Talk:Croatian language

For archived talk, see Talk:Croatian language/Archive

Contents

1 Croatian and Slovene 2 croatian / serbo-croatian 3 copyright 4 categorization in the taxobox 5 Related discussion at another Talk page 6 Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia

Croatian and Slovene

Hi. It would also be very interesting that someone add perhaps pretty close connection between Croatian dialect from Zagorje and Slovene language. I shall add this obvious connection (but I am not a Slavist, neither Slovenist or Croatianist (is this the right term?)) to the article about Slovene language. As it is written in this article that Croatian is the Central-South Slavic diasystem. Interesting, because (at my opinion) we can't speak about any diasystem in Slovene language - so the language itself is somehow unique among the Slavic languages (just do not ask me to reveal my own theory about the language...!), and specially among the languages of the former Yugoslavia. (I also know too little about Macedonian-Bulgarian connections). I just see tiny outlines of this diasystem between Slovene and Zagorje dialect. And no other at all.

The dialects of Croatian from the north morph quite a lot. People from Burgenland use many words that resemble Slovenian words, but their accent is more like the Austrian German. People from Međimurje use so many umlauts in their accent, so to speak, that I can more easily distinguish words from standard Slovenian than from them. The accent of Zagorje is sort of like morphing of what they speak in Međimurje to what they speak in the south-central Croatia. --Shallot 17:30, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

It's all mucho simpler, as the text on the following link enunciates-http://www.i-depth.com/P/e/ez00831.frm.music.msg/2811.htmlMir Harven 20:08, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Yes, this is a little bit different picture from your point of view than mine. But can you really distinguish words from sS...? We who have lived in former Yugoslavia are perhaps privileged against the youngster ones, because in fact we understood the foreign language. My daughter does not understand neither Croatian, neither Serbian or even Bosnian language. "Bolan, stvarno ne." For one foreigner the knowledge of Serbo-Croatian is just like the knowledge of English, German, Russian, French or other language. We were able to communicate with Serbs/Croats/Bosnians, because we were able to speak S-C. But in the future the young ones won't be able anymore. I know that nobody won't learn Slovene, but Slovene youngsters won't learn C-S-B either. We were somehow forced to learn, which is not bad. On the contrary. Because Slovenia market is so small, we can also absorb other medias (books, journals, films, TV programmes, ... and God help us - not idiocies of any kind) [XJam]

Now, where to draw the line, that's obviously a hard question which doesn't have a single answer. The most common distinction is that Slovenian and the Croatian-Bosnian-Serbian group are different but on the same horizontal line. Thus, the diasystem thing is used to explain the bipolar nature of the standard languages in the C-B-S group, not the link between the dialects in Slovenia and northern Croatia. --Shallot 17:3

0, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

They say that theoretically the closest language to Slovene is Bulgarian. I know to little to confirm this. In my opinion is the Russian language and not Croatian or Serbian, which might in fact be the closest ones. In a historical view of the last 20th century at least. Perhaps typical representative of this was here belittled Josip Broz Tito himself (- hey guys, he was the leader of anti-Nazism forces during WW2, so watch a bit for your words... - he wasn't just a communist authoritarian leader and dictator - you can speak now whatever you want, after his death yeah, but you can show some respect too ...), because his father was Croat, mother Slovene and he was born in Kumrovec, which is, as we all know in Zagorje. And some say that he spoke badly Croatian or Serbo-Croatian. (Ups, I didn't read the debate above first, so this might fall out of the context. And BTW in Slovene we say factory "tovarna" and also German "fabrika" in colloquial language, heh, he.) And also - Yugoslav Encyclopedia (general and of Yugoslavia) was printed in Slovene too. Slovenes never protested that the Lexicographical institute was stationed in Zagreb. But I can't agree with the sentence: Second- only Croatia, among all Yugoslav republics, had a vital lexicographical tradition. As I know Encyclopedia of Slovenia (Enciklopedija Slovenije) is already out with all of its volumes. So, from where this edition did come from? I guess from nothing. Zero, zippo, zilch, nicego.

I think that comment from Mir Harven was aimed at the southeast rather than the northwest :) He likely overgeneralized when talking about all of Yugoslavia. --Shallot 17:30, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Yep. When you turn the Earth upside down, southeast becomes northwest, or am I wrong... [XJam]

Another indication that Slovene language was never diasystem or multisystem is that Croats or Serbs badly understood Slovene, while most Slovenes did understand Serbo-Croatian well.

Again, I don't think you should interpret the diasystem reference to include all south Slavic languages in Yugoslavia, just the controversial west-central group. --Shallot 17:30, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Yes Shallot I understand the meaning of a diasystem in this context. I am not pushing a term diasystem in this C-B-S group context. Think from my point of view as a Slovene. I was just asking which language (or even a dialect) is the closest one to Slovene. As I know and hear, the Craotian Zagorje dialect sounds so. I do not want to harness much of grammatical science inhere. I think the sentence "Kaj si rekel?" sound identically in both (in Slovene and in Zagorje dialect). These king of diasystems came widely after 1990s, specially C-B-S and C-S groups, latter meaning Czech-Slovak. At least for foreigners. And for us as former citizens of Yugoslavia C-B-S group, since we can't speak any of separate language, just Serbo-Croatian. Before 1990 I didn't know that Czech and Slovak are also so different and have different histories too. [XJam]

Not perfect of course, but better that them their language. So Slovenes always spoke with Serbs or Croats in bad Serbo-Croatian - which is in fact not fair. Even today this is so. Hate, hate all around. Poles do not want to speak Russian, Croats do not want to speak Serbian, Serbs do not want to hear about Croatian and on and on. And finally - you're blaming Tito in such an extent. While he was still alive there was at least PEACE in Yugoslavia. You should also consider the situation during the Cold War in Europe not just in former Yugoslavia itself. Only 10 years after his death this terrible inhumanity happened. Where did so praised "bratsvo i jedinstvo" ("brotherhood and unity") go?. Kak' si rekel, tak sem čul. Nikak nebu, a da nekak nebu. I nikad i ni bilo, da nekak ni bilo...

Note that the silly comments about Tito came from the Serbs -- I for one fail to see such a large extent of Tito's influence on the linguistic problem that has existed since half a century before he was even born. I left that statement there so that I couldn't be accused of censoring, but one of these days I'll have to do some cleanup. --Shallot 17:30, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I never knew that Tito was really speaking so bad (Serbo-Croatian). "Ako bude trebalo, ...", - sounds familiar? [XJam]

And on the end one fact from one Slovene internet forum when one Slovene said: I guess the only war I shall see in my whole life in the future will be the War between Slovenia and Croatia. I think these sad words say enough. All who have cooked the mess in former Yugoslavia will get their own appropriate judgement, I won't judge noone. They always got it. Best regards. --XJamRastafire 05:57, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

You probably shouldn't take everything you read on the Internet so seriously. Fact is, most people are idiots :) --Shallot 17:30, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Thank you for this. Perhaps I am big idiot enough to belive such idiots. But as we know they are also always dangerous.

On a more general note, I have been told that the Slovenian language was formed by taking different things from different dialects that the Slovenian people spoke, and standardizing on that compromise. On the other hand, the standardization of the dialects that the Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian, Montenegrin and whatever other people spoke happened in a sort of a heavyhanded manner which set aside all dialects other than a handful of types of štokavian (ikavian &#353tokavian was left out, for example). Since the Croats generally seem to speak a more diverse group of dialects than the Serbs, it could be expected that they would eventually be the ones to find themselves unhappy with the result as they found many their local dialects fade away in favor of some largely imported standard. Mix in a large number of unfavourable circumstances, a lot of politics, and there's your neverending conflict. --Shallot 17:30, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Slovenist Jože Toporišič recently said that Slovene literary language was formed in the Central part of Slovenia and not perhaps in Transmuraland. But it also might come from Prekmurje - why not? Or from Carinthia, where Slovene originates. Perhaps is the same thing as in C-B-S gruop but not in such an extent and to harm any dialect, since there were never revolts from other parts of Slovenia. For instance the Primorje region which borders to Italy, was always tightly connected with the mainland - even during two WWs, when this region was sold to Italy by American president Wilson (sort of speaking) and was governed by Italian fascists. [XJam]

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I tako...ode drug Tito. A nije uspio svladati ni "Srpski bukvar za početnike-az, buki, vedi.."Mir Harven 19:36, 3 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I nikad se ne vratih... (Probably wrongly written in Serbian aorist) --XJamRastafire 00:12, 4 Jan 2004 (UTC)

croatian / serbo-croatian

hmm do both croatian and servo-croatian really need a seperate place? it seems to me that both are actually the same language with the same history and stuff and only now for political reasons not being considered the same. also now the info that should be the same in both articles (history or the facts sheet for example) that should be excactly the same will not be.

Can't Croatian language be put under "the name controversy" and/or "dialects" at Serbo-Croatian language or could we make a shared 'history' section? --62.251.90.73 21:57, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)

No. Try reading the history -- you'll notice that it's rather apparently different. It'll also help you to see why the "they're the same language" argument is rather pointless.

Also, it's spelled "Croatian", "Serbo-Croatian", "separate", "exactly". I've seen the term "Serv" used as an ethnic slur for the Serbs so I'd particularly advise against making such mistakes. --Shallot 22:07, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)

It is one of the standard versions of the Central-South Slavic diasystem, formerly (and still frequently) called Serbo-Croatian. well i guess then the article has quite a bad and confusing start.

Why is it confusing? It is not untrue that it belongs to the said group, and the linked page explains things like grammar, things that are common to all the standard variants such as this one. We keep the common content on that page, and the variant-specific content on variant-specific pages. This has fairly obvious historical and practical reasons. --Shallot

also the numbers on the facts page are the same and i hardly think that's a coincidence

I assume the numbers you are referring to are those for the number of speakers. Yes, the number in parenthesis refers to all the other intelligible variants as well as this one so it is the same, it has to be. The number outside the parenthesis refers to this variant only, and that one is smaller. --Shallot

and don't whine about my spelling, especially correcting me not using a capital on 'croatian' is so lame... if i would care about my spelling on this talk page i would get a dic. Also i spelled both Croatian and Serbo-Croatian the good way somewhere in my comment as well so correcting me like i don't know any better is just stupid, now stfu lamer. --62.251.90.73 22:52, 10 Jul 2004 (UTC)

It's rather amusing to see someone post pretty silly comments without having done any research, make glaring spelling errors that also happen to be offensive, and expect not to get corrected for doing that. Do us all a favor and spend more time reading the fine articles, and less insulting people. --Shallot

Not capitalising words for one, is not a spelling error. And that i make spellings errors, as a not native English speaker, has i no way anything to do with the speakers intelligence or the validness of his message. Maybe Einstein made a lot of 'glaring spelling errors' as well when he started to speak English, did that made him less intelligent? When you're trying to speak French or Russian, you won't do so well, would you? would that make you a stupid person? Further more this is just a discussion page, in which all is well as long as people understand what I'm saying, and they obviously do. Which makes my spelling totally irrelevant. I saw discussion pages with comments in a mix of russian and english and still those people were not flamed for their spelling.

Commenting on my question, which is not a flame, it's just a question, a question rose to me by reading the article. So a question that can also arrise to other people, wether it is valid or not. And I don't think the question is that strange, since this norish linguist also answered and researched this, and he wouldn't have done that, if it wasn't a question in this first place.

And thanks to Mir Harven i know better now. While you only wasted everyone's time with your lame flame.

Also if you as a serb feel offended because some guy on some internet discussion misspelles serb as 'serv' because in his native language serbian would be written servisch, you deserve to feel offended. Because apparantly, you are unable to relevate an internet discussion or read things in context.--62.251.90.73 11:47, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)

You got offended at a rather straightforward correction, insulted me, imagined my nationality (wrongly), all in a nice little rant. Thanks for your valuable contribution, I'm not sure what we'd do with out it :P What the other user pasted below is just another merely subtly different reiteration of the same things that were already written in the articles and in the talk pages. --Shallot 15:56, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)

For those conversant with Croatian-http://main.amu.edu.pl/~sipkadan/PRIK10B1.HTM "Na prvom mjestu (odmah iza Predgovora i Pozdravnih riječi) nalazi se rad norveškog jugoslaviste i jednog od organizatora skupa Sveina Mönneslanda, pod naslovom Sociolingvistička situacija deset godina poslije raspada Jugoslavije.

“Deset godina nakon raspada Jugoslavije i šest godina nakon Daytona” - kaže Mönnesland - “vrijeme je da se trezveno razmotri sociolingvistička situacija na prostoru bivše Jugoslavije. Polazne tačke tog razmatranja bi mogle biti u dvije naoko oprečne konstatacije: 1) Bošnjake, Crnogorce, Hrvate i Srbe spaja zajednički jezik (a jezik je i ono najvažnije što ih spaja), i 2) Unutar zajedničkog jezika postoje različiti standardni jezici pojedinih nacija (17).”

Prihvatajući Brozovićev termin, Mönnesland dalje poredi “skandinavsko i srednjojužnoslavensko jezično područje”, nalazeći neke sličnosti u tome što je “i unutar skandinavskog kao i srednjojužnoslavenskog jezičnog područja broj standardnih jezika... varirao tijekom vremena” (ib.), a glavna pokretačka snaga koja je dovela do pojave novih standardnih jezika “bio je nacilonalizam, ne u negativnom smislu, već kao snaga koja je težila afirmaciji nacionalne kulture u procesu izgradnje nacije” (18). To je u skladu s idejom: jedna nacija - jedan jezik, “koja potječe iz vremena romantizma, onako kako se to odvijalo u srednjoj i istočnoj Evropi” (ib.). Po tome bi “svi Hrvati i svi Srbi van Hrvatske odnosno Srbije... trebali imati... potpuno isti standard kao u matičnim zemljama”, uz insistiranje na nacionalnom imenu jezika, što postaje značajnije od sličnosti supstancije, pa tako u Bosni i Hercegovini funkcioniraju tri standarda s tri različita naziva: srpski (u Republici Srpskoj), hrvatski (na područjima pod hrvatskom upravom) i bosanski ili bošnjački, što je još sporno (na ostalim područjima BiH)." In short: Norwegian linguist Monnesland speaks that Croatian,Serbian and Bosniak are ONE, CENTRAL SOUTH SLAVIC LANGUGE in the same vein Norwegian, Danish and Swedish are ONE, SCANDINAVIAN LANGUAGE. Since no one uses the term SCANDINAVIAN, it is evident that SERBO-CROATIAN, and its less offensive successor term, CENTRAL SOUTH SLAVIC LANGUGE, are just remnants of political linguistics. Serbo-Croatian will have disappeared from history, completely. Just, old habits, geopolitical plans and other mundane motives keep the fossil name still in the game. Until it's history, the less offensive and less politically prostituted term, Central South Slavic diasystem, should be used. Temporarily. Mir Harven 10:48, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Thanks Mir, i guess that explains it, thank you. --62.251.90.73 11:48, 11 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Finally, I find the reasoning and sources for this diasystem thing. But I hope we all agree that "a scandinavian linguist says" isn't enough. Plus, if it's true for scandinavian languages that have been separate standards for hundreds of years, it isn't neceserally true for BCMSxyz which had a common media space just 15 years ago (and to an extent still has). Zocky 16:35, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm... I read the above once more. MH, are you sure you're reading it right? "skandinavsko jezično područje" doesn't necessarily mean there's a single scandinavian language. It means the area covered by the Skandinavian language or languages. Plus, what Brozović says means that Serbs and Croats speak the same language with differet standard languages within it. And Mönnesland continues to say that "the number of standard languages has changed over time both within the Skandinavian and within Central-South Slavic language area." He then goes on to describe how appearance of these new standards is driven by the forces of positive nationalism.

But the processes that he's talking about took place in the formerly common Skandinavian tongue (probably no more varied than the whole Kajkavian/Štokavian/Čakavian/Torlak spectre) centuries or at least decades ago. I appreciate that the same process of divergence could happen with Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian, but I can think of at least three reasons why it's not likely: (1) all standards are based on the same dialect, (2) there is an available large body of literature in all of the standards, which tends to stabilize the language standards (3) there is no isolation of speakers, especially not from media in other standard languages.

All I'm saying is, the Skandinavian languages example may not apply very well. Zocky 16:52, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

copyright

Suspicion of copyright infringement to http://www.hercegbosna.org/engleski/croatian_language.html .

Since I'm one of the owners of the site http://www.hercegbosna.org , I'm free to use the material from this site. If someone has dubieties- email info@hercegbosna.org. Anyway-I'm a bit puzzled, since this issue had been discussed ca. 5-7 months ago and I thought it was a resolved "problem". I guess it's somewhere on this page, or on my Talk page. In any other case- email info@hercegbosna.org . Mir Harven 17:47, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, this is the issued resolved: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Croatian_language/Archive#Copyright Mir Harven 07:06, 31 Aug 2004 (UTC)

categorization in the taxobox

This article argues that Croatian doesn't come below Serbo-Croatian in the categorization. The article Serbo-Croatian language does. Please let's just keep things separated as they are and avoid casting judgement from one article into the other. --Joy [shallot] 11:45, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I have no idea how to handle this thing, but I would just like to mention that having contradicting articles at Serbo-Croatian, Serbian and Croatian is probably not a good thing. Zocky 13:16, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

They are not contradicting, at least not any more contradicting than e.g. articles on different religions :) Some interpret things one way, some another. All articles make note of both interpretations and link to the other articles, but we have them all to avoid being partial to one interpretation only. It's pretty tidy compared to how it could look AFAIACS... --Joy [shallot] 13:23, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Every foreign linguist agree that Croatian, Bosnian and Serbian r standard forms of one unic Serbo-Croatian language.

That is not actually true, because there are various theories in dialectology that differ in explanations. --Joy [shallot] 14:43, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I think that theur opinion counts more because we cannot say that they are partial.That we cannot say for experts from mentioned countries. U say that u have a lot of agruments that contradict my stands.Belive me for every agrument of your I have at least 3 anti-arguments.And another prove that it is one language:in areas where Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks live they all speak same dialect of Serbo-Croatian. My final:SERBIAN,CROATIAN and BOSNIAN R STANDARD FORMS OF SERBO-CROATIAN LANGUAGE. User:Jugoslaven

The taxobox row we're arguing about says "genetic classification", and links to language families and languages, which in turn explains how language families are based on its members deriving from a common ancestor. "Serbo-Croatian" is not a current name for this language I'm speaking, and the same language is not merely a phylogenetic child of Serbo-Croatian, it's also much more a child of older forms of dialects that predate S-C. This is a valid argument even if one ignores the plea against use of the term "Serbo-Croatian" because it's inherently biased towards the first listed origin and the two origins listed at all. --Joy [shallot] 18:48, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The article South Slavic languages cites Croatian as subcategory of Serbo-Croatian:

Serbo-Croatian (ca. 17 million)

Bosnian (ca. 2 million) 
Croatian (ca. 5 million) 
Serbian (ca. 10 million) 

So we can categorize Croatian in taxbox as Subcategory of Serbo-Croatian or bold Croatian in word Serbo-Croatian so that others know that it is about Croatian standard of Serbo-Croatian. User:Jugoslaven

Um, I don't see how that overrides what I said. That article is accommodating both interpretations -- that it's all together, and that it's separate. That doesn't imply that this article has to do the same in its taxobox. --Joy [shallot]

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I don't really mind the low-key revert war over this, although it would be much more sensible to discuss it here first before changing it in the article again. What I do mind is people calling those with a different opinion vandals. That's just counterproductive, plus see wikipedia:No personal attacks. Zocky 18:13, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Well, you'd really have to talk to Jugoslaven, because he incited the latest round of controversy and continues to inflict it upon us all. --Joy [shallot] 23:31, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I will remind that Jugoslaven is still persistently adding "Serbo-" in this article's taxobox with little apparent rationale. I suppose it's a good way as any to pump up one's edit count... --Joy [shallot] 23:49, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Related discussion at another Talk page

Interesting discussion about the history of the Croatian language appeared at Image_talk:Cpw10ct.gif. Feel free to check it out.

Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia

"A good example is the wikipedia project, with non-existent «Serbo-Croatian» wikipedia (on a more formal level, such an enterprise is not linguistically possible since any text would be easily recognized as either Croatian or Serbian, with Bosnian somewhere in the middle)."

I don't think this is a good example at all. It is also possible to recognise English as American, Australian, British or variants somewhere in the middle, but an English Wikipedia is possible (it exists, in fact). Shouldn't we remove this passage?

I just found out that Serbo-Croatian wikipedia does exist: http://sh.wikipedia.org so I'm removing the above passage as POV