Croatian language: Encyclopedia II - Croatian language - A note on Serbo-Croatian

Croatian language - A note on Serbo-Croatian

One still finds many references to Serbo-Croatian, and proponents of Serbo-Croatian who deny the existence of Croatian (as well as Serbian and Bosnian) as a separate standard language. The usual argument generally goes along the following lines:

• Croatian, Serbian and Bosnian are almost completely mutually intelligible, sharing much vocabulary
• Typologically and structurally, these languages have virtually the same grammar, i.e. morphology and syntax
• The Serbo-Croatian language was "created" in the mid 19th century, and all subsequent attempts to dissolve its basic unity have not (yet) succeeded
• The affirmation of distinct Croatian, Serbian and Bosnian languages is purely politically motivated
• According to phonology, morphology and syntax, these languages are essentially one language because they are based on the same, Štokavian dialect.

However, these arguments all have flaws:

• mutual intelligibility is not the decisive criterion for anything. For instance, although Urdu and Hindi are mutually intelligible to a degree probably higher than Croatian and Bosnian, they are recognized as separate standard languages. On the other hand, the unity of Chinese culture has imposed the notion of one Chinese language, although numerous "dialects" are almost mutually unintelligible (in fact, the same holds true for the differences between Croatian dialects as well - the mutual intelligibility between different Kajkavian, Čakavian and Štokavian idioms is so small that some linguists consider them to be separate, so called "microlanguages"). Also, some linguists operate with the notion of "Chinese languages" – but this is not the generally accepted position. To give a simple and clear example: if there is no "Hindi-Urdu", then there is no reason to have "Serbo-Croatian".

• As far as structural similarity or even the identity of basic grammar is concerned, one might add that, apart from the aforementioned Urdu and Hindi cases, Malay and Indonesian are the same with regard to basic grammar, yet they are dutifully listed as different languages in classification manuals. Moreover, the basic grammar (morphology and syntax) is just one part of a theoretical description of a language: other fields (phonetics, phonology, word formation, semantics, pragmatics, stylistics, lexicology, etc.) give different theoretical linguistic descriptions and prescriptions for Croatian, Bosnian and Serbian (just as with Hindi and Urdu).

• Since the Croatian language as recorded in Držić and Gundulić's works (1500s and 1600s) is virtually the same as the contemporary standard Croatian (understandable archaisms apart), it is evident that the 19th century formal standardization was just the final touch in the process that, as far as the Croatian language is concerned, had lasted more than three centuries. The radical break with the past, characteristic of modern Serbian (whose vernacular was likely not as similar to Croatian as it is today), is a trait completely at variance with Croatian linguistic history. In short, formal standardization processes for Croatian and Serbian had coincided chronologically (and, one could add, ideologically), but they haven't produced a unified standard language. Gundulić did not write in "Serbo-Croatian", nor did August Šenoa. Marko Marulić and Marin Držić wrote in a sophisticated idiom of the Croatian language, some 300/350 years before the "Serbo-Croatian" ideology appeared.

• Politics is always the central factor in determining what is a language and what is a dialect. The purely linguistic criterion (or criteria) that would decide on the status of a language simply doesn't exist. Various modern linguistic atlases give extremely varying numbers of languages in the world: the number generally fluctuates between 4,000 and 8,000, but some books reduce it to ca. 3,000, while others expand the figure to ca. 17,000. It is evident that such a wide variance is the best sign that no reliable linguistic criteria exist to give a unanimous answer to the question "what is a language?". Serbo-Croatian is arguably a political construct, as is Croatian or, for that matter, any language in the world. A similar analogy could be drawn between the Croatian kajkavian dialect and Slovene language. Had politics drawn those two sets of dialects closer together, they might have been considered a single language, too.

The topic of language with the writers from Dalmatia and Dubrovnik prior to the 19th century is somewhat blurred by the fact they by and large placed more emphasis on whether they were Slavic rather than Italic, given that Dalmatian city-states were then inhabited by those two main groups. There was less notable distinction being made between Croats and Serbs, and this, among other things, has been used as an argument to state that these people's literature is not solely Croatian heritage, thus undermining the argument that modern-day Croatian is based on old Croatian.

However, the major part of intellectuals and writers from Dalmatia who used the štokavian dialect and were of Catholic faith had explicitly expressed Croatian national affiliation, as far as mid 1500s and 1600s, some three hundred years before the Serbo-Croatian ideology had appeared. Their loyalty was first and foremost to the Catholic Christendom, but when they professed ethnic identity, they called it "Slovin" and "Illyrian" (a sort of forerunner of Catholic baroque pan-Slavism) and Croat — these 30-odd writers in the span of ca. 350 years themselves never mentioned Serb ethnic affiliation any time. A Croatian follower of Vuk Karadžić, Ivan Broz, noted that the Serbian affiliation was as foreign as Macedonian and Greek appellation at this time. Vatroslav Jagić pointed out in 1864:

(From The History of the Croatian language, Zagreb, 1864.)

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "A note on Serbo-Croatian", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki