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Revision as of 07:28, 27 March 2004 by Nikola Smolenski (talk | contribs)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)The Bosnian language (Bosanski jezik) is one of the standard written versions of the Central South Slavic diasystem, which is the commonly accepted name among Bosniak and Croat linguists, although, due to various reasons, the designation Serbo-Croatian still predominates in the majority of countries outside of former Yugoslavia.
| Bosnian (bosanski) | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Bosnia and Herzegovina |
| Region: | -- |
| Total speakers: | ? |
| Ranking: | Not in top 100 |
| Genetic classification: |
Indo-European |
| Official status | |
| Official language of: | Bosnia and Herzegovina |
| Regulated by: | ? |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | bs |
| ISO 639-2 | bos |
| SIL | SRC |
The language is used primarily by Bosniaks in Bosnia and Herzegovina and elsewhere. The name for the language is a controversial issue. Croats and Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina call their language Croatian and Serbian. The constitution of Republika Srpska, where the language is also official, refers to the language as Bosniak language (Бошњачки језик/Bošnjački jezik), which is prescribed name of the language in Serbian language.
The language is based on the Western variant of the Shtokavian dialect and uses the Latin alphabet.
History
The irony of the Bosnian language is that its speakers, Bosnian Muslims or Bosniaks, are, on the level of colloquial idiom, more linguistically homogenous than either Serbs or Croats, but have failed, due to historical reasons, to standardize their language in the crucial 19th century. The first Bosnian dictionary, a rhymed Bosnian-Turkish glossary authored by Muhamed Hevaji Uskufi , was composed in 1631.
Uskufi's Bosnian glossary
Muhamed Hevai Uskufi: Potur Šahidi, Bosniak-Turkish glossary, 1631
But, unlike Croatian dictionaries, which were written and published regularly, Uskufi’s work remained an isolated foray. At least two factors were decisive:
- The Bosnian Muslim elite wrote almost exclusively in Oriental (Arabic, Turkish, Persian) languages. Vernacular literature, written in modified Arabic script, was thin and sparse.
- The Bosniaks' national emancipation lagged behind that of the Serbs and Croats, and since denominational, rather than cultural or linguistic issues played the pivotal role, a Bosnian language project didn't arouse much interest or support.
Musa Ćazim Ćatić: Poems, 1914
Prescriptions for the language of Bosnian Muslims in the 19th and 20th centuries were written outside of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Probably the most authentic Bosniak writers (the so-called "Bosnian-Muslim revival" at the turn of the century) wrote in an idiom that is closer to the Croatian form than to the Serbian one (western Štokavian-Ijekavian idiom, Latin script), but possessed unmistakeably recognizable Bosniak traits, primarily lexical ones. The main authors of "Bosnian Muslim renaissance" were polymath, politician and poet Safvet-beg Bašagić, "poete maudit" Musa Ćazim Ćatić and storyteller Edhem Mulabdić.
In the days of Communist Yugoslavia the lexis was Serbianized but the Latin script became dominant; the official name was Serbo-Croatian. After the collapse of Yugoslavia Bosniaks remained the sole inheritors of the Serbo-Croatian hybrid in Bosnian variant and are trying to reshape it, under the new name of Bosnian, into a distinct national/ethnic standard language.
The main Croat and Serb objections are that the language should be called "Bosniak" or "Bosniac" because Bosniaks, or former Bosnian Muslims, consider it their standard language — and the name "Bosnian" is deceptive since it creates the impression that it is the official language of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is not true (Bosnia and Herzegovina has three official languages: Bosnian, Croat and Serbian).
On a more formal level, the Bosnian language is beginning to take a distinctive shape: lexically, Islamic-Oriental loan words are becoming more frequent; phonetically and phonologically, the phoneme "h" is reinstated in many words as a distinct feature of Bosniak speech and language tradition; also, there are some changes in morphology and orthography that reflect Bosniak pre-WWI literary tradition, mainly that of the Bosniak rebirth at the beginning of the 20th century.