Language and Identity in the Balkans Serbo-Croatian and Its Disintegration

by Greenberg, Robert D.

• ISBN13: 9780199208753
• ISBN10: 0199208751
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-10-29
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Language rifts in the Balkans are endemic and have long been a symptom of ethnic animosity and a cause for inflaming it. But the break-up of the Serbo-Croat language into four languages on the path towards mutual unintelligibility within a decade is, by any previous standard of linguisticbehaviour, extraordinary. Robert D. Greenberg describes how it happened. Basing his account on first-hand observations in the region before and since the communist demise, he evokes the drama and emotional discord as different factions sought to exploit, prevent, exacerbate, accelerate, or just makesense of the chaotic and unpredictable language situation. His fascinating account offers insights into the nature of language change and the relation between language and identity. It also provides a uniquely vivid perspective on nationalism and identity politics in the former Yugoslavia and itssuccessor states."The book will become a classic reference for those who wish to study the dramatic rise and fall of the language-formerly-known-as-Serbo-Croatian." Award citation

Author Biography

Robert Greenberg is Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of New Haven and Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Yale University. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1991 where he taught 1991-1992. He then taught at Georgetown University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill before taking up his current position in 2003.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
Overview	p. 1
Goals and methodology	p. 4
Language as a marker of ethnic identity	p. 6
Language in the context of Balkan nationalism	p. 9
Serbo-Croatian: A dying tongue?	p. 13
Serbo-Croatian: United or not we fall	p. 16
Introduction: The precarious language union	p. 16
Models for unified languages	p. 18
Centrally monitored unity	p. 20
Government-imposed unity	p. 21
Pluricentric unity	p. 23
Controversies connected with Serb/Croat language accords	p. 24
The Literary Agreement (1850)	p. 24
The Novi Sad Agreement (1954)	p. 29
The power of competing dialects	p. 32
The Stokavian dialects and ethnicity: An overview	p. 34
Dilemmas of dialects: Ownership and citizenship?	p. 35
Standard pronunciations, variants, or idioms	p. 39
The writing on the wall: Alphabets and writing systems	p. 41
A multiplicity of alphabets	p. 41
Spell-bound: Clashes over spelling rules	p. 44
Vocabulary: A reflection of divergent approaches to identity	p. 47
Croatian purism	p. 48
The supremacy of the vernacular for the Serbs	p. 50
Divergent attitudes towards foreign borrowings	p. 51
The turbulent history of the language union: A chronology	p. 54
Serbian: Isn't my language your language?	p. 58
Introduction	p. 58
One language, two variants	p. 59
The two alphabets	p. 60
The two pronunciations	p. 63
The factions in Serbian linguistic circles	p. 65
Orthographic chaos: 1993-1994	p. 69
The battle between the ekavian and ijekavian dialects	p. 77
The triumph of the academies	p. 83
Conclusions	p. 85
Montenegrin: A mountain out of a mole hill?	p. 88
Introduction	p. 88
Montenegro's dialects and its literary traditions	p. 91
The sociolinguistics of dialect geography	p. 92
The literary traditions in Montenegro	p. 94
Montenegro's two factions	p. 97
The Neo-Vukovites	p. 98
Nikcevic and his supporters	p. 99
The proposed standard	p. 102
New letters and new pronunciations	p. 103
The expansion of ijekavian features	p. 104
Conclusions	p. 105
Croatian: We are separate but equal twins	p. 109
Introduction	p. 109
Croatian from Broz to Brozovic	p. 111
Contributions of the "Croat Vukovites": Traitors or Croat patriots?	p. 111
Tito's Yugoslavia: Croatian and not Croato-Serbian	p. 115
The new Croatian	p. 118
The Cakavian and Kajkavian lexical stock	p. 120
Infusing the new standard with native Croatian forms	p. 122
Recent orthographic controversies	p. 125
The prescriptivist Pravopis	p. 125
The descriptivist Pravopis	p. 128
Conclusions	p. 132
Bosnian: A three-humped camel?	p. 135
Introduction	p. 135
History is on our side: The origins of the Bosnian language	p. 137
It's all in the name: Bosnian or Bosniac	p. 139
The peculiarities of the new Bosnian standard	p. 142
The dialectal base	p. 143
Is Bosnian a mixture of Serbian and Croatian?	p. 146
The first Symposium on the Bosnian language	p. 150
Closing ranks: A new charter for a new century	p. 155
Conclusions	p. 156
Conclusion	p. 159
The Serbo-Croatian successor languages: Shared obstacles and divergent solutions	p. 159
My language, my land	p. 164
Postscript: Developments since 2004	p. 168
Observations four years later	p. 168
Scholarly attitudes towards the new language realities in ex-Yugoslavia	p. 168
Croatia: A round table controversy	p. 171
Bosnia-Herzegovina: two new dictionaries on their way	p. 175
Montenegro: The pains of language separation	p. 177
Serbia: Recent perspectives	p. 180
Final remarks and future research	p. 181
Text of the 1850 Literary Agreement	p. 183
Text of the 1954 Novi Sad Agreement	p. 187
Works cited	p. 190
Index	p. 199
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