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Numbers

Total number of speakers of so called Bosnian... up to 5 000 000 ??? Hahahaha, wikipedia, get serious please, don't allow those stupidities :)))))))) Please. We'll die laughing. Oh Gosh!

That's just the higher estimate for those that declare it their spoken language; it's up to the individual what he calls his native tongue. There is a source on the section. Evlekis (Евлекис) 18:29, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Grammar

As a source for my edit:

--WizardOfOz (talk) 14:49, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

I think that somebody skilful with Misplaced Pages and technically savy is on a mission to glaze over differences between the official languages of three distinct countries (Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia) by cramming their languages under one category: Serbo-Croatian. Although their factual differences are not large and although it would be more practical for these countries to have only one language, this is not the factual case at the moment. Serbo-Croatian is not taught in their schools (language that was used in time of Yugoslavia) and, as far as I know, no publications are currently written in it. So why is every English article about these languages pushing the idea that they are considered Serbo-Croatian? People who use these languages do not consider them Serbo-Croatian nor they ever use the category Serbo-Croatian in their schools. Differences, as minor as they are, should be respected and wikipedia ought to publish the most up-to-date info. I think that somebody skilful with Misplaced Pages and technically savy should seriously consider respecting these languages and stop promoting the false idea that the majority of people who use it consider it Serbo-Croatian. Despite the fact that the savy Serbo-Croat uses good references, most of them were written by foreign authors and he usually fails to mention that there are many others who challenge their views, i.e. they are not overwhelmingly considered accurate. Local linguists and theoreticians (who actually use the language) should occasionally be taken into consideration as well. Bizutage (talk) 08:43, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

... There is noone talking about that those two grammars are not quite simmilar, but the article is about Bosnian (which have own grammar rules), and not about SC (which also have own rules but no more publications)! Following your opinion, we should delete all articles about south slavic languages, even SC, and just make a article about slavic-church language. This will also include deleting of Slavic and Czech. So please rollback your edit or give sources which can aprove your opinion. --WizardOfOz (talk) 16:39, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

The point of the merger is not to paper over any differences, but to consolidate the commonalities. Please see the talk page at Croatian, where nationalists are trying to impose a walled garden on this very idea, that there is anything common to the SC standards. I have deleted nothing supported by RS's. If you believe otherwise, please indicate specifically what I've done wrong. ... You also should know that that pathetic stub in the grammar section was not encyclopedic. Since all the info is in the main article, it should not be there: see WP:Fork. As I've said, if you want to write a summary of the main article at Bosnian language, as we have at Croatian and Serbian, by all means do so; if you wish to discuss the development of distinctive elements of Bosnian, even better. That would be encyclopedic and most welcome. (Though note there is already an article on the differences between the BCS standards.) kwami (talk) 16:51, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

I haven´t take a look at the other articles, mea culpa, but have saw those redicoulus entries in the summary on this one. About nationalistic POVs on the talk of Croatian language, I will never take a part in one of those discussions as I am blocked on hr.wiki by one nationalist . But in otherway, even if I not agree with users like Roberta F. in other cases, in her post above she has right. Compilation of one language without publications since 1992 with three living languages (let us leave macrolanguages by side), is truly original research. Prefering of SC as "the only one", is also a political wiew. The proclamation in Vienna 1875 was just a only possible solution for accepting of an "unified" language in whole Yugoslavia on that time. The solution was maded as a political base to show the accepting of each other. The end result was the war in the 90´s :). As a solution for those discussions all across the wikies, I prefer a "stand alone" variant of each. In educational point of Misplaced Pages, such edits and marging just leave the reader in an labyrinth of uncertainty. It´s like (beside that most of USA readers don´t even know where Bosnia or other countries are) giving something to reader without conclusion and just saying: try to search elsewhere, we are writing, but we don´t know it. If we now take a look at this article, from a readers point, what will we conclude: Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian, are just a part of Serbo-Croatian. Ok. In which country is this language spoken? Is there any official publication on this language? Whatfore are the other languages which are official spoken in few countries if it is simmilar? What are the differences?, thats what i will ask myself as a reader. If we suspect, that some of readers have a middle degree of any education, they will search for solutions elsewhere. That is the point, where the scientific world is loughing about million of editors here: they are writing nonsense on Misplaced Pages. I know that there are enough rules on every single project, but the fact is that those rules just glorify some political decisions in the past. I will wait for some time and perhaps include the grammar part of SC article. But untill then, it will be nice to see an admin leading trough the discussion and leaving some room to move, and not reverting with such explanations. Hope for a good cooperation in future. Best regards --WizardOfOz (talk) 17:30, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

, really! He's one of the principal irritants on this project too. I sympathize with you: He appears to be completely irrational.

I see where our difference lies: The difference between the meaning of the word "Serbo-Croatian" in English, and of srpskohrvatski in BCSM. Here we are using SC simply as a cover term for the language standards based on Shtokavian. That's how English speakers understand the term: Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks, Montenegrins speak a mutually intelligible language, for which this is the label. For example, the US Foreign Service Institute, which trains American diplomats and other officials, has a course in "Serbo-Croatian". That's just how the word is used in English. (It may also be used for the old official standard of Yugoslavia, but that is clearly a secondary understanding in English; since that standard is now defunct, it is rarely used with this meaning anymore except in historical writing.) SC may leave something to be desired as a name, but it's better than any of the alternates (BCMS, Central West South Slavic) and is far more WP:Common. To the average English speaker, the fact that SC has four national standards (Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, Montenegrin) is no more relevant than the fact that English has separate US, UK, Canadian, Australian, NZ etc. standards. If they want to call those separate languages, fine, but that's just terminology. Meanwhile, you wouldn't claim to be pentalingual because you understand English, Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, and Montenegrin! That would only count as bilingual. Since the grammar (incl. the phonology) is essentially identical, per WP:Fork it should be covered in one place. Since the WP:Common name in English is SC, it should be covered at SC. We do the same thing with Hindi-Urdu grammar, rather than duplicating that info at Hindi and Urdu. It's simply much easier to maintain the info when it's gathered together in one place.

This has nothing to do with any claim that there is an official SC standard, nor does it deny that there are separate BCMS standards. In fact, all articles go to pains to point out that out. In other words, use of the term "Serbo-Croatian" in English does not have the political connotations that it does in BCMS. While Bosnians, Serbs, and Croats may find it offensive, that is carry-over from their own culture and history, and is largely irrelevant to an English-speaking audience. Of course, we do try to address those sensitivities by taking care to address the issues of language standardization, but that cannot be allowed to dictate how everything else is presented.

BTW, if you can suggest an alternate name that would (1) be recognized by normal English speakers, and (2) not cause offense to nationalists, that would be fantastic, but so far we've not been able to come up with one. We could debate whether the article should be renamed Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian, but I don't think that's likely to succeed. Anyway, the debate over what we call the article is largely irrelevant to the need to merge duplicated material. kwami (talk) 18:02, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Didn´t know that you also have expirience with X, LOL, have just seen the discussion above and didn´t tought that there is deeper "contact".

About your link to the FSI, i know the problematic. One of my friends has been a assistant professor on the departement of speech on the Southern Illinois University, and she is a bosnian origin. I´ve heard about the tries to explain the different behind the most common name and the differents between those languages. She gived up and moved to NYC :). That is one of the problems of the en and de wiki; using common names no matter if they are right or wrong. As you say "better solution for article name than SC", we can´t call it others. It is a language and that is a fact, even if we dispute it. But also, the fact is that there are three other languages which have been the base for the creation of SC. We claim that SC is the one with the most common name, and it is for sure, but SC is just a result of approximation of the serbian and croatian. It has been unified 1875, long after other two had they own grammar and dictionaries. Now we are trying to move to the base, but we are just on the crosspoint. Serbian and Croatian have been unified to Serbo-Croatian and now are leaving this "federation" in two different ways. Just like the states do. The croatian is have token the german way and the most of the new solution are based on the german grammar. The Serbian is based (in his developement) on the Framkophonetical ground. Bosnian is trying to be a different and take the SC as a base, including some borrowed words form the Ottoman empire. But the fact is that SC is on his end, and the others on the start. As I sayed above, I will try to include some parts of SC article in to the bosnian, perhaps you can take a look at my english grammar then? --WizardOfOz (talk) 18:48, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

The different traditions of written grammar books is to be distinguished from the objective grammar of the language itself. (The English word "grammar" is polysemous that way.) So yes, the tradition of describing Bosnian as opposed to Croatian or Serbian grammar should be the subject of this article. But the actual grammar itself (inflections, syntax, etc.) should be consolidated in "SC grammar", since it's practically identical for the different standards. Also, dialectical variation within Bosnian may be of interest. Again, you're still thinking of SC as an official standard. On the ground, Shtokavian has always been a single dialect, regardless of what it was called, and that's what we cover in the SC grammar article, regardless of what that's called.

I'll be happy to review your English, though how long I take will depend on how prolific you are! kwami (talk) 19:04, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

But if you take a look at the article SC, the presentation shows it like a shtokavian holy mother. There is no presentation like it is a parallel of others (i know my english is horrible) or a result of the unification. That is what leads the nationalistic parts to such discussions. If someone shows up that it is one family but different children (even if one is a stepchild), it will be much easier for all :). And by the way, I will try not to keep my edit small for correction in the next days :) --WizardOfOz (talk) 19:40, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

If you have particular suggestions for how to improve it, that would be nice. I imagine that it was originally written for the Yugoslav official standard, and only later coopted as a cover term for modern BCMS. As with many articles, the editing probably wasn't very good when it was refocused. Also, SC in the general English sense isn't just Shtokavian, but all Serb and Croat dialects. We might even be able to split the article: "SC (spoken language)" vs "Standard Serbo-Croatian" or "SC (Yugoslav standard)" or some such. One could cover BCMS as a mutually-intelligible spoken language, and the other as the defunct official standard of Yugoslavia. I won't make such a decision myself, because I'm not familiar enough with the subject to anticipate the consequences, but it would be worth bringing up on the Talk page. kwami (talk) 19:48, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Genetic classification

The classification of Bosnian as deriving from Serbo-Croatian is factually incorrect and please do not reintroduce this back into content. Serbo-Croatian is a construct of the 19th century. Period. Mentions of Bosnian as a language, both by native speakers and foreigners, go back centuries before anyone even used the term Serbo-Croatian. The first known dictionary of Bosnian from 1631 is another work that references the language under that name and predates the existence of a unified Serbo-Croatian language. Furthermore, when the new Neo-Shtokavian East Herzegovinian based standard was introduced in schools and other institutions in Bosnia-Herzegovina under the Austro-Hungarian rule starting from 1878, the official name under which it was introduced was again Bosnian, it was changed to Serbo-Croatian in 1908. No argument regarding widespread use of the term "Serbo-Croatian" in the English speaking world can be a justification for historical revisionism. Bosnian deriving from Shtokavian is accurate, its relationship to the now defunct Serbo-Croatian language can be explained as a section in the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.36.233.255 (talk) 00:17, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

You are quite wrong. Bosnian is derived from the Shtokavian dialect which is the basis for standard Croatian and standard Serbian as well. "Serbo-Croatian" is the term used in English to describe all the non-Slovenian Western South Slavic dialects--the three standard languages based on Shtokavian (Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian) as well as Kajkavian, Chakavian, and Torlakian. --Taivo (talk) 03:58, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

I am not 'quite' wrong. Modern Bosnian standard is derived from A Shtokavian dialect, not THE Shtokavian dialect, as there are several Shtokavian dialects. Older Bosnian texts are in dialects other than the one used for the current standard. You may want to revise what a language, standard language and dialect is. "Serbo-Croatian" as a cover all term is by no means universally accepted in English speaking world, especially regarding language history. "Serbo-Croatian" was a politically chosen name in the 19th century which was never fully accepted even in former Yugoslavia, and does not have any meaning outside that historical context, especially in regard to language history. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.36.233.255 (talk) 08:39, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Please don't edit war, or you'll be blocked. Bosnian is the East Hercegovinian dialect of Shtokavian, just like standard Serbian and Croatian. I would hope you know that. Serbo-Croatian is the common English term for this language. It doesn't matter what the politics are, but if you have a better suggestion for a name, please give it here.

Also, if you want to argue that Serbo-Croatian is a political fiction, then we should delete this article, as the Bosnian "language" is also a political fiction: taxonomically, the official language of Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia is just Shtokavian. — kwami (talk) 09:04, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

I do not 'edit war', I corrected your dubious classification of Bosnian. If Misplaced Pages is not an open encyclopedia but a place where relevant edits are considered vandalism and users blocked, at least we have made progress in you publicly announcing that. As far as the name is oncerned, post-Yugoslav era institutions, books etc. in the English speaking world, when they want to treat the three standard languages as a group, often use the term BCS. Your edits are basically an attempt to push political viewpoints created and maintained during the times of Yugoslavia as the only valid, and do not reflect any kind of linguistic reality. "Serbo-Croatian" is not recognized as a language anywhere in the former Yugoslavia, it has no official status nor it is taught in any ex-Yu universities. The viewpoint you are trying to present basically ignores pre-19th century history, post 1990s developments and the volatile language situation in former Yugoslavia where this issue was by no means settled. I have provided my arguments regarding edits, you have not addressed any of them constructively. As for your private opinions on what fiction or non-fiction is, perhaps you could go to the German-Dutch border and convince them that the separation of those two is also linguistic fiction as both sides of the border can understand each other very well. Perhaps you should go to the Dutch language page and change it to Low Franconian?

Edit warring to correct an article is still edit warring. The problem here has been the unending complaints, principally at the Croatian article, but also here and at the Serbian article, by people who are better informed by Balkan political propaganda than by English usage. We have similar problems with Greece and Macedonia, Macedonia and Bulgaria, Serbia and Kosovo, etc. If you want to move Serbo-Croatian language to BCS, or any other name, then propose that at the SC talk page. If you have the sources to convince people that that term has replaced SC in general English usage, we will likely move that article and update the articles of the various standards to match. See WP:RS. But if you're only seen to be yet another biased editor trying to deny some unpleasant truth, you're not likely to get anywhere. — kwami (talk) 12:38, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Let us be clear - is this an article about the Bosnian language written in the English language, or is it an article about what some English speakers understand as Bosnian and/or Serbo-Croatian? If it is the latter your suggestion to start digging up ONLY English language literature would be relevant. If it is the former however, then the primary source of information are the relevant scientific publications done by native speakers. I have read many of those, and nowhere have I read that Bosnian is considered by Bosnian linguists to be a dialect of some imaginary language called "Serbo-Croatian". It is similar with Croatian sources, and, yes, with many English language sources. The same way I would not presume to tell the Dutch and Germans what is Dutch and what is German on their mutual border, I do not see how any non-native source can be more relevant than native linguistic viewpoints as well as the official status of Bosnian in various constitutions where it is named as one of official languages (Bosnian, Montenegrin, Kosovan etc.) Now, if you had problems with some of those sources you could have made a section in the article itself explaining your view with appropriate sources, but instead you choose to vandalize and censor other SOURCED views. You have demonstrated in this discussion the lack of basic understanding of what a dialect, language and standard language is - just look at your offer to "rename" Bosnian into Shtokavian. You have also not addressed any of concerns raised in my posts, instead you chose to simply disregard them as "nationalist propaganda". Now, why would I want to go to some other page to have a committee decide for me what Bosnian language is or is not? I have Bosnian linguists to help me with that. I did not come visiting "Serbo-Croatian" language page, nor am I interested in that dead language apart from where it concerns my own Bosnian, i.e. historical perspective and consequences of the now aborted linguistic unification. My time will be better spent writing an article about Bosnian and publishing it somewhere where this kind of censorship is not applied, because, quite frankly, the state of this article is disastrous - it is pure rubbish. The only practical result of this censorship of yours will be to in the end misinform the general public, who will in practice, if they visit parts where Bosnian is spoken or deal with works in Bosnian get views radically different to what you here are presenting as the objective truth. My concerns however, about your actions here, have been and will be transmitted to other interested parties. Unless you have anything else relevant to add, I propose we end this discussion.

You are of course correct in saying Bosnian is not a dialect of SC. The dialect is Eastern Herzegovinian; Bosnian is a standardized form of that dialect, just as Serbian and Croatian are. However, you are not correct in saying that Bosnian is a dead language. Serbo-Croatian is spoken by 16 million people, and all of its standards, including Bosnian, are doing quite well.

We don't normally require sources to be in English. However, the Balkans is a special case, due to the extreme amount of distortion published in the languages of the region, and the difficulty arbitrators of the multitudinous disputes have in evaluating their reliability. For example, we don't rely on Greek or Macedonian sources on whether the name of the FYROM is "Macedonia", nor on Serbian or Kosovar sources on whether Kosovo is a separate country.

As for the idea that SC is an artificial construct, that is of course to some extent true. The Western South Slavic isoglosses separate several divergent varieties subsumed under Slovenian, some with Kajkavian, and Chakavian + Shtokavian. So, if you wish to distinguish languages based on isoglosses, then Bosnian is a form of a Shtokavian, or more likely "Chaka-Shtokavian", language. However, we do not determine WP:Truth on Misplaced Pages, but report on what is said in the relevant literature. "Shtokavian language" is simply not a phrase that is often found. According to most of the literature, Western South Slavic is bifurcated into Slovenian and Serbo-Croatian; SC is then trifurcated into Kaj, Cha, and Shto (ignoring transitional Torlak); Shto comprises various dialects, including Eastern Herzegovinian; and E. Herz. has four officially standardized forms, including Bosnian. The Slovenian and Serbo-Croatian dialects have also converged to some extent due to efforts at standardization. That, therefore, is what we report. If you wish the article to say something else, it is up to you to provide WP:Reliable sources for your view. And I concur: until and unless you have encyclopedic support for your claims, there is not much point in continuing the discussion. — kwami (talk) 16:54, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Languages are not distinguished by isoglosses. Dialects and dialect groups are. Language by itself is partly a historical and political construct which cannot be judged solely on the basis of some 'objective' linguistic factors. But never mind that, I am not here to teach you. Now, if we want to be entirely precise, Eastern Herzegovinian has no officially standardized forms, let alone four. It was used as the basis for the standard languages, but all three standards (Montenegrin is still in the standardization phase) differ from it in some respects, where certain features of it were not accepted into the standards or rather 'rolled back' to conform to some imagined prestigious form of the language. Someone speaking East Herzegovinian dialect would generally be instantly identifiable as not speaking standard language. Furthermore, whether ekavian Serbian, which is the much more widely used variant of Serbian, is really based on East Herzegovinian, and not Šumadija-Vojvodina dialect, is something that can be and is disputed. As for books, I have read so many, by reputable authors, both in English and one of BCMS languages which say no such things as you are claiming. As for truth, it is of course clear to me you are not interested in the truth, but just for the record of future readers of this discussion, every claim made here by me can be readily sourced. As for your value-judgment on Balkans' scientific credibility, it is just that - a value-judgment unwelcome in any truly scientific discourse. Finally, to quote Marc L. Greenberg's (Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures, University of Kansas) view on the use of "Proto-Serbo-Croatian" in scientific papers, as a response to your attempt at historical&comparative linguistics and language classification: "For one thing, we cannot be very sure about the features, sociolinguistic situations, and alleged past boundaries of these proto-dialects, especially of such dubious constructs as "Proto-Serbocroatian," a notion that has more to do with the 19-20lh centuries than it does with the 9-10th.". I couldn't agree more. :) I agree with your last sentence. Ćao. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.36.233.255 (talk) 17:26, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

When languages are dialects in a continuum, as is the case with Slavic, then isoglosses do play a role. You see the same thing in Romance, Germanic, and Indic. As for SC being more a product of the 19th century than the 9th, I agree as well--but as you said, languages are also the product of politics and history, so the 19th century also counts. Regardless of all that, though, English speakers call the system of mutually intelligible registers and dialects spoken by Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks (as well as the non-mutually intelligible lects Croats consider to be part of the same language) "Serbo-Croatian", and that's therefore the terminology we use. — kwami (talk) 20:29, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Oh my God, here we go on and on and on again and again. This is what you get when you have nations forming in the age of the Internet. The fable "West" has sorted these things out 150 years ago, but right here in the Balkans we're only starting to deal with all these identities, nationalisms and all other tedious Bronze age stuff. And Serbs, Croats, Bosnians and now recently Montenegrins are boring the world to death (but apparently not each others) with their constant bickering about language, wars, fascists, communists and anything else you could imagine. Let's get things straight now, shall we? First of all, a nation is a political construct. More importantly, a nation is an abstract entity. There are no nations in nature, only in human minds. Nations in the modern (European) sense were mostly formed during the industrial revolution, when, as someone put it, Europeans decided to switch from religion to another common identifier, so they made up culture, and started collecting fairy tales and epic poems about medieval kings. Besides, check the wikipedia article on nation if you don't believe me. And if you don't (you, the unsigned one) then you probably believe in said fairy tales. So, nations have not existed since the dawn of time, and so haven't the languages. It is of course true that Serbo-Croatian was created in the 19th century based on the east Herzegovinian štokavian dialect, and South Slavic idioms were much more differentiated before that. But, you see, this last fact is irrelevant. It is irrelevant because we Serbo-Croatian speakers do not speak in pre-19th century idioms. We speak that same language that was created by Vuk, Gaj and others in an attempt to create a South Slavic nation. In this last bit they of course failed miserably, but their language (again a political and ideological construct) succeeded in becoming the literary language. And we've been over this a zillion times. It is not a matter if anyone likes it or not, it is not a good thing and it is not a bad thing, but simply: Croats, Serbs, Bosniaks and Montenegrin speak the same language. This is a simple linguistic fact and it is the opinion of pretty much every non-native linguist specialized in the matter, and for the sake of terminological uniformity it is called Serbo-Croatian in English, plain and simple. Now, stop boring people from civilized countries with Balkan nationalist mythology, they are simply not interested. And no one is trying to force your very special language (whichever it maybe, I really don't care), spoken since the stone age and so very different from that neighbouring one into anything. Call it as you like, speak it as you like, but that will not change the fact that it is indeed the same as that neighbouring language. Jasno?Zhelja (talk) 02:29, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Serbo-Croatian? Smells like a lower-end political agenda

Dear Taivo,

like you I am also an academic, in the natural sciences, and I hate to see Misplaced Pages abused as a vent for skewed nationalist politics. It is no surprise either that certain Serbs and some Croat currents oppose the separate identity and language of the Bosnian/Bosniak people; beliefs which inter alia culminated in the Srebrenica genocide in Bosnia 17 years ago. Regarding the issue of language, it is important to underline that Serbo-Croatian was constructed as a political umbrella term within former Yugoslavia strongly favoring Serb and Croat interests while leaving out the Bosniaks politically discriminated, also withdrawing their choice for "Bosnians/Bosniaks" in population censuses while instead introducing "Muslims by nationality". The bottom line is, historically, Serbo-Croatian is not a proper language or even a valid term any longer, however further (incorrect) use is fiercely pushed by Serb and Croat individuals as to undermine the actual validity of the Bosnian language, which is officially recognized as its own language and not as part of another. It is therefore highly incorrect and erroneous to maintain that "Bosnian is a form of Serbo-Croatian" as currently attempted by a number of editors. It may however be acceptable to write that Bosnian language is sometimes still refereed to as Serbo-Croatian, but only if stressing that this is unofficial, defunct and incorrect. I appreciate and hope for your help. Thank you. MarcRey (talk) 18:43, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Interestingly I just discovered that you are one of the individuals promoting the misleading mentioning of Serbo-Croatian in the Bosnian language article. This leaves me very disappointed given your supposed academic background. You are fundamentally mistaken that Serbo-Croatian is used in the English language as a name given to B/S/C. Nowhere is this considered accurate any longer (for which I can provide you with a heap of sources). Obviously the factual description of a language in a Misplaced Pages article should reflect the official conditions as opposed to unofficial contextual use. I also urge you to not underestimate my editorial capacity on Misplaced Pages, despite my lack of user account I have a previous editing history on Misplaced Pages stretching 7 years. And this battle should not be too difficult considering you are contesting what is pretty much an axiom by now. MarcRey (talk) 18:43, 12 January 2012 (UTC) 22:53, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Serbo-Croatian is a term given to a language previously and not a language itself. A crucial difference which is trying to be omitted currently. The POV-tag is of necessity. MarcRey (talk) 18:43, 12 January 2012 (UTC) 23:12, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

I just recently noticed by the courtesy of another user that I had been using an incorrect POV-tag for the dispute at hand. Interestingly, no other user in the discussion felt obliged to underline that the faulty POV-tag was criticizing the article's title. MarcRey (talk) 11:58, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

I love the source some of you have given for the Serbo-Croatian classification of Bosnian. Basically, school work. I am appalled by the ignorance and regressiveness you have chosen to impose on the language standards in former Yugoslavia, all that on the cost of Misplaced Pages's good name. I do hope you have some reason in you but I better prepare myself for a prolonged process. Obviously, a fraction of Serb (possibly Croat) editors have had the comfort of editing undisturbed for a long while. MarcRey (talk) 18:43, 12 January 2012 (UTC) 23:49, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

We've been over this before at the Serbian and Croatian pages. It's really simply repetitive nationalistic propaganda that somehow Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian are not mutually intelligible. Indeed, all three standard "languages" are not only completely mutually intelligible varieties of a single language, but they're even based on the same dialect of the one language. It's just religio-nationalistic political propaganda to say they are somehow different "languages". We label them three "languages" because the nationalists insist upon it for political reasons, but linguistic science only stretches so far and will not admit any attempt to claim that these are not mutually intelligible varieties of the single non-Slovenian West South Slavic language that is most commonly called "Serbo-Croatian" in the linguistic literature. Grow up and get over it. You are acting like a bunch of little children trying to insist that "My language is better than your language." It's even worse than that--you're a set of triplets trying to claim that your other siblings are adopted or that you have different fathers or that you were born at different times. Your "languages" aren't separate languages at all, but varieties of a single language and you can all very easily understand one another. If we put you in a room and turned off the lights you couldn't tell who was Croatian and who was Serbian and who was Bosnian. Those are just the linguistic facts. --Taivo (talk) 04:29, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Once more, I am not under any circumstances contesting the mutual intelligibility of Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian; in fact three varieties of the same basic language. Hence, I would appreciate if you could pay greater attention to the proceeding discussion or stay out of it. Absurdly enough, you are constantly referring to one phenomenon we all despise (religious nationalistic propaganda) but at the same time strongly adhere and insist on the invalid usage of a linguistic umbrella term sprung out of religious nationalistic propaganda intended to position, in first-hand, Serbs, and secondly Croats, as the dominant class in undemocratic communist Yugoslavia, in turn undermining the national and human rights of Bosniaks/Bosnians, a medieval European nation. According to some of the responses I've received during the course of this discussion, these are supposedly my own "personal opinions" of none concern to anyone else. Then I choose to ask you these three simple questions: 1) Was Yugoslavia a democratic state catering the opinions of all peoples? 2) Ethnicity by religion as established by Serb and Croat leaders to replace the Bosniak/Bosnian ethnicity appears to be highly inflamed by political bias and denial of national rights, don't you think? 3) If such a nation, as Yugoslavia was, selects to introduce a language called Serbo-Croatian in order to "coincidentally" cater the interests of the two dominant groups (Serbs and Croats), while excluding the Bosnian/Bosniak nation from any consideration, and in addition with the latter being massacred and raped a few decades later under the banners of "Death to the Turks!" and "Return to your ancestor Serbs and Croats", do you not evidently recognize a certain nasty religious nationalistic propaganda of which "Serbo-Croatian" was a child? The solution is No, Yes, and Yes. Importantly, none of these are to be considered opinions but rather established facts, among other recognized by a west-sanctioned agreement signed by Croatian president Franjo Tudjman, Serb president Slobodan Milosevic, and Bosnian president Alija Izetbegovic. Thus the renouncement of Serbo-Croatian as a proposed umbrella term for three varieties of one and the same language was not imposed because of politics, but rather introduced by politics in the first place, and one of the reasons war broke loose. To summarize, it would be insane to claim that B/S/C is not the same language in origin, people understand each other perfectly well, but the classification of these varieties as Serbo-Croatian is anything but sound today. Neither are your constant claims of Serbo-Croatian "as the only suitable term" and "as the most frequently used term" accurate. In reality, Serbo-Croatian is never used in official context without strongly underlining its defunct status and continued use as a "pseudo-language", and also colloquially you shall see that Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian are separately used on a vastly more frequent level than Serbo-Croatian, however often underlining that they are mutually intelligible and previously classified as Serbo-Croatian. Even a simple search on Goggle yields more hits on Serbian language, Croatian language, Bosnian language, and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian language than what it does on "Serbo-Croatian language": Serbian language, Croatian language, Bosnian language, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian language,Serbo-Croat language

1. Serbian language: 301 000 000 hits

2. Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian language: 136 000 000 hits

3. Bosnian language: 75 400 000 hits

4. Croatian language: 34 700 000 hits

5. Serbo-Croatian language: 28 900 000 hits

Now I would please like you to provide us with actual sources on the common usage of Serbo-Croatian instead of the milk-additive language described below. And to finally wrap up things, excuse me for saying that I somehow fail to see you as an expert on Biological anthropology Taivo, with regard to your last lines. Personally, I can spot and differentiate between Bosniaks, and Croats and Serbs, with extreme accuracy as there are indeed physical characteristics unique to each. This has also been shown recently by haplotype analysis, albeit preliminary, but further studies are sure to shed more light on this matter. Until objective wide-scale studies have been undertaken, neither you or I can comment on the supposed kinship between Bosniaks, and Croats and Serbs. A new POV-tag has been inserted. MarcRey (talk) 13:11, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I like the story of the Serbian linguist talking with a visiting scholar for two hours before realizing he was Croatian. And there really is no substitute for "Serbo-Croat(ian)" in English. People simply don't go around saying "Oh, I have a friend who knows BSC!". Others would think it's a milk additive or something. — kwami (talk) 07:06, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

MarcRey, you clearly failed in Understanding Context 101. My last line had nothing whatsoever to do with biology and I never made any such claim. I was talking about the mutual intelligibility of the languages and turning off the lights simply removed all visual (biology, costume, hair style, etc.) input and focused entirely on auditory input. Simple Google searches are completely substandard in Misplaced Pages usage--there are too many uncontrolled variables. And the issue isn't the existence of Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian (and now apparently Montenegrin) as labels for national varieties of Serbo-Croatian. Even you admit these aren't languages but mutually intelligible varieties of a single language. The question is what to call that single language that they are all varieties of. The most common label in English is Serbo-Croatian and your characterization of respected linguistic sources that use that label as "school work" is simply childish itself. There is a single language that comprises all the non-Slovenian speech forms of West South Slavic. I looked at your Google search and you are wrong in your number about "Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian". If you actually look at the results, you will see that virtually none of them have the literal phrase "Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian" with slashes. They most commonly have a list of varieties of Serbo-Croatian: "Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian". Google simply interpreted the "/" marks as commas. So your argument is false to begin with. Indeed, if you look at the third result, the first one that isn't Misplaced Pages, it has "the splintering of Serbo-Croatian", referring to the common language name for all three of the named nationalist varieties. The third source that you use to show "Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian" not only fails to show that form, but shows that the common name is, indeed, "Serbo-Croatian". Your argument, therefore is false and you have no evidence. --Taivo (talk) 17:02, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Other Google results on your results list that are actually counterarguments to your assertation that they show "Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian":

• "Serbian (српски), Croatian (Hrvatski) and Bosnian (Bosanski) are different national literary and official registers of the Serbo-Croatian language" (fifth result)
• Same as third result (sixth result is the workbook to accompany the third result)
• "(Serbo-Croatian, Deprecated but still in use)" (eighth result, but even though Serbo-Croatian is "deprecated" notice that the web address for the information is still ...serbocroatian.html...)
• same as sixth result (eighth result)

So, you see, the first page of your Google Search showed ten results, but only one or two of them actually have "Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian" with slashes and not commas and several of them still point to "Serbo-Croatian" as being the most common name. Indeed, two of the results were Misplaced Pages and you can't use Misplaced Pages as evidence for Misplaced Pages. You simply have no firm evidence for "Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian" and no solid argument that "Serbo-Croatian" is not the most commonly used term. --Taivo (talk) 17:16, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

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