The Serbian-Croatian, on translations and other things.
by D. Djordjević
Over the years I've done the translator, working occasionally with the agencies. It was mostly of documents of various kinds, manuals or business letters. Came in handy to cover the holes or to keep you occupied when you are out of work, even if the money earned were always a few. Was more challenging when I did voluntarily as for example for the transmission Ostavka! Radio Shockwave Severgnini conducted by Michelangelo between 1999 and 2001, or by doing interpretere to Aleksandar Zograf when he came to present its collection of comics in Milan also in those years. Some experiments were also depressing as when I acted as interpreter in a court during the summary trial to two Roma accused of attempted theft. They were sentenced to several months in prison without stealing anything. Under the table one of the two caused me to pass a note with the phone number of a relative in Germany and a calling card. The first attempt did not succeed because a guard saw it, but by the second hearing ended when everyone stood up finally handed it to me. I called immediately and I felt a little 'redeemed for working with a process that I found embarrassing. Lately, given the economic difficulties I started again to send their CVs to translation agencies and some responded. One of these, Easy Languages, a kind of selection called an article on the languages and the translation profession, to be eligible for the team of collaborators. I wrote on the age issue for a language that everyone speaks in four of the six former Yugoslav republics, but no one recognizes, that the Serb-Croat.
Serbian-Croatian, when a language becomes uncomfortable.
When I was born in 1977 in Yugoslavia spoke Serbian-Croatian, the language considered three official languages used in the individual federal republics: Slovenia, Macedonia and Albania. To these we can add the spoken language minorities in border areas such as Hungarian, Italian, Wallachian, and the languages spoken by the Roma community and goranci. Of course there were the local dialects, much less numerous than in Italy but also marked differences, that in the course of the twentieth century have been standardized and replaced by spoken regional differed mostly for accent and slang. The linguistic situation may seem complicated but in the end has never been a problem, because the majority of the population spoke precisely the Serb-Croat. language "unifying", while other languages, however, had their own spaces in schools, media and publishing. Then the rise of the current hegemonic policies or disgregazioniste passed away this peculiar linguistic plurality and intercomprensibilità.
If anything, it is today that confusion reigns as the Serbian-Croatian, spoken in Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro and Bosnia was divided into Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin, without a reasonable basis for linguistic-philological but mainly on political base. So in the languages of the former Yugoslavia would be doubled if a resident can go to Sarajevo and Podgorica have a conversation of any meeting at most a few dozen different terms, however, known not only to those who were born before eighties. The same applies if a resident of Zagreb goes to Belgrade, where the most will find some difficulty if he goes in the suburbs where they speak a particular slang formed in recent decades, but the same difficulties that could find a Milanese wandering through the villages of Rome. So now you can run into the paradox of having to translate a text from Serbia to Montenegro, which are among the other two variants closer to Serbian-Croatian considering the historical and cultural factors that have woven the story of the two countries. In fact the last separation concerns precisely these two republics, fortunately without tragic results occurred and bloody as those that characterized the civil war of the nineties, but still quite heavy with consequences at the political level and, consequently, social and economic, creating several problems for ordinary citizens, accustomed to travel, to do business, entertain family relationships and friendships, being suddenly faced with new boundaries and bureaucratic obstacles. In the light of this situation, as I mentioned, we see emerging in the linguistic speculations. To take a trivial example, but significant, if we look at the labels of any product, we have to read the ingredients in four different languages where differences often do not exist or were minimal. In misguided attempt to highlight the diversity using synonyms or simply changing a preposition. For anyone and especially for a professional translator can be a bit 'scandalous that someone is paid to pretend to translate.
Without being of philologists, but using only common sense, we can not conclude whether it is the exact same language, at least have the very strong doubts that we can break up under the new political and administrative borders. Yet today, the Serbian-Croatian is not even discussed, pretending it does not exist even if the attempts to turn it into neo-lingual accentuating the differences and pointing to the overproduction of neologisms sometimes ridiculous, are not having the desired success. A language follows its own course and adapts to the needs of human nature is obviously much more practical and longest-running current policy that would live or dead.
I would like to suggest websites where you can learn Serbian, learn Croatian or learn Bosnian online with native teachers.
Serbian language Part 1
In order to strengthen their identity, Croats insist on promoting a national language more and more distinct from the Serbian-Croatian encouraged by Yugoslavist. But Serbs and Croats continue to understand each other perfectly in 'their language'.
SERBIAN - CROATIAN OR CROATIAN - SERBIAN, THE USE OF LANGUAGE GEOPOLITICAL.
Part 1.
Two languages or one? A language a nation, or language two nations? All these questions are resolved in a single question: what is the main feature of the national identity of Serbs and Croats?
In the nineteenth century, in intellectual circles in Zagreb was born under the influence of the Renaissance European Illyrian movement, led by Ljudevit Gaj. The movement arose to counter the dominance of the culture of Hungarian and Austrian Slav, aimed to promote cultural unity, but, ultimately, the political unity of the South Slavs The claim of the unity of the southern Slavs stemmed from the realization that only with the creation of a State sudslavo would be possible to defend the interests of the peoples of the expansionist intentions of the powers surrounding. The ideal unit rested on the belief that language is the foundation of national identity. On this basis, that is, the belief that Serbs and Croats speak the same language and therefore are one people, Ljudevit Gaj, leader of the Risorgimento movement Croatian, chose as the standard language Croatian dialect spoken by Croats in Herzegovina, the region where the mode to speak of Croats did not differ from that of the local Serbs. In fact, in Herzegovina, Serbs and Croats speak using the dialect and pronunciation štokavo ijekava. The štokavo is the general characteristic of the dialect (in this case a dialect that has become a literary language) as the interrogative pronoun "that" is expressed by the word "am"; ijekavo is the characteristic that refers to the pronunciation of vowels sun. Even in Belgrade, for example, using the štokavo, however, not the pronunciation ijekava but that ekava.
A few decades before Gaj, Serbia, Vuk Stefanović Karadzic reformed the Cyrillic alphabet and spelling formulated the fundamental rule of the Serbo-Croat language: "Write as you speak and read as it is written."
The idea that the fundamental elements of a nation are in the first language, and then, the customs, the base of which are natural and environmental factors and geographical-climatic, is derived Herderian. In fact, according to Johann Gottfried Herder primacy in the formation of a nation lies with the language, because only through it can pass customs and traditions from one generation to another. For Herder, "is the language that establishes the laws and ties the races," so that the language "is imprinted on the mind and character of a people. Again, "the essence of the nation is not race," the blood "(because it breeds, stirring everywhere, are an arbitrary allocation), but it contains the modes of acculturation (language, religion, forms of cohabitation, costumes)
The main weakness of the conception Herderian was that it was a vision of the nation-historical, that is essentially apolitical. Besides, it was only logical that in Croatia backward and politically submissive, in particular Hungary and then Austria, the first instances of emancipation were presented in the form of reflections on cultural issues. In complete absence of a history and a tradition of its own policy, the only place where you could do for those few intellectuals Croats and Serbs soaked Risorgimento ideals learned in the course of their studies in European universities, was obviously the 'sphere of culture. They then find the thought of Herder a particularly fertile soil and suitable for their purposes, cultural and ultimately geopolitical.
The fact that in the Balkans, more than elsewhere, the national revival comes out of the magic hat of culture and mimetizzi continuously as a cultural phenomenon, it is understandable if you think centuries of absence of any kind of unitary state populations sudslave. That their absence has precluded any possibility of reflection and empirical evidence on the role of the state in the creation of national identity. It also prevented the culture formed a uniform policy of the Serbs and the Croats. So the cultural commitment has been for centuries, in Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia, the only way to do politics. Discuss the language of Croats and Serbs, therefore, means addressing an academic or purely cultural, but to intervene in a political and geopolitical notch.
SERBIAN - CROATIAN OR CROATIAN - SERBIAN, THE USE OF LANGUAGE GEOPOLITICAL.
Two languages or one? A language a nation, or language two nations? All these questions are resolved in a single question: what is the main feature of the national identity of Serbs and Croats?
In the nineteenth century, in intellectual circles in Zagreb was born under the influence of the Renaissance European Illyrian movement, led by Ljudevit Gaj. The movement arose to counter the dominance of the culture of Hungarian and Austrian Slav, aimed to promote cultural unity, but, ultimately, the political unity of the South Slavs The claim of the unity of the southern Slavs stemmed from the realization that only with the creation of a State sudslavo would be possible to defend the interests of the peoples of the expansionist intentions of the powers surrounding. The ideal unit rested on the belief that language is the foundation of national identity. On this basis, that is, the belief that Serbs and Croats speak the same language and therefore are one people, Ljudevit Gaj, leader of the Risorgimento movement Croatian, chose as the standard language Croatian dialect spoken by Croats in Herzegovina, the region where the mode to speak of Croats did not differ from that of the local Serbs. In fact, in Herzegovina, Serbs and Croats speak using the dialect and pronunciation štokavo ijekava. The štokavo is the general characteristic of the dialect (in this case a dialect that has become a literary language) as the interrogative pronoun "that" is expressed by the word "am"; ijekavo is the characteristic that refers to the pronunciation of vowels sun. Even in Belgrade, for example, using the štokavo, however, not the pronunciation ijekava but that ekava.
A few decades before Gaj, Serbia, Vuk Stefanović Karadzic reformed the Cyrillic alphabet and spelling formulated the fundamental rule of the Serbo-Croat language: "Write as you speak and read as it is written."
The idea that the fundamental elements of a nation are in the first language, and then, the customs, the base of which are natural and environmental factors and geographical-climatic, is derived Herderian. In fact, according to Johann Gottfried Herder primacy in the formation of a nation lies with the language, because only through it can pass customs and traditions from one generation to another. For Herder, "is the language that establishes the laws and ties the races," so that the language "is imprinted on the mind and character of a people. Again, "the essence of the nation is not race," the blood "(because it breeds, stirring everywhere, are an arbitrary allocation), but it contains the modes of acculturation (language, religion, forms of cohabitation, costumes)
The main weakness of the conception Herderian was that it was a vision of the nation-historical, that is essentially apolitical. Besides, it was only logical that in Croatia backward and politically submissive, in particular Hungary and then Austria, the first instances of emancipation were presented in the form of reflections on cultural issues. In complete absence of a history and a tradition of its own policy, the only place where you could do for those few intellectuals Croats and Serbs soaked Risorgimento ideals learned in the course of their studies in European universities, was obviously the 'sphere of culture. They then find the thought of Herder a particularly fertile soil and suitable for their purposes, cultural and ultimately geopolitical.
The fact that in the Balkans, more than elsewhere, the national revival comes out of the magic hat of culture and mimetizzi continuously as a cultural phenomenon, it is understandable if you think centuries of absence of any kind of unitary state populations sudslave. That their absence has precluded any possibility of reflection and empirical evidence on the role of the state in the creation of national identity. It also prevented the culture formed a uniform policy of the Serbs and the Croats. So the cultural commitment has been for centuries, in Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia, the only way to do politics. Discuss the language of Croats and Serbs, therefore, means addressing an academic or purely cultural, but to intervene in a political and geopolitical notch.
Part 2 - 3
Part 2.
If the Serb-Croat and one or two languages has remained until today one of the most debated political issue. The ideal unit of the peoples of the South Slavs, Yugoslavia, based on the assumption that the language of the Serbs and Croats should be one. Consequently, the primary task of every separatist nationalism was, and is, to prove that they are two very different languages.
The fact that immediately distinguishes the Serbian and Croatian is that the first is written, as well as in the Latin alphabet, also in Cyrillic. On the other hand, if you let slide the historical memory will remember that the Croats throughout the Middle Ages wrote in Glagolitic, essentially a variant of the Cyrillic old. To realize just visit some late medieval Croatian Catholic Church. There are even some words written with the Cyrillic alphabet of Serbia have the same graphic form if they were written with the Latin alphabet and of course have the same meaning and pronunciation in both Serbian and Croatian language, such as the words jaje (egg ), ja (I), moj (mine), mak (poppy), oko (eye), kao (as), je (is), mama (mother), TATA (Dad, written in capital letters) and so on. So it is even possible to build a few short phrases that are spelled in the same way in Serbian Cyrillic alphabet is Latin Croatian, such as the phrase "Moja mama je kao ja jaka" ("My mother is as strong as me.") In fact, the letters a, e, j, o, m, k, and T (if written in capital letters), are written in the same way in the Latin and the Cyrillic alphabet.
The second difference in the mode of expression of Serbs and Croats, as already noted, is that the Serbs and Croats speak ekavo ijekavo. These are two variants of pronunciations that stand in the way in which they express the vowels: the Serbs for example for the word milk say mleko and Croats mlijeko. However, it is a difference that affects more the standard of literary language that the linguistic substance.
In some regions of the former Yugoslavia is easy to find Serbs who speak ijekavo (especially in Bosnia and Herzegovina), as there are Croats who speak ekavo (eg in the vicinity of Zagreb).
Since many Serbs speak ijekavo, in the late Ante Starčević - the father of Croatian nationalism or anti-Serb as Franjo Tudjman called father of the nation - wrote his works in ekavo. In his view the majority of Serbs spoke ijekavo and thus to distinguish them from the Croats were to adopt the standard of pronunciation ekava. The irony of history has meant that, according to a nationalist logic, the works of the father of today prove almost all written in a foreign language.
There are in fact differences between Serbian and Croatian, but no more than that between dialects of the same language. This is different due to the different historical development of the Croatian-Serbian language has had in different regions. The Serbian language, as well as its standard, is full of words of Turkish origin, while the standard Croatian has been purged of foreign words, as they have always considered them to be an element foreign to the spirit of the language.
The way of speaking of Serbs, Croats and Muslims in Bosnia, especially in those regions where the three populations lived together until yesterday, is the same. It is therefore impossible to distinguish on the basis of language. The only way to determine if it is of Serbs, Croats and Muslims is to classify them on the basis of religion.
Part 3.
The creation of a language, as well as the creation of a nation, is a process which contributes a plurality of causes. Serbs and Croats have been exposed to the influence of different religions and different cultures, therefore, the Christian East and the Christian West. You can also find on the limes that divides East from West, crushed by the encounter of different ideas and geopolitical interests. For this they have developed special characters. But the differences are not such as to divide them into two teams ethnically different. So much so that sometimes we find major differences between Croats of two different regions, such as between Bosnian Croats and Croatian Zagorje (north-west of Zagreb Croatia and Slovenia) or between Serbs of two different regions, such as between the Serbs of Croatia and Serbs Šumadija (region of central Serbia), which between Croats and Serbs in the same region, for example, between Serbs and Croats in Herzegovina.
The idea of a unitary language Serbian-Croatian was the basis of the ideology of brotherhood and unity in the socialist Yugoslavia. According to this view, Serbs and Croats, despite their differences, the two peoples are brothers, one race in a nutshell that occupies a unique geopolitical space, the Western Balkans, but that history had divided creating two teams ethnically similar. In fact, the first statement on the language and the spelling of 1954, known as the agreements Novi Sad, intellectuals and writers Serbs and Croats declared that "the popular language of Serbs, Croats and Montenegrins is a single language. For this reason, the language of literature that has developed on the basis of it around the two major centers, Belgrade and Zagreb, is a single language with two pronunciations, the ekava and ijekava. In short, the ideologists of Tito claimed that one single language with two variants, the Serbian and Croatian ekava ijekava, of equal value. To quote the words of Miroslav Krleža, the most important Croatian writer and, with Ivo Andric, Yugoslav, "Croatian and Serbian are one language. The Croats call it Croatian Serbs of Serbia. "
During the Yugoslav affair, many of the intellectuals who had signed the agreements Novi Sad changed several times its opinion with respect to the language issue. You could make a long list of intellectuals, both Serbs and Croats, who have never heard contradict themselves by saying that Serbian and Croatian are one language, to support with equal firmness, only a few decades later, that there were two different languages. It almost did not realize that while fighting each other they understood perfectly!
Given the similar, if not equality, between Serbian and Croatian, the Croatian nationalists (but not only them!) Were always worried to try the difference between Serbian and Croatian, even at the cost of inventing it. This great work of imagination had its highest expression in the nineties during the rule of the party HDZ, which during the presidency of Franjo Tudjman. In fact, if Tudjman had an obsession, this was the continuous invention of new / old words and nell'autarchia Croatian language. It got to the point that the last book of President Tudjman has a title "Croatian so" that is almost incomprehensible to a Croat.
The continuous invention of words that did not exist or were no longer used for decades in the current Croatia before 1991, and therefore the continued use phrases that distinguished Croatian from Serbian and were served up to the people through television and the press, is undoubtedly the more particular marker of the cultural policy of the presidency of Franjo Tudjman. Of course, the first manifestation of linguistic self-sufficiency in the history of Croatia dates back to the period of the Independent State of Croatia Ante Pavelić established by the governments of the Axis forces during World War II. But Tudjman in the invention of new words has reached absolute peaks. It seemed that all Croats were to go back to school to speak and write their own language correctly. It has even been seriously debated whether to introduce the etymological spelling, thus repudiating the common approach to the Serbian and Croatian introduced by Vuk S. Karadzic. The (unspoken) word was autarky language. The intent was to highlight the national and cultural identity Croatian highlighting the differences from the Serb. This trend has had applied to the tongue sometimes landings so absurd as to produce a quantity of jokes neo-croatismi.
If the Serb-Croat and one or two languages has remained until today one of the most debated political issue. The ideal unit of the peoples of the South Slavs, Yugoslavia, based on the assumption that the language of the Serbs and Croats should be one. Consequently, the primary task of every separatist nationalism was, and is, to prove that they are two very different languages.
The fact that immediately distinguishes the Serbian and Croatian is that the first is written, as well as in the Latin alphabet, also in Cyrillic. On the other hand, if you let slide the historical memory will remember that the Croats throughout the Middle Ages wrote in Glagolitic, essentially a variant of the Cyrillic old. To realize just visit some late medieval Croatian Catholic Church. There are even some words written with the Cyrillic alphabet of Serbia have the same graphic form if they were written with the Latin alphabet and of course have the same meaning and pronunciation in both Serbian and Croatian language, such as the words jaje (egg ), ja (I), moj (mine), mak (poppy), oko (eye), kao (as), je (is), mama (mother), TATA (Dad, written in capital letters) and so on. So it is even possible to build a few short phrases that are spelled in the same way in Serbian Cyrillic alphabet is Latin Croatian, such as the phrase "Moja mama je kao ja jaka" ("My mother is as strong as me.") In fact, the letters a, e, j, o, m, k, and T (if written in capital letters), are written in the same way in the Latin and the Cyrillic alphabet.
The second difference in the mode of expression of Serbs and Croats, as already noted, is that the Serbs and Croats speak ekavo ijekavo. These are two variants of pronunciations that stand in the way in which they express the vowels: the Serbs for example for the word milk say mleko and Croats mlijeko. However, it is a difference that affects more the standard of literary language that the linguistic substance.
In some regions of the former Yugoslavia is easy to find Serbs who speak ijekavo (especially in Bosnia and Herzegovina), as there are Croats who speak ekavo (eg in the vicinity of Zagreb).
Since many Serbs speak ijekavo, in the late Ante Starčević - the father of Croatian nationalism or anti-Serb as Franjo Tudjman called father of the nation - wrote his works in ekavo. In his view the majority of Serbs spoke ijekavo and thus to distinguish them from the Croats were to adopt the standard of pronunciation ekava. The irony of history has meant that, according to a nationalist logic, the works of the father of today prove almost all written in a foreign language.
There are in fact differences between Serbian and Croatian, but no more than that between dialects of the same language. This is different due to the different historical development of the Croatian-Serbian language has had in different regions. The Serbian language, as well as its standard, is full of words of Turkish origin, while the standard Croatian has been purged of foreign words, as they have always considered them to be an element foreign to the spirit of the language.
The way of speaking of Serbs, Croats and Muslims in Bosnia, especially in those regions where the three populations lived together until yesterday, is the same. It is therefore impossible to distinguish on the basis of language. The only way to determine if it is of Serbs, Croats and Muslims is to classify them on the basis of religion.
Part 3.
The creation of a language, as well as the creation of a nation, is a process which contributes a plurality of causes. Serbs and Croats have been exposed to the influence of different religions and different cultures, therefore, the Christian East and the Christian West. You can also find on the limes that divides East from West, crushed by the encounter of different ideas and geopolitical interests. For this they have developed special characters. But the differences are not such as to divide them into two teams ethnically different. So much so that sometimes we find major differences between Croats of two different regions, such as between Bosnian Croats and Croatian Zagorje (north-west of Zagreb Croatia and Slovenia) or between Serbs of two different regions, such as between the Serbs of Croatia and Serbs Šumadija (region of central Serbia), which between Croats and Serbs in the same region, for example, between Serbs and Croats in Herzegovina.
The idea of a unitary language Serbian-Croatian was the basis of the ideology of brotherhood and unity in the socialist Yugoslavia. According to this view, Serbs and Croats, despite their differences, the two peoples are brothers, one race in a nutshell that occupies a unique geopolitical space, the Western Balkans, but that history had divided creating two teams ethnically similar. In fact, the first statement on the language and the spelling of 1954, known as the agreements Novi Sad, intellectuals and writers Serbs and Croats declared that "the popular language of Serbs, Croats and Montenegrins is a single language. For this reason, the language of literature that has developed on the basis of it around the two major centers, Belgrade and Zagreb, is a single language with two pronunciations, the ekava and ijekava. In short, the ideologists of Tito claimed that one single language with two variants, the Serbian and Croatian ekava ijekava, of equal value. To quote the words of Miroslav Krleža, the most important Croatian writer and, with Ivo Andric, Yugoslav, "Croatian and Serbian are one language. The Croats call it Croatian Serbs of Serbia. "
During the Yugoslav affair, many of the intellectuals who had signed the agreements Novi Sad changed several times its opinion with respect to the language issue. You could make a long list of intellectuals, both Serbs and Croats, who have never heard contradict themselves by saying that Serbian and Croatian are one language, to support with equal firmness, only a few decades later, that there were two different languages. It almost did not realize that while fighting each other they understood perfectly!
Given the similar, if not equality, between Serbian and Croatian, the Croatian nationalists (but not only them!) Were always worried to try the difference between Serbian and Croatian, even at the cost of inventing it. This great work of imagination had its highest expression in the nineties during the rule of the party HDZ, which during the presidency of Franjo Tudjman. In fact, if Tudjman had an obsession, this was the continuous invention of new / old words and nell'autarchia Croatian language. It got to the point that the last book of President Tudjman has a title "Croatian so" that is almost incomprehensible to a Croat.
The continuous invention of words that did not exist or were no longer used for decades in the current Croatia before 1991, and therefore the continued use phrases that distinguished Croatian from Serbian and were served up to the people through television and the press, is undoubtedly the more particular marker of the cultural policy of the presidency of Franjo Tudjman. Of course, the first manifestation of linguistic self-sufficiency in the history of Croatia dates back to the period of the Independent State of Croatia Ante Pavelić established by the governments of the Axis forces during World War II. But Tudjman in the invention of new words has reached absolute peaks. It seemed that all Croats were to go back to school to speak and write their own language correctly. It has even been seriously debated whether to introduce the etymological spelling, thus repudiating the common approach to the Serbian and Croatian introduced by Vuk S. Karadzic. The (unspoken) word was autarky language. The intent was to highlight the national and cultural identity Croatian highlighting the differences from the Serb. This trend has had applied to the tongue sometimes landings so absurd as to produce a quantity of jokes neo-croatismi.
Part 4 - 5
Given that language is not only a means of transmitting culture, but also a powerful instrument of power, it is obvious that in Croatia the linguistic differentiation of the Croatian language from the Serb was and has worked in particular in the jargon state administrative and military . A large amount of words in the political jargon was born after 1990. It started with terms directly related to the birth of the new political system, which in fact in Croatia was marked by the election victory of HDZ. In fact, the first word was changed glasanje - which means vote, replaced by glasovanje, so the term glasanje was relegated to the past, along with the socialist system and the ideal of brotherhood and unity of Serbs and Croats.
The passport, which has always been in Croatia as in Serbia was called pasos, became overnight putovnica, a term derived from the word putovati - that means traveling. The sign of honor became by orden to odličije. Other examples: the term "development discourse" passed by tok razgovora to tijek razgovora, the public defender from javni tužilac became Pucki pravobranitelj, stop changed from uhapsiti in uhititi. The ambassador from Ambasador became veleposlanik (word made up of large and sails = poslanik = emissary), while the term console, for some reason, was konzul. The word sekretär, secretary, was expelled from the administrative language and was replaced by former Slavic synonymous tajnik. The audience went from gledaoci to gledatelji - television viewers that propagated the new Croatian language.
Europe, so far unfulfilled dream scope and Croats, which materialized in their imaginary form of shop windows Graz or Trieste, became Europe by Evropa, except that according to the same logic should tell Kaukaz for Caucasus and Kavkaz like today is referred to in both Croatian and Serbian in the distant mountain range between Europe and Asia. I wonder if this was an oversight, since for the Croats the East was no longer important, or if someone realized that a Croatian word Kaukaz is unpronounceable. In honor of this inclination toward the West, then, and in homage to the new geopolitical interests Croatian cinema in the center of Zagreb has always called Balkan became Europe.
At the same time to turn to the new Europe Croatia, almost all so-called foreign words, those of Greek, Latin or English were expelled from school manuals and political language. Why? Why also used by the Serbs. If the first to indicate the plane could be used at will or words avion zrakoplov, from day to day to use the term became zrakoplov (word made ploviti = navigate and zrak = air). Similarly, if you were first normal use as synonyms aerodrom or Zracna luka to indicate the airport,
the second of a sudden became the only word allowed. The same tried to do with the term helicopter in Croatian as Serbian is said helikopter, but fortunately the new term was never accepted as it is considered too ridiculous. Similarly, the director of the school became direktor ravnatelj, and the task to do at home to Domača zadaća changed in domaci uradak.
Some even changed their names or geographic locations. So Banija region, historically home to a large number of Serbs, after the operation Lightning 1995, which ended with the expulsion of the Serbs, not only changed its ethnic configuration, but in honor of the great victory changed its name in Banovina.
With the birth of the army Croatian, all the names of the degrees of army officers were changed. He did his best to differentiate as much as possible dall'Armata Yugoslavia. The barracks from Kasarna became vojarna, the degrees of major and captain, who in Croatian-Serbian play major, Kapetan were replaced by terms such as bojnik and satnik.
The only misfortune of this great work of creation of the new Croatian language was that some international terms were replaced with various Slavic words coined ad hoc. In this way, thanks to the root of these neocomposti Slavic, Croatian was always understood by the Serbs, and Croats for European languages became more and more distant. To look good, rather than a process of nation-building or rebuilding through the creation of language, it was a simple elimination of a large number of synonyms and therefore an impoverishment of language.
There are states and peoples who despite having a heart its own particular national characteristics and their State, they admit without difficulty that they share with other people their own language. In fact, probably, do not go so ever to support that speak two different languages with a tenacity equal to that shown by Serbs and Croats. For example, an Austrian hard to argue that its language, at least the official and literary, is different from that spoken by the Germans, and for the same reason you do not think that the use of the German language would question his Austrian national identity. The insistence with which many linguists and ideologues of the States which have emerged on the territory of the former Yugoslavia, marking the difference between Serbian and Croatian, in case there is suspicion that indeed there is a substantial difference between the two peoples. In fact, the presence of the zeal of language purists, and their work through television and newspapers, it should be noted that the new Croatian language has not eradicated dialects, nor overwhelmed their use. Often the differences between the various dialects in Croatia itself are greater than those between the standard literary language Croatian and Serbian.
Thus, for example, the dialect Zagreb can be more comprehensible to a Belgrade since both dialects are filled with so-called Germanisms, that one Split, whose dialect is unintelligible without knowledge of a minimum or more precisely of the Venetian dialect. As if that were not enough, although Croatia was not introduced the etymological spelling, was allowed as desired, in the Balkan-style absurd application of the concept of democracy, to use for some words, even the etymological spelling. So it is that for example, two brothers of different ages in the same elementary school, studying two different spellings, with the only difference being that one has a teacher a little 'more zealous than a linguistic purism.
Part 5.
After 1991, not only Croats but Serbs have been trying to reinvent their language. Suddenly, in Serbia you had to write only in the Cyrillic alphabet to honor orthodoxy. At the same time, many in Bosnia were busy to invent an imaginary Bosnian language. But Serbs and Croats understand each other perfectly. And when they meet in the world, in contexts truly foreign to both, for example nell'ambita Europe, communicate with each other without problems. When asked which language to communicate, with a little 'embarrassment, perhaps because conscious of the absurdity of their situation, they say: Nasim jezikom (in our language) without further clarify what is this "our language" - the language of understanding each other.
If a time to hold together Serbs, Croats, Muslims and Montenegrins was the conception of brotherhood and unity sealed by the existence of a common state, I wonder if now the link is not in the sense of bewilderment and confusion in front of their past and their future. What are the consequences of linguistic separatism today is too early to say, but if you judge by past experience we must conclude that the peoples of the former Yugoslavia have always found a common language, despite the divisions and divergent interests.
Marina Abramović, the most famous contemporary artist of the former Yugoslavia, winner of the Venice Biennale in 1997, speaking of his work Balkan Baroque noted: "Balkan Baroque is the wealth of the mind, or rather a kind of irrationality, madness typical of a specific geographic area. I believe that the environment, and especially the geographical configuration, it is extremely important for the formation of collective psychology. The Balkans is a place where East meets West, then a place where two opposing civilizations are in contact and mix causing the inconsistency of our nature. " In full agreement with Abramović, the geopolitical Georges Prevelakis observes in his book The Balkans: "With regard to the internal forces in the Balkans, history shows that the best and the worst are both possible, and that the forces of convergence are as important as of divergence. So the determining factor seems to be the geopolitical environment. (...) For better or for worse the Balkan nations are able to go to extremes. Undoubtedly one of these extremes is the dispute between Serbs and Croats in their language.
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