Serbo-Croat language

John Farebrother wrote:

You have to use language that meets your client's expectations/needs. What this discussion has shown is that in some cases that will be modern official Serbian or Croatian, and sometimes not. Sometimes it will be a dialect that can justifiably be called Serbo-Croat.

jokerman wrote:

An excerpt from the page quoted in my previous post (http://sh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia):

"Sav originalni materijal priložen Wikipediji je "Slobodan Sadržaj", definisan GNU Slobodnom Dokumentacionom Dozvolom, što znači da se može slobodno upotrebljavati, izmeniti, kopirati, i distribuirati, uz uslov da bilo koja kopija, modifikacija ili izmena ne sme stavljati dodatne restrikcije na sadržaj (tj. mora biti izdata pod istom dozvolom)."

'izmeniti' and 'uslov' and 'distribuirati' and 'mora biti': 4 terms and/or wordings, of which 2 nowadays are considered rather Croatian and another 2 nowadays are considered rather Serbian - all in one sentence!

And nobody bothers that they are mixed up and everybody understands perfectly, don't they?


[Bearbeitet am 2009-10-23 20:37 GMT]

jokerman wrote:
I live in Germany and most of my fiends and acquintancies are Germans. Without going too far into detail of how that comes, I meet new people from the above mentioned 'native' contries on a regular basis (usually advanced students and/or similar who come to Germany for a few weeks and/or months). I sometimes take them with me to a cafe or to a bar where I meet my German friends. Nine times out of ten, the topic 'languages' will be brought up and nine times out of ten, the newly arrived boy will start explaining how different his language is from the other two (or three, whichever you prefer). Once I am alone with the Germans again, their (and mine) reaction is - you guessed it - *rolleyes*. Nobody cares over here, you see.

jokerman wrote:

Nine times out of ten, the topic 'languages' will be brought up and nine times out of ten, the newly arrived boyo will start explaining how different his language is from the other two (or three, whichever you prefer) - along with the explanation of the history of the south slavic groups starting back in the fifth century or so.

Once I am alone with the Germans again, their (and mine) reaction is - you guessed it - *rolleyes*

but this example is not very good for illustration of the problem people would only think that the author is illiterate

Maybe the end-clients and end-users of your services do care, do not underestimate them.

PeregrineFalcon wrote:

[According to jokerman...]

... Croatian, Serbian and Bosnian are ONLY spoken in their countries where they are official languages,

...and citizens of other countries don't think that they are real languages and that they should exist.

English and German are also spoken only in countries where they are official languages. So, we should do the same with those languages: people from UK, USA, Canada and Australia should do what the most of world thinks they should do: call their languages English, American and Australian, and people from Germany, Austria and Switzerland should accept that German language spoken in those countries should be renamed into German, Austrian and Swiss.

Lingua 5B wrote:

It seems to me this whole discussion revolves around what's politically correct vs. the basic linguistic common sense. Let me explain:

Many people here who made their points thus far are from Croatia or Serbia and use strict Croatian and Serbian language standards at all linguistic levels, and that's fine.

However, for example, people in Bosnia use a variant that could be described as some sort of the mixture of both, when it comes to phrasing, wording, terminology, slang, word formation, etc etc.. Therefore, from the linguistic point of view, this mixture can be freely and absolutely labeled as " Serbo-Croatian", but it's not politically correct, because the political and administrative name of of this language is "Bosnian". When it comes to this dialectical mixture / variant, I know it will be inconceivable to the Serbian and Croatian speakers who have left their bitter comments on this topic and who obviously see things strictly from their own perspective. A little odd taking into account they are linguists and should be aware of linguistic mixtures in certain regions around them ( but you can only perceive them if you are not blinded with extralinguistic matters). This linguistic mixture has been created through cultural and linguistic ways, not political. Therefore, some people use it naturally and as a standard in their own region ( nothing to do with politics at all, you are just projecting). Now, calling those people "klingons", "sentimental romantics" etc, is a discrimination and a direct attack on linguistic and cultural freedom. People( masses) don't *choose* to speak a certain variant, the variant chooses them.

There are even regions where people speak a mixture of Ekavian and Iekavian and where it is a standard, for example some regions at the south of Serbia bordering with Montenegro. People in the RS have Cyrillic + Iekavian as an official standard. Etc, I could go on forever about the blendings on various linguistic levels, but my point is that the people who use them are not aliens, like it was nicely implied by some on here.

I have come to conclude that the *naming* and labeling appear to be a problem in the light of this topic, and some people have a particularly negative attitude toward certain names ( e.g. SC). You can change the name of the cake, but the flavour will still be the same.




[Edited at 2009-10-22 12:21 GMT]

jokerman wrote:

Outside Croatia, most Croats would not use (or even understand) 'brzojav' for telephone. If you don't like that example, 'tipkovnica' is another one. For most of us 'Gastarbajters' that has always been - and most likely will remain - 'tastatura'.

jokerman wrote:
The above sentence can, of course, be translated into an entirely different way and I would not be surprised if some of the 'new linguists' translated it as:

"cijelovito izvorno tvorivo dano u obol Wikipediji...."

but that is NOT what my clients want nor what my typical end-users would like to read (or even understand properly).

jokerman wrote:
... the citizens in other countries simply don't care.

And that is what I meant when in one of my previous posts I said that "The world is much more than your own village".

Lingua 5B wrote:

You can change the name of the cake, but the flavour will still be the same.

Henry Hinds wrote:
.................... but is it not feasible to still keep them in one bag? Or should they be broken up for considerations other than national pride?

In our part of the world, with all our little differences and pecularities, we do not break up languages into Canadian or USA, or Mexican, Argentinian, Peruvian, Chilean, Columbian, etc. They are all English or Spanish.

Yasutomo Kanazawa wrote:
I know nothing about Serbo-Croat, but..

isn't this language still used in old documents, for example like Latin?

John Farebrother wrote:

Differences

One of the reasons foreigners find this discussion so bizarre is that for us the name of our language is far less important as a component of national identity. Americans and Australians happily speak English, without this detracting from their own identity as Americans and Australians.

Ivana Bjelac wrote:

If everyone is so happy speaking Englishisn't it bizarre that most of the clients insist on distinctions US vs. GB English or Canadian vs. France French?