones we are talking about) references to various mountains as borders are never about the tip of the mountain (?). Tip cannot be a border. When mountains are mentioned as a border marker, it is always a reference to the the whole length of the mountain, in the similar way the rivers are used for this purpose. DIA and CPD are now considered to be complementary sources (not contradictory), because they explain the same (or very similar) arrangement and situation.

Yeah, well, I did not exclude that possibility from the map, and still it's missing huge chunks of territory that is implied to be included. And this is logical really, there's little that the Byzantine Emperor, who concentrated on the Dalmatian cities, could have known about the exact borders deep in the hinterland. --Joy [shallot]

It is fairly safe to say that, going on what we now have, the borderline between early medieval Croatia and Serbia (or, more accurately, between the Croats and Serbs) went along the Cetina–Dinara-Una line. There is another complement to this theory that comes from a different source – linguistic history. Pavle Ivic, the most accredited linguistic historian of former Yugoslavia, published a book in 1986 about the medieval history of the (then official) Serbo-Croatian language. According to Ivic, the border between old Croatian (cakavski) and old Serbian (stokavski) was a stable one for some 800 years (from the 7th to the 15th century, that is until the Ottomans arrived in the region), and it run along the Cetina-Dinara-Una line. Ivic’s research was strictly linguistic, had nothing to do with historical texts we are discussing, but he nevertheless came to a same conclusion (Ivic believes that cakavski and stokavski were brought to the Balkans as already formed dialects of the Croats and Serbs).

Well, regardless of the merits of that, if that is something that one wishes to show, then a map should be marked "Pavle Ivić's beliefs of the medieval locations of Croats and Serbs". Not "Medieval Serbia, and Constantine said so back in 950". Can you not see the inherent bias in this kind of presentation? --Joy [shallot]

• Joy: I understand what you are trying to emphasize, but what you did effectively destroyed the map. Please bring the original back, and upload this one as a version of it + post it here (the Talk page).

It did not destroy it, it made it more accurate according to its caption. If you wish for the caption to be changed, please make a new, proper image. --Joy [shallot]

• As I said before, a map very similar to this one can be found in Toynbee's book. Toynbee made a map on purely historical interpretation some 14 years before Pavle Ivic published his book. As far as Ivic is concerned, I do find linguistic history to be quite useful in trying to figure out 'who lived where' in the medieval Balkans. It is now generally accepted that Croats and Serbs came to the Balkans in the 7th century independently and as already well-formed Slavic tribes. This fact was evident in their respective languages: comparative linguistics of earliest examples of old Croatian (Cakavski) and old Serbian (Stokavski) shows centuries of independent linguistic development from the initial proto-Slavic language in their separate pre-Balkan homelands (wherever these were). There was a general consensus among the Serbian and Croatian linguists in SFRY (feel free to double check this) that the borderline between Cakavski and Stokavski run along the Cetina-Dinara-Una line from the initial settlement (7th century) to the Ottoman arrival in the area (15th century). Then the situation changes into chaos (but that is a separate story). The bottom line is that for some 800 years Cetina-Dinara-Una line represented a linguistic border between what we can call two different Slavic languages, which is the evidence that the line was also an ethnic divide between two Slavic tribes (Croats west of it; Serbs east of it) regardless of what medieval political (or 'state') borders actually were in the region.

Contents

1 Dialects, ethnic affiliation and the rest... 2 RE: Dialects, ethnic affiliation and the rest... 3 Goodbye to all that 4 Replacement image

Dialects, ethnic affiliation and the rest...

It is now generally accepted that Croats and Serbs came to the Balkans in the 7th century independently and as already well-formed Slavic tribes. This fact was evident in their respective languages: comparative linguistics of earliest examples of old Croatian (Cakavski) and old Serbian (Stokavski) shows centuries of independent linguistic development from the initial proto-Slavic language in their separate pre-Balkan homelands (wherever these were). The quoted statement is not true. There is no such thing as “Old Croatian” reducible to fully grown dialectal groups. Slavic dialects in the area from Slovenia to Bulgaria have begun to differentiate from the 10th/11th century until the 15th, and oldest Croatian vernacular texts are written both in Chakavian and Shtokavian- one can check the respective dialects pages. As I see, the cited passage essentially follows the line of thought dominant in Serbian philology and beginning with early Slavic philology- the names in charge are Jernej Kopitar, Pavel Šafařik, Franz Miklošič and Vuk Karadžić. Well, these early efforts to ethnically differentiate between various dialects have been discarded long since- in general Slavic philology, except for Serbian one, which remains something of a stubborn loner in this respect. The bottom line is that for some 800 years Cetina-Dinara-Una line represented a linguistic border between what we can call two different Slavic languages, which is the evidence that the line was also an ethnic divide between two Slavic tribes (Croats west of it; Serbs east of it) regardless of what medieval political (or 'state') borders actually were in the region. No way. Historical dialectology admits that corpus of texts written in vernacular Western Shtokavian (pre- 1500) is a part of Croatian heritage and belongs to the history of Croatian language. We’re speaking of the vernacular here, and this includes:

• texts on “marbles” or Bosnia-Hum tombstones (the majority)- see Bosnian Cyrillic

• the earliest complete shtokavian vernacular text like Vatican Croatian prayer book, ca. 1400- see the Croatian wikipedia, http://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatikanski_hrvatski_molitvenik -although this will be soon put on en wiki

• the majority of commercial and legal texts from old Bosnia and Hum (in case they’re not written by imported Serbian scriveners from conquered Serbian lands in the 14th century)

• the majority of legal texts of Croatian nobles from southern Dalmatia, 13th centuty onwards

More, one must stress the following: chakavian and shtokavian were not strictly separated in these early times: as a bit dated, but nonetheless accurate in many details book "Srpskohrvatski jezik"/Serbo-Croatian language, Infopress, Belgrade, 1972, states: “Od početaka XV veka čakavski i štokavski dijalekat se razvijaju nazavisno jedan od drugog, pri čemu je štokavski dijalekat razvio nove osobine, a čakavski dijalekat, iako je u svome istorijskom razvitku pošao svojim putem, ipak čuva, više ili manje, arhaične jezičke crte (fonetske, akcenatske, morfološke i leksičke)...."/From the beginning of the 15th century chakavian and shtokavian develop independently..". Also, authors stress that isogloses of both dialects were virtually indistinguishable until the 15th century, and that majority of Bosnian texts from 1300s and 1400s contain characteristics that have later become «trademarks» of chakavian: žd into j vs đ (mežda into meja vas međa/border), -l vs –o in perfect tense (govoril vs govorio/spoke), three accents speech, jd vs đ (dojde vs dođe/came), no metatesis (vse instead of sve),...

So, to conclude: on purely dialectal basis, the following is true:

• there was no strict boundary between chakavian and shtokavian speeches- although the predominance of one or the other can be posed to be Una –Catina-Dinara boundary. Also, western shtokavian is not clearly separated from eastern shtokavian, although the boundary is reconstructed to be the Danube- a bit westwards to the Drina river- eastwards to the Neretva river- around Boka Kotorska bay to the sea. The western shtokavian area (contemporary Slavonia, greater part of contemporary Bosnia and Herzegovina, southern Dalmatia, Dubrovnik (along with hinterland) and Boka bay) is the area of Croatian cultural heritage (and Bosniak, in case it embraces pre-Ottoman culture).

• the text, evidently, belongs to the school that attributes shtokavian to the Serbian (or proto-Serbian) ethnic group. Well- this "ethnic dialectology" is long since buried. Mir Harven 13:52, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

RE: Dialects, ethnic affiliation and the rest...

Pavle Ivic showed through a number of devices that many differences between early medieval Cakavski (old Croatian), Stokavski (old Serbian) and Kajkavski (old Slovenian) were in fact very old, and that these dialects were certainly brought to the Balkans from separate tribal pre-Balkan homelands (Ivic refers to these dialects in their pre-Balkan phase as proto-Cakavski and proto-Stokavski etc). By the time Croats and Serbs moved to the Balkans (7th century) proto-Slavic was very dead (we can talk about various separate Slavic languages in general from 500 AD with some degree of certainty) - for Serbs and Croats to speak an 'indistinguishable' language would imply that they were either a same tribe (which we now is not true - pre-Balkan Serbia and Croatia were at a different place) or that they somehow miraculously retained proto-Slavic as their language after every other part of the Slavic world differentiated. Both ideas don't make any sense.

To sum it up: in the early medieval Balkans (7th-15th century, or from the 'arrival' to the Ottoman invasion) language situation was quite clear. All Serbs spoke only Stokavski, which was a basis of their language. All Slovenes spoke only Kajkavski, which was the basis of their language. Along the same lines, nobody else but the Croats spoke Cakavski. Nevertheless, you are now saying that Croats somehow spoke their own authentic dialect plus a chunk of the dialect that formed the basis of the language of the neighbouring tribe (what you refer to as 'western Stokavski'; buy the way, why that particular chunk of Stokavski and not some other? Also, I could not help but notice that the laundry list of 'western Stokavski' which you attribute to the Croats looks suspiciously like a potential Greater Croatia dream map in NDH style - Bosnia, Herzegovina, Boka Kotorska and so forth). That kind of language situation (authentic dialect plus a chunk of a dialect used by a neighbouring tribe) makes no sense at all, and also questions any kind of ethnic cohesion of the Croats as a Slavic tribe during the period in question. The situation is very different today, when Croats speak Stokavski (70%), Kajkavski (20%) and Cakavski (10%), but this linguistic and ethnic anomaly was caused in the 19th century when the Serbs and Croats reformed from the same ethnic mass (Cetina-Dinara-Una line was long gone due to westward movement of people carrying Stokavski with them) using the Roman Catholic (Croats) - Eastern Orthodox (Serbs) criteria for a split. However, projecting a present day arrangement to the early Middle Ages simply does not work, because then things were different and much simpler.

Pavle Ivic showed through a number of devices that many differences between early medieval Cakavski (old Croatian), Stokavski (old Serbian) and Kajkavski (old Slovenian) were in fact very old, and that these dialects were certainly brought to the Balkans from separate tribal pre-Balkan homelands (Ivic refers to these dialects in their pre-Balkan phase as proto-Cakavski and proto-Stokavski etc). Well- as far as the nationalist fictions are concerned, de te fabula narratur, pal. Pavle Ivić did not show anything: neither the existence of various South Slavic dialects before 900s-1000s, nor the attribution of shtokavian to the nascent Serbian ethnicity. Such "theories" are not accepted anywhere in the world: they are pure fiction and nothing more. An accomplished and well-known dialectologist, Ivić was not a historical-comparative linguist nor an expert in Slavic historical grammar, and, unfortunately for his stature as a serious philologist, lost much of his scientific credibility due to his unequivocal support for Greater Serbia ideology. This "discourse" is, sir, finished. Mir Harven 20:29, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• Well, not so fast: if there is a problem with Pavle Ivic because of his ethnicity, lets use a purely Croatian example, one that you might find to be closer to home (and one that has nothing to do with the Serbs). Throughout the 1990's, Croatian linguistic journal 'Hrvatsko Slovo' published a number of articles written by various Croatian linguists about the Persian linguistic influence detected in the old Cakavski (influence on grammar as well as vocabulary). The examples shown in ‘Hrvatsko Slovo’ were presented in the context of the 'Iranian origin' theory (in short, the theory that the Croats were originally an Iranian tribe that moved into eastern Europe and imposed their rule over some Slavs, thus initiating the ethno-genesis of the Slavic Croats). Now, the reason why I am mentioning this is the fact that these linguistic traits shown 1) have to be very old, certainly pre-Balkan in origin because Croats arrived to the Balkans as a Slavic tribe, and 2) that these linguistic traits can not be detected in any shape or form in the Stokavski dialect (!!!). The main point here is that this concept, presented by Croatian linguists, furthers Pavle Ivic’s theory that Cakavski and Stokavski are indeed very old forms that had a separate pre-Balkan history.

• By the way, I posed a number of important questions in my previous reply, and I puzzled by your lack of elaboration. I am still very interested in you explanation how could early medieval Croats speak an authentic dialect (Cakavski) plus a chunk of dialect spoken exclusively by the neighbouring Serbs (Stokavski); I would also appreciate you elaboration as to why you choose certain parts of the Stokavski dialect to present as Croatian and not some others. Dismissing the most famous SFRY linguist (Pavle Ivic) because of his ethnicity is a very lowbrow approach, but I nevertheless choose to go along for a moment and present you with a non-Serb opinion. Lets see if you will dismiss the work of Croatian linguists in ‘Hrvatsko Slovo’ as gibberish as well, and what that leaves us with in terms of evidence...

Yawn...these "questions" are not the questions at all, because they fall into the category "why dont we, since the earth is round (so they say) fall off it when we reach a certain, border line of curvature" ? Essentially, all questions are based on wrong premises and wrong ideas on dialects development. One might add this: the curriculum of the Serbian language study (Philological faculty, the Belgrade University) can be seen on the following page: http://www.fil.bg.ac.yu/katedre/srpski/05.html. For those not conversant with Serbian language and Serbian Cyrillic, I'll translate: out of 5 manuals on the Slavic historical-comparative grammar, two are authored by Croatian philologists (Ivsic and Vrana), and other three by Serbian philologist Boskovic and two French authors (Houyer and Vaillant). Neither of these works contains Pavle Ivic's «discoveries» mentioned above. Moreover, Brozovic's book elaborating on western shtokavian dialect and giving virtually the same picture of Croatian and Serbian linguistic development as briefly delineated on the pages on Croatian language and Shtokavian dialect, «Standardni jezik»/Standard language, is on the list of university textbooks. And, as for Ivic's works listed as university manuals- the situation is the same: his «national dialectology» has not found way to this university curriculum. Or, maybe (here, I'm certain) it did, in a few obscure passages that contradict both Ivic's previous contentions (in his other works) and historical language development charts in other authors' standard textbooks. Mir Harven 09:07, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• Mir: I have to be honest and admit that I am rather disappointed. You either dismiss my questions without attempting to answer, or you simply ignore them (in the 'Hrvatsko Slovo' case). Frankly I see no point in continuing. I was looking forward to your answers, and had some further ones too: for example, I was looking forward to you elaboration regarding the statement about the Croatian language in the Hum region (Herzegovina) in the light of the existing historical evidence which clearly shows that Hum represented one of the core areas of ethnic Serb settlement in the medieval period. Be that as it may, I think that the whole discussion was still useful because non-responsiveness can be very indicative of certain problems, and I do hope that people who visit these pages will have something to think about...

It seems that this «controversy» has to be exposed in a rather pedestrian manner, so that no rational person could be left in doubt. So:

• »Hrvatsko slovo» is not a linguistic, but a political-cultural weekly. Moreover, no Croatian linguist of any standing has ever, anywhere, tried to connect various structural traits of Croatian language with anything «Iranian». What seems to be beyond doubt that the very name for Croats, Hrvati, is not of Slavic, but probably (and not certainly) of Sarmatian-Iranian origin. Chakavian dialect is only one in the spectrum of South Slavic dialects, there is nothing particularly «non-Slavic» about it, and this kind of «reasoning» belongs to the repertory of delusions of a coterie of self-proclaimed hyper-Croatian amateurish ideologues. They are, by name: Marijan Horvat-Milekovic, Andrija Zeljko Lovric, Ivan Biondic, Marijan Krmpotic, Mato Marcinko and a few others. These people are not linguists (except Krmpotic), and even Krmpotic's forays into Croatian language exploration are rather pathetic: for instance, his insistence on morphonological instead of phonemic orthography for Croatian has lead him to wrongly assume that, since due to phonetic changes reflected in orthography, Latin «absurd» is written as «apsurd» in Croatian, if we were to avoid such flexions, we should write «obcija» for «option». He, a poor soul, forgot that Latin word does not contain phoneme «b», but «p». I'll repeat: no Croatian linguist has ever advocated such ludicrous claims that exist (even this is an exaggeration) on the fringes of looney variants of Croatian national ideologies. The leading contemporary Croatian linguists, transgenerationally, are: Radoslav Katicic, Dalibor Brozovic, Stjepan Babic, Milan Mogus, Josip Silic, Ivo Pranjkovic, Branka Tafra, Anica Nazor, Milica Mihaljevic, Marija Turk, Dragica Malic, Mile Mamic, Petar Simunovic, Mirko Peti, Alemko Gluhak, Zrinka Jelaska, ..Experts on Chakavian dialect are, among others, Dalibor Brozovic, Milan Mogus (the head of Croatian Academy) and, especially, Petar Simunovic, co-author of monumental Chakavian lexicon. Not one of these linguists has ever advocated such nonsense as are the fictions that had appeared in «Hrvatsko slovo».

• medieval Croats, as is recorded in various documents, spoke and wrote in Chakavian, Shtokavian and proto-Kajkavian dialects. There is nothing peculiarly unique in this situation, since medieval Germans (for instance) spoke and wrote in various Germanic dialects that are now «divided» between standard German and standard Dutch. In Europe, there are five dialectal continuums: western Romance, western Germanic, western Slavic, Scandinavian, and south Slavic. Interference between elements of these continuums is freqently strong, and modern languages, from Catalan to Bulgarian, are all, in a way, historical compromises. A few idioms are confined to exclusively one ethnicity- but this is more an exception than the rule. As far as Shtokavian dialect is concerned, it's established that is was transethnic from the outset (just like the quoted example of Plattdeutsch), and efforts to ascribe it to one ethnicity (in this case Serbian) have been relinquished everywhere except in Serbian linguistic circles.

• the entire passage is full of unverified and uncorroborated statements: for instance, Hum (a part of contemporary Herzegovina) was not «one of the core areas of ethnic Serb settlement in the medieval period.» This is just a fancy promulgated by a few Serbian historians and archaelogists of dubious credibility (Sinisa Misic, Djordje Jankovic,..). Strange- other historians (for instance, Croatian ones), like Neven Budak or Mladen Ancic, who have devored studies to the early Hum culture, have came up with completely different stories- which can be seen in Creoatian language pages like http://www.hercegbosna.org/ostalo/etnicka.html

• as for Pavle Ivic being «the most famous ex-SFRJ linguist», I guess few will agree. He was probably the most prominent dialectologist from former Yugoslavia, but his knowledge of theoretical linguistics, phonology, syntax, lexicology or culturology was much less impressive. For instance, he couldn't stand the comparison with Dalibor Brozovic re phonology, language standardization, sociolinguistics,..or with Radoslav Katicic with regard to theoretical linguistics, comparative Slavic and Balkans philology, syntax and history of literary languages in the South Slavic area.

• I think that this could be best summed up thusly: the origin, nature and structure of various Slavic and south Slavic dialects are described, among others, in studies on comparative Slavic grammar authored by, among others, Croatian philologists like Stjepan Ivsic and Josip Vrana (50s-60s). There is nothing «Iranian» in Chakavian dialect, and there is nothing «Serbian» in Shtokavian dialect- and they are analyzed and described in these books that serve as university manuals for Serbian language study at the Belgrade Philological faculty. Nor have authoritative contemporary works on Chakavian dialect (Milan Mogus, Petar Simunovic-both academicians:http://mahazu.hazu.hr/Akademici/MMogus_Bibl.html, http://www.hazu.hr/Akademici/PSimunovic-Bibl.html) given any credibility to the fictions published in «Hrvatsko slovo». Linguistics is science, and popular ideological fantasies – well, not. Mir Harven 23:50, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• Mir, just a few things here, as a form of a post script:

• You state that "there is nothing «Serbian» in Shtokavian dialect". Let me restate some of the basic facts about the Serbs and the Stokavski 'dialect': we know for a fact - from the local surviving medieval written sources - that medieval Serbs spoke only Stokavski and never anything else. We also know that this remained true until this day - modern Serbs speak only Stokavski. Given this exclusive nature of the relationship between the two, claiming that there is 'nothing Serbian about Stokavski' implies that Serbs have no relationship whatsoever with their own language (?!?!) which they speak for at least 14 centuries (and probably much longer). Such a position is not only historically and linguistically indefensible - it is also completely illogical.

• German nation that exists today is an early modern political, cultural and economic construct. In the early medieval period only various Germanic tribes existed, and these tribes had a long independent development (not unlike Croats and Serbs). This was evident in their linguistic development, too - language spoken by the Saxon tribe was distinct from that spoken by Franks although they belonged to the same Germanic language group (this versatility in one of the reasons why modern Germans have so many distinct dialects today). I don't see you point here.

• With regards to Hum: I don't really know even where to begin with this one. But since we are on the DAI map talk page, lets start with Constantine Porphyrogenitus himself. The Byzantine Emperor explicitly states that the Serbs settled what you refer to as Hum (modern day Herzegovina). Now, the point that DAI's descriptions about situation in deep Balkan interior can be somewhat shaky is a valid one, but in the case of what you call Hum we are talking about a region that is immediately behind the walls of Byzantine governed city of Ragusa (modern day Dubrovnik). If we can give Porphyrogenitus credibility for anything it is the knowledge of the Adriatic coast and the immediate hinterland of Byzantine ruled cities - and the Emperor clearly stated that the population was ethnically Serb. What you refer to as the Hum region was the part of medieval Serbia (or Raska) under the Nemanjic dynasty from 1180 to 1326. There are numerous contemporary medieval sources referring to the region from this period, published in a thick two volume book titled 'Srednjevekovne Srpske Povelje i Pisma. Tom I/II'. All the sources are presented in a color photo of the original (page on the left) and its translation to modern language (page to the right). In all these sources, there is not a single one that mentions the Croats as the population of the region, or that indicates in any way that the region is Croatian populated area under the Serbian rule. On the other hand, there are numerous references to the local population as the Serb one ('Serblji' in the original form). In other words, you thesis about the Croatian population in the Hum region sinks like a stone thrown into the ocean in the face of the contemporary historical evidence. Also, do note that I am referring to the original medieval sources (which you can check and read for yourself), and not any interpretation by any Serbian historian.

Goodbye to all that

Evidently, the linguistic content of the thesis is exhausted. So, to conclude:

• to avoid illogical meanderings: Serbs now speak, on a dialectal basis, shtokavian and torlak dialects. Ivic's attempts to assimilate the torlak dialect into the shtokavian (solely for the purpose of resuscitating Vuk Karadzic's equation: original shtokavian speakers = Serbs) has failed: so, on a dialectal basis, Serbs speak both shtokavian and torlak dialects. As for medieval Serbs, we can only suppose and reconstruct, since there are no Serbian vernacular texts until the beginning of the 19th century: probably they spoke some mixture of Church Slavonic language, shtokavian and torlak (if we assume that torlak didnt change over region –much) dialects. Here we see a reflex of typically romantic confusion of language and ethnicity, as well as confusion of synchrony/the present and diachrony/the past, vernacular and the literary language. On all these levels confusion rules: the past and the present, simple vernacular and a literary language, the ethnic and quasi-ethnic naming of the language at various points in history. What is beyond doubt:

1) earliest shtokavian purely vernacular texts (1400s-1500s) are Croatian-not Serbian. Serbs are the majority of native shtokavian speakers now, but shtokavian is not their ethnic property. Leaving the torlak dialect aside for a moment, Serbs had been «mute» in the vernacular until the beginning of the 19th century; during this time, Croats have developed impressive literary output in the vernacular, in three dialects, and call it Croatian (besides Slovin, Illyrian, Dalmatian, Slavonian and Bosnian). If by some chance Vuk Karadzic had opted for torlak idiom as pan-Serbian language, all shtokavian speakers would have followed him in torlakisation of speech, to accept torlak-based Serbian standard language. This wouldnt be so hard, since more than 95% of shtokavian literacy, 400 years +, had been written under Slovin, Illyrian and Croatian names- and not Serbian. By what trick of history native speakers of various shtokavian dialects, from 1300s and 1400s on, call their language Croatian ? Heck, what's with their memory ? How could they forget that they should name their language Serbian, since probably some Serbs spoke, on a rustical level, virtually the same dialect ?

2) the names Slovin and Croat are interchangeable. See http://www.hercegbosna.org/ostalo/jezik2.html

3) Serbs are now-we need not reconstruct- the majority of shtokavian dialect speakers. But, what does this have to do with the concocted equation «Serbian ethnicity = shtokavian dialect native speakers» ? As has been pointed out (and, we'll leave Urdu/Hindi or Malay/Bahasa Indonesian examples), Plattdeutsch has been from the beginning multiethnic re its speakers. Even more, this situation shows all the misery associated with linguistic-ethnic delusions: languages are classified according to:

• genetic relatedness

• criterion of similarity due to contacts between idioms

• typological-structural elements criterion

• value judgements of their speakers criterion

According to the first criterion, there are 2 north-Germanic «languages»: High- and Low-Germanic; second- interlinked continuum of dialects; third, 4 languages: Dutch, High- and Low-German, and Yiddish. Only value judgement criterion is accepted: there are 3 languages: Dutch, German and Yiddish. The application to the linguistic situation from Slovenia to Bulgaria would give similar, and more complex, confusions.

So much for the imaginary identity between Serbian language and shtokavian dialect (or continuum of dialects, Serbs being the native speakers only a part of).

4) the rest is about history. I can only repeat: Porphyrogenetus is considered to be an unreliable source, since he (or others, who wrote on these parts) attributed to the Serbs teritories motivated by political reasons. Serbian charters (and, if the source is Ljubomir Stojanovic, only a part are Serbian, since he incorporated many Croatian texts written in Croatian mixture of the vernacular and Church Slavonic) are documents on Serbs who ruled foreign lands of Dioclea and Zahuml'e. The nature of there rule and the extent of Croatian name have been discussed elsewhere on the wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokeljs , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Bokeljs , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:History_of_Bosnia_and_Herzegovina This is finished. No more DAI (a patchwork), no more Serbian =shtokavian fictions, no more exclusively Serbian sources that tell their version of reality. It's over. Mir Harven 11:49, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Replacement image

This image needs to be replaced — its origin is {{unverified}} (though I assume it's © from Alfred Toynbee's Constantine Porphyrogenitus and his world), and is too illegible. Additionally, if there are problems with its accuracy, and it's wanted for an accurate depiction of history as currently understood rather than a depiction of Constantine's or Toynbee's world view, we need better than crudely doctored images with offending sections blacked out.

I've started making a replacement at Image:Serbia - 10th Century - De Administrando Imperio.png. There are a few obvious problems -- I think that that should be "Pannonia", not "Dannoni" at the top, and looking at the original I now believe I see that the shading for "Serbia" should go to the coast. (That these are not unambiguously clear in the original is argument enough for a replacement project!)

Though a history buff, I am almost completely ignorant of the history of this corner of the world – I like making maps, though. I picked this up from the image recreation project which is creating GFDL versions of images with unfree or unknown licenses. So I am currently completely devoid of preexisting conceptions, prejudices, and chauvinism on this topic.

Please visit the new image's talk page to leave suggestions for modifications. (Note: it's on Wikimedia Commons (http://commons.wikimedia.org), home of freely licensed images shared by all Wikimedia projects. Your Wikipedia id+password won't work there.) Avoid changing and reposting the image itself. I have all the original layers that went into creating it, so I can make any number of modifications and generate a wholly new image without harming its quality. Note that the name of the image may need to change if what the community wants is an accurate map, as history is currently understood, instead of a representation of Constantine's or Toynbee's understanding.

Kbh3rd 15:36, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

There was no blacking out of an offending section. The black line on the image indicates the position of the Dinara mountain, there is no intent to overwrite any content by it. --Joy [shallot] 18:17, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks! I normally get very chagrinned when I publically mis-state something like that, but in this case, every misinterpretation of the map is simply another argument for its replacement. Is that an important feature for this map given the articles it's used in? I assume perhaps so if you went to the trouble to add it. I would also appreciate some feedback on how important the smaller labels are on the original that I've omitted on the recreation, since that map was not made specifically for the article. -- Kbh3rd 23:49, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Well, yes, although it's unclear what these maps are supposed to be based on, given that there's two of them supposedly from different sources, and yet they depict a combination of them (and a rather hyperbolic combination at that). You can see excerpts (and/or links to excerpts) from the referenced texts above. Dinara may be mentioned in the Chronicle, and the DAI doesn't actually seem to have a definition of the western border of its Serbia and Bosnia. --Joy [shallot] 00:11, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I think I can help you with this map. First one was inaccurate because border between Serbia and Croatia in that time was not river Una but Vrbas. I have similar maps in my historical atlas, in which border between Serbia and Croatia is river Vrbas. So, map could be changed in that way. The last version of map posted by Joy is very bad in both: accuracy and aesthetics. So, could somebody of you to change this map to river Vrbas be shown as western border of Serbia, or I will have to upload another map about this subject? User:PANONIAN

For reference, the replacement image was in turn replaced with Image:Serb lands03.jpg. --Joy [shallot] 19:07, 18 May 2005 (UTC)