What did they call it before they called it “Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian-Montenegrin”?[1]
J. P. Maher. September 2006. Chicago.
In 1958 the U.S. Army called it “Serbo-Croatian”. That was during the Cold War.
I was a soldier in Military Intelligence, just beginning to learn the major language of Yugoslavia at the US Army Language School, on the old Spanish Presidio of Monterey in California [2]. Thirty-some years later the Berlin Wall came down. In Slovenia in the year 1990 I learned from an American working there (it was still Yugoslavia then) that the Army had closed down the Monterey course. The Pentagon apparently had not yet received their orders to attack Yugoslavia. They thought the Cold War was over. Someone in Washington had other ideas. The old contingency plan to dismantle Yugoslavia was taken off the shelf, updated and implemented by the mercenaries of MPRI, and invisible government countermanded the shut-down. In 1992 a call went out for teachers of “Serbian and Croatian” at the re-named US Defense Language Institute. The announcement was a classic farce. Some petty bureaucrat at a loss how to phrase the official advertisement took his phraseology from want-ads for interpreters. It was spelled out that job applicants must be able to teach the “two languages” simultaneously or consecutively [3]. “It” was now two languages. One colonel took the Monterey course in Croatian and/or Serbian; he developed the Pentagon plan for the big ethnic cleansing of Serbs from Croatia in 1995. At the University of Michigan the linguistics department chairman opposed the New-Speak and retained the designation “Serbo-Croatian” [4]. An Austrian colleague wrote me: “Serbo-Croat” is history”. – It was of course Austrian history. The University of Calgary in Canada ran with the political-correctness. Doctoral candidates there could now fulfill the requirement of reading ability in two foreign languages by passing exams in Serbian or Croatian. Queuing up to apply for the test in “the two languages” Croats and Serbs were united in laughter.
Then there were three. At the ICTY in The Hague “it” became “Bosnian-Croatian- Serbian”, all three spoken simultaneously. Consequently, Vojislav Šešelj demanded that court interpreters should turn Croatian testimony into Serbian for him.
Then “it” was four. Americans applying for Fulbright Grants in 2005 and 2006 were “informed” that the language of the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro / Srbija I Crna Gora ought to be to be called “Montenegrin”, a separate language, if Montenegrins wanted it so. Language teachers in Montenegro were ordered to call “it” Crnogorski / Montenegrin or Mother Tongue, if they wanted to keep their jobs. Dozens of honest Montenegrin teachers felt otherwise, that the language they were teaching was in fact Serbian. They were fired and stripped of their pensions.
The linguistic theory of Vuk Stefanoviæ Karadžiæ, that south Slavs – Catholic and Orthodox – spoke the same language, was declared passé. The policy of the multi-ethnic Austrian Empire and, later, the Austro-Hungarian Empire (1867-1918) was both liberal and reactionary. It was liberal in that subject nations had the right to be schooled in their own languages, use them in court and see them printed on the currency. The policy was reactionary in that this was a measure to keep the Slavs, who were a 60% majority in the Dual Monarchy, subject to German and Hungarian rulers [5]. Croatian linguists themselves had reservations at the time about using the Zagreb dialect as a standard, for it seemed too Slovenian. Zagreb dialect, for one thing, shares with Slovenian the interrogative pronoun kaj ‘what?’. (In all the western and eastern territories Catholic Croats and Orthodox Serbs use another word for ‘what?’, that is, što.)
Both Vienna, with an eye to coherence of the Empire, and Rome with an eye to conversion of Eastern Orthodox “schismatics”, smiled on the efforts of Archbishop Strossmayer to teach a new auxiliary language to the Croats to hasten their integration into a broader society and function as missionaries [6]. It was some time before many Croats at all could speak their new literary language. In the words of R. G. A. DeBray (1951): Ljudevit Gaj (Croat linguist, 1808-1872) chose the je- version of the što dialect, the same dialect as chosen by Vuk Karadžiæ and one of the most widely spoken in the Yugoslav lands. Gaj introduced a phonetic spelling exactly corresponding to that introduced by Vuk for Cyrillic. Thus he helped the Croats to give up their local dialect as a literary medium and enter a wider field. The final seal to this work was set by the Vienna Literary Agreement [Beèki književni dogovor] in 1850, when all the leading Yugoslav scholars of the time, including both Vuk and Gaj, and agreed on the final adoption of a common literary language on the following basis: the adoption of a single dialect in its unadulterated form rather than a composite language embodying the features of several dialects; this dialect was to be the je-version of the što dialect, already mentioned above, the most widely spoken dialect except in Serbia...
Bosnian. Is that bosnjaèki or bosanski? Muslim Bosnians stake no united stand in practice. In Chicago a school for Muslim Bosnian children displays a big banner “Govori Bosanski! – Speak Bosnian!”. At Northeastern Illinois University in 1992 the debate “got physical”. I watched as a Junoesque blonde give a good shove to young man who had called “it” “bošnjaèki”; she told him in no uncertain terms that “it” was “bosanski”.
At Truman College in Chicago I asked students with Muslim names “what country do you come from?” –“Bosnia” they all said. “What language do you speak?”. – “Bosnian.” Then I responded (in Serbian) that I too speak – “… bosanski i bošnjaèki i hrvatski i hrvatsko-srpski i srpski i crnogorski…” They always laughed. One smiling man flatly said: “it’s the same language”.
At a nearby grocery store, a clerk with the Muslim name Amira revealed the stress normal people are put under. When we first chatted at the check-out counter, she asked me if I was of Yugoslav origin. Her surprise was great to hear I was “irskog porekla”. Since then she always greets me with “moj irac / my Irishman”... One day she remarked that she was pleased that I always greeted her in srpski. She then hesitated, rolled her eyes and said the PC word “bosanski”. (She didn’t say hrvatski, since I hadn’t said “porijetla”, which Bosnians – Muslim and Christian – would use.)
The literary Croatian word for “wedding” is vijenèanje, derived from the noun vijenac “wreath”, which in turn is from the verb viti “to twine, braid, wreathe”. One infers from this example of formal language morphology and etymology, when mapped onto the material, ethnographic and religious facts, that the literary Croatian language is historically a Serb dialect, since the Eastern Orthodox (Serb) wedding ceremony in its traditional form involves the crowning of bride and groom with wreathes of green, while such a custom is not found in the Roman Catholic (Croat) wedding rite.
Here is what the Catholic Encyclopedia teaches about Croats and Serbs, in the entry Albania: “... every other race in the Balkans, with the exception of the Western Serbs, called Hroats, went over to schism…”.
My last anecdote about newly created “languages” is from the year 2006. A British real estate developer in recently independent Montenegro remarked that her business was facilitated by her knowledge of Serbo-Croat [7]. Down to earth people don’t buckle under to propaganda and Political Correctness [8]. Honest and competent scholars are not extinct. Early in the Bosnian War: Harvard Professor Mark Pinson spoke of the crop of nouveaux balcanistes, regarding their knowledge, or lack of it, of Balkan languages:
To help remedy this situation, for both general readers and specialists in Islamic studies, most of whom do not read Serbian, I am exploring the possibility of having translated from Serbian into English several articles and books by local Muslim historians on the Muslim community in the Ottoman, Austrian, and Yugoslav periods.” (Pinson. 1994: 85).
Conclusion. Abraham Lincoln in his Illinois lawyering days once asked a witness in court “if you called a dog’s tail a leg, how many legs would a dog have?” The witness: “Five.” Lincoln: “No, even if you call a dog’s tail a leg, it’s still a tail.”
Bibliography
DeBray, R. G. A. 1951. Guide to the Slavonic Languages. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. Inc.
Pinson, Mark. 1994. Editor. The Muslims of Bosnia-Hercegovina. Their historic development from the Middle Ages to the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Center for Medieval Studies
Stolz, Benjamin. 1984. Serbo-Croatian as a Balkan Diplomatic Language during the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries
[1] This formulation I owe to my son Paul. After a lecture on the Copernican concept of the heliocentric world, he asked his teacher “what did they call it before they called it “the solar system”? Paul’s teacher couldn’t answer the question, but promised a higher mark if Paul could find the answer. When my son asked me, I couldn’t answer him immediately. But after a few hours of thinking, I decided to look at the question from the standpoint of writers from flat-earth days. Eureka! – what Aristotle wrote about was “the heavens”.
[2] The Presidio got its name before the Yankees landed in the 1840s. Until then the base was Mexican. The region had been a Spanish missionary territory, converting the Indians who owned the land previously. “Missionization” was devastating for the natives. Catholicization offered salvation from the fires of hell, but managed to shorten Indian lives through upsetting traditional diet and work and by contagion with European diseases.
[3] MPRI is “Military Personnel Resources Inc.”, with headquarters just across the Potomac River from Washington DC, not far from the Pentagon. Chief officer was General Soyster, the “donkey” (lowest student academically) of his West Point class. I received the call for teachers from an American of Serbian descent who is suspected by informed people of being a government informer on America’s Serbs..
[5] There would be no independent Slovenia or Croatia before Serbia’s victory over Austria-Hungary, for Vienna would have wiped out any independence movements as Britain crushed the Easter Rising of the Irish in 1916.
[6] After Emancipation of Catholics and Presbyterians from Anglican domination, the Catholic clergy could now function openly in Ireland. But papist clergy were now subjects and servants of the English throne. Rome favored English over Gaelic. In Canada, Irish Catholic priests pushed English on French Canadians.
[8] In August 2006 the White House kitchen resumed serving pommes frites (chips UK) under the old name French Fries. This name was banned in retaliation against France for not joining the “coalition of the willing” against Iraq in 2003. Also banned was French toast. They became Freedom Toast and Freedom Fries. They forgot Freedom kiss.
--------------
Croatia upset over EU language proposal
April 10, 2007 6:34 PM
BELGRADE, Serbia-Montenegro, Apr. 9, 2007 (IPS/GIN) -- Many Croats are seething about an European Union parliament member's suggestion that EU institutions should use a single Serbo-Croatian language for residents of the West Balkans, rather than translating everything into four different languages.
Croatian media commentators called the proposal a sign of "disrespect" and "lack of goodwill" towards the small nation. The daily Vjesnik called for the EU to "respect [the] particularity for Croatia" once it joined the union.
The proposal to introduce a single Serbo-Croatian language in EU institutions came from member of the European Parliament Charles Tannock, who suggested that the single common language be introduced, mostly for practical reasons, once the nations join the EU.
"I hope you'll not burden us with expenses for translations into Croatian, Bosniak, Montenegrin or Serbian," Tannock said at a recent discussion in the Parliament, attended by officials from Western Balkans countries. "People from Western Balkans have to agree on the language they all understand, and that is Serbo-Croatian."
The EU spends about 800 million euros ($1.04 billion) a year of its 100 billion euro ($130 billion) budget for translation into languages of its 27 member nations.
Language is a sensitive issue in the West Balkans, where several ethnic groups are seeking to distance themselves from each other.
Some Croatians are trying to forget the past because the language it left in the Balkans is too mixed up with Serbs and Bosniaks. Croat linguists are now producing a language of their own.
The disintegration of former Yugoslavia more than a decade ago led to the creation of new nations. But it could not erase the fact that Bosniaks, Croats, Montenegrins and Serbs have a language in common.
That language is at present called "Serbo-Croatian," though you could just as well call it "Western Balkanian." It is understood, despite its local variations, by all 16 million people in the region.
The varieties spoken are distinct due to region, not ethnicity. Serbs in Croatia speak as Croats, Croats in Serbia speak like their Serb neighbors. Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks in Bosnia cannot be ethically distinguished by the language they speak.
Croatia has been moving towards a separate language that is distinct from Serbian and other influences. Its leading linguists have turned to history, old literature and their own imagination to invent new terms that would detach Croatian from Serbian.
New expressions were introduced for fax, which became "dalekoumnozitelj" (distant reaching copy device). Helicopters were named "zrakomlat" (air beater), phones became "brzoglas" (quick voice), and it was decided that "zoroklik" (cry at dawn) would replace the Croatian "pijevac," which sounded similar to Serbian "pevac" for cock.
A radio station, it was decided, should become "krugovalna postaja" (a station spreading waves in circles), and that an audience could cheer performers with "rukohlap" (hand clap) and not the usual "aplauz" (applause, both in Serbian and Croatian).
New information technology language has been proposed, in place of the English terms in common use. Croat linguists decided that a hard disk should be "cvrsnik" (a hard thing), and that hardware is "ocvrsje" (another word for a hard item).
The mouse became "nastolno klizalo" (a thing gliding on a desk). A copy of an item was named "preslik," derived from but distinct from "preslikati," common both in Serbian and Croatian. An attachment would be "privitak," an item added to something.
Some bloggers took it upon themselves to translate this "new Croatian" into simple language understood to all on the Web.
But some of the new language has been chilling, rather than amusing. New language for military ranks has been taken from the days of Croatia's Ustashi regime, which was a puppet regime of the Nazis during World War II.
The Ustashi exterminated Serbs, Jews and Gypsies under the command of "casniks" (officers, or "oficiri" in Serbo-Croatian), "satnik" (captain, or kapetan in Serbo- Croatian), and "bojnik" (major, or mayor in Serbo-Croatian).
Serbs have made their own efforts to purge the language of "Turkish" (Bosniak) or "Croat" words. But they failed to find original Serb language for "carape" (socks), "papuce" (slippers), "secer" (sugar), "duvan" (tobacco), "pamuk" (cotton), "sapun" (soap), "bakar" (copper), "bubrezi" (kidneys), "cekic" (hammer), "cizme" (boots), or "rakija" (brandy).
"Fragmentation of Serbo-Croatian and the development of these languages could have been expected," Belgrade linguist Nikola Tanasic said. "However, imposing or enforcing something in such a sensitive area does not work. People still understand each other and will continue to do so for many years."
The International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia, founded by the United Nations, translated all its documents into one language called "B/C/S," or Bosnian, Croat, Serbian. The accused war criminals from all three nations understood it perfectly well.
|
