Talk:Croatian language/Archive 8

This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 5

Archive 6

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Ban reminder

Just a reminder to all interested parties that the anon IP user in the thread(s) above, 78.3.*, is topic-banned from this page, per Talk:Croatian language/Archive 6#Ban notice. For the sake of everybody's sanity, consider just reverting him on sight rather than engaging him in discussion. Removing his postings is exempt from 3RR. If he persists, short-term semiprotection may be considered. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:06, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

If that's the case, we should simply delete the above. But how can you lump all of 78.3.* into one sock account? — kwami (talk) 12:43, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, I was taking it for granted that all of those 78.3.* IPs are a single person. Are there any signs they are not? They don't need to be a registered user in order for an arb restriction to apply to them. Fut.Perf. ☼ 12:46, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

The 78., 83., 195. and 193. are IP ranges generally used by Croatian broadband ISPs, however, I have reasons to believe that you're correct in your assumption about all the edits being done by the same person. Furthermore, I have suspicions that the person in question also has a Wikipedia account which he avoids using when making edits that constitute trolling (an account that has already been used in the discussions on Talk:Croatian_language). I'm not sure if I should (or if I'm supposed to) disclose which account that is. Tty29a (talk) 12:51, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

You can make a case to CU if they're really sockpuppeting. If they are, it's completely against policy. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 12:53, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Is 78.0* under the topic ban? Chipmunkdavis (talk) 09:26, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

I really don't see how we can ban IP ranges. We'd effectively be saying that Croats are not allowed to edit anonymously, criminalizing a nation by association. That would be a much more drastic measure than simply semi-protecting this talk page, or deleting irrelevant posts. — kwami (talk) 12:04, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Semi-protection seems reasonable given how edits made by anonymous users haven't been constructive (to say the least) and in most cases follow a pattern of rehashed and already refuted arguments. Tty29a (talk) 12:17, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Excuse me, but neither answers by a few of you were constructive, you have basic problems with basic definitions, arguments "refuted" by you were simply ignored and not discussed. 78.0.148.74 (talk) 12:54, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

I wonderred what sockpuppeting does mean. I've found out and I must laugh at you. Why would people sockpuppet if they are not registered in wikipedia? All you did was hiding someone's message. Censorship. Dynamic IPs? If you are interested, from 78.0.* to 83.* is a half of Croatia. You probably had 10 offended Croats more likely than 1 crazy. What you did here is recognised as spreading of Serbian anti-Croatian politics on English web pages and was a topic in a few Croatian newspapers. 78.0.148.74 (talk) 07:29, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

BTW if you are interested why only IPs are writing - because there is huge contempt for English wikipedia in Croatia, because of articles like this one. For too many Croats it is embarrasing to contribute here. 78.0.148.74 (talk) 09:09, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

I keep getting sucked into these pointless rantings by Croatian nationalists who have nothing constructive to contribute. I suggest we apply semi-protection to the Talk Page since no anon IP has contributed anything positive to the discussion for a long time. But I know how reluctant Wikipedia is in general to applying any level of protection to a talk page. In general, protection is for vandalism. The anon IPs from Croatia here have generally been annoying like mosquitos, but not vandals. --Taivo (talk) 13:44, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Your suggestion seems reasonable, Taivo. It seems that the Croatian nationalists for lack of a genuine physical struggle to burn some of their energy (i.e. a shooting-war with Serbs or Bosniaks) take to cyberspace reverting articles in the name of defending "national honor". It's a shame that you can't read BCMS/SC, Taivo. It's fascinating to compare this article in English with the Croatian version which more prominently and uncritically presents the distortions, apologetics and political subservience as Marc Greenberg described in his monograph on linguistic myths by scholars from the former Yugoslavia. 199.243.110.82 (talk) 17:23, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Has anyone considered the possibility that this *73.nnn IP-anon "troll" (for lack of a better term) may be mentally unbalanced? His/her rants go far beyond simple disagreement, but border upon some sort of OCPD tied with some sort of militant-nationalist facist views. I see the administrators have a ban on him - but perhaps it is best simply to ignore him and remove his edits to this talk page? Drastic, I agree - but you really can't discuss something with someone who is clinically irrational. HammerFilmFan (talk) 00:27, 18 December 2010 (UTC) HammerFilmFan

Unfortunately, I don't think so. Have you read the discussions on WP-hr? There are administrators there who are even less rational than this! And there have apparently been newspaper articles (if "newspaper" is the proper word) which claim WP-en is engaging in cultural genocide. It's amazing how crazy it all is, but then, this is one of the reasons humans keep getting into wars. (Besides the fact that they're enormously profitable, of course.) — kwami (talk) 00:57, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

WP-hr is indeed a special case. The administration there has to be the worst and most incompetent of all Wikis that I've ever edited. The bias is completely astonishing and what's best is that none of the active users dares question it. If you do so, you'll most likely get banned. I remember a controversy over a user who edited an article about the Human species. He decided to remove the creationist babble which somehow found its place in there and at the same time he added actual scientific content to the article. The person in question had a positive track record as he had previously made huge contributions to science articles, however he got instantly banned for this edit because it was too "anti-religion". The problems that WP-hr suffers from are far worse than just nationalism. It suffers from anti-scientific dogmatism and from anti-intellectualism. Ironically, the admins often complain about science articles being too short. Tty29a (talk) 09:03, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Does anyone have a link to any online croatian articles about english wikipedia? If google translate works, it'd be a fun read. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 14:32, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Take a look at this discussion from the article on Serbo-Croatian_grammar: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Serbo-Croatian_grammar#Wikipedia_article_Serbo-Croatian_grammar_makes_headlines_in_Croatia. There was also a flare-up which got some attention in the Croatian media last year when Ivan Štambuk was working on Wiktionary for Serbo-Croatian (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary_talk:Votes/pl-2009-06/Unified_Serbo-Croatian#In_the_newspapers). Nationalist Croats and Serbs and their supporters kept missing the point and equated Štambuk's descriptivist approach with "genocide", "Yugonostalgia" or some other silliness. They instantly jumped to the conclusion that Ivan Štambuk was some commissar who wanted to deny the "right" of Croats and Serbs to have separate languages, even though he provided ample justification from descriptive linguistics why common treatment made more sense for compiling a dictionary meant for foreign users who are indifferent to political hang-ups of some native-speakers. Vput (talk) 16:12, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Not sure if this is the right venue, but can you please provide some links to corroborate this? --Joy [shallot] (talk) 16:33, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

If you're referring to the mud-slinging, Joy, some samples are at http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Beer_parlour_archive/2009/May#L2_header_Serbo-Croatian_instead_of_Croatian.2C_Bosnian.2C_etc. (especially the back-and-forth between Ivan Štambuk and Robert Ullmann) and the actual vote on Wiktionary on consolidating separated BCMS entries under one header at http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2009-06/Unified_Serbo-Croatian (those opposing Štambuk's reasoning throw out the usual reasons that official recognition/decree by central governments of nation-states should negate a consolidated/common treatment in an online dictionary or that the term "'Serbo-Croatian' is a heavy insult to towards speakers of Croatian" (this last one comes from Kubura)) Vput (talk) 20:42, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

No, I was not referring to that.[1] I was referring specifically to the story that a user got instantly banned over a legitimate edit.

[1] I am disinclined from spending time analyzing exactly who offended whom in a discussion that is a flamewar by default. It would offend my sensibilities, if you like ;) --Joy [shallot] (talk) 09:37, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

User: Endimion17, Article: Talk:Čovjek, he received an instant ban (and his edit on the Talk: page has been removed) for saying that he'll edit the article to remove creationism from it and add scientifically acceptable information. As you can see from his track record, he isn't a vandal but rather a quality contributor. WikiHR is filled to the brim with people who take great offense when their dogmas are being questioned. Tty29a (talk) 15:34, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

?

What happened to article on the Croatian language. Why is it destroyed?--KudySk (talk) 14:26, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

It's not. It's right here. — kwami (talk) 22:19, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

But this is not about Croatian language... Croatian language is not based on Eastern Herzegovinian Štokavian! Statements in this article are Greater Serbian pamphlets. 89.172.124.131 (talk) 07:40, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

It's official in Vojvodina

so editors. add it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.0.139.239 (talk) 14:13, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

Done The article already includes this in Current Events, will add to infobox. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 16:33, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

What is this?

[1] This file has name. This file has explanation of image. It is named correctly. Taivo? What is wrong with it? --Domjanovich (talk) 08:20, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

It's not a map of Croatian dialects in the language sense, but in the geographic sense. It's rather misleading to call Serbian dialects "Croatian" because they're geographically Croatian. — kwami (talk) 09:48, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

[2] Thanks. --Domjanovich (talk) 07:46, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

this is systematically inconsistent -- the text is about the croatian language -- according to the article's claim a "variant" of so-called "serbo-croatian". as such, the maps covers this alleged "variant's" area, not the area of serbian. a respective map can be added to the serbian language's page and would be a much more sensible step. -- esse quam videri - to be rather than to seem (talk) 09:31, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

But it does include Serbian. The Serbian-speaking areas of Croatia are not excluded; the map simply shows dialects and ignores the distinction between Croatian and Serbian. Therefore to claim it's a map of Croatian dialects is a lie. — kwami (talk) 09:49, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

you should be a bit more careful with your wording if you want me to take your position seriously. read my previous response again. the fact that in some areas both serbian and croatian are spoken, does not conflict with the map's coverage of the croatian language, which is its focus. a map for the serbian language can cover areas where it is either an official minority language or spoken by a significant number of people in croatia. neither point has anything to do with the incorrect naming by taivo, however. -- esse quam videri - to be rather than to seem (talk) 08:00, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree with kwami. This is not a map of "Croatian", but a map of dialects found in Croatia. The maps borders are Croatia's borders, not the borders of Croatian speakers excluding non-Croatian speakers. Indeed, if you take the most common meaning in English of "Croatian"--Standard Croatian--then it should not even include Kajkavian and Chakavian. Since the whole terminological issue of "What is Croatian?" cannot be answered in a strictly linguistic sense, then the map needs to be as accurately labelled as possible and the current labelling, which matches the political borders of Croatia, is the most accurate. --Taivo (talk) 10:42, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

the current labeling is perfectly fine. i did inadvertently omit "dialects", which is why my post read as if i focused on croat standard language only; sorry for the confusion -- in spite of that, croatian dialects are part of the croat language and therefore my statement wasn't contradictory. however, the fact remains that even if one followed the theoretical construct of a "serbo-croatian" language, this article deals with the croat "variant" and the map is supposed to show this so-called "variant's" dialects -- thus calling them "serbo-croatian" dialects is incorrect (regardless of the map's in/accuracy). having a map that covers speakers of croatian (with all its dialects) beyond croatia's borders, would be a different story altogether (not unlike the map for serbian showing areas where it is an official or minority language). -- esse quam videri - to be rather than to seem (talk) 06:17, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Lead wording (2)

I'm not particularly keen to appease the unhappy IPs, though this article could use some truce, if it's achievable at all. However, I think that they have a point that the intro shows a bit too much of "Serbo-Croatism"; some sentences seem written in spite to the nationalist view, rather than simply acknowledging it. However, I don't like the current wording at all, which reads:

Croatian ([hrvatski jezik] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help)) is the collective name for the standard language of the Croats and for other Serbo-Croatian dialects spoken or once spoken by Croats in Croatia [...] and [diaspora].

because 1) it repeats the word "Croats" twice 2) it introduces "Serbo-Croatian dialects" quite suddenly 3) it does not flow very well. I propose the following:

Croatian ([hrvatski jezik] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help)) is the collective name for the standard language and dialects spoken by Croats in Croatia, neighboring countries and diaspora. It is part of Serbo-Croatian language, along with Serbian, Bosnian and Montenegrin.

First, it succinctly defines what it is in the first sentence, without commitment of which part it is. I think that Serbo-Croatian is better introduced in the second sentence; I'm not sure how to formulate it (I don't quite like "part of Serbo-Croatian" either, but cannot think of a better replacement), so I'm open to suggestions. No such user (talk) 09:19, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, my problem with it is also "part of SC". Considering how adamant our IPs are in fudging the issue, I think it's important that we are clear that it overlaps Serbian and isn't exclusive from it. I don't have any bright ideas, though. Maybe "These are varieties of the SC language", to clarify that it isn't a single coherent language? — kwami (talk) 09:52, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Croatian ([hrvatski jezik] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help)) is the collective name for the standard language and dialects spoken by Croats in Croatia, neighboring countries and diaspora. It is part of Western Section of South Slavic language group known as Serbo-Croatian language, along with Serbian, Bosnian and Montenegrin.

--Domjanovich (talk) 08:14, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

That sounds as though SC is synonymous with western SS. — kwami (talk) 09:07, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

It is part of Western Section of South Slavic language group known as Serbo-Croatian language....

I dont think so. Read carefully, it is simple as it sounds. --Domjanovich (talk) 17:09, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

paraphrase → Croatian is part of the language group. The language group is known as SC language. — kwami (talk) 00:06, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

The lead as it stands right now is fairly straightforward:

Croatian ([hrvatski jezik] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help)) is the collective name for the standard language of the Croats and for other Serbo-Croatian dialects spoken or once spoken by Croats in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Vojvodina (Serbia), Slovenia, and neighbouring countries, as well as by the Croatian diaspora worldwide.

The geographical extent seems rather odd (a Croat in Bosnia probably speaks Bosnian I would think), but the attempts to reword it seem awkward, at best, especially the last one that throws in that needless "West South Slavic" wording that just confuses the matter. --Taivo (talk) 21:13, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

That's the point: the language is not determined by the locality, but by the ethnicity of the speaker. I have heard Serbs say that they speak Croatian, but I always took that to mean that they were culturally assimilated, and were only Serb by ancestry.

I do see No Such User's point though. Is there anything wrong with

Croatian ([hrvatski jezik] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help)) is the collective name for the standard language and dialects spoken by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and neighboring countries. They are varieties of the Serbo-Croatian language, along with Serbian, Bosnian and Montenegrin.

? — kwami (talk) 00:06, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

The only that I'd change with No Such User's version involves "Bosnia and Herzegovina" and changing the order of the variants. I'd do it as follows.

Croatian ([hrvatski jezik] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help)) is the collective name for the standard language and dialects spoken by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and OTHER neighboring countries. They are varieties of the Serbo-Croatian language, along with Bosnian, Montenegrin and Serbian.

(i.e. I'd add "other" before neighboring countries because Bosnia and Herzegovina is one of those neighboring countries, and put the order of the varieties alphabetically to head off some hyper-sensitive nationalist from thinking that putting "Serbian" first is a manifestation of that omnipresent Serbian hegemony :rolls eyes:)

The rest of it looks OK to me. There's no need to say "Serbo-Croatian dialects" in the first sentence of the current lead since the second sentence of No Such User's proposed lead covers standard Croatian being a variant of Serbo-Croatian as opposed to an autonomous South Slavonic language at the same classificatory level as Slovenian or Bulgarian. Vput (talk) 04:00, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

I'll put in the 'other', though it makes little sense to me: it means that Croatia and BH are neighboring countries, but doesn't mention who it is they neighbor, nor why that unnamed country is relevant. Without the 'other', it would mean Croatia and BH (where the vast majority of Croats are found) and also countries neighboring either of them, such as Slovenia. — kwami (talk) 08:31, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

If you put it that way, then skip "other". However I do propose another slight change instead:

Croatian ([hrvatski jezik] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help)) is the collective name for the standard language and South Slavic dialects/languages spoken by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and neighboring countries. They are varieties of the Serbo-Croatian language, along with Bosnian, Montenegrin and Serbian.

I'd put in "South Slavic dialects/languages" to narrow down the choices of whatever is used natively by Croats but that they simply generalize as "Croatian" (i.e. Kaykavian, Chakavian, Bunjevac and Torlak (Krashovani)). The original wording suggests that "Croatian" is a collective name for a certain standard language and/or any dialect that is native to Croats.Vput (talk) 15:58, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand. You mean because some Croats are native English speakers, and that's not "Croatian"? Some may be native Slovene or Bulgarian speakers too; I think it should be pretty obvious what we mean. To be precise, we'd need to say "the collective name for the standard language and Serbo-Croatian dialects spoken by Croats", but that's precisely the wording that people object to.

Would "traditionally spoken" work? — kwami (talk) 20:08, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, to be nit-picky, that's pretty much it. I know what you mean though but I'm trying to head off the silly and disruptive rants of the Croatian nationalists/patriots/chauvinists without unduly lengthening the lead. I remember in the arguments over Torlak and the nationalist Croatian anguish over ethnic kin speaking a marked "Serbian" dialect. Several of us here were saying that Torlak should be included under "Croatian" in the infobox because of the Krashovani, while the nationalists were trying to deny it likely because of Torlak's perceived "Balkanism" or "Serbianism". One went so far as to say that the Krashovani idiolect is actually a hybrid of Kajkavian and Banat-Bulgarian (thus stealthily skirting around the matter of self-identified Croats bearing "Serbian coodies" from Torlak). One nationalist in this Torlak dispute then used the silly argument that if we state that Croatian includes Torlak because of the Krashovani, then because diaspora Croats natively speak English, we should then say that Croatian includes English. Although it shows the laughable mental gymnastics that nationalists will use to attempt to refute the evidence from comparative linguists, their ranting just clutters things up, leads to dumb edit wars and obfuscates the fact that the South Slavic dialects/idiolects/languages that Croats natively speak but call "Croatian" aren't always and necessarily exclusive to their ethnic body or speech community. Vput (talk) 21:37, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

My problem is with the whole concept and it's artificial redesign. There is no idiosyncratic difference between the croatian, serbian, bosnian and montenegrin "languages". To claim that they are different languages is to promote a political agenda. Someone gave an example of "organizirati" and "organizovati". Only an idiot can claim that "organizirati" is a "croatian" word, and that "organizovati" is a "serbian" word. The words in question are two dialectal forms of a LATIN word. Hence, at best we could only identify a "croatian" ijekavski/stokavski as a DIALECT of a general serbo-croatian (or croato-serbian for those nationalists around) dialect. There is no native croatian language as such because over 50% of croats are actually natively speaking KAJKAVSKI, which they share with Slovenians, and Slovaks.

The whole entry must be accordingly renamed to "Croatian DIALECT", just as should be the serbian, bosnian and montenegrin "languages" sections.

Because these are no more than dialectally differentiated variants of one and the same language. It is perfectly correct for a Serbian to say "organizirati" as well, as a quick look at recent history, and present, will immediately confirm. Reformator of serbian "language", Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic, has identified and recorded the fact that majority of Serbians speak stokavski/ijekavski and that stokavski/ijekavski is the language of Serbians. Also, the reason croats consider stokavski/ijekavski as their language is the independence movement Ilirski Pokret, which considered all Croats and Serbs to be Illirians and wanted to reunite them under the one movement, through language and obviously common folkloric customs.

Because the area of southern Europe was a melting pot for thousands of years, today is almost impossible to talk reason with any of the groups on the ground and agree with any of them on any historical points, from the origins to the language.

My suggestion, just to reinforce it, is to ignore the political and nationalist nonsense and rename the languages into dialects because that is what they really are. To call a serbian and a bosnian, croatian or montenegrin "languages" is to create a perversity out of lingustics as a science. A language differs from other languages by something specific and unique in its own idiosyncratic structure and grammatical rules. No difference of such magnitude exists in any of the serbo-croatian, or croato-serbian dialects. Everything croats use as their "unique" words is perfectly understandable to serbs, bosnians and montenegrins. And vice-versa.

Cold facts point at those dialects to be merely and just that - dialects.

And just before anyone starts writing their passion-fuelled political pamflets, I am Spanish, doctor of Slavonic literature and languages and have no interest in politics of any of the sides. I speak fluent and grammatically correct croato-serbian, or serbo-croatian, and, frankly I am tired of all those "experts" offering their opinion which is worth less than a pixel on my computer screen.

Better yet, close the (serbs, croats, etc.) pages all-together and close this futile and pseudo-intellectual "discussion" among the politically motivated diletants. It just makes a joke of the science that has no time for this nonsense. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 120.20.206.160 (talk) 04:53, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

There is no idiosyncratic difference between the croatian, serbian

Ugh. There is, and if you are truly fluent in Serbo-Croatian you'd know that. The diffence doesn't warrant calling the Serbian and Croatian standards separate languages, but the idiosyncratic differences do exist. The word you later on mention is the perfect example of that as it displays different preference in usage of terms among speakers of different standards and instantly label you as either a speaker of one standard or the other.

Only an idiot can claim that "organizirati" is a "croatian" word, and that "organizovati" is a "serbian" word.

I disagree. Standard Serbian consideres organizovati correct and that is what people will generaly use when they speak "Serbian". Organizirati will be understood but will automatically be recognized as a Croatian influence (which in turn is actually German influence on Kajkavian and Shtokavian). That doesn't take away from the fact that both standards belong to the same dialect and the same language (Serbo-Croatian), but the list of pluricentric words is quite long and to imply that it takes an "idiot" to recognize them as being either Serbian or Croatian is incorrect. Or do you perhaps also think that it takes an "idiot" to notice that "flat" is much more commonly used among BrE speakers than AmE speakers?

over 50% of croats are actually natively speaking KAJKAVSKI, which they share with Slovenians, and Slovaks.

That's a ridiculous claim. Kajkavian is in a dialect continuum with Slovenian, but it's not Slovenian. Neither Slovenian nor Kajkavian are in a dialect continuum with Slovak (how did you even get the idea that they're the same dialect?) and haven't been since the settling of Hungarians, which was a rather long time ago. The percentage of Kajkavian speakers is also much, much lower than 50%.

I am Spanish, doctor of Slavonic literature and languages and have no interest in politics of any of the sides. I speak fluent and grammatically correct croato-serbian, or serbo-croatian

But you're not a linguist, are you now?

The whole entry must be accordingly renamed to "Croatian DIALECT", just as should be the serbian, bosnian and montenegrin "languages" sections.

Standard Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian and Montenegrin are not different dialects. They're just different standards of the Shtokavian dialect. Furthermore, linguists don't label Standard Serbian and Standard Croatian varieties of SC as "dialects" so even if it were correct usage, you'd be hard pressed to find any sources backing it up. tty29a:talk 20:02, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

the general confusion over the topic of the article

It seems we're still stuck on this whole silly idea that anything any Croat speaks, ever, is equally relevant, and then reversing that into the definition of "Croatian language". To date, I haven't seen a single proper citation/reference that would really support that standpoint.

People in Croatia speak the Croatian standard language - it's ijekavian, Latin, with the standard Croatian vocabulary (organizirati and never organizovati, mrkva and never šargarepa, and so on). That is the primary definition of "Croatian language" in the real world. The categorization issues are moot, sure, but the topic is nevertheless coherent and recognizable, and notable enough for a standalone article on Wikipedia, so the article's primary task must be to describe that.

What happens to all of those fringe issues such as how to call the dialects this standard language originates from, or whatever the hell happens in Bosnia and Romania, is really besides the main point. Allowing these issues to overshadow the primary topic is giving them WP:undue weight. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 15:20, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

There's indeed a need to define the aim of the article, but also a need to move away from the extreme lede fixation here. All the efforts on this talk page about speaking in different places should have resulted in an expansion of the perhaps badly named "Current events" section, instead of changing one lede sentence. Anyway, the article needs a focus, which I suppose should be The three standardised Croatian dialects, as that seems the most common definition. All the debate about other dialects can be included in the article too, but not the focus I suppose? Once the exact purpose is defined, the article could be more appropriately structured. (In addition, can a Croat please source at least the language example section?) Chipmunkdavis (talk) 16:06, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

What do you mean by "three standardized Croatian dialects"? There is only one standardized form that is called "Croatian". Kajkavian and Chakavian are not "standardized"--they are local vernaculars only and not the basis of Standard Croatian. Standard Croatian is based on Shtokavian. I agree with Joy, that this article should primarily focus on Standard Croatian since that is what "Croatian language" refers to in English most commonly. --Taivo (talk) 16:16, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

I understand that official croatian is Shtokavian, but I assumed there was a set version of Kajkavian and Chakavian? Or are they that close to extinction already :/ Chipmunkdavis (talk) 16:22, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

There has never been an acceptably set version of either Kajkavian or Chakavian. There has been however much prose and poetry that has used something best defined as Kajkavian or Chakavian (for convenience sake, these are often referred to being expressed in "literary Kajkavian" or "literary Chakavian"). However being "literary" doesn't necessarily imply being "set" or standardized, since it only refers to either Chakavian or Kajkavian being used in belle lettres. With the term "Croatian", I tend to agree with Taivo that in English "Croatian" is often taken to mean "Modern standard language of Croatia which was codified using the Eastern Hercegovinian sub-dialect of Neo-Shtokavian". However, "Croatian" also seems to bear a second meaning in English meaning "West South Slavic language native to a Croat, be it actually a non-standard form from Chakavian, Kajkavian or Shtokavian (with Torlak being arguably part of Shtokavian rather than a distinct group)". This second meaning is tied to the points made earlier of "Croatian" being defined using ethnic, geographical or political criteria. Vput (talk) 16:48, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

I think that the two usages that Vput mentions are quite distinct. By far the most common usage of "Croatian" in English is going to be Standard Croatian. If one looks for "Croatian language" at Amazon.com, for example, the teaching grammars that one will find labelled "Croatian" will uniformly be Standard Croatian. I have also seen several PhD dissertations recently that use "Croatian, Serbian, and Bosnian" (in various orders) to refer to "Serbo-Croatian" and that describe the Standard (Shtokavian) forms. In these cases "Croatian" also clearly refers to Standard Croatian. The usage of "Croatian" as a cover term for "whatever dialect an ethnic Croat speaks" is much rarer in English as there are few works in English that deal with Chakavian or Kajkavian. --Taivo (talk) 18:31, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, these other issues exist, and should be described in the article, but my point is that they must not be given undue weight. The standard language takes precedence. About four million people pretty consistently use that. I'm from Vinkovci, and we use a local term budica for "kiosk". There's probably about fifty thousand people who understand and use that term. This is a valid piece of information, but nobody cares. Nor should they. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 12:12, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

This is true for any language. Our French language article primarily describes Parisian French, but doesn't exclude Norman. Chinese language has a separate scope than Standard Mandarin. Just as with Croatian, when an English speaker says "French" and "Chinese", they generally mean Parisian and Mandarin, but that doesn't mean that the terms don't include the others. It isn't the case that Croats speak "Croatian" plus in bizarre situations a few other dialects: Kaj and Ča are central to Croat identity. Zagreb is natively Kaj: are we going to say that the historical language of the Croatian capital isn't Croatian? And even if we were to exclude those dialects, we'd still have the problem that the language is ethnically defined: Eastern Herzegovinian spoken by Croats is "Croatian", the same subdialect spoken by Serbs is "Serbian", and when spoken by Bosniaks "Bosnian". Thus none of them are languages apart from the ethnic and lang-standard senses. Simplifying Croatian to Što wouldn't change that, and I don't see how it would materially affect any of the issues people find objectionable. Sure, we could have an article on Standard Croatian, just as we do Received Pronunciation, but it would be a separate article, and so wouldn't help us here.

Are there any sources that argue that Kaj and Ča are not Croatian, but separate languages, so that WSS consists of Slovene, Kaj, Ča, and SC/Što? I've never seen any, apart from dialectological analyses which argue that certain dialect of Croatian/SC are closer to Slovene than to other dialects of Croatian/SC. And if we go that route, we'd need to say that the languages of Croatia are "Croatian, Serbian, Chakavian, Kajkavian" and that the Croats speak "Croatian, Chakavian, Kajkavian". Are we willing to try to implement those changes and expand the battle to those articles as well? — kwami (talk) 21:31, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm not saying exclude anything, I'm saying clarify the primary topic and remove focus from tangential issues. Yes, kajkavian and chakavian and indeed intrinsically-connected varieties of shtokavian deserve a fair bit of mention, but that must not detract from the what is the essential topic - how they all interact with what is standardized and the most notable. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 12:12, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

So then have the article focus on the standardized Shtokavian with a shortened mention of the others in a different section with a link to those relevant articles? Chipmunkdavis (talk) 13:25, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, they all have each their own article already. It's really not much that needs to change, except the wretched lead section. The history sections put the other dialects into historical context, so they don't put undue weight on the matter. The lead section should explicitly state that the article describes primarily the current standard language, and clarify that the mention of dialects is simply because during various historical periods the term "Croatian" ("hrvatski") was either non-primary or it meant something (slightly) different than the current standard. And obviously that the dialects are today used in the vernacular and in literature, but not universally like the standard language. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 14:16, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Oh joy lead fixation. The history section is completely unsourced, so really can't be used for anything in the lead. Anyway, it already says "standard language and dialects", so what exactly should be changed? Chipmunkdavis (talk) 14:40, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Please see first sentence of this thread :) --Joy [shallot] (talk) 14:50, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Not a specific suggestion. Anyway, no point discussing the lead now, as it reflects the sources used in the main text. If the main text is changed, the lead should logically follow. I'm not sure how the article should look in the end, but if you want to create a section on the Shto vs the others, then that would be the starting point for this. Without that, not much can be done. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 15:02, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Granted, the problem is that it doesn't have much actual text and references to reflect. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 08:42, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

random section break

If this article is about standard Croatian, then rename it to 'Standard Croatian', delete all entries about other Croatian dialects and create another article dealing specifically with them. If it's not, then all the other Croatian non-standard dialects deserve at least as much attention as Croatian standard language does, because their historical contribution to Croatian culture is nothing short of immense, especially that of Čakavian. Just my two cents. P.S. To avoid confusion, this 'Croatian dialects' refers to dialects native to Croats. 93.139.111.126 (talk) 16:17, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Yeah? which one? Name one "native" dialect that only Croats speak. I'll give you a hint: there is no native dialect only Croats speak. If there was one such dialect, then that would have to be the true "croatian" "language".

In which case you would still have to answer to a valid question, why are croats insisting on stokavian/ijekavski dialect as being the "real" "croatian" "language"? Coz, bosnians, serbs and monenegrins speak it too... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 120.20.206.160 (talk) 05:46, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Kajkavian and Čakavian are arguably spoken only by Croats. I don't see how that warrants calling them "languages", though. As for the reason why Croats insist on Shtokavian, the basis of what was later to become standard language of Serbs, Croats and other ex-Yugoslavian ethnic groups was determined in the 19th century. A compromise had been reached at the expense of Kajkavian and Chakavian dialects because Shtokavian was a better basis for a pluricentric state (one which would encompass almost all South Slavs) seeing as it was spoken by a larger population (though supposedly only a minority of Croats). tty29a:talk 20:11, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

The common intentional error is to claim that Kajkavski is "croatian dialect". It is not. Kajkavski is a dialect of Slovenian language, because Slovenian is Kajkavski. Hence, Kajkavski is not spoken exclusively by hrvats (Croats and hrvats are not the same thing either. Croats were Illyrian tribe named so by Romans simply because they lived in a newly conquested province Romans named Croatia. Hrvats, on the other hand are Slavs, not Illyrians.) Čakavski is a dialect spoken in Istria and Dalmatia, and as such Slovenes in Istria also speak it, mixed with Slovenian. But even if we allow for Čakavski to be a dialect spoken only by hrvats, your suggestion does not answer the obvious question: why do hrvats insist on stokavski/ijekavski to be "their" unique language, when you too confirm it was a choice of a language common to larger area and group of Slavs than only hrvats.

It is clear for all to see that a "language" classification, in case of south slavic language, is not working. It is artificial and it is purely political propaganda imposed on the unsuspected and, as usual, badly informed naive foreigners who have no idea what they are discussing.

That must change and the current nationalist/political hysteria must be replaced by cold facts. Hrvats, Serbs, Bosnians and Montenegrins all speak one and the same language. It is not permissible to have a multitude of names for one and the same language. How would that look if we apply the same silly notion to spanish language? We would have Chilean, Ecuadorean, Colombian, Cuban, Mexican, etc.

No intelligent, and educated, person would agree with that. So why are we all then serving as hypocrites and allowing this to be done with what can only be called a Jugoslav (as in south slavic) language?

There's no objective criteria by which one can determine whether a dialect is "real Croatian" or not. All three dialects were called Croatian in the past, both by the native speakers and by various foreign speakers. To answer your original question, there are two macro-dialects spoken only by Croats, kajkavian and čakavian, but I didn't mean this when I said 'native'. I meant "native" means that a dialect one speaks in this case has an uninterrupted continuity all the way to proto-Slavic. Best regards 78.0.216.180 (talk) 14:34, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

All three dialects were called Croatian in the past, both by the native speakers and by various foreign speakers. - They were also not called Croatian for the better part of their history. These dialects are about a millennium old (give or take a few centuries for some subdialects), and for almost the entire 19th and 20th century when the linguistic science has developed they've been classified as South Slavic dialects, usually within Serbo-Croatian. Now that we have the Croatian nation-state of 20 years, of course that nationalist would like to think of it as "exclusively Croatian". But what you cannot change is history. Identities come and go, 50 years from now there'll be no Croats or Croatia (it would be merely geographical region in the EU federal state, without any real borders or autonomy).

I meant "native" means that a dialect one speaks in this case has an uninterrupted continuity all the way to proto-Slavic. - That's nonsense. Typical nationalist myths of "ancient past". Slavic speakers of Proto-Slavic times have absolutely no connection whatsoever with Croats of today. Modern-day Croatian identity encompasses individuals of various genetic stock, most of which migrated only recently into borders of what is today Croatia, and whose sole identity is determined by the religion of their parents. Catholics = "Croats", Muslims = "Bosniaks" and Orthodox = "Serbs". Dialectal picture has changed immensely over the centuries reflecting various migrations. Even today, 60% of population Croatian's capital Zagreb are immigrants from non-Kajkavian area that have arrived in the last half-a-century or so.

What identity today's speakers of Čakavian and Kajakvian embrace is irrelevant. Ča+Kaj+Što are inextricably connected, sharing bundles of isoglosses that have accumulated over the centuries of close contact, and are usually classified into Serbo-Croatian cluster. That is a matter of fact that cannot be ignored. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 11:49, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

That is not true. In fact that is one of those politically charged lies promulgated nowadays by creators of that "new" croatian state. Estonian genetic researcher wrote in 2004 his disertation dispelling that myth and blowing into the thin air. Dr. Siiri Rotsi had demonstrated that 80% of Hrvats are of Slavic origin, equal to that of Serbs, Slovenians, Slovaks, Polish, Russians etc. They too, just like the rest of Slavs have the same R1a haplogroup, identifying them genetically as Slavs. Read before you write your political pamphlets: en.scientificcommons.org/siiri_rootsi

There is no such thing as "Slavic origins". Anyone making a claim that tens of thousands of year old genetic markers have anything to do a decades- or centuries-old identities, that have been constructed in the historical period as can be abundantly attested in the respective literature, is a brain-dead moron. The spread of Slavic identity was primarily through linguistic assimilation (the word Slavs originally meant "those who speak like us"). Croats from northern Croatia are much more genetically close to neighboring Hungarians or Austrians than they are to remote Russians. The same is valid for any other imaginary collective that we call nation-state or civilizational milieu. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 18:57, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

In fact, his doctorate too makes one unwanted and unspoken conclusion that is yet to re-write the history of Europe. See, the rest of Europe (Germans, Italians, French, English, Germanic and Latin people as we know them today) are ALL genetically Slavs too. Their is R1b haplogroup, a minuscule mutation of R1a haplogroup of genes, the Slavic gene. So, please steer away from making those political declarations that have nothing to do with the facts. In fact, why don't you review your contributions and leave comenting to those who know what they are talking about? By making comments like that one you and everyone else who have their knowledge copied and pasted from who knows what page off the net, you are not contributing to clearing the confusion created here by claiming "hrvatski", "srpski", "bosanski" and "crnogorski" are "languages" in their own right, when they are one and the same language. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 120.20.29.86 (talk) 23:14, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

I meant "native" means that a dialect one speaks in this case has an uninterrupted continuity all the way to proto-Slavic. I just noticed this gem. Russian speakers have an uninterrupted continuity all the way to Proto-Slavic as well. So perhaps this article should be called "Russian (Croatian dialect)" or "Polish (Croatian dialect)" or "Bulgarian (Croatian dialect)". It's completely meaningless drivel. --Taivo (talk) 13:06, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

I believe that particular entry was misunderstood, due to the poor English of that IP user. I myself would have probably chosen a similar definition, like: 'Croatian' is a collective term for all dialects (or languages, if 'Kaj' and 'Cha' are condidered as such) historically (or, alternatively, 'traditionally') spoken by modern-day ethnic Croats and their forebears.

@ editor "Ivan Štambuk": Judging by your user name, I take you are Croatian? Even though I do not believe your predicitons are of any significance for this discussion, I feel obliged to share my opinion on this matter. Therefore, I find my identity intrinsically more valuable than certain political views, regardless of whether they pertain to rightsism, leftism, nationalism, communism, multiculturalism, or any other political ism. If anything, identities are more permanent than these isms, otherwise this article would not be named 'Croatian language'.161.53.243.70 (talk) 16:09, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

All the theorizing is really beside the point. What do our refs say? Do or do not the people of Zagreb speak "Croatian"?

ELL2 says, The official language of Croatia is Croatian (Serbo-Croatian). [...] The same language is referred to by different names, Serbian (srpski), Serbo-Croat (in Croatia: hrvatsko-srpski), Bosnian (bosanski), based on political and ethnical grounds. Minority languages (Serbian, Italian, Albanian, Hungarian) are not numerous and are not in official use. That would suggest that Kaj and Ča are both Croatian and SC. Also, The [SC] dia-system linguistic complex is the most heterogeneous Slavonic dia-system, with an exceptionally large variety of dialects, some with six or seven cases, some with four, and a great variety of verbal tenses. At the same time, these dialects have a striking degree of connectedness, containing characteristic features, which distinguish the complex from all other Slavonic languages. (For those who will inevitably conclude from this that SC should be called a "diasystem" rather than a language, note that the same argument would apply to Croatian: "diasystem" here refers to Kaj+Ča+Što, not to B/C/S. If SC is not a "language" cladistically, then neither is Croatian (Kaj+Ča+Što) as a whole.) They do say that the term ‘Serbo-Croat’ no longer has any official validity in sociopolitical terms [...] the sociopolitical reality is that it no longer has a single name, but then note that there is no satisfactory substitute for the name of the language. (The "Museum of Learning", which copies WP articles, actually has an article "53-AAA-g: Phonology", using the Linguasphere code as the name!)

Ethnologue says, Dialects: Kaykavski, Chakavski, Shtokavski (Ijekavski). Shtokavski official dialect, but others recognized as valid dialects, with much literature.

Linguasphere — kwami (talk) 01:00, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Linguasphere has 53-AAA-g "Srpski + Hrvatski" as the language name (they use "+" rather than the conventional hyphen in most hyphenated language names). The alternate names for this language are "Serbo-Croatian, srpsko-hrvatski, hrvatsko-srpski, 'serbo-croat', 'serbian + croatian'". Major variety labels are then srpsko-hrvatski-L. ("historical serbian + croatian", "old štokavski", the "L" represents a literary form), srpski-F. ("literary serbo-croatian-S.", "literary serbian", "part of literary štokavski"), hrvatski-F. ("serbo-croatian-N.", "literary croatian", part of "literary štokavski"), ikavski-F. ("literary ikavian", part of "literary štokavski"), srpski-G. ("generalised serbian"), hrvatski-G. ("generalised croatian"), kajkavski, čakavski, štokavski, and torlakski. Linguasphere typically separates literary and formal varieties from vernacular varieties. Thus the division of literary serbian and literary croatian. But all the modern literary varieties are labeled as part of "literary štokavski". The vernaculars are Kajkavian, Chakavian, Shtokavian, and Torlakian. Thus, neither Croatian nor Serbian (Linguasphere was written before "Bosnian" was treated as something different from Serbian and Croatian) are treated as vernaculars, but simply as formal registers of Shtokavian ("literary" and "generalised"). --Taivo (talk) 14:35, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Do they not explain what they consider srpski-G. and hrvatski-G. to be? That would seem to be parallel to this article. — kwami (talk) 14:34, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Linguasphere uses a bunch of abbreviations like that for many languages. The -G. forms are used for speech varieties or registers that would be equivalent to RP or GA English--"broadcaster" forms or a formal speech register used for public speaking or mass communication. So the Linguasphere codes hrvatski-F. (written) and hrvatski-G. (spoken) would, indeed, represent the registers/varieties that this article is more about--Standard Croatian. The kaj, ča, što, and tor forms represent the local vernaculars. In this regard, treating formal/literary registers alongside vernaculars, Linguasphere is a little tricky to use sometimes. --Taivo (talk) 14:41, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

A lot of clutter here. By offering another artificial name "hrvatsko-srpski or srpsko-hrvatski) we would only continue a political debate which should be eliminated from linguistical debate. Because Bosnians and Montenegrins are by default excluded from identification with the language alled srpsko-hrvatski, or hrvatsko-srpski. Also, can those who have no professional and academic background leave the use of big words, like "dia-system" "linguistic complex", and similar. It makes their poor english look even sillier.

another random section break

Also, the fact cannot be changed by pseudo-comments made by self-appointed referees and redactors here. This debate is not for anyone here to make. This debate is for real and academically certified linguists to discuss. Wikipedia can only reflect conclusions of people who are deprived of nationalist and political motivation for their contributions here, and are in a position to sift the ideology and lies from cold scientific facts. It is a perversity to have people imposing their political platforms as a "truth" and make artificial changes that have no place in scientific linguistics. Kajkavski and Čakavski are not exclusive hrvatski dialects. That, obviously, must be reiterated ad nauseam to those who claim that they are.

Slovenski is Kajkavski, so the only logical conclusion is that all those in today's Hrvatska, speaking Kajkavski, are really Slovenes. And about 50% of Hrvats use kajkavski as their first language.

And that is another cold fact that confirms what a perversity is being created by claiming that there exist some "cratian", "serbian", "bosnian" and "montenegrin" languages. In fact, natinalists among the Hrvats are well aware of that irony and are busylly inventing "autohtone" or "new-old:" words to replace anything that they can from their vocabulary that may make their version of stokavski/ijekavski look like "srpski".

Another cold fact is that Ča- Kaj- and I-kavski are not even dialects. Rather, they are deflections of adjectives (in Ikavski, ijekavski, ekavski) and/or pronouns (in sto-sta- kaj- ca- kavski). Fundamental grammatical rules are identical and do not change beyond what could only be described as dialectal differences between Ča- Kaj Sto- Sta- I- kavski.

And to mix Torlakian into Hrvatski is absolute nonsense. Inevitable political and nationalist contribution by evil-doers. Vlasi came from Central Serbia and brought their dialect with them, settled in Hercegovina and melted in with local Serbs and Hrvats. Paradoxically, todays, most of people recognisign themselves as Vlaji (in Hervcegovina, "h" is not pronounced or is replaced by "j" - is that a language too now? - so a word like "hladno" (cold) are pronounced as "ladno", and "Vlah" is pronounced as "Vlaj"). Conveniently for nationalists on all sides, today's Vlasi (Vlaji) are both Serbs and Hrvats, and are on every side of this politicised debate, mudding it further to obvious delight of those "linguists" here promoting their "theories" and "undeniable truths" about "uniqueness" of their local "languages". Cold fact about Torlakian: it is NOT spoken in Hrvatska AT ALL. Not even in "Vlajina", which is a part of Hercegovina where people call themselves "Vlaji", although majority of them today are actually Serbs and Hrvats and speak stokavski/ijekavski with cakavski and ikavski contributions.

To complicate things further, Hercegovina stretches into Montenegro, and naturally, so do ikavski, stokavski and ijekavski.

Not even dialects. Merely deflections in the one common language. Hence my suggestion to rewrite this rediculous page, along ith the other three rediculous pages and regenerate Jugoslavenski (as in south slavic) jezik page and explain properly all these dialects and deflections used throughout the south slavic region where the stokavski/ijekavski (maybe that would be a proper name for the language, to emphasize surreal ideologies tailoring the "languages" from what are merely deflections) is spoken.

I find it rather bizarre that you would argue that 50% of the inhabitants of Croatia are Slovenes rather than Croats, but regardless, we base our articles or WP:Reliable sources. Anything else is just noise. — kwami (talk) 01:09, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Anon IP, please sign your posts. I think that the anon IP thought I was advocating a certain terminology in my last post. I was simply quoting the entry in Linguasphere. --Taivo (talk) 01:46, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Ethnicity is not bound to language and the number of Croats speaking Kajkavian is nowhere close to 50%. I want you to provide some sources for that claim.

Kajkavski and Čakavski are not exclusive hrvatski dialects. That, obviously, must be reiterated ad nauseam to those who claim that they are. Slovenski is Kajkavski, so the only logical conclusion is that all those in today's Hrvatska, speaking Kajkavski, are really Slovenes.

Feeling the need to reiterate it ad nauseum doesn't make it true. The separation between Slovenia and Croatia goes back to times of the Kingdom of Hungary which was well before the initial wave of nationalism. You're choosing one arbitrary ethnicity over another.

It makes their poor english look even sillier.

You might want to brush up on your own English before commenting on other people's language skills.

Another cold fact is that Ča- Kaj- and I-kavski are not even dialects. Rather, they are deflections of adjectives (in Ikavski, ijekavski, ekavski) and/or pronouns (in sto-sta- kaj- ca- kavski). Fundamental grammatical rules are identical and do not change beyond what could only be described as dialectal differences between Ča- Kaj Sto- Sta- I- kavski.

Let me see if I got this right. They're not dialects but they have dialectal differences? You seem to be in disagreement with your self. Deflections of adjectives and pronouns? Really? Also, if the grammatical systems are identical, why do they have different case and tense systems? I honestly hope you're just a troll. tty29a:talk 08:28, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

According to historical developements, Croatian and Serbian languages can not be both classified as Serbo-Croatian. That one is political nonsense. Serbian language can be classified as Serbo-Croatian because this standard is partly based on historical Serbian language and partly on borrowings from Croatian and Montenegrin. Croatian standard is based only on historical Croatian. 78.3.34.187 (talk) 09:40, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Another wrong conclusion logically coming from such wrong classification would be existance of some historical continuum between Croatian and Serbian languages or possibility that both of these modern standards developed from the same macro language zone. In reality Croatian standard developed directly from and is almost identical to one Croatian historical dialect precisely its literal form, while Serbian standard developed by transfer of no-Serbian literal forms into historical Serbian, resulting in newly created language, only from this point more similar to those languages which forms were borrowed.

This is why Serbian nationalists insist on Serbo-Croatian term - to hide a fact that their standard has not been their historical speech. Paralelly, they insist on it to aculturise their neighbors and to make possible an idea (pretty sick one) of spreading Greater Serbia across non-Serbian lands. 78.3.34.187 (talk) 10:09, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

In reality Croatian standard developed directly from and is almost identical to one Croatian historical dialect precisely its literal form, - Pray tell, what exactly is that "Croatian historical dialect" ? Could it be Eastern Herzegovinian? If so, it's the same dialect that also yielded what is today referred to as "Bosnian language" and "Croatian language". The truth is that there never was "Croatian language", at least not one separate to what Slavs of Islamic and Orthodox orientation spoke/wrote. Try reading parts of the Dušan's Code: despite it being "Serbian", it's much more intelligible to any Croat than "Croatian" Baška tablet. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 11:31, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

There surely was Croatian language, there are many historical records of it with the same name. It is out of question. And it was developing by time, it doesn't matter if there were a few variances based on more than one dialect. Croatian standard is not based on Eastern Herzegovinian, it is based on Dubrovnik Štokavian writings from the 18th century, defined by its writers with the same name - Croatian. That is literal form I've pointed to. However this form was Ikavian Štokavian, so the only element included into Croatian standard which can be related to Eastern Herzegovinian Štokavian was 'ije' instead of 'i' but not because of Ijekavian E. Herzegovinan Štokavian, but rather because of Croats in the most southern Dalmatia who were Ijekavians too although their Ijekavian was identical to Ikavian in all other elements, except for ije/i.

Croatian Baška Tablet was much older past, it's written in an older Čakavian, it is closer to Old-Slavic than to any language in the 18th century and there is no any sense to make comparations the way you are doing. You make no difference between 11th and 18th century and that is quite ridiculous.

Dušan's Code was written in the 14th century in Eastern Church Slavonic, there are tens of rewritings [3]. All records are translations, even older ones, so are those translated to Serbian language. In original it was Church Slavonic precisely Eastern - one used in the Orthodox world - modern Serbs can not read and understand it easily. it's much more intelligible to any Croat than "Croatian" - you really made me laugh here. So you don't even know that you are speaking about translation of Dušan's Code to modern Serbian? 78.3.34.187 (talk) 12:43, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Just because some written document mention Croatian name (of language or people), it doesn't mean that we're dealing with separate language. It's the same language that has been over the centuries termed in many different ways. By far the most common appellation used was Illyrian. Bartol Kašić's grammar of "Croatian" was grammar of Illyrian, and Croatian name is nowhere mentioned in that little book. 90% of Old Dubrovnik writers didn't call themselves Croats or their language Croatian - simply because the notion of nation-state didn't exist at that time, and there was no shared identities even to their immediate Slavic neighbors, let alone Croats of far away in Istria, Slavonia or Zagorje. Their language is/was Ijekavian Easter Herzegovinian dialect, not Ikavian. Ikavianisms were stylistically marked words used in poetic writings, and not actually spoken. Their usage has dropped over the centuries as they went out of fashion. There is hardly any exclusive Čakavian traits in Baška tablet - it's mostly Church Slavonic: containing jers and jat were provably not spoken at that time, as well as a good chunk of the grammatical endings. Dušan's code is available in dozens of surviving copies (manuscripts) yes - but I don't see how it relates to my point: It's more close to modern "Croatian language" than any of the historically "Croatian" documents written in Čakavian, Kajkavian or even Croatian Church Slavonic (which had more Čakavian than Church Slavonic elements, beside being written in a script that no Croat can decipher today). In your arguments you display typical nationalist bias: you're quick to dismiss any irrefutably shared similarities with Serbian literary tradition using some laughable logic, while at the same trying to emphasize the commonness of Croatian encompassing such a wide array of disparate literary traditions across the centuries that it barely makes sense to consider them a part of the same cultural milieu, let a alone a singular language. And any dissenter are a part of the "Greater Serbian conspiracy". Come on. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 01:54, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

But 'Illyrian' was Croatian, that was the most often used name of that language. In the same time no other South Slavic language or people were called that way. The Austrians in the 19th century were first to spread name "Illyrian" (so called "Illyrian provinces") to the east to Serbian lands too but it was not based on language truly, it was their generalisation in the times when any particular national awakaning of the South Slavic peoples was all they wanted to stop. "Illyrians" in their usage meant "South Slavs" and nothing else. But "Illyrian" as name of the language was historically, before the 19th century used by the Croats themselves to define their own languge and script. It started with the Rectangular Glagolithic script in Dalmatia, Croatian script. Term "Illyrian" was supported by the Catholic church and it is logical that in the 19th century it was name used by the Croats. Serbs didnt jump into that train at all. It was not their ethnical name by any meaning. 78.3.96.96 (talk) 13:45, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

That was reason why Croatian writers (of the Croatian Reinnesance literary movement in the 16th century in Dalmatian cites) were stating that Croatin and Illyrian were synonyms for the same language. These are historical facts and it must be respected. Any other approach to this problemacity is someone's modern nationalisn - against Croats and Croatian culture.

Language in Dubrovnik was primarily Ikavian in the beginning, not Ijekavian. By time it was Ijekavianized as well as speech of that wider region, which was result of global changes. So logically the writers respected Ikavian form further on because of tradition, although people started to use ije instead of i. It is stupid to say that it was Eastern Herzegovinian, since Eastern Herzegovina was just one small region where it was spoken in the end. And what is the most important there are no historical writings coming from Eastern Herzegovina, people who were living there were shephards not intelectuals, there was no cultural centre there - a city or cities. It is not correct what this article states - that Croatian was standardized on that basis. It is one more political fake coming from Serbian extremists. Why? Vuk Karadžić used Ijekavian forms from Eastern Herzegovina applying to Serbian standard. By definition, Serbian standard was enriched with Eastern Herzegovinian forms where a small number of Serbs had settled after migriations caused by Turkish occupation of Serbia. Vuk made use of it. Croatian was based on Dubrovnik literature - that is the cultural centre of that speech. Gaj was the creator, Not Karadžić! But, since Serbian was based on portions from Eastern Herzegovina by definition and since Serbian nationalists started global attack on Croatian language and culture from the end of the 19th century, with the main idea that if Croatian = Serbian then Croats = Serbs, in the end all South Slavs = Serbs. That is why Serbian nationalists are pushing idea that Croatian standard is based on Eastern Herzegovinian Ijakvian too. To equalize it to Serbian - by definition. Doing so they have opened new possibility - all Štokavian speeches are Serbian. Sick, very sick. But that's what politics is. And you support that sick politics. That is sick too. This should be encyclopedia, not political batttleground.

You constantly make the same generalization concerning languages/dialects - you mix ages like cards. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to defend completely impossible categorization. Dušan's code is available in dozens of surviving copies (manuscripts) yes - but I don't see how it relates to my point: It's more close to modern "Croatian language" than any of the historically "Croatian" documents written in Čakavian, Kajkavian or even Croatian Church Slavonic (which had more Čakavian than Church Slavonic elements, beside being written in a script that no Croat can decipher today). Once again you are playing with words - is that your way to escape the truth? It's really stupid to say that modern Croats can understand someone else's historical speech better than their own. It is embarrasing to answer that. It is not inteligent to say that and it is not inteligent to answer. Jokes are not evidences. All main definitions in this articles are lies. That is the main problem. What is even more worse, I can see that in other articles when there is some controversy you wikipedians are using tags. This is not only controversial this is politically based fake and you have rich talk page with unsatisfied readers but anyway you didn't put any tag? How can anyone take you seriously. 78.3.96.96 (talk) 14:58, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Your diatrabe reeks of cultural snobbery and has little place in an article on a language. For starters, modern Croatian is indeed based on Eastern Hercegovinian Neo-Shtokavian. Deal with it. The fact that you try to shun the Eastern Hercegovinian connection to modern Croatian arguing "And what is the most important there are no historical writings coming from Eastern Herzegovina, people who were living there were shephards not intelectuals, there was no cultural centre there - a city or cities." is linguistically untenable. It is similar to the old thinking used by Serbs in Vojvodina who disparaged Karadžić's Ijekavian standardization as rural and uncivilized compared to their "civilized" Ekavian speech as used in Novi Sad and Beograd. Another problem with your thinking is that if modern Croatian were indeed based on Neo-Shtokavian that's Dubrovnikian (i.e. free of a Serbian connection), why do Croatian linguists still grouse about or whine over the efforts of Croatian Vukovci using Eastern Hercegovinian as illustrated in the following passage from Hrvatski jezični savjetnik (Ed. the reference manual for using modern standard Croatian):

"Povijest hrvatskoga standardnoga jezika obilježna je, što se leksika tiče, tronarječnim prožimanjem, prekinutim doduše krutim i isključivim štokavskim purizmom hrvatskih vukovaca... te je posve normalno i prirodno da standardni jezik svoje leksičke i stilske praznine popunjava kajkavskim i čakavskim riječima." (translation for interested observers: The history of the Croatian standard language, as it concerns the lexicon, is characterized by a tri-dialectal interpenetration interrupted, to be sure, by the inflexible and exclusive Shtokavian purism of the Croatian Vukovians... and it is completely normal and natural that the standard language fills its lexical and stylistic gaps with Kaykavian and Chakavian words.)

The elephants in the room are that morphology, syntax and phonology are left unmentioned. The (tenuous) diversity that distinguishes modern standard Croatian from the other modern neo-Shtokavian standards has had negligible or no effect on aspects outside lexicon. The fact that the authors of the Savjetnik describe the Vukovians' work as inflexible and exclusive Shtokavian purism indicate that they feel that modern standard Croatian is "too Shtokavian".

In addition, how else could Croats explain how Stjepan Babić insists that the proper forms of "pogreška" and "strelica" are now "pogrješka" and "strjelica" respectively? Babić thinks that it's irrelevant that most modern Croats have learned and continue to use "pogreška" and "strelica" and they (for some cultural/political/non-linguistic reason) should use "pogrješka" and "strjelica" like "true" Croats because these latter forms are attested in Dubrovnikian Shtokavian literature. Babić's prescription implies that he, like the authors of the Savjetnik, feels that modern standard Croatian still uses a form of Neo-Shtokavian "improperly" or in an "inflexible" way.

These statements are extension of politics and are just as foolish as the claim that Ivan Štambuk and other contributors on English Wikipedia are spreading Greater Serbian politics. Moreover by following Karadžić's simplistic and faulty logic that anyone who speaks Shtokavian like him can only be a Serb (all because he "imagined" himself to be as such), one can use the corollary easily and justifiably concluding that the Bosniak or Serb in Mostar who speaks Shotkavian just like the Croatian neighbour can only be a Croat. Few outside the Balkans still use such childish logic, but it's interesting to see that the worst fights of this type occur on the article for standard Croatian. The articles for standard Bosnian, Montenegrin and Serbian have so far had very little or no nationalist intrusion from native speakers. Shtokavian is not the preserve of just one ethnicity, but splintering it with criteria such as imagined ethnicty or cultural perceptions instead of observable and testable inguistic ones such as i/ije/e reflexes or accentual retraction (i.e. Novo- i Staroštokavski) is politically-motivated and is explainable only under sociolinguistics (which is here dwarfed by observations and results from analysis in morphology, lexicon, phonology and etymology).

By insisting that it's stupid that modern Croats should find some text from an author of a different ethnicity to be more intelligible than something else by an author of their ethnicity is juvenile and shows the intellectual dishonesty and dogma ingrained in Croatian nationalists. The author's ethnicity has no bearing on whether a text should be intelligible or not - what matters is the language/dialect/idiolect used. In the same way, the average modern Croat would understand better Vuk Karadzic's compilation of folktales in their original neo-Shtokavian Ijekavian form than he would of Marulić's "Judita" or the Baška tablet. The fact that "Judita" and Baška tablet are properly identified as part of Croatian culture doesn't mean that they should be more intelligible or legible to the average modern Croat than a more recent neo-Shtokavian Serbian text using the standard language as the modern Croat knows it. Let's put it this way, the average native speaker of English such as I, can understand a text of modern Scots better than I can of some text written by Chaucer, even when Chaucer and I belong to the same cultural sphere or ethnic group - the "English". It doesn't matter that Scots is obviously associated with a different ethnic group and culture, since it's the morphemes, syntax and script used that we're dealing with. Vput (talk) 18:36, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Eastern Herzegovinian Neoštokavian? Nonsense. Ijekavian was spoken in Southern Dalmatia too, parts of Bosnia too, parts of Slavonia too, Montenegro too. Eastern Herzegovinian was closer to Montenegrin. It was used by Vuk Karadžić, not by Ljudevit Gaj! After Gaj's decision to use Štokavian some Illyrianists wrote: "Evo koliku smo mi provincialni Hrvati žartvu na oltar obćenite sloge prineli, kad smo naše podnarečje ostavili, a dalmatinsko narečje za književni jezik primili." (Danica, nr. 49, 1843) Translation: "Here's the victim we provincial Croats have offered to the altar of general concord, since we have dropped off our dialect and we have taken Dalmatian dialect for our literary language". - Dalmatian dialect! And Dubrovnik is in Dalmatia. Not in Herzegovina. Ijekavian was spoken in southern Dalmatia, from Dubrovnik to Ston! It has nothing to do with Eastern Herzegovina. I can find tens, maybe hundreds of examples like this one - Croatian standard is based on rich Dubrovnik literature from the 18th century and earlier! Because Neoštokavian was called "Croatian" from the 17th century when it developed, even Montenegrins considered it was Croatian in the 20th century: "Mi govorimo hrvatskim jezikom, ali smo Crnogorci... poglavica nam se zove Hrvat-baša" (M. Vego, Povijest Humske zemlje I, Samobor 1937., 65.). Translation: "We are speaking Croatian language, but we are the Montenegrins... our chief's name is Hrvat-baša" (Hrvat = Croat). And it's known that Vuk Karadžić defined the Eastern Herzegovinian as Croatian too. However modern Croats don't think that all Neoštokavians must call their language Croatian. We are not nationalists as you say, quite contrary. Our linguists and our people have no problem if Serbs call their language Serbian, Bosniaks - Bosnian and Montenegrins - Montenegrian. That is only your own manipulation that we want the others to call it "Croatian". Problem here is of another kind. It is term "Serbo-Croatian" - which is invalid one, since Croatian is not only Neoštokavian, but also Čakavian and Kajkavian so it is imposible to categorize it as Serbo-something! And it is uncivilized to force the Bosnians and Montenegrins to call their languages S-C. S-C is Greater Serbian nationalistic pamphlet! 78.0.156.69 (talk) 09:02, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Discussions on this page often lead to previous arguments being restated. Please read recent comments and look in the archives before commenting, and read through the list of highlighted discussions below before starting a new one:

In English, the language spoken by Croats, Serbs, Bosniaks, and Montenegrins is generally called "Serbo-Croat(ian)". Use of that term in English, which dates back at least to 1864 and was modeled on both Croatian and Serbian nationalists of the time, is not a political endorsement of Yugoslavia, but is simply a label. As long as it remains the common name of the language in English, it will continue to be used here on Wikipedia.

-> this box and massage is just another attempt to escape discussion whenever a group (a few wikipedians who installed their bias into atricle) is out of arguments. Also, statements in this box are all incorret: it's impossible that term Serbo-Croatian dates back at least to 1864 with the same meaning because this term was never linguistically defined and it didn't have always the same meaning until nowadays; it is not common name of the language in English, since English sources reflect what is written in "seating academies" in the Western Balkans, so there are differences from one English source (reflection) to another English source (reflection). It is extremely problematic that this article is written opposite to works of Croatian linguists!

Finally, main particular issue in last episode of discussion was: Eastern Herzegovinian! Somebody should explain what Eastern-Herzegovinian is doing there, when all really scientific sources mention Dubrovnik and Southern Dalmatia. 78.0.156.69 (talk) 13:17, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

You may pretend not to understand, but the meaning is obvious: SC is the language spoken by Serbs and Croats. If you want a different name, please provide the sources. It's also obviously based on E. Herz; again, if you believe differently, pls provide the sources. We may follow Croatian academies for the Croatian standard, but not for the entire language, which is spoken by more than just Croats. — kwami (talk) 17:25, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Anon. IP, The term "Eastern Herzegovinian" is what has entered into standard usage among Slavicists in the English-speaking world. We could argue that it's not the best term since the particular form of Neo-Shtokavian Ijekavian equated to "Eastern Herzegovinian" was originally used natively in a band stretching from far southern Dalmatia to southwestern Serbia via northwestern Montenegro and eastern Herzegovina. Pavle Ivić probably started describing this sub-dialect as "Eastern Herzegovinian" since that was Karadžić's native dialect and his way of speaking was codified by the Vukovci of ALL ethnic persuasions (i.e. Serbs AND Croats) for use in the respective modern standards. Notwithstanding the apparent geographic restrictiveness of the term "Eastern Herzegovinian", Karadžić's own dialect was virtually indistinguishable from that used by Croats in Dubrovnik, Bosniaks in Herzegovina, and Serbs in southwestern Serbia. Perhaps a more inclusive term would be "Dubrovnikian-East-Herzegovinian-Northwest-Montenegrin-Southwest-Serbian" but that's just hypothetical and it sacrifices concision for subservience to national identities that scream loud enough. Anyway to ascribe some sort of malevolence or threat to Croathood and standard Croatian because of the name "Eastern Herzegovinian" is nationalist fodder as is the idea that using "Serbo-Croatian" is insulting to non-Serbs. It's perceived as an insult because some native speakers seem to keep choosing to feel insulted by repeatedly going on exo-linguistic detours. There's nothing intrisically "bad" about the term, any more than the term "English" which describes the native language of Americans, Australians, Canadians, Irishmen, Indians, New Zealanders, Scots, or South Africans, many of whom have no connection to England.

Your insisting that Croatian's dominant Neo-Shtokavian component not being Eastern Herzegovinian is misguided and directly contradicts sources on Slavonic languages published outside the Balkans but indirectly also the actions and pronouncements of most Croatian linguists and their prescriptivism. Again, why do the Savjetnik's authors subtly denigrate the Vukovci's efforts as "interruption" by "exclusive Shtokavian purism" (i.e. Eastern Herzegovinian Neo-Shtokavian) in Croatian standardization? Why do mainstream Croatian linguists now tend to minimize or gloss over the contribution of the Vukovci, and instead give back-handed compliments about them using phrases such as "admirers of Vuk", "followers of the Shtokavian cult", or "Shtokavian zealots"?. Why does Babić insist on resurrecting Dubrovnikian Shtokavian forms with -rje- as in "pogrješka" and "strjelica" when the average modern Croat has learned not to use this cluster?

If modern standard Croatian had not been based on Eastern Herzegovinian Neo-Shtokavian (i.e. Vuk's dialect), as you insist, then these modern complaints and attempts to alter modern standard Croatian would make no sense. The fact that they do occur indicates that the standardization work of Broz and Maretić's as reliant on Karadžić's efforts and ideas still dominates the modern language, and so cue the Croatian prescriptivists and nationalists itching to remove perceived "coodies" to satisfy themselves that they have nothing to do with their perceived enemies, the Serbs (which people outside the Balkans already know).

Anyway, there's actually NO problem for distinct nationalities or ethnic groups to speak one language (e.g. Mexicans and Argentinians speak Spanish), any more than there being one nationality or ethnic group consisting of people who speak different languages (e.g. Han Chinese can speak Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka, Wu, Min, or other Sinitic languages). Most English-speaking readers of this article can already deduce from the terms "Croat" and "Serb" that they are indeed distinct people (not to mention distinct from Bosniaks and Montenegrins). However it's simplistic and dishonest for these same readers unaffected by Balkan politics to then insist that because they are different people (which no one should be foolish enough to deny), therefore the standard languages that they each use are as different from each other as Czech and Slovak, for example (which has been contradicted by analysis done by linguists who have nothing to gain from the whims of Balkan politicians. Vput (talk) 19:28, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

The assertion: Was never Croatian language. - no! Was and exist Croatian language. Not the standard language constitute the language, but thec to dialects, the standard literary language is a artificial language. The Kajkavian, Chakavian and Sthokavian Croatian languages constitute the Croatian language. Afore the 19th century was a standardized Croatian language from Nikola and Petar Subić Zrinski: this standard alloy every dialect. For nothing clear the Serbo-Croatian language for every Croat, the Kajkavian and Chakavian languages today still different variants. And to top it all the Shtokavian dialects was yet fairly different dialects up the advent of the Serbo-Crotian language, the present Shtokavian dialects already less different dialects. If the Bosnians and Montenegrins desire to separate Bosnian and Montenegrin languages, earn to the old notes of the old Shtokavian dialects in this regions and hereby implement language-purism. The Croatians now accrete the Kajkavian, Shtokavian and Chakavian dialects, as in the Burgenland Croatian literary language also accrete the spoken Chakavian and Shtokavian dialects of Burgenland (besides the notable influence of the Kajkavian language from the 17th-18th-19th century, moreover Slovene and Prekmurian, nor yet Hungarian and German influences). Doncsecz^talk 13:00, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Sorry Doncsecz but I can't understand your English. Írhatod magyarul, amit megírtál elõbb angolul? Vput (talk) 21:55, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Nem arról van szó, hogy beleakarok kapcsolódni a vitába, egyszerűen csak látom milyen hosszú viták zajlanak itt és elmondtam a véleményemet. Doncsecz^talk 07:49, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Rendben, semmi gond. Vput (talk) 18:36, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Council for norm of Croatian Standard Language

I stumbled upon an interesting debate related to the subject here [4]. Unfortunately, Google Translate [5] makes a mess out of it. However, it illustrates the state of mind in Croatian academia. I particularly like the following two paragraphs, spoken by the President (Katičić, I think); quite an esoteric conception, where the diachronism almost exclusively determines the concept of a language:

Već je po tome neprilično izjednačivati jekavsku novoštokavštinu s istočnohercegovačkim dijalektom, a to vrijedi kud i kamo više kada se govori o književnom jeziku svih Hrvata i o njegovu standardiziranom liku. To je naprosto slaba lingvistika. A jedino su takvim shvaćanjem omogućena mišljenja, [...] po kojima je taj jezik zasnovan na jednom srpskom dijalektu u najužem smislu, pa je po tome i sam zapravo, ako se sudi objektivno, srpski. Takvo je mišljenje vrlo živo u srpskoj jezikoslovnoj sredini, a i u međunarodnoj slavistici na mnogim se stranama drži, manje eksplicitno, ali dosta žilavo. No stvari se pokazuju u sasvim drugom i u pravom svjetlu ako se bolje pogleda kako je doista nastao hrvatski književni jezik. Temeljna značajka hrvatske jezične situacije jest mnogodijalekatnost i tronarječnost. Kao hrvatsku cjelinu ne određuju je narječja i njihovi dijalekti kao zasebne danosti, nego komunikacijski suodnosi među njima. Ne određuju je, pojednostavnjeno rečeno, čakavci, kajkavci i štokavci svaki sami za se, nego tako što se sporazumijevaju jedni s drugima.

translation:

That means that it's inappropriate to put an equation sign between general Ijekavian neo-shtokavian and Eastern Herzegovian dialect, and that is even more true when we're talking about literary language of all Croats and its standardized form. That is, simply, bad linguistics. And such attitude furthers the [mis]conceptions [...] whereby this language is based on a Serbian dialect in the most narrow sense, and thus, if objectively judged, is Serbian itself. Such an opinion is very much alive in Serbian linguistic circles, and even in international Slavistics it has strong roots, less explicitly, but fairly strongly. However, things show up in entirely different light if one sees how the Croatian literary language emerged. The basic characteristics of Croatian linguistic situation is its multi-[sub]dialectal and three-dialectal character. As a Croatian wholesome, it is not determined by the [three] main dialects and their subdialects as separate entities, but their communicative inter-relationship [emphasis mine]. Simply put, it is not determined by chakavians, kajkavians and shtokavians each for themselves, but in communication with each other.

To reuse a quote, that is, simply, bad linguistics. No such user (talk) 08:14, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Is this the language standardization committee? If so, it's not surprising: lots of language academies subordinate linguistics to politics. Their purpose, after all, is not academic but political. It wouldn't be anything new for the same to happen with Croatian. — kwami (talk) 09:35, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

So no Torlakian? Chipmunkdavis (talk) 09:51, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Three 'main' dialects. Also, many classify Torlak as Shto; AFAIK, it resulted from the mutual influence of Shto and Bulgarian, which previously had been separated. — kwami (talk) 10:01, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Guys you are so funny. Citation brought by No such user is not "bad linguistics", it is not linguistics at all - it is just short commentary about Serbian bad linguistics ;) But your approach says something about your "bad faith". More and more this talk page becomes a kind of dossier showing who or what are you. Almost every statement by anyone of you is manipulation and distortion of the facts. Croatian standard is not only "based on Štokavian", it is natural developement of Croatian literary language in Štokavian dialect, to remind you Croatian Štokavian is predominant literary language of the Croats in period from the 16th to the 19th century. In the same period Serbian literary language was not Štokavian at all, it was Eastern Church Slavic. Looking from linguistic perspective, Croatian standard is both historical and modern Croatian dialect and language, both vernacularly and literary; Serbian standard is Serbo-Croatian - I agree. Nothing strange if Serbs insist on Serbo-Croatian, before 19th century their language was Serbo-Slavic (srbo-slavjanski), at present they want it to be Serbo-Croatian. LOL

BTW Serbs identified themselves as Slavjani (Slavs) before Vuk's standardization, same as the Macedonians and Bulgarians - nothing strange, they spoke variance of the Eastern South Slavic. After Vuk's inovation they became Sloveni (Slavs) - just Ekavianized form of Croatian Slovini (Ikavian) - that's how they became speakers of the Western South Slavic. Only Serbian standard deserves to be called Serbo-Croatian. ;p 78.0.133.111 (talk) 12:30, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

P.S. if Torlak is Što than Macedonian and Bulgarian are Što too. And Russian. Do Serbs want all of it to be framed by Serbo-Croatian? ROTFL 78.0.133.111 (talk) 12:32, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

...except that no reputable linguist would contemplate such a simplistic classification which jumps across the Slavonic clades. However if political mouthpieces would be allowed dominate all Slavicist circles (as is noticeable in the Balkans), then Slovenian must be subordinated to "Croatian" thanks to Croatian insistence that Kaykavian "belongs" to Croats. Vput (talk) 17:12, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, the reactions of the local clique indeed prove their 'bad faith'. Katičić is an outstanding scholar and a true authority for this issue, unlike some arrogant and self-righteous wikipedians. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 161.53.243.70 (talk) 08:58, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

@Vput: political mouthpieces are allowed dominate this article and South Slavic categorization thanks to your contribution too. You people, "local clique", have no shame to use your own OR's. Croatian Kajkavian and Slovene are not the same, their differentiation dates back to around the 9th century. 83.131.68.144 (talk) 13:12, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

I have to agree here, apart from the paranoia, ad hominem attacks, and assumption of bad faith. There are strong isoglosses between Kaj and Slovene, even if they are more closely related to each other than Kaj is to Ča-Što. — kwami (talk) 13:28, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

My comment was in reaction to 78.0.133.111 who cloaked a logical fallacy as a "Serbian" one where we can create a valid classificatory group with Serbo-Croatian being an umbrella term for any Slavic language that uses "što" for 'what' including Russian. If we want to play the same game, then Slovenian with its "kaj?" may as well just be an extension of "Croatian" because Croats insist that Kaykavian is theirs. As to Katičić, he lost all my respect as a Slavicist when he recently engaged in mental sleights of hand to conclude in all seriousness that Serbian is not Štokavian (with the aim of creating a separation from Croatian where there is none. There are differences, but that is not one of them). His saying such things is as idiotic as the handful of Hungarian linguists (e.g. Laszló Marácz) and amateurs who still insist that Hungarian is not a Finno-Ugric language. Vput (talk) 16:14, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Ah, I understand now. Never mind. — kwami (talk) 16:21, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

No problem. And 83.131.68.144, the political mouthpieces and the "local clique" of linguists here are much further apart than you'd like to imagine. The political mouthpieces state that Croats and Serbs as independent people (with independent cultural traditions/religions/self-images) can only have independent languages respectively called "Croatian" and "Serbian". We, the "local clique" state that Croats and Serbs as independent people (with independent cultural traditions/religions/self-images) do not necessarily have independent languages, notwithstanding the superficial impression of unchallenged distinctiveness as gleaned by frequent assignment/stereotyping of "Croatian" to "Croats" and "Serbian" to "Serbs". Vput (talk) 17:22, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

You, "local clique" forget that Croatian and Serbian standards can not be equalised due to linguistics mainly, politics has nothing to do with it. These standards are around 30% different suma sumarum, due to Eastern South Slavic portion still saved in Serbian standard mainly. Taking Štokavian for homogenous dialect makes no sense. Otherwise you should involve Macedonian and Bulgarian to S-C imaginary language. A lot of examples can be shown taken from Romance or Germanic languages where 30% or even less different languages are considered separate idioms and noone makes problem about it. So if there is any politics here it is S-C, which BTW is political term, by origin and practical using, in any moment, including now. 89.172.82.22 (talk) 07:48, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

"local clique" of linguists here - now I'm trying to imagine what kind of science is that and what kind of the linguists you are, bearing in mind you - "linguists" have established political term on the basis of Yugo-communist "Novi Sad Agreement" in 1954 - another scientific pardon political gathering. 78.0.128.72 (talk) 13:40, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

What comes out of these anonymous IPs is more of the same Croatian nationalist defense: 1) reducing the matter of Serbo-Croatian to a communist-era innovation thus ignoring the pre-communist-era work of the Croatian Vukovci Maretić and Broz, to say nothing about the Illyrians' willingness to work with Vuk as part of creating a pan-South-Slavic confederation ("Yugoslavia-lite" with the Croats taking a leading role) which got the whole idea of SC started. On Novi Sad: for sure it was political - just like the meeting that later produced Deklaracija o nazivu i položaju hrvatskog književnog jezika, right? and 2) deliberate confusing of "standard language" with just "language" which could then exclude Chakavian and Kaykavian since modern "Croatian" is neo-Shtokavian-Iyekavian with Kaykavian and Chakavian exerting a minimal effect on lexicon and none on the other aspects of modern Croatian. Riddle me this you native-speakers of "Croatian": Why did my Croatian teacher tell me to learn "jezik" or "govorim" (just like Bosnians and Serbs) rather than "zajik" or "govorin" like people speaking Chakavian? Why did my "Croatian" textbook teach me that I'm supposed to say "okolo grada" - 'around the cities' (just like Bosnians and Serbs) instead of "okolo gradof" as characteristic of Kaykavian? Of course Shtokavian isn't homogeneous and while we're at it neither is "Croatian". The image of "Croatian" being a unified language to match today's unified Croatian nation is a non sequitur considering that an Istrian or Slavonian can undeniably feel unified as Croats but their native languages of a Chakavian sub-dialect and Shtokavian sub-dialect respectively are not unified or even that similar (definitely more distinct than the difference between standard Croatian and standard Serbian). This faulty reverence of languages in defining ethnicity reflects poorly on attempts to gather as many points as possible to give the appearance of homogeneity among Croats. Vput (talk) 16:41, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

more of the same Croatian nationalist defense - please stop calling Croats nationalists! Arguments against Serbo-Croatian are not based on nationalism, it's tradition, culture and science. Do you understand that term Serbo-Croatian was one always used by some kind of the nationalists, Greater Serbian nationalists, Yugo-nationalists?

1) reducing the matter of Serbo-Croatian to a communist-era innovation thus ignoring the pre-communist-era work of the Croatian Vukovci Maretić and Broz, to say nothing about the Illyrians' willingness to work with Vuk as part of creating a pan-South-Slavic confederation ("Yugoslavia-lite" with the Croats taking a leading role) which got the whole idea of SC started - interesting, so you admit that whole Serbo-Croatian circus is politically based, but you keep on ignoring it when it comes to linguistics!? Term Serbo-Croatian existed before 1954 and Novi Sad Agreement, noone says opposite, but it hadn't any precise meaning and it wasn't used for any kind of defined macro-language or language, it was used as it was - as an idea for something that was supposed to happen in the future, and it hasn't happened at the end. So the way Serbo-Croatian is used in this article and categorization tree is definitely based on political decision in Novi Sad!

On Novi Sad: for sure it was political - just like the meeting that later produced Deklaracija o nazivu i položaju hrvatskog književnog jezika, right? Right! Only political declaration can be confronted to another political declaration. It's always like that in the world. But it's known that communist secretaries were usually politically led and not well educated and they gave directives for what was declared in Novi Sad ('54), while in Zagreb ('69) the academics declared something, after communist totalitarian regime weakened at the end of the 60's). It's enough to compare 2 declarations to see what is politics and what is linguistics. Or we can take a look what were all kind of communist declarations in the 50's and 60's and laugh for a few hours.

2) deliberate confusing of "standard language" with just "language" which could then exclude Chakavian and Kaykavian since modern "Croatian" is neo-Shtokavian-Iyekavian with Kaykavian and Chakavian exerting a minimal effect on lexicon and none on the other aspects of modern Croatian.

This is stupid. Croatian standard is based on Croatian literary language used from the age of Croatian Literary Reinnesance (16th century). So Kajkavian and Čakavian remained vernacular speaking forms. But to say that they have a minimal effect on lexicon is also wrong. You should take 3 dictionaries to make comparations and see how minimal it is. Kajkavian and Čakavian are simply more archaic so all those more archaic sounded issogloses in Croatian standard are coming from one or both of Kaj&Ča.

Riddle me this you native-speakers of "Croatian": Why did my Croatian teacher tell me to learn "jezik" or "govorim" (just like Bosnians and Serbs) rather than "zajik" or "govorin" like people speaking Chakavian? Why did my "Croatian" textbook teach me that I'm supposed to say "okolo grada" - 'around the cities' (just like Bosnians and Serbs) instead of "okolo gradof" as characteristic of Kaykavian? Your Croatian teacher probably doesn't know that "zajik" is spoken by very minor number of Čakavians, those settled in Istria. The most of Čakavians say "jazik" or "jezik". There are plenty of local alternations in vernacular speeches, so what? Like "govorin" instead of "govorim". Your Croatian teacher also didn't tell you that "okolo gradov" is characteristic of Čakavian, similar to Kajkavian and you probably don't listen to your teacher or textbook or whatever it is - "okolo gradov", "okolo gradof", "okolo gradova" - (around cities); "okolo grada" - (around city). If you take examples be sure how you use it and don't mix singular and plural: "Okolo grada" is said in Čakavian and Kajkavian too ;) But all of that is not important for one simple reason: Kajkavian and Čakavian are the oldest Slavic speeches in general, still saved in a wider region, full of archaisms. For example, in Kajkavian of Bednja there are some the oldest known Slavic archaisms in Europe, in Čakavian there are many local non-Slavic archaisms that got into Čakavian by mediation of Late Antique/Early Medieval Dalmatian Language. In both Kajkavian and Čakavian, old language structure of Western Proto-South Slavic idiom is preserved. Why is this important? Because you cannot compare Kajkavian and Čakavian to Neo-Štokavian! That's why! You cannot compare idioms from different ages the way you do it. If you want to compare Kajkavian and Čakavian with any kind of Štokavian spoken by the Croats, you should compare it to Ikavian Ščakavian – predecessor of Ikavian Štokavian, or Ikavian Štokavian – predecessor of Ijekavian/Ikavian Neo-Štokavian in Dubrovnik in the 18th century! Ikavian Štokavian became Croatian literary language in the 16th century and being literary form meant it developed futher literary to the point in the 18th century so that last form served as basis for making Croatian standard in the 19th century. You cannot say: Why did my "Croatian" textbook teach me that I'm supposed to say "okolo grada" - 'around the cities' (just like Bosnians and Serbs) instead of "okolo gradof" as characteristic of Kaykavian? because „okolo grada“ is already a phrase from Croatian literary language before developement of Dubrovnik Neo-Štokavian. Change „gradov“ -> „gradova“ occurred within natural developement of Croatian Reinnesance Ikavain Štokavian. It's not like Bosnians and Serbs, it's like Croats. Bosnia is a special case due to ethnic chaos there after Ottoman occupation, so let's stick to Serbs for a moment. What was their way to say 'around cities' in the 16th or 17th century? Can you answer that? Yes, I know you must dive into Serbo-Slavic and Torlakian, which were completely different idioms in that age. So instead of manipulated formulation - 2) deliberate confusing of "standard language" with just "language" which could then exclude Chakavian and Kaykavian since modern "Croatian" is neo-Shtokavian-Iyekavian with Kaykavian and Chakavian exerting a minimal effect on lexicon and none on the other aspects of modern Croatian. – it must be said: deliberate confusing of "standard language" with just "language" which could then exclude Eastern South Slavic Serbo-Slavic and Torlakian since modern "Serbian" is neo-Shtokavian-Ekavian as a result of installation Western South Slavic language structure into originally Eastern South Slavic speaking forms and continual borrowing from the west even at present. Finally how can you reject that 'bad faith' comes from your side if your action is manipulative replacement of controversy to another side, where that controversy never existed, beside politically, in the last century?!

Of course Shtokavian isn't homogeneous and while we're at it neither is "Croatian". – Štokavian isn't Croatian, I agree, as long as we are speaking about any kind of Štokavian. But we are not. This is article "Croatian Language" and that's what we are speaking about – Croatian Štokavian idiom! Ikavian Štokavian as direct basis for the next one and that one is Ijekavian Neo-Štokavian in Dubrovnik. And both are named Croatian. Serbian Štokavian standard is something else, it is similar but not the same, when 2 dictionaries are compared, modern Croatian and modern Serbian (standards) they are 70% equal. 83.131.70.109 (talk) 12:28, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Your response is pretty much part and parcel of this whole sub-section of the Talk Page which began when No such user pointed out that it's bad linguistics in letting diachronism (i.e. the historical development of a dialect/language) take precedence in defining a language regardless of whether the modern result of that development means that the present language overlaps fully or virtually fully with the self-declared distinct language of another community. Who cares that the Serbs originally used Slaveno-Serbian as a literary language? Culturally and historically it's significant, but it doesn't explain why modern standard Serbian is expressible either in Neo-Shtokavian Iyekavian (just like modern Bosnian or modern Croatian) or Neo-Shtokavian-Ekavian (as opposed to the non-standardized and deprecated Old-Shtokavian-Ekavian of Torlak). Who cares that the Latin alphabet of the Serbo-Croatian variants copied the same few letters from Czech and Polish? Does this mean that we should conclude that Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian are best considered as identical on that basis?

No one (not even Western linguists) denies that the history of the self-declared Croatian speech community is marked by events not present in the history of other speech communities in the Balkans. However, underlining them as a way to define "Croatian" and so justify treating it as a separate language in the same way that we do for Slovenian or even Macedonian contradicts or clashes with the findings derived from the many linguists/Slavicists outside the Balkans who describe Croatian as a national or standard variant of Serbo-Croatian (where SC is understood as meaning the codified Neo-Shtokavian-Iyekavian language whose genesis began in 1850 and NOT only as the communist-era official language initially expressed in two "pronunciations" according to the Novi Sad Agreement). The mutual intelligibility of the SC variants is extremely high and calls to mind pluricentric languages such as English, French, German, Portuguese or Spanish with each lending itself most helpfully or powerfully to treatment or analysis as one language rather than as several nationally-delineated variants elevated as separate languages

Serbo-Croatian was indeed born from political desire (ever heard of the Illyrians and Vuk?), and by (un)happy coincidence those Croatian intellectuals found that Dubrovnikian Shtokavian was for practical purposes the same language (not identical, but "highly-highly" similar to the point where the differences didn't matter or weren't even there in the first place) as Vuk's native dialect. The importance of this event led not only to conclusion of the Vienna Literary Agreement, but gave enough inspiration for Croatian language planners (Croatian Vukovians) not only to impose Neo-Shtokavian-Iyekavian as the base of the new standard but to draw actively on Vuk's corpus of folk-tales for use in a new word-stock and grammar. The result was that it made standard Croatian virtually the same as standard Serbian (especially the Iyekavian variant of it) to the point where Western linguists legitimately describe "Croatian" and "Serbian" being variants of one language. What else could they be to them who are unaffected or indifferent to local ethnic consciousness or cultural perceptions? Diachronic analysis reveals how Dubrovnikian Shtokavian was important in allowing Neo-Shtokavian-Iyekavian to become the base for modern standard Croatian. However this fact from diachronic analysis, has a far-reaching synchronic result because it explains why something in modern Croatian can be expressed the same (or very often expressed identically) to the same thing in modern Serbian (especially in its Neo-Shtokavian Iyekavian sub-variant). The (un)happy result from synchronic analysis means that non-Balkan linguists following their training often treat, describe or analyze Serbo-Croatian as a valid pluricentric language. In another example, diachronic analysis reveals how Kaykavian influence was important in allowing certain lexical items to become eventually codified in modern Croatian (e.g. vlak, tjedan). Synchronic analysis however reveals that Kaykavian has had little effect on modern Croatian and fails to explain why we can analyze or treat modern Croatian and modern Serbian as codifications of Neo-Shtokavian-Iyekavian.

The resilience of these Croatian Vukovian efforts explains the revisionism in the linguistic narrative in Croatia, the orthographic disputes pitting Babić, Finka and Moguš against Anić and Silić, the (so far empty) talk among Croatian language planners to insert more Chakavian or Kaykavian words or structures in the Croatian standard, and the continued stereotyping of words or expressions as "Croatian-only" (i.e. "good words") or "Serbian-only" (i.e. "bad words"). For the Croatian nationalists who want to deny or suppress the memory of Croato-Serbian cooperation, the revisionism must reach further back in time by elevating the literary achievements of Dalmatian writers (no matter how unintelligible their writings are to the average educated Croat in 2011 and how they were excluded from the decisive Vukovian standardization), and emphasize the long-dead (or perhaps questionable) isogloss of "Western Shtokavian" (i.e. Croatian Shtokavian) versus "Eastern Shtokavian" (i.e. non-Croatian Shtokavian) which has gained little currency among linguists outside the Balkans since it lacks the explanatory or still-observable validity of isoglosses based on accent (Old vs. New Shtokavian) or "yat" reflexes, both of which rely on linguistic parameters and go above modern ethnic groupings or cultural norms.

Basically rejection of Serbo-Croatian is being used as a proxy to reject Royal Yugoslavia or its communist version. It's no secret that many Croats have highly negative feelings/opinions about Yugoslavia but those carry little or no weight in a linguistic discussion. It's just that no Croatian nationalist (ranging from the self-declared patriot to the chauvinist) really wants to admit this very openly, because then it turns the whole argument on a language's supposed invalidity to a referendum or opinion poll about some political system or ideology. At that stage, the linguistic "evidence" against Serbo-Croatian becomes little more than latent political judgments being masked with the seemingly respectable sheen of linguistic analysis. It's political to the core, but it doesn't change the fact that the Bosniak, Croat, Montenegrin and Serb still learn in school to use something that linguists outside the Balkans describe coolly as variants of a one language or just a pluricentric language. These same Western linguists do not comment on whether we should treat the constituents of the former Yugoslavia as different people or not after having concluded that they're dealing with just one language. The question of ethnicity is one for geneticists, historians or anthropologists. Period. This is the fundamental distinction but it's pushed aside by the unquestioning adherence to language equaling ethnicity as can be seen in the Balkans with linguists effectively being allowed to determine who belongs to "the tribe" and who doesn't. Vput (talk) 22:24, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

This Vput's long sermon is Greater Serbian political pamphlet. Like in those myth-maniacal Serbian internet pages. It's full of innacuracies and lies. 83.131.80.244 (talk) 08:19, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

83.131.80.244, WP:POT. --Taivo (talk) 12:19, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

83.131.80.244, I'm left to deduce that your "source" is Mir Harven's www.hercegbosna.org Vput (talk) 17:51, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

There are also strong isoglosses between Kaj and Ča, Ča and Što and Što and Kaj; when I say Kaj, Ča and Što, I mean Croatian dialects only. Generally all 3 dialects are naturally overlapping, thus making unbroken continuum among them. The main language structure was/is floating from one area to another, thus making transfer dialectal zones: Nothern Čakavians are Ekavians as well as Kajkavians, Southern Čakavians are Ikavians as well as western Štokavians, Western Štokavians exchanged a lot with Kajkavians during the ages when Kajkavians were settled in Slavonia (later Štokavians pushed them more to the west). Today it's situation that modern Croats speak their standard and in many cases they are not sure anymore which issoglose is originally Kajkavian, which is Čakavian and which is Štokavian. The most of issogloses were shared by 2 dialects at least, already in the beginning! Even by initial South Slavic material cultures, Slovenian and Croatian Slavs were similar groups, close to the Western Slavs. Logically, Croats and Slovenes belong to the same Western South Slavic language group from the beginning and that's why Slovene language and Croatian language in 3 dialects share a large part of vocabulary, unlike Serbs who did transfer from the Eastern South Slavic to Western South Slavic (as 78.0.133.111 noted), but still saved a lot of Eastern South Slavic vocabulary. The real tragedy of Serbian language: Serbs dropped off their traditional language and adopted to the languages of their western neighbors. They lose characteristical Serbian expressions even today and borrow from the Croats. But, why would Croatian culture suffer from changes in Serbian culture? If the Irishmen speak English now, instead of Irish, should we classify English as Iro-English or Anglo-Irish? 83.131.68.144 (talk) 14:01, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Uhhh, there's no need to bring in the Irishmen, since Americans, Canadians, New Zealanders, Singaporeans, South Africans et al. also speak "English". Do we deny the ethnic or non-linguistic distinction or separateness in the above nationalities/ethnic groups just because they speak "English"? Does anyone from native-speakers of English to linguists insist that "English" is derogatory and should be renamed as "Amero-Australo-Canado-Hiberno-Indo-New Zealander-Singaporean-South African West Germanic" or separate terms "American", "Canadian", "Singaporean" etc.? The difference is that these people don't seem as insecure as Balkan nationalists because not having a language named after your ethnicity doesn't actually mean that the ethnicity can't exist. An ethnicity needs A language, but not necessarily a DISTINCT or even a STANDARD language (rhetorical question: does anyone believe that Montenegrins are non-existent because they speak Neo-Shtokavian Ijekavian like Bosnians, Croats and Serbs and they still have no standardized language?). The only people bent on negating the Croatian ethnicity are Greater Serbian nationalists. Western linguists however make no judgment on the existence or non-existence of Croats when they analyze or treat modern Croatian as a variant of Serbo-Croatian instead of a language. It's known in linguistic literature that different nationalities/ethnic groups can use the same language (which is different from having a standard language) like Austrians and Germans using German, just as you can see one nationality/ethnic group using different languages like Chinese using Mandarin or Cantonese among other Sinitic languages. Why do the nationalists keep falling into the old trap of letting language equal ethnicity, and then letting a big part of their existence depend on whether their native language has a distinct name from the name of the supposed enemy's native language even when it's the same? In fact if you reject the equation of language = ethnicity, then the Greater Serbian claim that anyone speaking Shtokavian is Serbian is exposed as being even more preposterous. It's interesting that Croatian nationalists and Serbian ones operate from the same equation when incorporating the place of language, yet use it against each other when defining themselves. Vput (talk) 20:14, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

there's no need to bring in the Irishmen, since Americans, Canadians, New Zealanders, Singaporeans, South Africans et al. also speak "English". Do we deny the ethnic or non-linguistic distinction or separateness in the above nationalities/ethnic groups just because they speak "English"? Does anyone from native-speakers of English to linguists insist that "English" is derogatory and should be renamed as "Amero-Australo-Canado-Hiberno-Indo-New Zealander-Singaporean-South African West Germanic" or separate terms "American", "Canadian", "Singaporean" etc.? The difference is that these people don't seem as insecure as Balkan nationalists because not having a language named after your ethnicity doesn't actually mean that the ethnicity can't exist. - very nice, in this case you are writing in the wrong talk page and you should replace your objectiveness to article Serbian Language. ;) You see, modern Croatian standard is directly based on and naturally developed Croatian literary language in last 400 years. From where Serbo- came suddenly? From Mars? 83.131.70.109 (talk) 12:38, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

There are no strong isoglosses between Ča and Što: it's hard to draw a line between them. And I/E/Ie-kavian has nothing to do with Kaj/Ča/Što. I don't know what you mean by "Serbian", because it isn't what Serbs speak, which is often the same Štokavian that Croats speak. — kwami (talk) 14:08, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Wrong. Ikavian Čakavians (formerly the most of Dalmatia, today the islands from the southern Pag to Korčula in the south) and Ikavian Štokavians (southern Dalmatia, Dalmatian inland, Herzegovina and in the past western Bosnia) speak almost identically. Main difference is a lot of Romancisms in Čakavian but Slavic structure is almost the same. Many Ikavian Čakavians in aquatory of Split are closer to Ikavian Štokavians inland from Split than to Ekavian Čajkavians in Kvarner aquatory in the north of Adriatic. Ikavian Štokavian replaced Čakavian as literary language in Dalmatia around the 16th century, not just accidently. Also very important, Ijekavian Štokavians at the seaside (from Kotor and Dubrovnik to Pelješac peninsula) spoke identically to Ikavian Štokavians with a lot of old Čakavian issogloses (like all maritime terms), while Ijekavian Štokavian of the Montenegrins and Eastern Herzegovinians was significiantly different. 83.131.68.144 (talk) 14:34, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

That's basically what I just said. — kwami (talk) 15:11, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Huh, it seems 83.131.68.144 misunderstood "strong isoglosses between". Obviously he/she wrote about "strong issogloses" shared between dialects. It is opposite to what you said. 78.0.146.233 (talk) 14:16, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

So he's establishing Serbo-Croatian? Can't argue with that either. — kwami (talk) 19:36, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I got it wrong as 78.0.146.233 says, for me those lines were drawn as bridges between, not walls between, sorry; and no, I'm not establishing Serbo Croatian 83.131.70.109 (talk) 12:28, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Even though there are no strong isoglosses separating central South Slavic dialects, there also are no common innovations shared by all of them. Even common čakavian innovations don't exist, although there are common (inter)kajkavian and common (inter)štokavian innovovations. Čakavian itself, while far from being monolithic, is in general closer to kajkavian than it is to štokavian, due to it being quite archaic for South Slavic standards. source: Poredbenopovijesna gramatika hrvatskoga jezika, Matasović, p.64-65 78.0.208.32 (talk) 11:28, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

So he's establishing Serbo-Croatian? Can't argue with that either. Obviously not. Štokavian dialect of Croatian is not Serbian language. If someone speaks about Croatian dialects it is about Croatian language. 89.172.82.22 (talk) 07:54, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

That sounds circular Chipmunkdavis (talk) 09:42, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

"circular" as well as the counter arguments. Defending S-C is risen to the level of religion. It's not only circular, it's vertigo. 78.0.128.72 (talk) 10:52, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

"Defending S-C is risen to the level of religion." - I fully subscribe to this. Judging from this rather lengthy talk page, a curious reader would probably conclude that Croats are some totalitarian fascist people prone to inventing lies and half-truths in order to distance their language from Serbian. Not to mention that Croatian linguists, much like the majority of their compatriots, are all presented as shameless nationalists (perhaps with the exception of "progressive" and "unbiased" prof. Kordić) who supposedly follow the nationalistic policy of Croatia. Same goes for Croatian sources. They are overtly, and sometimes openly, discarded as nationalistic regardless of the fact that there is no greater authority for Croatian language than the authority of Croatian linguists. E.g. the Institute of Croatian Language and Linguistics explicitly states that "Croatian is a Slavic language of the West South Slavic subgroup of the Slavic branch of Indo-European language family." (http://www.ihjj.hr/oHrJeziku.html). There's no mention of Serbo-Croatian because: 1) It is usually associated with the defunct standard language of socialist Yugoslavia and 2) It's some macro-language (if it's to believe the foreign sources) with a highly controversial name. The fact that most foreign sources traditionally lump Croatian and Serbian together just reinforces the systemic bias so evident among most members here.93.139.40.194 (talk) 14:40, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

It's one thing for the authorities of Croatian ethnicity (or even ordinary Croats) to be viewed as experts in contemporary usage (e.g. How do you spell this word? What's the conjugation of this verb?). It's another to treat their conclusions as unquestionable on other matters in linguistics given that anyone can study a language academically and conduct research in it. Languages know no ethnic boundaries (in a related way, specialists in Slavic languages are not restricted to those of Slavic nationality. E.g. Wayles Browne, Robert Greenberg, Alexander Schenker, James Naughton, Celia Hawkesworth, Ronelle Alexander, Christina Kramer). The average Croatian linguist and the average non-Croatian linguist should be equally capable of researching the subject and there are indeed some Croatian linguists (e.g. Anic, Pranjkovic, Kalogjera, Skiljan) other than the controversial (in most Croatian eyes) Snjezana Kordic whose work or views haven't exactly jived with the mainstream/nationalist school either. However, what we see is that professional opposition to treating Croatian as a national variant of Serbo-Croatian or Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian today comes from a certain group of Croatian linguists. As far as a I can tell, linguists outside Croatia (to remove any bias in Croatian eyes, I won't count Serbian linguists) do not put forth such professional opposition. Let readers make their own conclusions why the dichotomy aligns that way.

In addition a declaration by one source doesn't necessarily make something so. On the surface and without any analysis or evidence, declaring that Croatian is a (separate) language has as much value or credibility as saying that Croatian is part or a variant of one Serbo-Croatian language (as another example, just because Vuk Karadzic concluded long ago that all Shtokavian-speakers are Serbs like him doesn't make it so) The next step is to consider the evidence used in putting out those statements. As far as we can see the evidence used to present Croatian as a separate South Slavic (Abstand) language comes from several Croatian sources and makes much reference to the existence of localized literary traditions, perceptions (feelings) of the speech community (including the sociolinguistic idea that a language's separateness or definition arises from the functions for the (arbitrarily-defined) speech community regardless of the degree of intelligibilty to other dialects/idiolects/languages), and reinterpretations of usage tendencies typical of most Croats as immutable or black-and-white facts so as to concluding that Croatian is not only a valid standard language (which isn't controversial here) but also a valid Abstand language with South Slavic like Slovenian and Bulgarian (which is controversial here). Outside the Balkans, such evidence used to present differentiation is not elevated because of the adherence to the principle that linguistics as a whole (rather than one sub-discipline called sociolinguistics) is applied to classification or analysis of languages. Invalidating the idea of a pluricentric language on unfavourable political connotations (to Croats) or deprecated nomenclature is a minority one, and while the name can change or the lexicon can be tweaked with grandstanding from a language academy or politicians, that doesn't seem to change the guts (e.g. morphology, phonology, prosody, phonetics, lexis, syntax) which result in intelligibility. That kind of change in mutual intelligibility takes at least several decades if not a few centuries. At best it's premature (and at worst fallacious) to declare today that Croatian is a separate language (understood as meaning other than a "standard language") within South Slavic. Painting those who conclude that Serbo-Croatian (= pluricentric language with national variants today) as religious fanatics indicates a certain amount of desperation or juvenile ad hominem from a side that chooses not to heed linguistic research. To illustrate what I mean, I came across the following abstract of a study done in 2008 exploring how Croats translate nine Serbian texts into standard Croatian [6]. The researchers concluded that we're still dealing with identical linguistic systems given the low degree of divergence in the translations from Serbian offered by the Croats (over 98% identity in morphological and derivational inflection, under 10% lexical divergence, over 95% identity in using closed grammatical cases). Vput (talk) 17:41, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

First of all, I did not present 'a' source but 'the' source dealing with Croatian language. Thus, comparing the viewpoint of the Institute of Croatian language and Linguistics with that of Vuk Karadžić sounds surreal, which is exactly the issue I addressed earlier. I don't think it should be that hard for anyone to deduct from the arguments here that the Croatian side faces much hostility in this article, even if citing valid sources. As regards to my supposed "juvenile ad hominem", I had no intention of insulting anyone since I believe this should be a place of civilized discourse. However, the reply to it just helps to reinforce the observed negative bias towards the Croats.

Second of all, judging from the study you cited, you seem to equate Croatian language with standard Croatian language, when convenient. You yourself said that the term "Croatian language" has another meaning than just standard Croatian, i.e. Croatian also includes two non-Štokavian macro-dialects. That said, if the Croatian subjects were prompted to translate the text in Serbian into Čakavian or Kajkavian, the results would most certainly be in a sharp contrast to those obtained by simply comparing the national standards. Simply said, your source deals with only one dimension of Croatian (and Serbian, for that matter). Why is that important? Theoretically, if all Croats were speakers of only Čakavian or only Kajkavian, Croatian would, without any shade of doubt, be both an abstand and an ausbau language. In other words, the aforementioned dialects are included into SC because they are culturally affiliated with Croatian Štokavian speakers, hence the Croatian language as a whole, who in turn are more linguistically related to Serbian Štokavian speakers.93.136.101.128 (talk) 22:28, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

The problem is that what makes IHJJ the source here? Among sources it is one of many when dealing with Croatian's place or definition with some being more easily refutable or questionable than others (e.g. Vuk's faulty equation of Shtokavian to Serbian). You've probably read about the sources which present Croatian as a national variant rather than a separate language already so I won't bore you here with them again. A related matter is that many languages are not governed by a pack of elitists - think of all of the languages out there that aren't standardized or aren't managed by a language-planning organ. Because those languages lack such regulation, are they to be dismissed as undefinable or unusable? As I said earlier it's one thing to defer to a Croat when it comes to usage or something particular of his or her region. It's another when we talk of linguistic matters outside day-to-day usage. Do you really believe that IHJJ "own" this idea of a Croatian language and like any holder of private property feel that it's "hands-off" to people outside their circle? Languages know no ethnic boundaries nor are they treatable like copyrightable or exclusive property with enforceable "rights" to access or usage for only a handful of people.

However I don't disagree totally with you on the variation in what is to be covered under "Croatian" because I've seen it in use. On one hand, "Croatian" is equated to "Neo-Shtokavian Ijekavian standard language of Croatia" and this is the meaning that most often turns up. Witness courses such as "Teach Yourself Croatian" or "Colloquial Croatian" among others which teach the accepted standard and next-to-nothing from Chakavian or Kaykavian (apart from certain lexical items such as "tjedan" or "vlak", and even then there's no mention of their non-Shtokavian origin). This equation is also reinforced in the Croatian education system in teaching "hrvatski jezik". A Croatian grad student in linguistics once described to me the contradiction within Croatian academia which on one hand insists that Croatian today must be treated separately from Serbian today largely because of dialectal/linguistic variation, yet the public education system reinforces that hrvatski still equals "Neo-Shtokavian-Ijekavian standard" by penalizing kids who use "ja govorin" rather than "ja govorim" or "bum videl" instead of "vidjet ću". He asked somewhat rhetorically what's a student to think when confronted with such a set-up? On the other hand "Croatian" can bear a secondary meaning "whatever South-Slavic language a self-declared Croat speaks be it one of Shtokavian, Kaykavian, Chakavian or even Torlakian". However for the reasons just above this meaning is not common (right now I can recall only Lisac's book on dialectology which such a stance by analyzing or describing the native speech of all self-declared Croats, and so encompassing those 3-4 groups mentioned above). Of course this makes things tricky for those insisting on language equalling ethnicity given the overlap with what some Slovenes, Bosnians, Serbs or Montenegrins speak.

Concluding that Croatian = standard Croatian is not so much a matter of convenience but perhaps an inconvenient truth for some people with both Croats and non-Croats going along with it. The problem seems that among Croats who angle for linguistic distance from Serbs and make much about the linguistic diversity or different history of Croats, their language standardization body and education system has been teaching something that is virtually identical to that used by Serbs. The results of which turned up in that study. One would think that the Croatian participants weren't excluded from using Chakavian or Kaykavian if they knew it well but they seemed to have done things earnestly when translating and drew on the Neo-Shtokavian-Ijekavian standard as taught as the "hrvatski jezik". Vput (talk) 00:47, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Your Croatian contact was correct in that children are penalized for speaking non-standard dialects during the classes of Croatian language. Considering very few people actually speak the standard variant at home, that also qualifies a number of non-standard elements of Štokavian as eligible for "penalty" during the said classes. Mind you, there is quite a few of Čakavian and Kajkavian poems and obligatory reads integrated into Croatian language classes, with Marulić, Hektorović, Matoš and Krleža being some of the most notable authors. That should be fairly easily verifiable: e.g. http://www.profil.hr/knjiga/dveri-rijeci-6-hrvatska-citanka/30549/ etc.

Thus, "Neo-Shtokavian-Ijekavian standard" vs. "whatever South-Slavic language a self-declared Croat speaks be it one of Shtokavian, Kaykavian, Chakavian or even Torlakian" is a false dilemma, since these two definitions are not mutually exclusive but rather complementary: http://www.profil.hr/knjiga/poredbeno-povijesna-gramatika-hrvatskog-jezika/8076/ . In Croatia and our immediate surrounding (Slavic) area that goes without saying. However, the situation is quite different abroad because if someone is interested in learning Croatian there would be little point in teaching him the non-standard idioms as well, precisely because vast majority of the Croatian population understands and speaks the standard if needed. http://www.ihjj.hr/oHrJeziku-povijest-3.html 93.136.53.113 (talk) 12:44, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

The three options I see are (1) introduce a new term for the language as a whole which is accepted internationally, (2) create a new Croatian standard, say one based on the local dialect of Zagreb, (3) keep calling it Serbo-Croatian. — kwami (talk) 20:30, 19 February 2011 (UTC)