WHAT'S BOSNIAN FOR A LANGUAGE?

            Concerning the article of Mr Robert Bubalo in the Vecernji list (nr. 14010, 2002-10-28, p. 10) published under the title  Bosnian intellectuals wish to  sweep the Croatian language , I would like, as a linguist, to clear up some linguistic (but also confused!) notions.

            The question: Does a Bosnian language exist at all?  depends on the definition of the notion  language itself. Whereas the notions like  dialect ,  speech ,  local speech are linguistically rather well-defined, the definition of the notion  language makes problem, because it also includes ideological, respectively cultural, sociologic and national parameters.

            If we adopt the very large linguistic definition of the language as a  group of linguistic proceedings used by a social community (Jodogne), it's clear that we cannot deny to Bosnians the right to call their language Bosnian. But if we now look which are these  linguistic proceedings which would distinguish the Bosnian language from  related ,  neighbour languages, the Croatian and the Serbian, the question arises: What's finally Bosnian for a language?

            From a strictly historical standpoint, the claim to the peculiarity of a Bosnian language (and nationality!) isn't a novelty. I had already the occasion to emphasize it several times, the endeavour to assert the Bosnian identity (linguistic and national!) appeared consciously at the end of the 19^th century, favoured simultaneously on Muslim side (Mehmed-bey Kapetanovic-Ljubusak) and on the Catholic one  namely Croatian  (Don Antun Knezevic), but not on Orthodox-Serbian side, which is worth knowing, because this occurrence is a kind of repetition of history. Nowadays too, we have in Bosnia and Herzegovina the same splitting: a Croatian-Bosnian Federation on the one side, and a Serbian Republic on the other; which means that the ideological and political options didn't really change in Bosnia in the last hundred years.

            The awakening of the Bosnian national consciousness in the 19^th century was welcome to the Austro-Hungarian policy, which absolutely tried to hinder, on one side, the Croatian efforts to annex Bosnia and Herzegovina as  the historical fief of the Croatian-Hungarian crown , and, on the other side, the Serbian demographic pretensions. In such a context, the Bosnian-Herzegovinian territorial Government financed the publishing in 1890 of the  Grammar of the Bosnian language for the middle school written by Franjo Vuletic, and the official appellation of the language used in Bosnia and Herzegovina was until 1907: Bosnian. The above-mentioned Bosnian nationalist Mehmed-bey Kapetanovic published between 1891 and 1910 his journal  Bosnjak (The Bosnian) with the catchword:  From Trebinje (= symbolizing South) to the Door of Brod (= symbolizing North), there were neither Serbs nor Croats!

            But how does this problem look from the linguistic standpoint?

            Just like in Croatia where, since the independence in the early nineties of the last century, one tries to determine the identity of the Croatian language exclusively in opposition to the Serbian, one now tries in the same way to define the Bosnian language in opposition with the Croatian on one side, and the Serbian, on the other. But psychologically, it can't be otherwise, because  let us use a psychoanalytical analogy  just like a boy in his period of maturation poses his own identity by op-posing himself to the father, in the same way, a national identity can be asserted only by opposition to similar identities.

            The most manifest  respectively the most emphasized  characteristic of the  new Bosnian language, which brings it near to the Croatian, is the ijekavian pronunciation (the old Slavonic diphthong jat is pronounced ije), while the (French) ending  isati for the foreign verbs (in opposition to the German  irati in the Croatian) brings it near to the Serbian, just like the syntactic construction da+infinitive for the declarative sentences instead of the objective infinitive in Croatian.

            However, although the ijekavian pronunciation is an essential characteristic of the Croatian standard language, it is not an exclusive characteristic of the Croatian: the Montenegrians also use it, as well as the Croatian and Bosnian Serbs, the so-called Precani,  Overers (= Serbs living over the border, in Austro-Hungarian Empire), unless until the attempt of their systematic  ekavisation (the jat is pronounced e) through the school instruction in the first and the second Yugoslavia. And when the infinitive for the declarative sentences, which seems to be nowadays a kind of  symbol of the Croatian language, is rather uncommon in Montenegro and Bosnia, the ending -isati for the verbs of foreign origin was used on the other hand by many Croatian writers at the end of the 19^th and the early 20^th century, as by Antun Gustav Matos for instance, who certainly cannot be considered as a  bad Croat!

            As for the turcisms, which are considered presently as a kind of peculiar ( Moslem !) characteristic of the Bosnian language, they are not a specificity of the Bosnian language; the Serbs and the Croats use them altogether. Let me only give you a personal example. I remember in my childhood my Grand-Mother, who was  Sokica , native from Vrbanja near Zupanja in Syrmia (Eastern Croatia), currently using such words as: pendzer (prozor = window), sokak (ulica = street), peskir (rucnik = towel), cirjak (svijecnjak = candlestick), etc.

            As one knows, the ijekavians are (were!) in majority, and therefore is it not astonishing  that the  great Serbian autodidact linguist, Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic, decided to impose to his compatriots the Herzegovinian ijekavian dialect as Serbian standard language in the first half of the 19^th century. Neither is it astonishing at all that, two centuries earlier, the Croatian  Propagandists (members of the Roman missionary institution  Congregatio de propaganda fide ), with the first Croatian grammarian Bartol Kasic (1575-1650) at the top, made choice of the same dialect as Croatian standard language, and for the same majority reason.

But there is, however, a big difference between these two identical choices as for what the conceiving itself of a standard language should be: opposed to the intolerance and exclusiveness (we would say nowadays:  integrism !) of Karadzic's dialectal purism, the ancient Croatian linguists, and also their heirs, the romantic  Illyrians in the 19^th century, conceived the Croatian standard language rather as a synthesis of all Croatian dialects (hence including the cakavian and the kajkavian with their written and literary inheritance), and as the basis of that standard language (one used to say at that time: literary language), they rather saw the stokavian speech of the Ragusan literature, than the Herzegovinian popular dialect (Mazuranic, Vraz, Demeter, among others). Such a Croatian standard language disposed of a living literary tradition, which the Serbian language did not, because the Serbian literary inheritance was written during passed centuries before Karadzic's  reform in the  Slavonic-Serbian , an ancient liturgical  dead language; dead, because the people in Serbia didn't use it. This fact could explain why the above-mentioned Karadzic found that it would be a very pretty idea to  appropriate the Ragusan literature and simply proclaim it Serbian!

            In conclusion, from a strictly linguistic standpoint, I don't hesitate to affirm that there is only one language in this area, the Croatian language, which Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic and his Serbian (but, unfortunately, also some Croatian!) followers tried to steal, to seize! The fact that some people today call this Croatian language Serbian, and other people Bosnian or Montenegrian, that's their business, and it doesn't bother me at all! I just agree with the clever statement of the great Croatian philosopher and politician Ante Starcevic:  It is therefore necessary that the writers, who consider themselves as Serbians or something else, also try to write in the civilized Croatian language, may they call the language self even Coptic! (Narodne Novine, nr. 189, 1852-08-18).

Prof. Antun Pinterovic

Distributed by CroatianWorld.net. This message is intended for Croatian Associations/Institutions and their Friends in Croatia and in the World. The opinions/articles expressed on this list do not reflect personal opinions of the moderator. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, please delete or destroy all copies of this communication and please, let us know!