For BCS, I’ve found that the language is inextricably connected to its history and national identity. Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian, and Montenegrin are now considered different languages, despite their near identical alphabet, grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. The reason, according South Slavic language expert Ronelle Alexander, is symbolic. Each country believes that language is the foundational claim to cultural distinctiveness and authenticity.
In the 9th century, the Slavic language was spoken, but not written. A Christian Moravian prince named Rastislav wanted to convert the people of the Balkans in the native language. He requested liturgical books for missionaries to use. That language is called glagolitic, which was in Cyrillic.
A Serbian linguist named Vuk Karadzic sought to reform the language because he felt the language inaccessible to the common man. In a time in which Serbia was trying to break from Ottoman rule, he sought to base the written language on the spoken language expressed in folk poetry and famous epic songs of a heroic past (382). “Write as you speak” (Pisi kao sto govoris) was his motto. This became the foundation for BCS. In agreement with Croatians, who used Latin a Latin alphabet, the language of Bosnia was officially called Serbo-Croatian.
As time when on, Croatians, Serbians, and Bosnians grew apart. Croats were Catholics, Serbians were Orthodox, and Bosnians were Muslim. Serbian was closely tied to the Cyrillic alphabet, which has historical connections to the Christian Orthodoxy. Croats were closely tied to the Latin, which has historical connections to Catholicism.
Bosnian was created, and more recently Montenegrin, in the midst of war and nationalistic fervor in the 1990s. Bosnians wanted to feel closer to their Islamic roots. So the adopted some Turkish words here and there.
If one is truly interested in learning Croatian, Serbian, or Bosnian, these slight differences are important. Only an understanding of Bosnia’s tumultuous history can help one truly be able to make distinctions between the near identical languages. For my purposes, and for the majority of native speakers, it seems that they couldn’t care less for what the language is called. This concern occupies politicians. Nevertheless, it is an advantage on applications to know that you know 4-5 languages when you only studied one!
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