# All Slavic languages: Standard vs. spoken language



## MathiasSWE

Hey everybody!

I am curious to know about the gap between the standard and spoken languages in the Slavic-speaking world. From what I understand, the gap between standard and spoken Russian is very small and the dialects are very homogeneous, whereas when it comes to Slovenian the dialects can be very far from each other and the standard language is very much a constructed one. 

What is it like for the other Slavic languages?

Thank you!


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## TriglavNationalPark

As you correctly pointed out, there is a huge disparity between standard Slovenian and spoken Slovenian. In fact, someone using standard Slovenian in a casual context runs the risk of appearing affected or unnatural.

Perhaps the most common characteristic of most forms of spoken Slovenian is vowel dropping. There are also dialects that have no neuter (*Zapri tist(i) oken* (m.) instead of *Zapri tisto okno* (n.) = "Close that window"), dialects that have no dual, some obscure dialects that use masculine forms for females, dialects that are transitional to Croatian (at least one with a Shtokavian-like future tense!), dialects that are transitional to West Slavic (using *vy-* instead of *iz-*, for instance), dialects that still use the imperfect and aorist, dialects that pronounce the letter "g" as "h" (*hora* instead of *gora* = mountain), dialects that transform all "l"s, not just the word-final ones, into "u" or "w"s (*pršwa* instead of *prišla* = "she came"), and so on.

This huge dialectical diversity renders many fringe dialects virtually unintelligible to speakers from other parts of the country.

BTW, even the word *jaz* = "I" isn't common in many forms of spoken Slovenian. In Ljubljana, for instance, most people say *jest*; in my grandmother's dialect, they use *ja*, and so on.


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## trance0

TriglavNationalPark said:


> ... dialects that *still use* the *imperfect* and *aorist*...



As far as I know, Resian is the only dialect that still shows remnants of *aorist*. As for imperfect, I am unaware of any Slovene dialect that still uses it.

I agree with the rest of your post.


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## TriglavNationalPark

trance0 said:


> As far as I know, Resian is the only dialect that still shows remnants of *aorist*. As for imperfect, I am unaware of any Slovene dialect that still uses it.


 
I was going by what I read in a few sources such as Comrie and Corbett's _The Slavonic Languages_: "Within this area are the highly idiosyncratic dialects of the Rezija valley, [...] where the aorist and imperfect tense forms have, in one form or another, survived." Of course, it's entirely possible that these sources are out-of-date or just wrong; I'm certainly not a linguist, so any corrections are more than welcome.


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## trance0

Well, basically it goes like this: first the imperfect was ousted by the orginally compound_ perfect _and afterwards the aorist suffered a similar fate. So, aorist was in use longer than imperfect, but still disappeared from the language long ago. If we compare the situation with Serbocroatian, we see a similar trend, the imperfect is practically dead while aorist is still in use in many of the dialects.


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## sokol

I agree with trance0: it is aorist that is preserved there, in the dialect of Resia/Rezija, and that only with a few verbs.

As far as BCMS is concerned we've recently got this discussion about aorist and imperfect running where, obviously, some native speakers have come to the conclusion that we still haven't established well how common imperfect is, but that at least it _is _common, in some regions and/or dialects and/or age groups.



MathiasSWE said:


> From what I understand, the gap between standard and spoken Russian is very small and the dialects are very homogeneous (...)


That's right, but there is sociolinguistic variation: from educated разговорня речь to просторечие to мать there exists a broad range of linguistic varieties. But someone with real knowledge of Russian and its varieties should comment on that; I certainly can't do that.


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## Tagarela

Ahoj,

As for Czech language, it has been discussed here 

And which is the Slavonic language that shows less differences between standard and spoken varieties? 

Na shledanou.:


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## trance0

sokol said:


> As far as BCMS is concerned we've recently got this discussion about aorist and imperfect running where, obviously, some native speakers have come to the conclusion that we still haven't established well how common imperfect is, but that at least it _is _common, in some regions and/or dialects and/or age groups.



It appears that imperfect in BCS is no longer used by the great  majority of the population(aside from some mostly older people in certain areas) since most cannot distinguish this tense from aorist. In Croatia, even aorist is pretty much dead. It seems the synthetic past tenses in BCS are on their way of dying out, just as it has already happened in Slovene.


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## Anatoli

Ukrainian has a variety of dialects too. There are discussions now as to what makes the standard Ukrainian, as many words, which were considered Ukrainian before are now considered Russianisms. For obvious reasons, Eastern and Southern dialects are closer to Russian, Western dialects are closer to Polish and Slovakian.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_dialects

Belarusian has, apart from the standard language, two main dialects. The subdialects may have some Ukrainian, Polish influence but all of them are heavily influenced by Russian to the point that people are not able to separate what's Russian, what's Belarusian.


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## iobyo

MathiasSWE said:


> Hey everybody!
> 
> I am curious to know about the gap between the standard and spoken languages in the Slavic-speaking world. From what I understand, the gap between standard and spoken Russian is very small and the dialects are very homogeneous, whereas when it comes to Slovenian the dialects can be very far from each other and the standard language is very much a constructed one.
> 
> What is it like for the other Slavic languages?
> 
> Thank you!



The differences between Standard/Literary and Spoken Macedonian are mostly phonological. Omitting intervocalic consonants is quite common (_прави → праи; негови → негои; повеќе → поеќе_).

There are many dialect groups, individual dialects and sub-sub-sub-dialects (two villages speaking the same dialect may use different words particular to their village).

As far as comprehension is concerned, someone speaking their own dialect will usually be understood by speakers of another dialect. In fact, we enjoy making fun of each other by imitating each others' dialects. This is due to a leveling process (coming closer to the written standard) and speakers of different dialects living in the same community. The capital city is a good example of this, where few people can say their great grandparents are from that city.


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## Panda Nocta

sokol:

>That's right, but there is sociolinguistic variation: from educated разговорня речь to просторечие to мать there exists a broad range of linguistic varieties

From my POV, the differences are mostly lexical. If there're any regional grammatical pecularities, they are not considered acceptable in a wide context. It is sufficient to learn just standard Russian to sound naturally in any Russian-speaking country.

In Belarus there's only one spoken language (though, indeed, philologists will tend to look for "dialects" to report), but there are two widespread written forms: the official and the so-called tarashkevica. The choice between a Polish-originated and a Russian-originated equivalents of a word is often a matter of political views rather than  "dialects".


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## Athaulf

MathiasSWE said:


> I am curious to know about the gap between the standard and spoken languages in the Slavic-speaking world. From what I understand, the gap between standard and spoken Russian is very small and the dialects are very homogeneous, whereas when it comes to Slovenian the dialects can be very far from each other and the standard language is very much a constructed one.
> 
> What is it like for the other Slavic languages?



In Croatia, wherever you go, you'll likely find three different levels of language:

(1) Standard Croatian, used almost only for formal purposes. (These days, almost nobody uses it in its pure official standard form, but more on that below.) 

(2) The authentic old local dialect, which will often be vastly different from the standard language, sometimes to the point of being hardly comprehensible for non-locals. Nowadays the dialects are likely to be spoken in their pure form only by old and uneducated rural people.

(3) The modern local vernacular, which is a mixture of the standard language, elements of the old local dialect, and various modern non-standard innovations in pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar. These modern local vernaculars are relatively close to the standard and mutually comprehensible without much trouble. 


Regarding the standard language, the issues of language standardization in Croatia are in a state of chaos. Almost nobody follows the official standard strictly in any context any more, and elements of local vernaculars are increasingly seen and heard even in serious media and other very formal contexts (which would be considered as totally inappropriate a generation ago). This is especially noticeable in pronunciation -- in Croatian cities, if you follow the official accentuation rules strictly, you're more likely to come off as an unassimilated rural newcomer than an educated, "properly" speaking person. Also, the inability to grasp certain details of the standard language that are absent from most local dialects (e.g. differentiating between the phonemes _ć_ and _č_) has lost most of its former stigma.

Nevertheless, there are still many elements of local vernaculars that would be totally out of place in any sort of formal speech, let alone writing. For example, there is a huge number of words that have different vernacular and standard forms, for which the standard form would sound strange and stilted if used in everyday life, but the vernacular word (often a German, Turkish, or Italian borrowing) would sound terribly inappropriate in a formal context. The situation is similar with numerous differences in morphology and syntax.


 The situation in other ex-Yugoslav countries formerly covered by the Serbo-Croatian standard (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, and Montenegro) is more or less analogous.


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## Duya

Athaulf said:


> The situation in other ex-Yugoslav countries formerly covered by the Serbo-Croatian standard (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, and Montenegro) is more or less analogous.



But, paradoxically, the gap between standard and spoken language (and the ensuing chaos you're talking about) seems to be the widest in Croatia, at least to my observation. I said "paradoxically" because Croats are generally most sensitive (compared to Serbs and Bosniaks) to the issues of language, and use of language as an element of national culture. Yet they cannot agree what is the correct accentuation system, and what is correct spelling of many words.

However, it's not only politics. Croatia has the misfortune that the native dialect of its capital and principal cultural centre -- Zagreb -- is very distant from the standard (which is mostly based on Herzegovina and Dubrovnik dialect). Also, Croatian dialects are the most diverse -- it's a patchwork of Shtokavian, Chakavian and Kajkavian, and ijekavian and ikavian on top of that. German influence has been stronger on north, and Italian on south. And so on. 

On the contrary, the primary Serbian dialect (ekavian Vojvodina-Šumadija dialect) is also the dialect of Belgrade, and the dialect of elite. It's also fairly close in accentuation and other features with the (arguably "more standard", Vuk Karadžić's) ijekavian Eastern Herzegovinian, spoken by Western Serbs (and Southeastern Croats). The third principal accent group (Southern Serbia/Torlak) is fairly suppressed and considered uneducated. 

So, the situation in Serbia is somewhat better, and, in Bosnia, while the language politics is entirely crazy, at least the dialects are so homogenous that everyone mostly intuitively knows what is correct and what not. Not that literacy level is too good anywhere.

Yes, I'm aware that I made many generalizations (which are inevitable in a short post), and take the above just as an overview, from somewhat personal perspective.


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## WannaBeMe

Serbian written language is not far from the spoken language but there are some differences. There is two variaties of pronauciation of jat, eastern -*e*- vs. southern and west -(i)*je*-. ml*e*ko vs. ml*ije*ko; d*e*vojka-d*je*vojka. In west-southern dialects *d*,*t*- can be melt with "jat" thus "*je*" like *đe*vojka. Common for all dialects is the *droping *of* "h*" in every position in the word  *h*ljeb vs. ljeb or "h">>>"v" if between vokals (u*h*o>>>u*v*o) while Bosniaks tend to insert h even where it not belongs (hlopta vs. lopta - ball). One character of Bosniak dialects is to drop vokals "*i*" and "*u*" if they are not stressed, but not completely, you can still hear it like half-vocals. (Nemoj pricat*i* vs. nemoj pricat´; u kući vs. uk´ći ; Bosna i Hercegovina vs. Bosna i Hercegov`na etc.
On the other hand in East-Southern Serbian to the Macedonian or Bulgarian border there is some mixture of Serbian with these two languages, those are Torlaks dialects.


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## Mišo

The contrast between standard and spoken Slovak is extensive, because of fairly motley dialects, that affect informal daily speeches.

All dialect groups differ mostly in phonology, vocabulary and inflection. Syntactic differences are minor. Not all dialects are fully mutually intelligible. In my opinion, the most racy dialects are the northeast ones and záhoráčtina on the other side, the most archetypal dialect is in Horehronie.

The dialects are fragmented geographically, separated by numerous mountain ranges. The first three groups already existed in the 10th century. All of them are spoken by the Slovaks outside Slovakia (USA, Canada, Croatian Slavonia, Bulgaria and elsewhere) and Central and Western dialects form the basis of the Lowland dialects.

The western dialects contain features common with the Moravian dialects, the southern central dialects contain a few features common with "latin" south Slavic languages, the eastern dialects a few features common with Polish, Rusyn and Ukrainian. Lowland dialects share some words and areal features with the languages surrounding them (Serbian, Hungarian and Romanian).

Still better, morphological principle of standard Slovak spelling consolidate all dialects. Forms derived from the same stem are written in the same way even if they are pronounced howsoever differently.

Main differences between Slovak dialects

*Eastern dialects* (in Spiš, Šariš, Zemplín and Abov) use not long syllables (that makes their speech comparatively quickly), speak notably soft _de te ne le di ti ni li_ (manytimes _ď ť_ assimilated to _dz c_) and have penultimate stress (that all at times makes them difficult for westerners to understand).

*Central dialects* (in Liptov, Orava, Turiec, Tekov, Hont, Novohrad, Gemer and the historic Zvolen county) use furthest long syllables, speak soft _de te ne_ (somewhere also _le_) _di ti ni_ (somewhere also _li_) and as it were they have dynamic stress (some of the north-central dialects have a weaker stress on the first syllable, which becomes stronger and "moves" to the penultimate in certain cases). Liptov dialect taken the basis of the present-day standard Slovak.

*Western dialects* (in Kysuce, Trenčín, Trnava, Nitra, Záhorie) use long syllables, norther speak soft _de te ne_ (somewhere _ď ť_ assimilated to _dz c_), _di ti ni_ (in Kysuce also _le li_), souther speak hard _de te ne le li_ (in wide region of Trnava also _di ti ni_) and have first syllable stress (somewhere first syllable is enlogated). Trnava dialect supported standard Slovak of the 18th and first half of the 19th century. Just _ľ_ is current pronounced by many speakers, particularly from western Slovakia, as a non-palatalized _l_, esp. in _li_ and _le_ where the caron is not written. The palatalized pronunciation of _li_ and _le_ as palatalized has become orthodox middle and eastern dialect feature, or as a sign of hypercorrectness and of the literary separation from the Czech.

Lowland dialects (outside Slovakia in the Pannonian Plain in Serbian Vojvodina, in southeastern Hungary, western Romania, and the Croatian part of Syrmia) are often not considered a separate group, but a subgroup of Central and Western Slovak dialects, but it is currently undergoing changes due to contact with surrounding languages (Serbian, Romanian and Hungarian) and long-time geographical separation from Slovakia.

Dialects in Slovakia here: http://www.pitt.edu/~armata/dialects.htm


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## TriglavNationalPark

Here's an old but interesting blog post and discussion about Slovenian dialects:

http://www.carniola.org/theglory/2005/12/diabolical_dial.htm


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## Christo Tamarin

MathiasSWE said:


> Hey everybody!
> 
> I am curious to know about the gap between the standard and spoken languages in the Slavic-speaking world. From what I understand, the gap between standard and spoken Russian is very small and the dialects are very homogeneous, whereas when it comes to Slovenian the dialects can be very far from each other and the standard language is very much a constructed one.
> 
> What is it like for the other Slavic languages?
> 
> Thank you!


Hi Mathias,

Here are some considerations on this topic.

{First}, mountains (rough terrain) is favourable to lingustic variety while smooth terrain is favourable to lingustic uniformity. Examples: the linguistic variety in Caucasus, the variety of dialects (romance, German, Slavonic) in the Alpes, etc.

{Second}, the long development of a language on that territory is favourable to the variety of dialects. For instance, the variety of dialects of English or Spanish is greater in Europe than in America.

Thus, we have already two explanations of the differences you noticed between Russian and Slovenian. {First}, unlike Russia/Moskovia, Slovenia is an alpic country. {Second}, Slovenia is assumed to be part of the Patria Linguae Slavonicae while Slavonic was brought to Moskovia not earlier than in 10th century AD.


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## Azori

Ayazid said:


> Lior, you seem to have forgotten that being Czech, I am not that familiar with Central Slovak dialects  (well, actually with any Slovak dialects, just with standard Slovak)


I'm not familiar with Slovak dialects too, and that's because nowadays they aren't spoken in Slovakia that much. Actually, I'm not sure if they even are. I'd bet that only some old people speak like that. Everyone I meet here speaks the standard language, regardless where he/she is from.


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## TriglavNationalPark

lior neith said:


> I'm not familiar with Slovak dialects too, and that's because nowadays they aren't spoken in Slovakia that much. Actually, I'm not sure if they even are. I'd bet that only some old people speak like that. Everyone I meet here speaks the standard language, regardless where he/she is from.


 
That's interesting. In Slovenia, virtually everyone speaks either a dialect or some more generic form of colloquial Slovenian. Standard Slovenian is fairly rare outside of more formal contexts.

In fact, it's usually easy to tell what part of Slovenia someone is from based on his or her dialect. Traveling around Slovenia, a very small country, one notices how dramatically the spoken language changes from region to region, sometimes even from town to town. Many dialects are virtually incomprehensile to people unfamiliar with them, not just because of borrowings from neighboring languages (Italian in western Slovenia, for example), but also because the vocabulary and the phonetics (and even the grammar, in the case of some remote dialects) can be very different. There are even some false friends among various Slovenian dialects!

You can read a discussion about Slovenian dialects HERE.


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## texpert

This is almost inconceivable in the Czech lands. The dialects are so rare that we almost cherish them as a national treasure. Yet almost no one speaks literary Czech either. It sounds so formal that there exist two standard languages in fact - written and spoken. 
_Otevři okno, prosím tě. _
_Votevři vokno, p'sim tě._
Open the window, please. 
From the colloqial form you can vaguely tell if someone is from Prague, West or East - and Moravia, naturally, which has most of the dialects here.


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## TriglavNationalPark

texpert said:


> This is almost inconceivable in the Czech lands. The dialects are so rare that we almost cherish them as a national treasure. Yet almost no one speaks literary Czech either. It sounds so formal that there exist two standard languages in fact - written and spoken.
> _Otevři okno, prosím tě. _
> _Votevři vokno, p'sim tě._
> Open the window, please.
> From the colloqial form you can vaguely tell if someone is from Prague, West or East - and Moravia, naturally, which has most of the dialects here.


 
Interesting. Does the fact that dialects are so rare in Czech have anything to do with the fact that the Czech lands have historically been more urbanized than many other Slavic countries?

In Slovenia, I have even heard people from Ljubljana remark that they would never really feel at home living in Maribor, Slovenia's second city, because their inability to speak the local dialect would forever mark them as outsiders. The differences are not limited just to pronunciation. For example, "this money" is *ta denar* in standard Slovenian, but *toti penezi** in the dialect spoken in Maribor. There are many other such differences.

There are some Slovenian dialects with no neuter, some with masculine forms for females, some with West Slavic features, some with gender-merged case systems, some that form the future tense completely differently, and so on.

* similar to the Czech *peníze*


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## texpert

TriglavNationalPark said:


> Interesting. Does the fact that dialects are so rare in Czech have anything to do with the fact that the Czech lands have historically been more urbanized than many other Slavic countries?


 
Czech linguists, please join me here. 

I have to admit I'm rather clueless. So far I assumed that Czech lands were too small to form any distinctive dialect groups (as in the UK or Germany). But given the fact that Slovenia is even smaller, the only other significant fact that strikes me is that the Czech has nearly come to naught as a modern language (due to Germanisation) in the course of 17th and 18th century, and when it reestablished itself, it had to be virtually taught again as a literary language. But it is true that there are no distant "unapproachable" valleys and the vital link between the town and village has never been cut to such extent as somewhere else. 



TriglavNationalPark said:


> In Slovenia, I have even heard people from Ljubljana remark that they would never really feel at home living in Maribor, Slovenia's second city, because their inability to speak the local dialect would forever mark them as outsiders. The differences are not limited just to pronunciation. For example, "this money" is *ta denar* in standard Slovenian, but *toti penezi** in the dialect spoken in Maribor. There are many other such differences.


 
Again, this sounds amazing to me. I never heard of any Czech unwilling to move _solely_ on this basis. It is true there are some regional variations of vocabulary. The _tramvaj _in Prague is _šalina _in Brno (second largest) for istance. Also some people from Moravia never lose their accent but it is usually seen as a nice personal feature here (at least in Prague). For istance my father was born in Opava, 400km from Prague. But although he has retained his accent (it feels more like a flavour to his speech), I cannot think of more than ten words spoken by him differently. Perhaps some people will disagree, but when compared to British English or German, the Czech and Slovakian actually do relate to themselves as dialects.


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## Ayazid

texpert said:


> This is almost inconceivable in the Czech lands. The dialects are so rare that we almost cherish them as a national treasure. Yet almost no one speaks literary Czech either. It sounds so formal that there exist two standard languages in fact - written and spoken.
> _Otevři okno, prosím tě. _
> _Votevři vokno, p'sim tě._
> Open the window, please.
> From the colloqial form you can vaguely tell if someone is from Prague, West or East - and Moravia, naturally, which has most of the dialects here.



I agree completely with you. The dialects are moribund here, unlike some 80 or 90 years ago when they were still quite common. But today to hear a young person speaking a dialect would be almost ridiculous (unfortunately). Virtually all of us speak a certain kind of colloquial common Czech (altogether not that different from the standard formal language), which differs only in accent, some regional words and there are also some slight divergences in pronunciation. Especially young people tend to speak in almost the same way everywhere in the country.

By the way, as for your example I think that in most of Moravia, the colloquial version would be identical with the formal one, since we don't use to add that _v- _to words beginning with _o-_ (as you probably know ).



texpert said:


> Czech linguists, please join me here.
> 
> I have to admit I'm rather clueless. So far I assumed that Czech lands were too small to form any distinctive dialect groups (as in the UK or Germany). But given the fact that Slovenia is even smaller, the only other significant fact that strikes me is that the Czech has nearly come to naught as a modern language (due to Germanisation) in the course of 17th and 18th century, and when it reestablished itself, it had to be virtually taught again as a literary language. But it is true that there are no distant "unapproachable" valleys and the vital link between the town and village has never been cut to such extent as somewhere else.



Well, I am no linguist but I have read some interesting articles about this topic and it seems that until the 16th century the language spoken in Bohemia and Moravia used to be almost uniform but in that period the dialects started to diverge more, mostly in the pronunciation of vowels.

Currently I am reading the book mentioned above, which describes exhaustively Czech, Slovak, German, Rusyn, Hungarian and even Gypsy dialects as they used to be spoken in our country in the beginning of the 20th century (very interesting reading by the way ) and what caught my attention was the fact that the  traditional Bohemian dialects were quite similar to each other and not greatly different from the colloquial Czech as it is spoken today. Of course one can find some odd words or forms here and there but after all it almost doesn't feel like a dialect! 

On the other hand the Moravian dialects were much more diverse with the Eastern ones being close to the dialects of Western Slovakia, Northern to Polish and central forming a specific _Hanák_ subgroup (most of Moravia). However, today they are all in retreat and what is replacing them is a Bohemian-based colloquial language on which they have left only a few imprints. 

Anyway, the reasons of this current uniformity must be the high level of urbanization, centralization and rather lowland character of our landscape. The dialects have been considered to be something funny, boorish and sign of low education, so it's no surprise that they died out if their speakers were ashamed of using them!

(_À propos_, I think that we should continue our discussion about dialects in the thread  All Slavic languages: Standard vs. spoken language since it has not that much to do with mutual intelligibility, right? )

Right: this is not mutual intelligibility. Posts moved. 
(Moderator note - sokol)


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## texpert

I think Ayazid has pretty much exhausted the subject in the best possible way. Still, would someone responsible switch us into the proposed (_standard vs. spoken_) thread, in case we should like to continue? 



Ayazid said:


> By the way, as for your example I think that in most of Moravia, the colloquial version would be identical with the formal one, since we don't use to add that _v- _to words beginning with _o-_ (as you probably know ).


 
Sure thing. This sample was taken from a different reply where I was referring to Bohemian lingo, yet I should have made it clear there. 



Ayazid said:


> Anyway, the reasons of this current uniformity must be the high level of urbanization, centralization and rather lowland character of our landscape. The dialects have been considered to be something funny, boorish and sign of low education, so it's no surprise that they died out if their speakers were ashamed of using them!


 
This is definitely the case here (*the stigma of boorishness*). Even the first president Tomas Garrigue Masaryk - who otherwise made no secrets about his rustical origins and valued his Moravian-Slovak roots and upbringing - made sure that he was speaking standard spoken Czech.
*Was this not the case in Slovenia, Croatia and other places where the dialects are widepsread? *



Ayazid said:


> (_À propos_, I think that we should continue our discussion about dialects in the thread All Slavic languages: Standard vs. spoken language since it has not that much to do with mutual intelligibility, right? )


 
I'd really like to but my technical prowess is clearly not sufficient


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## TriglavNationalPark

Ayazid said:


> But today to hear a young person speaking a dialect would be almost ridiculous (unfortunately).


 
In Slovenia, it's (still) very common even for young people to speak in their local dialects.



Ayazid said:


> Well, I am no linguist but I have read some interesting articles about this topic and it seems that until the 16th century the language spoken in Bohemia and Moravia used to be almost uniform but in that period the dialects started to diverge more, mostly in the pronunciation of vowels.


 
In part because the territory of present-day Slovenia was never united admininstratively before the end of World War II, Slovenian dialects had developed independently from each other for centuries. Parts of the Slovene lands were under Venetian (Italian) rule for a long time, a small chunk was under Hungarian rule, while even modern Slovenia's heartland was divided between two different Austrian states, Carniola and (Lower) Styria.

This is a major reason why Slovenian has so many dialects. In fact, it is often said that standard Slovenian is virtually an artificial Slavic language created by taking bits and pieces from various Slovenian dialects, primarily from the Dolenjska and Gorenjska regions of Carniola. (A small-scale Slovio, if you will. )



Ayazid said:


> Anyway, the reasons of this current uniformity must be the high level of urbanization, centralization and rather lowland character of our landscape.


 
This is another reason: Slovenia is a very mountainous, historically rural country, with numerous ranges, valleys, and vast forests that have hindered communication through the ages.



texpert said:


> This is definitely the case here (*the stigma of boorishness*). Even the first president Tomas Garrigue Masaryk - who otherwise made no secrets about his rustical origins and valued his Moravian-Slovak roots and upbringing - made sure that he was speaking standard spoken Czech.
> *Was this not the case in Slovenia, Croatia and other places where the dialects are widepsread?*


 
People who move to Ljubljana from other regions often adopt a more generic form of colloquial Slovenian (as well as standard Slovenian in more formal contexts) to fit in and sound more sophisticated. However, for people who live in Maribor or Koper, for instance, their local dialect carries no stigma; it's what most people there use on a daily basis. In fact, many TV reporters based in Koper use standard Slovenian grammar and vocabulary, but with a heavy accent that immediately identifies them as speakers of the local dialect.


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## Mišo

TriglavNationalPark said:


> I'm curious what central Slovak dialects sound like, particularly if there is some additional similarity to Slovenian because of their South Slavic connection. Are there any audio clips available online?



Here are some recordings from older humoristic broadcasts under the name of "Stredoslováci". Two jesting humorists try to imitate central Slovak. People from this area were their rewarding entity.



lior neith said:


> I'm not familiar with Slovak dialects too, and that's because nowadays they aren't spoken in Slovakia that much. Actually, I'm not sure if they even are. I'd bet that only some old people speak like that. Everyone I meet here speaks the standard language, regardless where he/she is from.



I was born and I live in Upper Trenčín region. When I come to my Zvolen family (central Slovakia), dialect jump is basically co-equal as when I come to my Walachian home-folk (east Moravia).



Ayazid said:


> I already heard some very ignorant remarks about Slovak from some of my peers. For example: "I don't like Slovak much, some words are different and it's a little close to Russian" (terrible!) or "But to read Slovak is not that easy, I have a Slovak book and had to read it slowly"... Ehm  I even found somewhere a post of a Czech girl where she wrote that until she familiarized herself better with Slovak language she used to think that it was Polish when she saw it ...



Such a boss-eyed gestios is advisable to disregard.


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## sokol

The "flat land" argument (strong dialects in mountains but hardly any dialects in flatlands) really is a myth.
There are plenty of flat regions with strong dialect features - Austrian Burgenland, Slovenian Prekmurje, Northern Italy etc.

The reasons usually are political and historical; concerning Slovenia: it was split into several political units - while Bohemia and Moravia were one political unit since medieval times; and surely there are more reasons, but this thread is not about history, right?
Austrian Burgenland and Slovenian Prekmurje never were political or economical centres: thus dialects remained strong, there was little levelling of dialects.
In Northern Italy the situation was different: this region was an economical centre for a long time but was split politically to the extreme: here political borders played an important role.
(But let's not elaborate on those Non-Slavic situations; this here is a Slavic thread, those examples are only given to emphasise the point I make here. 

It is a well-established fact that Slovenia is strongly divided into several dialect groups while Czech only has two main "dialect" or "accent" groups (whatever word you prefer) - Bohemian and Moravian.
BCS also is very diverse concerning its dialects - here politics even played a greater role (division between east and west, the Ottoman Empire, migration of Shtokavian dialect speakers to the west, etc.).


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## Mišo

TriglavNationalPark said:


> Slovenia is a very mountainous, historically rural country, with numerous ranges, valleys, and vast forests that have hindered communication through the ages.



But several times I have heard something about your forwardness. You were not by chance the most industrialized part of Yugoslavia? There were a lot of good news about you here.


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## TriglavNationalPark

Mišo said:


> But several times I have heard something about your forwardness. You were not by chance the most industrialized part of Yugoslavia? There were a lot of good news about you here.


 
Yes, Slovenia was the most developed part of Yugoslavia; in fact, it remains the wealthiest post-communist country in terms of per capita GDP.

However, Slovenia has always been a rural country at heart. Much of its industrialization ocurred only after World War II, but even in the period between 1945 and 1991, Ljubljana was essentially a provincial city, despite its status as the Slovenian capital. In Austro-Hungarian times, the Slovene lands were profoundly rural; most of the politically influential urban-dwelling bourgeoisie was ethnically German. Educated Slovenians pursued their studies in Vienna, Prague and Munich. Slovenia didn't have any centers of learning that could even remotely compare to those cities. The Slovene lands were a rural backwater in many respects.

Of course, Slovenia always had close cultural ties to Austria and, to a lesser extent, Italy; this helped Slovenia to retain a liberal, Western-oriented worldview even in the era of communist Yugoslavia. This, in addition to its industrialization, gave Slovenia a reputation for being forward-looking.

Nevertheless, Slovenia's industrialization came relatively late and didn't completely change Slovenia's fundamentally rural national character. It was also limited compared to many other countries; even today, Slovenia remains one of the EU's most rural and heavily forested countries. About half of its population is rural, compared to just about 25% in the Czech Republic.


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## texpert

Oh, I didn't know about that. As to the above-mentioned strong German influence, how much did it affect the vocabulary? In Czech, it is a strong feature of technical jargon and general slang, but given the late Slovenian industralisation it must have left another mark?


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## Ptak

Panda Nocta said:


> sokol:
> 
> >That's right, but there is sociolinguistic variation: from educated разговорня речь to просторечие to мать there exists a broad range of linguistic varieties
> 
> From my POV, the differences are mostly lexical.


_Lexical_? I definitely wouldn't say so. There could be some slight differences in pronunciation, mostly in Kostroma-Vologda region (where they pronounce the unstressed "o" like "o") and in the South (where they speak sometimes with Ukrainisms)... But as for vocabulary, I don't think Russia's regions have any evident differences in vocabulary, I'd say quite the opposite. Vocabulary is equal in the whole Russia.


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## skye

TriglavNationalPark said:


> dialects that pronounce the letter "g" as "h" (*hora* instead of *gora* = mountain)


 
I'd like to add something here as a speaker of such a dialect. g is actually not pronounced as h, but as a voiced consonant which sounds very much like h (h is voiceless). I can perfectly distinguish between h and the voiced h-like consonant and I can hear which one is being used. They are not one and the same sound to me.


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## sokol

Ptak said:


> _Lexical_? I definitely wouldn't say so. There could be some slight differences in pronunciation, mostly in Kostroma-Vologda region (where they pronounce the unstressed "o" like "o") and in the South (where they speak sometimes with Ukrainisms)... But as for vocabulary, I don't think Russia's regions have any evident differences in vocabulary, I'd say quite the opposite. Vocabulary is equal in the whole Russia.


I think - or at least, that's how I understood Panda Nocta - that the lexical variation mentioned refers to sociolects: "dialects" used according to social class (that is, просторечие and мать): those varieties of spoken language might be quite uniform throughout the whole of Russia (that's what all posts so far suggest ), but there are varieties, lexical ones: which might be used by working class, or also by middle and upper class if they want to come over more colloquial in style.

I've heard about this unstressed "o" pronounced like "o" (and not weakened) in northern Russian dialects already which reminds me that (I think) in some southern dialects pronunciation of "g = г" like in Ukrainian - as "h" - also exists: did you mean that with Ukrainisms?

It's amazing anyway that there is so little variation in Russian, with the language stretching over such a huge area. 



skye said:


> I'd like to add something here as a speaker of such a dialect. g is actually not pronounced as h, but as a voiced consonant which sounds very much like h (h is voiceless). I can perfectly distinguish between h and the voiced h-like consonant and I can hear which one is being used. They are not one and the same sound to me.


This is the voiced "h" which also is spoken in Carinthian_ (both_ in German Carinthian and Slovenian Carinthian dialects ).
It is indeed clearly different from the voiceless "h" - especially as Slovenian (standard language) "h" is pronounced [x] in IPA; but of course it is also different to IPA .


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## Ptak

sokol said:


> I think - or at least, that's how I understood Panda Nocta - that the lexical variation mentioned refers to sociolects: "dialects" used according to social class (that is, просторечие and мать): those varieties of spoken language might be quite uniform throughout the whole of Russia (that's what all posts so far suggest ), but there are varieties, lexical ones: which might be used by working class, or also by middle and upper class if they want to come over more colloquial in style.


I do not quite understand, sokol, what you mean "*мать*". Maybe "*мат*"? 
But anyway, просторечие and мат are not used according to social classes. Мат is the same for all classes. Only some rude (poorly educated, also) person can use it in the street when children and women are around him, and the other person would not act like that. But I think you easily can find someone who never studied at the University (so can be considered as "poorly educated" person), but would never use мат in the presence of children or women, or just unfamiliar persons (or even with his wife / friends).
I actually don't even think that "social class" is a topical idea in Russia. The society in the whole is equal. Some are richer, and some are poorer, yes, but there are not significant differences between social classes in the lexical, and maybe even in the mental meaning; and the idea of a "social class" is mostly... theoretical in the modern Russia. Thinking that only the "working class" uses мат, and that the "middle class" speaks more decorous, and that there is a class of "professors" who speak completely lofty is totally wrong.




> I've heard about this unstressed "o" pronounced like "o" (and not weakened) in northern Russian dialects already which reminds me that (I think) in some southern dialects pronunciation of "g = г" like in Ukrainian - as "h" - also exists: did you mean that with Ukrainisms?


Well, yes, mostly. There is also another peculiarity: to pronounce the "в" at the end of words like "у" (exactly like Ukrainians do). That's how our Sport Minister Mutko speaks, for example. If I am not mistaken, that's how Gorbachev speaks, too.
But it doesn't mean that _everyone_ in the South speaks like that, or that everyone in Kostroma, Yaroslavl, Vologda pronounces the unstressed "o" like "o".



> It's amazing anyway that there is so little variation in Russian, with the language stretching over such a huge area.


The harder it is to explain that to some foreigner who just says "I don't believe it"...


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## sokol

Ptak said:


> I do not quite understand, sokol, what you mean "*мать*". Maybe "*мат*"?


Sorry, that's just my ignorance.  I dont really speak Russian, and it seems that the "ь" just "creeps in" in places where it doesn't belong at all. 



Ptak said:


> I actually don't even think that "social class" is a topical idea in Russia.


It is rare that there is no dialect variation according to class (or almost none) but of course I trust your judgement. 



Ptak said:


> There is also another peculiarity: to pronounce the "в" at the end of words like "у" (exactly like Ukrainians do).


That is, "бывший" pronounced "быуший", right?
I didn't know that that's an Ukrainian feature too; I think the same also occurs in Slovak, but I know for sure that the same is the case for Slovenian where "bivši" in fact is pronounced "biuši" (the "u" of course not being syllabic) - it is both standard language and dialect in Slovenian, though, except for some Slovenian dialects where it would be "bifši" (Styrian Slovenian, I think?! or was it Prekmurje?).



Ptak said:


> The harder it is to explain that to some foreigner who just says "I don't believe it"...


Yes, I can imagine. 
(As you see I too was sceptic.)


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## Ptak

sokol said:


> That is, "бывший" pronounced "быуший", right?


Hm... I'm not sure about "бывший". Probably he (I mean Mutko whose pronunciation I'm trying to recall) pronounces this word as [быфший], as in standart Russian. But I definitely remember he pronounces "игроко*в*" as [играко*у*]. And his "г" is like in standart Russian, by the way.
I must add, I have relatives in the South, and they never spoke like that.


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## TriglavNationalPark

texpert said:


> Oh, I didn't know about that. As to the above-mentioned strong German influence, how much did it affect the vocabulary? In Czech, it is a strong feature of technical jargon and general slang, but given the late Slovenian industralisation it must have left another mark?


 
Informal Slovenian uses many German loanwords. They are especially common in some areas, such as household items and car parts, but they can be found in virtually every aspect of life. Many of the more recent borrowings were never accepted into standard Slovenian and are now a considered examples of very informal or even substandard speech. Many other German words, however, did make their way into standard Slovenian over the centuries, often in a modified form. A quick browse through any Slovenian etymological dictionary reveals that a relatively large percentage of Slovenian vocabulary can be traced back to German (often Old High or Middle High German).


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## Mišo

TriglavNationalPark said:


> For example, "this money" is *ta denar* in standard Slovenian, but *toti penezi** in the dialect spoken in Maribor.
> 
> * similar to the Czech *peníze*



"toti peneźi" is Košice form for standard "tieto peniaze"


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## TriglavNationalPark

Mišo said:


> "toti peneźi" is Košice form for standard "tieto peniaze"


 
Interesting!  I suppose this could be more evidence of the old West Slavic / South Slavic dialect continuum. The "doubled pronouns"* of some of Slovenia's eastern dialects (the use of *toti* instead of the standard *ti* [=these], for instance) are indeed similar to some Slovak forms.

* This is my description; I don't know what the phenomenon is officially called.


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## skye

sokol said:


> This is the voiced "h" which also is spoken in Carinthian_ (both_ in German Carinthian and Slovenian Carinthian dialects ). It is indeed clearly different from the voiceless "h" - especially as Slovenian (standard language) "h" is pronounced [x] in IPA; but of course it is also different to IPA .




I didn't know about that. BTW, I'm not from Carinthia. I'm from Severna Primorska.

It feels a bit strange to talk about this sound as h, because I don't perceive it as h at all, so I sometimes wonder if we really do have the same thing in mind. 

Maybe there are some other dialects where they really use h instead of g?


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## sokol

skye said:


> I didn't know about that. BTW, I'm not from Carinthia. I'm from Severna Primorska.


Well, I searched the internet for Carinthian dialect samples but all I found had "h" = [x] and "g" = [g], so no voiced "h": but I know from personal experience that bilingual Carinthian Slovene dialect speakers pronounce "h" voiced when using _German _Carinthian dialect. (Those German Carinthian dialect speakers who are not bilingual do the same, of course. )

So I am not quite sure if they actually use voiced "h" in Carinthian _Slovene _dialect too: but I try to find out (I am not a Carinthian Slovene - and I have left all my Carinthian contacts behind when I moved to Vienna).


Ah - finally: found one  so it wasn't a Fata Morgana after all: search this document here for "/h/-Gebiet" = "/h/-region" = the region where "g" is pronounced as a voiced "h".

Basically, "g = h" is valid for the central dialects of Carinthian Slovene - that's a huge simplification but the point anyway is that the pronunciation of "g" as a voiced "h" exists, and is indeed quite common, in Carinthian Slovene.
But when Carinthian Slovenes speak standard language they pronounce "g = g" - this applies for dialect only (nevertheless, standard language as pronounced by Carinthian Slovenes sounds radically different than pronounced by Slovenians from Slovenia - mainly because their "r" sound is a fricative "r").


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## skye

Thanks. I tried to view the document, but I'm having some problems with internet lately, so I haven't managed to see it yet. I'll try again later. 

I think that in Slovenia this is pretty much typical for my region only, but not for all the dialects in the region.


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## sokol

I can give a short quote of that:

"Nimmt man als Indikator nur einen einzigen Paramter, nämlich die Realisierung des Phonems /g/, kann man an den Ortsnamen die völlig chaotische Verteilung dieser Reflexe ablesen. Heute wird /g/ im zentralen Bereich als /h/ realisiert, während es im östlichen Jauntal und im Gebiet westlich des Faakersees jeweils als [g] gesprochen wird."
Source: _Heinrich Pfandl: Neues in den slawischen Sprachen & Sprachkontakt, Ringvorlesung, WS01/02, 22. Jänner 2002 (Nachbesprechung 24.Jänner)_

That's the most important part of it which roughly describes the geographical distribution.


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## skye

Thank you.


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## TriglavNationalPark

Some of the most hard-to-understand Slovenian dialects are spoken in Prekmurje (the Slovenian lands across the Mura River). This area was located in Hungary (rather than Austria) in Austro-Hungarian times and had its own literary standard. Nowadays, the written standard is no longer officially used (apart from hymn books in Protestant churches and other such limited uses), but the spoken dialects of Prekmurje thrive.

Here is the Lord's Prayer in standard Slovenian:



> Oče naš, ki si v nebesih,
> posvečeno bodi tvoje ime,
> pridi k nam tvoje kraljestvo,
> zgodi se tvoja volja
> kakor v nebesih tako na zemlji.
> Daj nam danes naš vsakdanji kruh
> in odpusti nam naše dolge,
> kakor tudi mi odpuščamo svojim dolžnikom,
> in ne vpelji nas v skušnjavo,
> temveč reši nas hudega. Amen.


 
And this is how it looks like in the Prekmurje literary standard:



> Oča naš, ki si vu nebésaj!
> Svéti se Ime tvoje.
> Pridi králestvo tvoje.
> Bojdi vola tvoja,
> kak na nébi, tak i na zemli.
> Krüha našega vsakdanéšnjega daj nam ga dnes.
> I odpüsti nam duge naše,
> kak i mi odpüščamo dužnikom našim.
> I ne vpelaj nas vu sküšávanje.
> Nego odslobodi nas od hüdoga. Amen.


 
The comparison comes from the very useful Wikipedia article about the Prekmurje dialect:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prekmurian_dialect

As the article states, the dialect is known as _prekmurščina, prekmursko narečje, _or _panonska slovenščina_, and was formerly referred to as _sztári szlovenszki jezik _by its speakers.


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## Kanes

In Bulgarian there is a big diference but almost exclusivly phonological. Mainly the preposotions and particles are pronounced togehter with words, letters are put after the word which helps pronounce them withouts stops between, its more pro-drop... Also the specific differences varie greatly along with dialect.. which they actually stem from mainly. Its usefully to say that the standard language has aways been limited to TV or written form.

tam li sme - tamlisme (are we there)
ot kade da znam - deda znam - (where should i know from)
v kolata - fkolata - (in the car)
tuk si - tukasi - (you are here)


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## Коста

> And which is the Slavonic language that shows less differences between standard and spoken varieties?


 
Modern Serbian standard is a direct derivative of the spoken language and does not differ singificantly from it. It's orthoraphy, also, is based on the perceived sound rather than etymology and is as close to phonetic as can be reasonably expected.


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## Коста

@Triglav. The Prekumurje version is closer to the original Church Slavonic, still chanted in Eastern Orthodox liturgies, posted here in modern Serbian orthography:

Оче наш, иже јеси на небесјех,
Да свјатитсја имја Твоје,
Да приидет царствије Твоје,
Да будет воља Твоја, јако на небеси на земљи.
Хљеб наш насушни, дажд нaм днес,
И остави на долги наша, јакоже и ми остављајем должником нашим,
И не ваведи нас ва искушеније,
Но избави нас от лукаваго.

Јако Твоје јест царство, и сила и слава, Оца и Сина и Свхјатаго Духа. Амин.


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## phosphore

Коста said:


> Modern Serbian standard is a direct derivative of the spoken language and does not differ singificantly from it. It's orthoraphy, also, is based on the perceived sound rather than etymology and is as close to phonetic as can be reasonably expected.


 


If Serbia were only Belgrade, that would be true. However, things look differently when we take into account also other parts of Serbia, especially the easternmost and southernmost ones.


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## Коста

phosphore said:


> If Serbia were only Belgrade, that would be true. However, things look differently when we take into account also other parts of Serbia, especially the easternmost and southernmost ones.


 
Well, actually, in Serbia everyone writes the way they speak. There is no one particular regional dialect that is considered "standard" for all.


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## sokol

Коста said:


> Well, actually, in Serbia everyone writes the way they speak. There is no one particular regional dialect that is considered "standard" for all.


If this were the case (that's for native speakers to discuss of course ) then they do not actually "write standard language" because Serbian standard language is clearly a codified language.
While some Serbian dialects are quite close to standard language, or probably as close as any vernacular can be to standard language as suggested by Wiki (supposedly East Hercegovan for jekavian and the dialects just east of them, in Western Serbia, for ekavian), others definitely aren't.

Obviously in the Shtokavian dialect regions the difference between standard language and dialect is much smaller than for many other Slavic languages, but a difference still exists.


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## Коста

sokol said:


> Obviously in the Shtokavian dialect regions the difference between standard language and dialect is much smaller than for many other Slavic languages, but a difference still exists.


 
The problem is what is the "standard" based on? There doesn't seem to be a consensus or uniformity of opinion on this issue because the language and orthographic reform of 1850 in Serbia destoryed the historical basis (and unity) of the Serbian literary language and made it subject to political/social/geographic/dialectical whims and variations.

While there is a codified "standard" (the last attempt was I believe in 1993), as you mention, there is no compliance with that standard in public media, schools, or among private citizens, so much so that it appears no one seems to care or know for sure what the standard is.


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## phosphore

I am sorry, are you saying that in Eastern Serbia the language used in schools and media is the local dialect and not the standard language? I seriously doubt that.


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## Duya

Kosta, sorry, but you're wrong in about every statement. Before Vuk and 1850 there wasn't any unity in literary language. Today, there is well-codified standard, with east Herzegovinian and Vojvodina-Sumadija as dialectal basis. While relatively liberal, it draws clear borders what is acceptable in standard language and what not. That does not excuse illiteracy, of course.


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## Diaspora

One difference that I think of is "otišao" is said by many young people as "ošo." And because of standardization the Torlakian dialects spoken by Serbs in Vranje/Kumanovo is almost dead.


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## Коста

phosphore said:


> I am sorry, are you saying that in Eastern Serbia the language used in schools and media is the local dialect and not the standard language? I seriously doubt that.


 
You doubt that, based on what? The media and the school instructors are under no obligation to use the standard language. From "Politika" (May 25, 2009): "Усвајање лошег говора"

"Саветник координатор за српски језик и књижевност у Заводу за унапређење васпитања и образовања Љубиша Јовановић међутим објашњава *да данас не постоје писана правила, нити упутства, као ни препоруке за школе којима би се наставници обавезивали да говоре стандардним српским књижевним језиком*."


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## Коста

Duya said:


> Kosta, sorry, but you're wrong in about every statement. Before Vuk and 1850 there wasn't any unity in literary language.


 
Really? And you know that how? Try reading _*original texts*_. The standard literary language that was used in adminsitration, military, courts, schools, and homes of all educated Serbs until 1860's followed the standardized orthographic and grammatical rules.

As for your "Today, there is well-codified standard, with east Herzegovinian and Vojvodina-Sumadija as dialectal basis" the truth is there are at least_ three_ "official" competing standards in circulation, and no one in govenrment instituions, schools, etc., is obligated to use the standard Serbian literary language (see my reply to phosphore above).

Just because somone (like Mr. Klajn) wrote a book of standardization doesn't mean anyone is obligated or forced or willing to use it. Besides, what is the "standardized" language based on? Mr. Klajn's opinion or taste? Or maybe his party affiliation?

Before we can talk what the standard is, perhaps you we can start with a question: What are the _*roots*_ of the standard Serbian literary language?

And when was the last time you read some letters to the editor sent to online Serbian publications? The vast majorty of them are hopelessly illiterate.


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## phosphore

I am sorry once again but it seems you misinterpreted what you read in the papers. In eastern dialects there is /dən/ for /dan/, /vlk/ for /vuk/, /videja/ for /video/, /kuča/ for /kuća/, etc. and these are just the major differences in phonology. I am quite sure these dialects are not used in formal contexts.


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## Коста

Diaspora said:


> One difference that I think of is "otišao" is said by many young people as "ošo." And because of standardization the Torlakian dialects spoken by Serbs in Vranje/Kumanovo is almost dead.


 
"Ошо" was never part of the standard Serbian literary language, from St. Sava onward. It does, however, exist in standard Japanese, meanings the chess king. 

"Отишао" is, of course, the current (corrupt) form of the original "отишел", which was replaced after 1850 with the colloquial form. If Vuk had been from the eastern Shtokavian area, the standard today would probably be "ошо" instead.


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## Коста

phosphore said:


> I am sorry once again but it seems you misinterpreted what you read in the papers.


 
I don't think so. Please read it yourself: http://www.politika.rs/rubrike/Drustvo/Usvajanje-losheg-govora.sr.html


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## sokol

Коста said:


> I don't think so. Please read it yourself: http://www.politika.rs/rubrike/Drustvo/Usvajanje-losheg-govora.sr.html


Sorry, Коста, but the article says that students do not use proper standard language - which itself prooves that there *is *a standard language norm with which students do not comply; if there weren't any the whole point of this article would be lost, that is - if there wouldn't be a Serbian norm there would be no reason why Politika should complain about a lack of acceptance for the norm.

So the article in itself is not proof that there's no norm but rather that Serbians (or Serbian newspapers, or Serbian journalists) are not content with the way Serbian standard language is mixed with colloquialisms.
Thus the article is even *proof *of the existense of a Serbian standard language, right? 

Also, please let's discuss this not with too much sentiment - let's keep a respectful, helpful and cordial tone, right? 
It may or may not be the case that Serbian standard language is lacking proficient speakers in schools or even in the government, but still there's no doubt that Serbian standard language exists, right?


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## Duya

What are you trying to prove, actually? There aren't any competing versions of the standard. Differences between 1960 Pravopis, and subsequent editions are minor. Sure there are some discrepancies and differing opinions among grammar authors, but that's the case in every language. I can agree that the situation in education and media is poor, but reasons for that lie in 1990s, not in 1850s.

Sorry, but you're just ranting now, blaming everyone because the situation was better back then in distant past. I'm not going to continue that line of discussion.


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## TriglavNationalPark

Duya said:


> What are you trying to prove, actually? There aren't any competing versions of the standard.



Just curious: Couldn't the Ijekavian standard of Serbian (officially used in the Serbian part of Bosnia-Herzegovina, for instance) be considered another version of standard Serbian?


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## Коста

sokol said:


> Sorry, Коста, but the article says that students do not use proper standard language - which itself prooves that there *is *a standard language norm with which students do not comply


 
First, if I came across as being disrespectful, I sincerely apologize. Second, I never said there was no standard Serbian literary language (please see my post #47). I am not sure where you get the I idea that I did.

I also stated that there is no particular regional dialect that is considered "standard" _for all _(#50), which is true. I then posited that the problem of standardization in the Serbian language may be in the fact that the standardization is based on historically shaky grounds (#52), which is readily verifiable.

I then stated that, in Serbia, the standard is not enforced (not that it doesn't exist!). I supported this claim by quoting Lyubisha Yovanovich, Consulting Coordinator for Serbian Language and Literature at the Institute for Advancement of Upbringing and Education (Саветник координатор за српски језик и књижевност у Заводу за унапређење васпитања и образовања) in post #56.

There are a lot of misconceptions about the Serbian language. Without getting into linguistic politics, the last sixty or so years are a major source of these misconceptions.

I would like to be able to openly and _factually _discuss these issues and go beyond word comparisons and false friends list if at all possible. Perhaps this forum does not deal with technical topics. 

If so, I apologize for assuming that it would go beyond simple word comparisons.


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## Коста

Duya said:


> Sorry, but you're just ranting now, blaming everyone because the situation was better back then in distant past. I'm not going to continue that line of discussion.


 
With all due respect, my original response was to your comment "*Before Vuk and 1850 there wasn't any unity in literary language*." (your post #54) 

Your statement above is simply not true. There was a _standard language_ used in the administration, courts, the military, the newspapers, etc. with _uniform orthography_ based on the 18th century Lomonosov's reform.

The use of ѣ assured _uniformed_ orthography for both major Serbian dialects. Its removal created two separate orthographic standards. Furthermore, the pre-1850 orthography used letters ћ and џ which are now credited to Vuk.


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## Коста

TriglavNationalPark said:


> Just curious: Couldn't the Ijekavian standard of Serbian (officially used in the Serbian part of Bosnia-Herzegovina, for instance) be considered another version of standard Serbian?


 
Officially, they are _parallel_, not competing. In Serbia the Ekavian standard is official. However, there this is not being enforced in public schools and other institutions. Prior to the 1850 reform, the use of the letter yat (ѣ) precluded literary division. Thus, for example, a word "girl" was spelled identically in both dialects as "дѣвойка," whereas today it is spelled in Ekavian "девојка" and in Ijekavian as "дјевојка." Instead of unifying, the reform created two _de facto _competing standards.


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## sokol

Коста said:


> I also stated that there is no particular regional dialect that is considered "standard" _for all _(#50), which is true. I then posited that the problem of standardization in the Serbian language may be in the fact that the standardization is based on historically shaky grounds (#52), which is readily verifiable.



Well, what shaky grounds? - But I will explain below in more detail, commenting your previous posts.
As for standards, there is only one Serbian standard in two varieties, and Ekavian standard here clearly is the leading standard dialect, with Belgrade being the leading cultural centre for standard language development.

In fact both *standardisation *of Serbian and *status *of the two varieties of Serbian are quite clear; also there's no doubt that both varieties essentially are one standard language where one sound is represented differently: historical yat - being "e" in one variety and as "je/ije" in the other one.
(Edit - to leave no misunderstanding: Daria Sito Sutić wrote in the article I quoted in this thread in my first post that Ekavisation as done by some Bosnian Serbs during the war in the 1990ies sounded ridiculous, obviously because there are some fine detail differencies between both varieties - especially in accentuation, I take it. Still, that's only fine detail.)

What is not clear, and of course open to discussion, is the gap between standard language and dialects in Serbian.
This I write as a "normal forero" and not as moderator.

Let me just add, putting my mod-hat halfway on, that we do not want political disputes. While it is of course okay to describe background (be it political or not) it is not appreciated to say that this or that action of the past had been a fault, because that would be promoting a political point of view, and it would lead nowhere anyway. (After all, who in the world would think about re-establishing the written language of pre-Vuk-times Serbian? Not a single Serbian national anywhere on this globe would, I am sure you agree. )

I'm a plain and ordinary forero again when writing this: 


Коста said:


> Well, actually, in Serbia everyone writes the way they speak. There is no one particular regional dialect that is considered "standard" for all.


Well, formulated like that this sentence seriously puts doubt to the existence of a Serbian standard language; I accept of course your explanation that this wasn't your intention, but still it reads like that - thus the misunderstanding.

 This clearly refers to Vuk's saying:
 Пиши као што говориш, читај како је написано.
 "Write like you speak, and read like it is written."
And he suggested so because at the time Serbian was not written like it was spoken.

 There is no doubt that Vuk and this saying were the beginning of Serbian modern standard language, but modern Serbian is no longer a derivative of any Serbian dialect - a standard language develops into a system of its own as soon as it becomes institutionalised.
 There exist several definitions of standard language (not even linguists can agree what *exactly *a standard language is) - some basic points are mentioned in the Wiki article -, but there's agreement that standard language is not a specific dialect but an *institutionalised *variety which is *not regionally* marked and which is *codified*.

 Please note also that if Vuk and his contemporaries would have followed those words exactly (and everyone would have written as they've spoken) then there wouldn't have been a reformed Serbian standard language in the first place. Because obviously Vuk applied that sentence to his own dialect, and set it up as standard language.


Коста said:


> The problem is what is the "standard" based on? There doesn't seem to be a consensus or uniformity of opinion on this issue because the language and orthographic reform of 1850 in Serbia destoryed the historical basis (and unity) of the Serbian literary language and made it subject to political/social/geographic/dialectical whims and variations.


I do not see a problem at all.
We both know what Serbian standard language is based on. (And we both know that Vuk's native was Ijekavian; his hometown since has become ekavised however.)
Also Ijekavian and Ekavian essentially are the same language except for the reflex of yat.
So there is no problem with the development of Serbian standard language - we know the facts and history quite well, better than the history of most standard languages.

If it were the case that Serbians themselves do not pay proper attention to the rules of standard language*) then that's a problem of language culture, thus a cultural issue, but it is not a linguistic issue.

If the Serbian standard language of pre-Vuk times still would be used in modern Serbia then probably similar issues would have arisen, considering the state of Sebian then (source: Peter-Hug-Lexikon quoting Meyers Konversations-Lexikon, 1888; modern online sources mostly let Serbian history begin with Vuk):
"Früher hatte die serbische Schriftsprache aus einem künstlichen Gemisch von  Kirchenslawisch und serbischen  Volksdialekten bestanden, bis im Anfang des 19. Jahrh. Patriotische Männer,  darunter namentlich der gefeierte Vuk Karadžić  für die Erhebung der Volkssprache, wie sie sich in den alten serbischen Nationalliedern zeigt, zur Schriftsprache  eintraten"
My translation:
"In former times Serbian literary language was an artificial mix of Old Church Slavonic and Serbian dialects. At the beginning of the 19th century patriotic men - among them acclaimed Vuk Karadžić - promoted the use of the vernacular as used in Serbian >national< (hero) songs as standard language."
So before Vuk there was a diglossic situation with a written language significantly distant from spoken language.

*) In this context it is irrelevant if this is true or not; whatever is the case, it's a cultural problem.


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## Athaulf

Коста said:


> With all due respect, my original response was to your comment "*Before Vuk and 1850 there wasn't any unity in literary language*." (your post #54)
> 
> Your statement above is simply not true. There was a _standard language_ used in the administration, courts, the military, the newspapers, etc. with _uniform orthography_ based on the 18th century Lomonosov's reform.



But Lomonosov's orthography was designed for Russian, which is extremely different from all Serbian dialects phonetically and phonologically. It also included, if I'm not mistaken, a bunch of arbitrary rules that existed only for historical reasons (like e.g. the contrast between *и* and *i*, which marked no difference in pronunciation). 

Was there actually a standard by which this orthography was adapted to Serbian? I haven't heard of one, and when I look at old Serbian printed texts, the usage seems quite inconsistent and haphazard. For example, were there actually standard rules for using *и*, *ы*, and *i*? (Out of these, Serbian needs only one, so Karadžić kept only *и*.) What about the final big yers (*ъ*), which were also an arbitrary convention, without any phonetic value? 



> The use of ѣ assured _uniformed_ orthography for both major Serbian dialects. Its removal created two separate orthographic standards. Furthermore, the pre-1850 orthography used letters ћ and џ which are now credited to Vuk.


And how many Serbs actually knew how to use yat properly? Most places where yat should be placed according to the etymological principles are identifiable by the Ekavian/Ijekavian contrasts, but not all. Even if you know how to identify all of them, it's disputable how far one should go restoring the Old Slavic yats. Would you spell *себе* (oneself) or *себѣ*, like Russians did before the Revolution? 

(For what that's worth, I agree that the old Russian and Serbian orthographies were more beautiful than their contemporary versions, especially Serbian. But they were also far less practical.)


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## Коста

sokol said:


> Well, what shaky grounds?


 
Thank you for taking the time to reply to my post. I agree with most of your comments and am very impressed with your knowledge of the Serbian language and its history, given that it is not your native tongue (is your last name _Kopitar_ by some chance? Just kidding! ).

Given the nature of the subject, answering even your simple question fairly would take up much more than a pageful. I therefore apologizefor the length.

What I meant by difficulty of standardization being on historically shaky grounds is that the language of Vuk Karadhzhich was _never_ a written language - it has no history as a literary language prior to his appearance on the scene. It's a grass-roots language that was built from ground up, artificially, rather than evolving naturally.

Vuk's product in many ways is even more an artefact than the pre-reform language. Vuk ended an 800 year old Serbian literary tradition and _alienated_ people from it. Today, an average Serb can not read anything written by Serbian authors more than 150 years ago.

The language of the reform has no historical heritage, it's orthography is based on how illiterate people "heard" it pronounced, and it is grammatically inferior to the previous standard. For example, "Sitting Bull" or "Седящий Бык", in Russian, in modern Serbian is "Бик који седи" (Bull that is sitting)! This is something characteristic of a completely primitive, descriptive, tribal language!

Vuk's solipsism regarding what is "real" Serbian is reflected in his first dicitonary: it contained 26,000 words! They were all _descriptive_ or nominative in nature: ox, man, house, hoe, sleep, yell, cry, etc. There was not a single abstract word in it! It was indeed the language of the illiterate "cattle keepers."

He threw out the most elementary words such as способност (ability), самосталност (autonomy, independence), садашњост (present, contemporary), важност (importance, singificance), опис (description) , попис (census), оглас (announcement), etc., etc. In addition to that, every _tenth_ word Vuk _inlcuded_ in his "people's language" was Turkish! 

Needless to say, he changed his spelling several times in his lifetime, showing complete lack of any organized or linguistic skill but pure trial and error approach. His written language varies from common slang to something unrecognizable. Only limited space prevents me from posting some telling examples. 

The historically "shaky grounds" also has a great deal to do with the _myth _of Vuk's person and opus that was created subsequently for politcial reasons. Based on comments of native speakers, I get the impression that an average Serb speaker knows only the second-hand, _official truth_, about Vuk_._

The post-Vuk literary language is not an _evolutionary _product of Serbian literary heritage divorced from politics. In reality, Vuk's reform must be views as if under certain political inlfuences, Plattdeutsch, Cockney English or "rap" became standrad "literary langues" of German-speaking and English-speaking people.

Radical alteration of German and English orthography to conform to the "celebrated" Vuk's reform (i.e. "write the way you speak") would understandably seem repulsive to a contemporary German or English writer for the same reason it was to an educated and literate Serb contemporary of Vuk's.

It should not be difficult to imagine that in forcing Plattdeutsch, Cockney and rap as the new lliterary standard would alienate an average German or English speaking person from the contemporary German and English literary treasure in a matter of several generations and that these new speakers would find their previous standards as "alien" or "awkward" as the Serbs of today find the language of pre-Vuk's reform, even though this is more based on the official _myth_ than on actual first hand experience!

The _myth _exaggerates the difference between the "old" and the "new" languages. Using some extreme examples, the political propaganda has convinced the people that Vuk's reform was a "do or die" necessity and that the Serbs, Serbian administration, military, the courts, and schools used some "alien" language that needed to be stripped of everything and built anew from ground up.

The shocking truth is: there simply was _no need_ for Vuk's reform! That is obvious from just reading the official newspapers of the time. Here is an example from the "Srbske Novine," published September 30th, 1867. 

"НЕЗВАНИЧНЫЙ ДЕО. Народна скупштина, по телеграму, кои смо у синоћнѣмъ изванредномъ листу саобштили, отворена є юче у подне после службе божіє. Престолну беседу, коіомъ є Нѣгова Светлостъ Князъ скупштину отворіо, скупштинари су многократнимъ усклицима прекидали. Нисмо изоставили да тy беседу іоштъ синоћь као пирлогъ узъ ванредный лист наши новина разшалѣмо."

This is _perfectly_ intelligible, albeit somewhat old fashioned. And while there may have been a valid argument for a_ partial_ reform of orthogrpahy, i.e. removing the "had sign" (ъ) from the words ending in consonants, the language was standardized and perfectly intelligible even today.

Of course, it was incomprehensible to any _illiterate_ Serbian peasant because his daily vocabulary was probably not more than several hundred words. For that reason, modern standard Serbian language, based on Vuk's reform, would be equally incomprehnsible to the same illiterate peasant of Vuk's times! So, what was Vuk's reform all about? His new language has now attained the same complexity as the one he helped remove!

Vuk's reform succeeded for policial reasons too complex to go into. It had no other appeal at home or abroad; no one in Germany, Russia, England, France, Italy, Bulgaria, etc. rushed to copy it! No country advocated elevating the language of the illiterate peasantry to a national literary standard except Serbia! Not one.

Vuk argued that his reform can make anyone literate in no time. The spurious phonetics of Serbian orthography today have no advantage whatsoever in terms of literacy over the literacy of other countries in Europe whose languages are not phonetic.

In fact, Serbian literacy is at the bottom of the European list, second from the last, giving Portugal the "honor" of being the most illiterate. This is not the legacy that should be the source of pride, a model to follow, or worse, a national endowment. 

Finaly, I never advocated returning to the mythical славено-сербскiй. I simply opined that returning the letter yat (ѣ), and keeping current orthography (more or less) intact, would help create a single standard regardless of Ekavian or Iyekavian dialects, one for _all native _Serb speakers. 

Instead of spelling milk "млеко"/"млијеко" it would be spelled "млѣко" and pronounced according to each speaker's native dialect; instead of "победа"/"побједа" it would be "побѣда", etc.

Serb teachers who work in Serbia but come from Iyekavian regions (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Monte Negro) would still teach the same literary standard regardless of their pronunciation (reflexion) of yat; as things stand today, due to a divided standard, such teachers are creating a great deal of confusion among ekavian children and contributing to their functional illiteracy.

Again, I thank you for your patience, your kind replies and even kinder suggestions.  In the future, I will try to conform my comments and participation in keeping with the forum's policies and preferences.


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## TriglavNationalPark

This discussion has reminded me of the Slovenian Alphabet War of the 19th century. In the 1830s, there was considerable public debate in the Slovene lands over which form of the Latin script to adopt for the Slovenian language. Slovenian has always been written in the Latin script (in fact, the earliest surviving document written in Slovenian is also the earliest surviving Slavic document written in the Latin script), but the previous standard was increasingly seen as deficient because it did not have unique letters for common sounds: the modern *č* was written as *zh*, for instance.

Therefore, two new alphabets were proposed:

** The Metelko Alphabet*, with all kinds of unusual-looking letters added to the Latin alphabet, some of them straight from Cyrillic.

** The Danjko Alphabet*, with a somewhat smaller number of similarly unusual-looking letters.

In the end, Slovenian adopted a simplified version of the BCS Gaj Latin alphabet (without the letters Nj, Lj, Dž, Ć, and Đ), which was in turn based on the Czech alphabet.

The Slovenian Alphabet War led the Slovenian poet France Prešeren to write a famous sonnet at the time ridiculing people who were so passionate about their preferred alphabet. Here are the first two stanzas with my strictly literal English translation:

*Al' prav se piše kaψa ali *_*kaſha,*_
_(Whether __kaψa or __kaſha is the correct spelling [__kaša __= porridge])_
_*se šola novočŕkarjev srdita*_
_(the feisty school of new spellers)_
_*z ljudmi prepira starega kopita;*_
_(is arguing with old-fashioned people; )_
_*kdo njih pa pravo trdi, to se praša.*_
_(who of them is right, that's the question.)_

_*Po pameti je taka sodba naša:*_
_(Using common sense, this is our verdict: )_
_*ak je od *_*kaſhe *_*kaψa bolj'ga žita*,_
_(if __kaψa is made of better grain than __kaſha)_
_*in boljš' obdelana, in bolj polita,*_
_(and better prepared, and better boiled)_
_*naj se ne piše *_*kaſha, ampak *_*kaψa.*_
_(then it mustn't be spelled __kaſha, but __kaψa)_


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## Коста

Athaulf said:


> But Lomonosov's orthography was designed for Russian, which is extremely different from all Serbian dialects phonetically and phonologically.


 
The Serbs used _Russian_ literatry language at the end of the 18th century.



Athaulf said:


> It also included, if I'm not mistaken, a bunch of arbitrary rules that existed only for historical reasons (like e.g. the contrast between *и* and *i*, which marked no difference in pronunciation).


 
The *i *was а short vowell follwing н, к etc. as is русскiй. I don't see anything wrong with keeping historical orthography, or even arbitrary spelling rules - _look at English! _No one seems perturbed by it! A language that has silent letters in word such as *dough *is perfectly acceptable, but _pragmatism_ plays an important role when it comes to removing ъ from Russian or Serbian?!?



Athaulf said:


> Was there actually a standard by which this orthography was adapted to Serbian? I haven't heard of one, and when I look at old Serbian printed texts, the usage seems quite inconsistent and haphazard. For example, were there actually standard rules for using *и*, *ы*, and *i*? (Out of these, Serbian needs only one, so Karadžić kept only *и*.) What about the final big yers (*ъ*), which were also an arbitrary convention, without any phonetic value?


 
Yes, there was a standard orthographic usage of all those primarily based on history and etymology, as well as esthetics. I agree that some of them such as *ъ *had no function but what function does *u* play in *vapour*? Yet British English continues to use it and I don't hear anyone questiong it!

The *ы* had to be used after *н* or *л* in order to prevent them from being pronounced as "nyi" and "lyi" but rather as "ni" and "li" as in точный. Whether *ы* had an audible soud difference with *и* in Serbian (slaveno-serbski) is matter of speculation. No one speaks the language that used it. Vuk's claim that they are identical is spurious because he also claimed that Serbian doesn't have an *ф* (f) or *х* (h). Vuk's vocabulary is thoroughly corrupt because it was based on how illiterate people "heard" the words. Thus *ишел* became *ишао*, etc.



Athaulf said:


> And how many Serbs actually knew how to use yat properly? Most places where yat should be placed according to the etymological principles are identifiable by the Ekavian/Ijekavian contrasts, but not all.


 
Those who had basic education - by memorization, of course, just as in English. Not many an educated Serb working in administration, courts, schools, post offices, etc. knew the _dervation_ of the spelling but I am sure he knew it had to do with the Church Slavonic heritage going back to St. Sava in the 13th century.



Athaulf said:


> Even if you know how to identify all of them, it's disputable how far one should go restoring the Old Slavic yats. Would you spell *себе* (oneself) or *себѣ*, like Russians did before the Revolution?


 
That's a valid question. And, no, I would _not_ spell *себе* as *себѣ*, although I see no reason why not, other than it would unnecessarily confuse and achive no desired effect at this point.

The extent to which restoring *ѣ* would be _useful and significant _- because it is a real audible inflexion in the Serbian language - would be to produce a single orthographic standard to match a single literary standard, as I already explained to Sokol in the post above: simply spell победа/побједа as побѣда.



Athaulf said:


> (For what that's worth, I agree that the old Russian and Serbian orthographies were more beautiful than their contemporary versions, especially Serbian. But they were also far less practical.)


 
Taste is like a picture on the wall. Highly subjective. Yet we all agree that homes without pictures and decorations look empty, and so can alphabets. Utiliatrian is not always the best as far as the taste is concerned. So, esthetics should be a consideration as well.

Reforming the Reform by creating a unified literary standard independent of dialect would help unify the language and allow all Serbs to feel linguistically united despite regional differences in pronunciation.

Imagine, if Croatia codified the Ikavian dialect as the "other" standard Croatian literary language and Dalmatian teachers used Ikavijan spelling in Zagreb! Well, that's what Iyekavian teachers are doing in Ekavian Serbia.


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## phosphore

Коста said:


> *The language of the reform has no historical heritage,* it's orthography is based on how illiterate people "heard" it pronounced, and it is grammatically inferior to the previous standard. For example, "Sitting Bull" or "Седящий Бык", in Russian, in modern Serbian is "Бик који седи" (Bull that is sitting)! This is something characteristic of *a completely primitive, descriptive, tribal language!*


 
Firstly, here are, in modern orthography, the first four verses from the Jovan Rajić's _Boj zmaja sa orlovi _(1789).

_Змај се љути готови_
_с орли војевати:_
_Некага, нек се љути_
_хоће их познати._

I cannot help pointing out that adjectives such as _primitive, descriptive or tribal_ do not really mean anything for a language. You are also wrong in many other points you have taken, but I am not good enough at English and I do not have enough time at the moment to prove that.


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## Коста

TriglavNationalPark said:


> This discussion has reminded me of the Slovenian Alphabet War of the 19th century. In the 1830s


 
Thanks for the historical overview. Very interesting, but it is not comparable to what took place in the Serbian reform. Serbia had an adequate and functioning literary language and alphabet for over 800 years. That language, of course, evolved, and so the did its orthography, but it was still related to the historical and cultural roots from which it was derived. There was no pressing reason to implent any reform in the standard literary Serbian language. It was perfectly intelligible to anyone who had basic education.

The fact is that phonetics are irrelevant, as most major and well-developed world languages are neither too practical (Chinese, Japanese) nor phonetic (English, French, German, Russian, etc.).

If there is one language that should have had a radical orthodographic reform it is none other than English. Yet no one seems to be too interested or concerned with the fact that, for all practical purposes, every English word is a standard unto itself! 

Why should there be a higher standard be applied to Slavic languages?


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## Коста

phosphore said:


> I cannot help pointing out that adjectives such as _primitive, descriptive or tribal_ do not really mean anything for a language. You are also wrong in many other points you have taken, but I am not good enough at English and I do not have enough time at the moment to prove that.


 
I appreciate the poem. Simple or "primitive" languages (this is _not _meant as an insult but as indicative of structure) can produce poetry. But they are not necessarily good enough for serious prose.

The best example that I think you will understand is chakavski, the true Croatian native language. It produced wonderufl poetry. Yet, chakavski remains useless for serious prose and therefore could never be used as Croatian literary standard. 

I would still like to hear why you disagree with my statements, even if you can't discuss them in greater detail.


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## DarkChild

Коста said:


> The language of the reform has no historical heritage, it's orthography is based on how illiterate people "heard" it pronounced, and it is grammatically inferior to the previous standard. *For example, "Sitting Bull" or "Седящий Бык", in Russian, in modern Serbian is "Бик који седи" (Bull that is sitting)! *This is something characteristic of a completely primitive, descriptive, tribal language!



 Really? There is no word to say "sitting" in this case as an adjective? It has to be described? I had no idea.


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## Коста

DarkChild said:


> Really? There is no word to say "sitting" in this case as an adjective? It has to be described? I had no idea.


 
There is, of course, *седећи* (pron. sedetyi as in седетьи) but these adjectives in modern Serbian are "awkward" and "archaic" and are never used.

You can use it in a different context such as *седећи на престолу,* *он рече *(sitting on a throne, he said [aorist]). In other words, you can use it as a verb but not as an adjective. For example, the old term even the reformers used for Vienna - *Царствующа Виенна* - cannot be translated into modern Serbian word for word, but as *Беч који царује*.


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## phosphore

Коста said:


> I appreciate the poem. Simple or "primitive" languages (this is _not _meant as an insult but as indicative of structure) can produce poetry. But they are not necessarily good enough for serious prose.
> 
> The best example that I think you will understand is chakavski, the true Croatian native language. It produced wonderufl poetry. Yet, chakavski remains useless for serious prose and therefore could never be used as Croatian literary standard.


 

Here is, in modern orthography, the first paragraph from Dositej Obradović's _Etika ili filosofija naravoučitelna po sistemi g. professora Soavi_ (1803).

_"Делајте дондеже свет имате". Советује нас небесна мудрост. Свет разумевасе овде време живота; зашто привременни мрак ноћи, доће, пак и проће; тако и дније живота пролазе али опет и долазе; и тако немарност наша или паче леност ласно би изговор наодила, та и сутра је фала богу дан какогод и данас: али кад нам се свет живота смеркне, и наступи на нас ноћ гроба, ту већ нам ти првога изговора нејма._

There is no language that cannot express what its speakers need to say.


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## sokol

Коста said:


> What I meant by difficulty of standardization being on historically shaky grounds is that the language of Vuk Karadhzhich was _never_ a written language - it has no history as a literary language prior to his appearance on the scene.


But it *has *a historic tradition - oral tradition also is historic tradition.
All modern languages have begun as spoken languages only; modern English was nothing but the language of common, ordinary people during the Normannic rule when for a while hardly any written documents in Anglo-Saxon survived.



Коста said:


> Vuk's product in many ways is even more an artefact than the pre-reform language. Vuk ended an 800 year old Serbian literary tradition and _alienated_ people from it.


So you say, but it seems most Serbs don't agree with you here because they still use Vuk's language (as you do, I guess).



Коста said:


> The language of the reform has no historical heritage, it's orthography is based on how illiterate people "heard" it pronounced, and it is grammatically inferior to the previous standard.


Vuk's analysis of Serbian was an exceptional phonological analysis, especially if you take into account that he produced this analysis in a time when phonology wasn't even an established field of science.
Of course Vuk's role has become over-emphasised in the course of history, but this only means that he wasn't the only one who favoured a reformed standard language; as I am sure you are aware even Croatians were in favour (who also felt, for different reasons, that a reform was necessary).

Slovenians developped a writing system which has morphological and historical elements, Czech has even more of that, and English or French rely heavily on historical spellings (which create great troubles for both children when they need to learn the standard language as well as learners of those languages).

So obviously both principles - phonological and historical ones - have their shortcomings and advantages.

Anyway, we do *not *want to fight a spelling war here, and we will not (we might discuss them, but we won't fight them here on the forum) - so again, please do not continue along this lines: on this forum there is no place for language politics: this is a discussion forum, but not a political platform.

So please refrain from the use of adjectives like "primitive" or "inferior" - after all this is not scientific because even the language of illiterate Amazon rain forest natives is not deficient but a linguistic system in its own right.
Also it is obvious that a newly defined standard language always needs time to develop fully; and as far as Serbian (_modern _Serbian) is concerned there's no doubt that it is long since a fully developped standard language, with a rich cultural life and literature.


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## Athaulf

Коста said:


> The shocking truth is: there simply was _no need_ for Vuk's reform! That is obvious from just reading the official newspapers of the time. Here is an example from the "Srbske Novine," published September 30th, 1867.
> 
> "НЕЗВАНИЧНЫЙ ДЕО. Народна скупштина, по телеграму, кои смо у синоћнѣмъ изванредномъ листу саобштили, отворена є юче у подне *после *службе божіє. Престолну *беседу*, коіомъ є Нѣгова *Светлостъ *Князъ скупштину отворіо, скупштинари су многократнимъ усклицима прекидали. Нисмо изоставили да тy *беседу *іоштъ синоћь као пирлогъ узъ ванредный лист наши новина разшалѣмо."


See, this is what I'm talking about. Whoever wrote this didn't know how to use yat properly. It should definitely be used in *послѣ*, *бесѣда*, and* свѣтлостъ*. I'm sure that someone more knowledgeable than me would find other mistakes and inconsistencies too. Whenever I see anything printed in the old Serbian alphabet, I see such inconsistencies. It seems to me that the Russian orthography was adapted to Serbian arbitrarily by different authors, without any real universal standard, which is contrary to some of your claims. 

(This isn't necessarily bad, and I'm not trying to be condescending at all. English spelling was also quite haphazard almost until the 19th century, and it certainly didn't prevent English from developing a great literary culture.)




Коста said:


> The *i *was а short vowell follwing н, к etc. as is русскiй. I don't see anything wrong with keeping historical orthography, or even arbitrary spelling rules - _look at English! _No one seems perturbed by it!


Oh, I agree with you about about this absolutely. As an instinctive reactionary, I firmly maintain that tradition and aesthetics should trump practicality when it comes to writing systems. (Not to mention that claims of practicality are always dubious -- the system of Gaj and Karadžić certainly has its own pitfalls.)


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## Коста

phosphore said:


> There is no language that cannot express what its speakers need to say.


 
I am sorry, I completely disagree with that statement. If that were true, then every language is equally capable of expressing every possible human concept, regardless of grammatical structure or size of its vocabulary. For instance, SS Cyrill and Methodius _created_ a liturgical language out of the Old Slavonic vernacular in such a way that it could, exactly and word for word, express abstract concepts used in koine Greek. Old Slavonic by itself could not, otherwise there would have been no reason for them to create a new language for a specific purpose.


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## phosphore

I am sorry, I do not understand what actually you are diasgreeing on? Language is not an entity on its own, it evolves with the people using it as a medium of communication and their needs; it evolves just like Old Church Slavonic did or modern Serbian have. Because we are not really speaking the language Vuk Karadžić spoke, are we? The very moment we needed to express something we could not using the existing vocabulary and grammar we would find the way to expand our language and do it, so the language would never be a problem and never is.

What seems to me to be the problem here and the cause of misunderstandings is that you think that Serbs (both educated and uneducated) in some moment in the 19th century decided to forget all the words they had used before and to stick to the words listed in Vuk Karadžić's dictionary; to forget all the syntactic structures they were using before and to stick to the ones from the Vuk Karadžić's grammar. I hope you are aware that never happened?


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## Коста

Athaulf said:


> See, this is what I'm talking about. Whoever wrote this didn't know how to use yat properly. It should definitely be used in *послѣ*, *бесѣда*, and* свѣтлостъ*.


 
Oh, I agree. They used it only where it was always vocalazied such as *синоћнѣмъ* or *Нѣгова*. But that doesn't mean it wasn't consistent or standardized. You are absolutely right: in Serbian, *ѣ* should be used in *послѣ*, *бесѣда*, and* свѣтлостъ*, because they differ in Ekavian and Iyekavian, and *његова* and *синоћњем *should not, because both are pronounced equally in either dialect.

The idea is not to change orthography for any other reason but to improve on it where it's needed in order to attain a unified and better literary standard for all Serb speakers.



Athaulf said:


> English spelling was also quite haphazard almost until the 19th century, and it certainly didn't prevent English from developing a great literary culture.


 
I would venture to say that English spelling remains haphazard.


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## Коста

sokol said:


> So you say, but it seems most Serbs don't agree with you here because they still use Vuk's language (as you do, I guess).


 
Most Serbs disagreed with Vuk as well. No one uses Vuk's language today. 



sokol said:


> as I am sure you are aware even Croatians were in favour (who also felt, for different reasons, that a reform was necessary).


 
The Croatians needed a literary language, period. Chakavian and Kajkavian simply did not suffice. The Croatian parliament spoke Latin. In Zagreb, you could buy only German books. Educated Croatians spoke German at home, and had only a rudimentary knowledge of Croatian dialects, sufficient to understand or instruct hired help.

The Serbs, on the other hand, had a rich literary tradition and a functional literary standard language. So it is no wonder (especially in the infancy of the "Illyrian movement") that some Croatians looked to the Serbs as the source. 



sokol said:


> So please refrain from the use of adjectives like "primitive" or "inferior" - after all this is not scientific because even the language of illiterate Amazon rain forest natives is not deficient but a linguistic system in its own right.


 
Apologies. In self-defense, I must say that I went out of my way to make it clear the terms I used were not meant as an offense but referred to the relative complexity of a language structure, as would be used in such words as the "primitive Church" or the "primitive Earth." 



sokol said:


> Also it is obvious that a newly defined standard language always needs time to develop fully; and as far as Serbian (_modern _Serbian) is concerned there's no doubt that it is long since a fully developped standard language, with a rich cultural life and literature.


 
No language is perfect and can always be improved on. As long as that is true, constructive critique should not be perceived as a "fight," don't you agree?


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## sokol

phosphore said:


> What seems to me to be the problem here and the cause of misunderstandings is that you think that Serbs (both educated and uneducated) in some moment in the 19th century decided to forget all the words they had used before and to stick to the words listed in Vuk Karadžić's dictionary; to forget all the syntactic structures they were using before and to stick to the ones from the Vuk Karadžić's grammar. I hope you are aware that never happened?


Well put.

Serbians did not adopt a completely new standard language in the 19th century; those Croatians using Kajkavian and Čakavian literary language and dialects till then did - but for Croatians using Štokavian and for Serbs the shift wasn't dramatic.


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## Athaulf

Коста said:


> See, this is what I'm talking about. Whoever wrote this didn't know how to use yat properly. It should definitely be used in *послѣ*, *бесѣда*, and* свѣтлостъ*.
> 
> 
> 
> Oh, I agree. They used it only where it was always vocalazied such as *синоћнѣмъ* or *Нѣгова*. But that doesn't mean it wasn't consistent or standardized.
Click to expand...


But whose idea was it to use yat that way? This is totally inconsistent with both the etymological principle and the Russian usage of the time. Both pre-Revolutionary Russian and Church Slavonic orthographies used yat in the words above -- just google them and you'll see many examples. Bulgarians did too, before yat was abolished from their spelling in 1945.

Furthermore, here is a counterexample that shows that such non-etymological useage wasn't universal. From the original edition of _Gorski vijenac_:Благо томе ко довіекъ живи!
Имао се рашта и родити —
— Вѣчна зубля вѣчне помрчине,
Нит’ догори нити *свѣтлостъ* губи!​On the other hand, Njegoš's publisher wasn't fully consistent either. In the above text, you can find many erroneous examples such as **звіезда* instead of *зв**ѣ**зда*, or **гньіездо* instead of *гнѣздо*. 

Yat wasn't the only inconsistent thing. For example, should feminine nouns ending in consonants, like *свѣтлостъ*, end with the small (*Ь*) or big (*Ъ*) yers? Etymologically and according to Russian usage, it should be the former, but these final consonants are not palatalized in Serbian, so only the latter would make any sense. Unsurprisingly, we see an inconsistnecy -- your above example uses *Ъ*, but _Gorski vijenac_ uses *Ь* (some small yers in the text got misscanned or mistyped as big, but you can see the correct version in the original facsimile). 

There are many other inconsistencies I could point out, but I think these examples suffice. Still, I am impressed with the beauty of this Old Cyrillic script. But you can't possibly claim that it was used according to a unified standard.


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## Athaulf

Коста said:


> The Croatians needed a literary language, period. Chakavian and Kajkavian simply did not suffice. The Croatian parliament spoke Latin. In Zagreb, you could buy only German books. Educated Croatians spoke German at home, and had only a rudimentary knowledge of Croatian dialects, sufficient to understand or instruct hired help.



That's ridiculously false. 

Except for foreigners, influential and educated people in Habsburg Croatia were highly multilingual, and easily switched between their local Croatian dialect, Latin, and German and/or Hungarian. Read, for example, Gjalski's _Pod starim krovovima_ for a nice portrayal of what everyday communication of these people looked like. It's true that the official state business in the Lands of the Crown of St. Stephen was conducted in Latin before 1848, but vernacular Croatian literature had existed for centuries before that. 

To see the absurdity of your claims about the sociolinguistics of Habsburg Croatia, just look at the poetry in Kajkavian vernacular written in the 17th century by Fran Krsto Frankopan, lord of one of the most powerful Croatian noble families, who got executed after a failed anti-Habsburg conspiracy. Do you think he wrote this using "only a rudimentary knowledge of Croatian dialects, sufficient to understand or instruct hired help"? And if you could buy only German books in Zagreb, where do you think, say, Tituš Brezovački published his works?

Obviously, you won't find any earth-shatteringly magnificent intellectual works written in vernacular in either Serbia or Croatia before mid-to-late 19th century, but it's ridiculous to engage in such uninformed putdowns. Because of the peculiar historical circumstances in mid-19th century, Serbs and Croats ended up with a more or less unified standard language different from the dialects of their earlier literary traditions, but things could have easily gone a very different way. (Of course, it's silly to even project the modern ethnic categories such as "Serbs" and "Croats" uncritically much earlier than the 19th century nationalist movements.)


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## Athaulf

sokol said:


> Serbians did not adopt a completely new standard language in the 19th century; those Croatians using Kajkavian and Čakavian literary language and dialects till then did - but for Croatians using Štokavian and for Serbs the shift wasn't dramatic.



That's not really true. The differences between modern BCS and the old Slavoserbian literary language are huge, about as large as the differences between BCS and the Kajkavian or Chakavian dialects of the old Croatian vernacular literature. 

Furthermore, even when it comes to vernaculars, BCS was definitely a dramatic change for speakers of Torlakian dialects in large parts of Serbia. A few years ago, a notable film was made in Serbia, called _Zona Zamfirova_, whose plot takes place in 19th century Niš, and most of the dialogue is in the local Torlakian dialect of the time. To modern BCS speakers, it sounds very foreign and barely understandable, sometimes as incomprehensible as Bulgarian.


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## Коста

I am wondering if you or phosphore are familiar with _За и против Вука_ (Меша Селимовић, 1967), _О језичком расколу,_ (Бранислав Брборић, 2000), _Поглед на историју српске културе у књизи "Језик и друштврена историја",_ (Драган Мишковић, 2003_), Два века Вука _(Светислав Басара), _Српски народни језик пре Вука _Караџића (Милица Грковић) to mention only a handful of dozens of works on this subject? And, finally, is _Wikipedia_ an acceptable authoritative source on this forum?


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## Коста

Athaulf said:


> That's ridiculously false.


 
I would love to discuss this with you in greater detail, but apparently this forum is not suited for that type of exchange, as I have been informed in no uncertain terms and actions, so I will let it go.


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## phosphore

Коста said:


> I am wondering if you or phosphore are familiar with _За и против Вука_ (Меша Селимовић, 1967), _О језичком расколу,_ (Бранислав Брборић, 2000), _Поглед на историју српске културе у књизи "Језик и друштврена историја",_ (Драгам Мишковић, 2003_), Два века Вука _(Светислав Басара), _Српски народни језик пре Вука _Караџића (Милица Грковић) to mention only a handful of dozens of works on this subject?


 
I am. You probably have not noticed but I have not said anything to defend Vuk Karadžić and the myth about him and his work. However, many of your arguments are false and I needed to point some of them out.


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## Коста

Athaulf said:


> But you can't possibly claim that it was used according to a unified standard.


 
I have no disagreement with your correct analysis. There were inconsistencies _across_ the region and countries, but within each system the spelling was consistent. 

Nyegosh used a mixed language, incorporating the language of the land with the literary standard. In doing so, he departed from orthography to accentuate the Iykeavian nature of the Montenegrin version of the speech. It was important to him to do that. Otherwise, I odn't think he would have done it.

But, for all their peculiar digressions, they were all very consistent within their own local usage. So, for example, the Serbian newspapers did not abritarily change their spelling rules as they went along. If you read digitized versions of Serbian newspapers from earliy 1800's until May 1868 (when they switched to the new orthography), they are consistent in their usage of the alphabet. 

The same can not be said for Vuk. he changed his orthography as he went along. He dropped "h" only to reintroduce it years later. His fist work was published in Саво Mркаљ's orthography. He also wrote ђед, ђевојка, etc., for the long time, only to break with his own rules and change to дјед, дјевојка - a mjaor departure from his earlier _пиши као што говориш_ rule.

Also onsistent were the Russians within their confines, and Bulgarians, and Montenegrins, etc.

As to your question 



Athaulf said:


> But whose idea was it to use yat that way?


 
The answer, of course, is what difference does it make?  That was the system they chose and they stuck to it. Who made the decision to drop yat in Bulgarian and why? Someone did, for whatever reason that seemed right, and because they _could_.

The important thing to remember in all things concerning the written language is that (1) the languge evolves and (2) nothing is set in stone. It is only when we fall for the fallacy that something is _perfect and untouchable _that things tend to stagnate. Everything can be imporved on, especially the evolving standrds of the written languge.


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## Коста

Athaulf said:


> That's not really true. The differences between modern BCS and the old Slavoserbian literary language are huge, about as large as the differences between BCS and the Kajkavian or Chakavian dialects of the old Croatian vernacular literature


 
Actually, to most Serbs this is not true. Slavenserbian is still _Serbian _and as such cannot be alien to the Serbs. I don't remember any other nation using it. The reason why it is not as alien to the Serbs as it is maybe to non-Orthodox speakers is because, through the litugical life and literary exposure to Church Slavonic, the terminology of the so-called Slavenoserbian is quite familiar.

In addition to that, Serbian eventually regained many of the old Slavonic words Vuk decided to drop, and they are in common usage in modern Serbian. The same cannot be said of the language variants used among non-Orthodox speakers in Bosnia and Croatia.


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## Коста

phosphore said:


> However, many of your arguments are false and I needed to point some of them out.


 
I guess we will just have to leave it at that.


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## Athaulf

Коста said:


> For example, "Sitting Bull" or "Седящий Бык", in Russian, in modern Serbian is "Бик који седи" (Bull that is sitting)! This is something characteristic of a completely primitive, descriptive, tribal language!


 
Actually, this is an example of a grammatical change that's been going on in nearly all Indo-European languages for thousands of years. Proto-Indo-European had a huge number of verbal participles that could be used for a variety of meanings, most of which have by now disappeared in nearly all modern IE languages. Ancient IE languages such as Latin, Sanskrit, or Old Church Slavonic still had many of these participles that no longer exist in modern Romance, Slavic, and Indian languages, which use subordinate clauses instead. 

However, this doesn't mean that these languages have become more "primitive". For example, in Latin, you could use the participle _demonstrandus_ (as in _quod erat demonstrandum_), meaning "which should be demonstrated". In Spanish, however, you have to use the subordinate clause _que se debe demostrar_ or _que debe ser demostrado_ instead of just the participle _demonstrandum_, and it's similar in Italian, French, and other modern descendants of Latin -- just like you have to say _koji sedi_ in modern Serbian because an adequate Slavic participle that would be analogous to the Russian _седящий_ doesn't exist any more. Are you going to proclaim that all these languages are primitive? (If I'm not mistaken, these participles are disappearing even in spoken Russian, and subordinate clauses are usually used in everyday speech instead.)

In fact, according to your criterion, Lithuanian is probably the most sophisticated European language. Just look at what you can express using only participles in Lithuanian -- it puts both Latin and Church Slavonic to shame:
http://www.lituanus.org/1987/87_1_04.htm


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## Athaulf

Коста said:


> But, for all their peculiar digressions, they were all very consistent within their own local usage. So, for example, the Serbian newspapers did not abritarily change their spelling rules as they went along. If you read digitized versions of Serbian newspapers from earliy 1800's until May 1868 (when they switched to the new orthography), they are consistent in their usage of the alphabet.



Well, let's take a look at http://digital.nb.rs/collection/no-srpske-novine. For example, as far as I see, the first issue of _Srpske novine_, dated January 27, 1834, uses yat according to the etymological principle, but occasionally uses *е* instead in a seemingly random pattern (*св**ѣтлый*, *Б**ѣоград*, *св**ѣтлость*, but *шестонедельного*, *у среди*). Thirty years later, in the issue of the same newspaper from January 2, 1864 (still before the switch to Vuk's orthography), I see far fewer yats. Yat is replaced by *e* almost everywhere (*заменити*, *место*, *време*) and used, as far as I see, only occasionally to palatalize the preceding *н*. 

Sorry, but I don't see a great consistency here. I also looked at scans of various Serbian books printed in the first half of the 19th century at the same website -- not counting those by Karadžić and his supporters -- and they vary similarly. (And yat is only one issue where the rules were inconsistent!) Again, I don't think this is necessarily bad, it's just that your claim about a long-lasting uniform standard is incorrect. 



> The same can not be said for Vuk. he changed his orthography as he went along. He dropped "h" only to reintroduce it years later. His fist work was published in Саво Mркаљ's orthography. He also wrote ђед, ђевојка, etc., for the long time, only to break with his own rules and change to дјед, дјевојка - a mjaor departure from his earlier _пиши као што говориш_ rule.


Well, he tried to make the literary language look and sound like vernacular. The problem that he didn't understand, or at least failed to take into consideration with all its implications, is that vernacular from one region is alien and difficult to grasp for people from other regions, so eventually you'll run into the same practical difficulties as with a traditonal high-register language in most places. As with so many other issues, the reactionary perspective has been vindicated when one considers the facts realistically. I fully agree with you in that regard.


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## Коста

Athaulf said:


> Are you going to proclaim that all these languages are primitive?


 
Let's not use this word. Maybe we can substitute it with _rudimentary._ But, after reading your post, even that may not be the right term either.

I can't answer your question, however, because I don't know if there was a time when Spanish _could_ form verbal participles, or if it lost that ability and why?

In Serbian the verbal participles once existed and then _were _lost by design (elevating local vernacular to a literary language), and replacing them with subordinate clauses. How can that be seen as progress? 

On the other hand, Serbian retained - or better yet _regained -_ verbal participles which come from Church Slavonic, such as *блаженопочивши*_ (one who is blessedly reposed), _which is commonly used in modern Serbian.

So, while *седећи Бик* sounds awkward, *блаженопочивши* doesn't (to a Serb). I am almost willing to bet, a Croatian would find it awkward, but not a Bulgarian or Russian. 

My impression was, and I am not a linguist obviously, that more rudimentary languages have to use a lot of descriptive terms or "suboridnate clauses" as you call them, to describe something. On the other hand, _liturgical_ languages, which are most sophsiticated and abstract, and languages derived from them, can express complex concepts with a single word. 

Perhaps these verbal participles are being lost in Russian and other languages today, but I just can't see how such a loss can be considered _progress._


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## Коста

Athaulf said:


> Sorry, but I don't see a great consistency here. I also looked at scans of various Serbian books printed in the first half of the 19th century at the same website -- not counting those by Karadžić and his supporters -- and they vary similarly. (And yat is only one issue where the rules were inconsistent!) Again, I don't think this is necessarily bad, it's just that your claim about a long-lasting uniform standard is incorrect.


 
I agree that there were changes in orthography over a span of 30 years, but I disagree that they were_ abritrary _or _inconsistent_. 

Obviously the official _Slavenoserbian_ language was _evolving _like all European languages were evolving at that time. If left undisturbed, it would have evolved into semi-vernacular literary standard like all other European languages.

In other words, there doesn't seem to have been any need for a reform, at least not from a linguistic point of view! And all those stories we read later how unintelligible and aritifical the language was are obviously false.The official pre-Vuk Serbian language of the newspapers is perfecty intelligible 175 years later.

Let's not forget that even Serbocroatian orthography changed several times from its creation (in 1956) in a span of 34 years years (1990), and Serbocoratian was a fully codified language. Germany changed its orthography several time since the end of WWII (60 years ago), the last being in the late 1990's, regarding the use of "sharp s" *β* (ss), and the Swiss dropped it althogether, and I am sure other European countries did the same thing. So, this is nothing new or unusual.

My point is that for each given orthographic standard used, the official Serbian used that standard _consistently _within the time span when that standard was current.

It's not as if in the same 1834 issue of Serbian Newspapers some wrote *свѣтлый*, and others *светлый *because they "felt" like it. And if there is an occasional inconsistency, could it have been a typographical error rather than persistent inconsistency? 



Athaulf said:


> I see far fewer yats. Yat is replaced by *e* almost everywhere (*заменити*, *место*, *време*) and used, as far as I see, only occasionally to palatalize the preceding *н*.


 
Well, yes. It became clear that the logical place for yat was only in those words where yat was reflexed diffrenetly in western as opposed to eastern dialects. Yat should be used only in those words where such reflextion is vocalized and pronounced. Former member of the Council for Standardization of the Serbian Language (1994), Branislav Brborich, writes about this in great detail http://www.rastko.rs/filologija/bbrboric-jezik/bbrboric-jezik3.html#_Toc515090636.

The use of *ѣ* behind *н* and *л* ion 1868 was done simply out of habit and because under that orthographic standard *лье* and *нье* were not acceptable (consistency!) and, frankly, would look "awkward," even though that's exatly what the Bolshevik Revolution did years later! The same can be said about the use of *ъ* following the last consonant of a word. Habit, just as English spelling looks "normal" out of habit, but not to someone who is learning how to write English. In many cases, changing the habit is the biggest hurtle, which is true even today for Serbian orthography.

Now, *Досθией Обрадовичь* used the _extended alphabet_ containing Greek letters, which was _legitimate_ (and not arbitrary) because the pre-Vuk alphabet contained all the Cyrillic letters, including Church Slavonic ones, even though all of them were not used often. In Dosithey's case the use of Θ was part of his legal name. 

You will also notice that even he used *ћ*, and the ealiest Serbian Newspapers used *ђ* and *џ*, which are traditionally credited to Vuk! Obviously they were in everyday use before Vuk's reform took place. What guives?


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## Коста

Athaulf said:


> To modern BCS speakers, it sounds very foreign and barely understandable, sometimes as incomprehensible as Bulgarian.


 
I don't mean to be "flooding" the page, but this is like a gold mine!  My mother grew up in Sokobanya, a Torlakian area, altough she lived most of her life in Belgrade. Torlakian may be sometimes incomprehensible to Shtokavian speakers in Bosnia and Croatia, but to native Ekavian speakers not so much. In fact we always used to joke saying *Он је из Ниш* (nominative) for "he is from Nish" instead *Он је из Ниш**а* (genitive). 

Sometimes these reports miss to mention critical information. You have to take into account a great number of refugees from Krayina and Bosnia who now live in Serbia who would not find Torlakian easy to understand. In fact, many Krayina Serbs speak *Ikavian*.


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## sokol

*Moderator note:
I'd like to remind you that this thread is about standard vs. spoken language in all Slavic languages.

I think we have exhausted the excourse about Serbian spelling already, so please leave it at that. While spelling is of course relevant to this topic it is not the topic of this thread.
We've learned a great deal (surely I have), but technically this is off-topic here.

So please let us continue with the gap between spoken and written language, be it in Serbian or any other Slavic language.

Thanks for your understanding!
sokol
Moderator*


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## sokol

Athaulf said:


> That's not really true. The differences between modern BCS and the old Slavoserbian literary language are huge, about as large as the differences between BCS and the Kajkavian or Chakavian dialects of the old Croatian vernacular literature.


Thank you, the correction is appreciated. 
Obviously I am not proficient concerning Slavenoserbian.

So this means that there was indeed a huge difference between spoken and written Serbian in the 18th and early 19th century - I underestimated this.


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## Коста

sokol said:


> *I think we have exhausted the excourse about Serbian spelling already, so please leave it at that...*


 
Will do, sir. But, let me just say that I was simply _replying_ to people who posted comments _to me_ rather than intitiate new posts perpatuating the topic. Should I _not reply to others?_ 

Forgive me, my understanding was that if someone's post had not been deleted (because it's off the topic, or leads nowehere, etc.), there is no reason not to respond to it.


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## sokol

Коста said:


> Will do, sir. But, let me just say that I was simply _replying_ to people who posted comments _to me_ rather than intitiate new posts perpatuating the topic. Should I _not reply to others?_


Accepted. 
Also it is not as if we couldn't allow any discussions about spelling here as the topic is related, but it shouldn't get too exhaustive - for detailed discussions about particular questions a new thread should be opened.


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## Коста

sokol said:


> So this means that there was indeed a huge difference between spoken and written Serbian in the 18th and early 19th century - I underestimated this.


 
It depends on the population. To Orthodox speakers the difference was not as huge because of a number of Slavonic terms that are present in everyday use that are alien to non-Orthodox speakers.

Looking at the original texts the literary Serbian of 175 years ago is not much different from the spoken Serbian today. The gap has narrowed, but the reason may be because, paradoxically, no one today speaks in Vuk's vernacular.


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## Коста

sokol said:


> For detailed discussions about particular questions a new thread should be opened.


 
I understand. I am learning.


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## phosphore

You are overestimating the influence of religion here; it is not like people talk about philosophy in churches. The change was not that big because it was not like that up to some date the only language used in books (or papers) was Slavonic-Serbian (which was not even codified) and from that day on it has been modern Serbian: books (and papers) in vernacular Serbian had been printed for years (even centuries) before *the spelling reform* took place.


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## Коста

phosphore said:


> You are overestimating the influence of religion here; it is not like people talk about philosophy in churches. The change was not that big because it was not like that up to some date the only language used in books (or papers) was Slavonic-Serbian (which was not even codified) and from that day on it has been modern Serbian: books (and papers) in vernacular Serbian had been printed for years (even centuries) before *the spelling reform* took place.


 
But the opinion of some BCS speakers whose native tonguee is Croatian is that the change was _monumental _and that the _gap_ between the _spoken_ language and the _new literary_ standard was _huge. _

Considering the difference in spoken Kajkavian and Chakavian compared to Shtokavian, I couldn't agree more. These two dialects are so different from Shtokavian that Vuk's reform literaly ushered in a whole _new language _for some.

But non-Orthodox _Shtokavian_ speakers also faced a considerbale gap, except that this one was based on different determinants. To them, words such as *оваплотити (се), васпитање, ваздух, вазнесење*, *крепки*, etc. would be alien because their common and well-known presence in Serbian (both spoken and literary) is of Church Slavonic origin to which they were not exposed. Multiply that by thousands more such words (including Russian words that are commonly used in Serbian to this day), and you can see why the gap was monumental to non-Orthodox, and much smaller to Orthodox speakers.

We can even see that the gap in Serbia was probably next to nil. Three _years_ before the official language reform took place (144 years ago) it is clear that the _written_ Serbian differed very little, if at all, from the spoken language. In fact, the laguage is practically _unchanged _to this day. Here is an example, reprinted in modern orthography:

"Фонду окружне болнице припадају ствари и новци у болници умролог болестника, које је болестник собом у болницу донео, ако нема по закону наследника, и ако болестник није наредио, шта де буде с његовим новцима и стварима." (Члан 10, Закон о подизању и устројству болница, "Новине Србске", 8. априла, 1865.)

Looking at this, I really can't see what was accomplished with the official reform intended to bridge the gap between the spoken and written languages, except change in orthography! By all accounts, _years_ before the reform, the written language _then _and the spoken language _today_ are identical for all practical purposes.

So what happend to Vuk's language? In all honesty, I don't see anyone write like Vuk wrote. Which makes me wonder, which language really survived: *the written, which became the spoken*, or Vuk's spoken, which he wanted to became the written standard? By looking at written examples from 150 years ago, and knowing the spoken Serbian today, it sure looks it is the former rather than the latter.


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## phosphore

Коста said:


> But non-Orthodox _Shtokavian_ speakers also faced a considerbale gap, except that this one was based on different determinants. To them, words such as *оваплотити (се), васпитање, ваздух, вазнесење*, *крепки*, etc. would be alien because their common and well-known presence in Serbian (both spoken and literary) is of Church Slavonic origin to which they were not exposed. Multiply that by thousands more such words


 
But there are no thousands of such words.



Коста said:


> Looking at this, I really can't see what was accomplished with the official reform intended to bridge the gap between the spoken and written languages, except change in orthography!


 
It *was* an orthography reform.

I am not sure what are you trying to say? A few pages ago you said that today there was no difference between spoken and written Serbian (which was false), then you accused Vuk of breaking our linguistic tradition (which could be true) and now you are saying that actually the tradition was not interrupted at all? I do not worship Vuk Karadžić and his work, so I do not need to be enlightened, if that is what you are trying to do.


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## Коста

phosphore said:


> But there are no thousands of such words.


 
No, not any more, but in the mid 19th century the number of words that would have been alien to non-Orthodox speakers was much greater. 



phosphore said:


> It *was* an orthography reform.


 
Yes it was, _coupled with_ a language reform. 

By all accounts, the literary language in the 19th century Serbia gradually changed _all by itself_ into a version that is closer to the modern Serbian then the language Vuk used. 



phosphore said:


> I am not sure what are you trying to say? A few pages ago you said that today there was no difference between spoken and written Serbian (which was false)


 
I wrote that in Serbia many (obviously not all) are not paying much attention to orthography and grammar, and pretty much write and speak as they please (abusing Vuk's motto пиши као што говориш). I stated (I believe in post #47) that the gap between the written and spoken Serbian (and by that I mean _standard _Serbian) does not exist, or is negligible. I also stated that the correct (codified) language is not being enforced in schools, according to a high state official responsible for language. I believe all three statements to be true.



phosphore said:


> then you accused Vuk of breaking our linguistic tradition (which could be true) and now you are saying that actually the tradition was not interrupted at all?


 
The tradition was interrupted by the reform in orthography and vocabulary. The written languge was already no different than the one spoken. It is also obvious that it was not the language Vuk used, just as it is obvious that no one today speaks the way Vuk wrote. 

I believe we have said as much as there is to be said about this. It is ironic that the gap between the spoken and written language is probably the smallest in the BSC regions and yet the topic seems to be much more unsettled than in other Slavic languages. I think it is useful to make others aware of the complexity of this issue, but not to try to solve it on this forum. 

Of course, you are invited to continue, if you wish, privately or by starting a new topic on this subject.

At any rate, thank you for your comments.


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## Athaulf

Коста said:


> Considering the difference in spoken Kajkavian and Chakavian compared to Shtokavian, I couldn't agree more. These two dialects are so different from Shtokavian that Vuk's reform literaly ushered in a whole _new language _for some.



Yes, but statements like this one should be directed towards individual regional dialects, not Croats and Serbs in general. 

The _grammar_ of standard BCS wasn't a large change for Shtokavian speakers anywhere. It was roughly as familiar to Shtokavian Croats from, say, Slavonija or Bosnia as to Shtokavian Serbs from, say, Vojvodina or Northern Serbia. On the other hand, dialects spoken far from the central Shtokavian nexus were very remote grammatically from standard BCS on both sides. It was a compromise for both sides. 

For even the most remote Kajkavian or Chakavian dialect, you could find Torlakian dialects whose grammar was at least as remote from standard BCS. In fact, considering the lack of case system in the latter, one could argue that they were even more remote. (Of course, just like Kajkavian smoothly blended into Slovenian near the border, Torlakian smoothly blended into Bulgarian. There was a more or less unbroken Slavic dialect continuum from Klagenfurt to Varna back then, and it's still somewhat preserved in rural places.)

As for the vocabulary, you say:



> But non-Orthodox _Shtokavian_ speakers also faced a considerbale gap, except that this one was based on different determinants. To them, words such as *оваплотити (се), васпитање, ваздух, вазнесење*, *крепки*, etc. would be alien because their common and well-known presence in Serbian (both spoken and literary) is of Church Slavonic origin to which they were not exposed.


Yes, but most of these words were never used in Croatia, and many of them remained specific to Serbian usage (not even including Bosnian) even in the days of the officially unified Serbo-Croatian. Instead, borrowings from Latin and Greek and novel domestic calques were always more popular than Russian and Church Slavonic words outside of Serbia, and especially in Croatia. This is why abstract terminology often varies among different BCS varieties. 

Out of the words you listed, only _krepki_ is used in Croatian. _Vaspitanje_ would probably be understood but never used, and _vaznesenje_ and _ovaplotiti_ sound utterly alien. (I don't think more than a tiny minority of Croats have ever known the meaning of that last word. I do, but I'm hardly representative.) Of course, there are examples of Russian and Church Slavonic words that were adopted in Croatia too. (Note however also that some regions of Croatia had their own Catholic Church Slavonic tradition, which also contributed some words. It was nowhere as widespread and influential as that of Orthodox Serbs, of course.)


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## Коста

Athaulf, you are absolutely right. I should have been more specific rather than speak in general terms. Apologies, As for Torlakian, it is Shtokavian (at least according to Serbian linguists) and, as such, intelligible even with reduced number of cases (regional factor); Chakavian and Kajkavian are not and are quite unintelligible to Serb sepakers, especially Ekavians. As for Serbian words still in use, how about суштесвеност, словесност, вапати, двери, јединосушни, etc? And, yes, there is a rich Church Slavonioc tradition in Croatia (Dalmatia) and for this reason I am surprised it didn't make greater inroads into the vernacular and the Croatian literary standard.


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## Mishe

TriglavNationalPark said:


> That's interesting. In Slovenia, virtually everyone speaks either a dialect or some more generic form of colloquial Slovenian. Standard Slovenian is fairly rare outside of more formal contexts




It's true dialects are still strong in Slovenia, but I think strong regional differences are in the process of slowly disappearing and fading away, that is strong dialects turning into some kind of regional accents (at least that's what I would say for Gorenjska, Dolenjska, parts of Štajerska). You can see the change when comparing speech of older people vs. young generation; my ex-girlfriend, for instance, was from Gorenjska and her mother spoke in a thick dialect (using forms like pršwa, delawa, s'r, kr'h, ščira, etc.), while her children spoke a much "milder" variant of the dialect, I'd say they kept the melody, phonology and some vocabulary, but other than that their speech seems much more "generic".


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## TriglavNationalPark

Mishe said:


> It's true dialects are still strong in Slovenia, but I think strong regional differences are in the process of slowly disappearing and fading away, that is strong dialects turning into some kind of regional accents (at least that's what I would say for Gorenjska, Dolenjska, parts of Štajerska). You can see the change when comparing speech of older people vs. young generation; my ex-girlfriend, for instance, was from Gorenjska and her mother spoke in a thick dialect (using forms like pršwa, delawa, s'r, kr'h, ščira, etc.), while her children spoke a much "milder" variant of the dialect, I'd say they kept the melody, phonology and some vocabulary, but other than that their speech seems much more "generic".



Good point. I would say that grammatical features are probably the first to go, whereas lexical and particularly phonological elements tend to be significantly more persistent. Some regional grammatical features are still common, such as the masculinization of neuter nouns (*"Odpri ta oken!"* instead of *"Odpri to okno!"* = "Open this window."). Others, of course, are much rarer. I know a middle-aged woman who refers to herself using the masculine gender -- a feature that was once common in parts of Gorenjska, but is exceedingly rare nowadays.

I wonder how the more "radical" regional features, such as the non-standard future tense formation of some peripheral dialects, are faring these days. I can't imagine that many members of the younger generation are still using them.

Of course, young kids may not be familiar with some standard Slovenian words. My family always used *kura* for "chicken", but when I spent a part of my summer vacation in southern Slovenia as a kid, other kids didn't understand the word at all, much to my surprise. They were only familiar with *kokoš*. (Both exist in standard Slovenian, but their use varies from dialect to dialect).


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## Athaulf

Коста said:


> As for Torlakian, it is Shtokavian (at least according to Serbian linguists) and, as such, intelligible even with reduced number of cases (regional factor); Chakavian and Kajkavian are not and are quite unintelligible to Serb sepakers, especially Ekavians.



Frankly, I think that the classification of Torlakian as Shtokavian isn't really justified. I believe it should be classified as a dialect group in its own right. In most of Croata, Serbia, and Bosnia, the local word for "what" (_što_/_šta_, _kaj_, _ča_) strongly correlates with many other aspects of the language, so it makes sense to use it for the basic division of the dialects. However, many Torlakian dialects are so different grammatically that it doesn't make sense to classify them as Shtokavian just because they share the same word for "what".

I guess you're right that a typical Shtokavian speaker would probably find Torlakian easier to understand than some very remote Kajkavian or Chakavian dialect. However, the standard BCS grammar has certainly been extremely foreign to Torlakian speakers -- I'd say much more so than to any others. Even nowadays, there's a comical stereotype of uneducated Serbs from the South mixing up noun cases. 



> As for Serbian words still in use, how about суштесвеност, словесност, вапати, двери, јединосушни, etc?


Except _dveri_ (which would sound archaic), none of those would be understood in Croatia. Even I don't know what they mean exactly, although I coul probably guess based on the word roots. 



> And, yes, there is a rich Church Slavonioc tradition in Croatia (Dalmatia) and for this reason I am surprised it didn't make greater inroads into the vernacular and the Croatian literary standard.


The problem is that historically, the Catholic Church and various secular rulers often didn't look favorably on the Church Slavonic rite, and sought to replace it with the Latin rite in most places. Thus, the Croatian CS tradition mostly remained confined to a few coastal regions where the conditions were more favorable. Furthermore, Croatian CS churches used the Glagolitic alphabet, whose relative obscurity probably made them less widely read and influential in recent centuries. It's certainly a pity that such an ancient tradition has remained on the margins.


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## Коста

Athaulf said:


> Frankly, I think that the classification of Torlakian as Shtokavian isn't really justified.


 
Based on the criteria listed it is, at least according to Serbian _and _Croatian linguists. Just because it has reduced number of cases doesn't mean it's not. In fact, some have gone so far as to suggest it was the _fourth_ BSC language! 

The eastern Ekavian and Bulgarian have coexisted and mixed for so long that their gramamtical and linguistic differences are not as alien as they would be, say, to someone from western Bosnia, Herzegovina or Croatia. There is also the cultural factor and the influence of the Church that plays a factor in the relative closeness.

I would say Torkalian is probably similar to Kajkavian in that it represents a blend between two distinct languages (Shtokavian Serbian and Bulgarian, that is Slovenian and Shtokavian Croatian), except that Kajkavian is also a literary language, unlike Torkalian.

But, as far as Torkalian is concerned, it is not considered standard literary language in its own right. I am not aware of any Torkalian-generated prose, so as such it can not be considered in the spirit of this thread, namely _standard vs. spoken language_.


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## sokol

Коста said:


> Based on the criteria listed it is, at least according to Serbian _and _Croatian linguists. Just because it has reduced number of cases doesn't mean it's not.


You're right, many dialectologists describe Torlakian as just yet another Shtokavian dialect, but Athaulf has a point in suggesting that it would be better not to call Torlakian a Shtokavian dialect but rather a dialect group of its own.



Коста said:


> In fact, some have gone so far as to suggest it was the _fourth_ BSC language!


I don't think so - or at least I haven't read any _linguist _who suggested that Torlakian were the "fourth BCS language".
When it comes to dialects of BCS there's no doubt that there are plenty, and Torlakian certainly is one of them; but as far as standard languages are concerned I haven't ever seen someone suggest that Torlakian even could be one - as you say also in the quote below:


Коста said:


> I would say Torkalian is probably similar to Kajkavian in that it represents a blend between two distinct languages (Shtokavian Serbian and Bulgarian, that is Slovenian and Shtokavian Croatian), except that Kajkavian is also a literary language, unlike Torkalian.


"Blend" is a little bit too strong a word I'd say, here with these dialects.

Both Kajkavian and Torlakian are dialects in their own right; influence there was for sure, after all the South Slavic dialect continuum was very gradual and to a degree even is intact in our times - a dialect continuum which once hardly had any sharp language borders and which only recently (in the last 100-200 years) has become significantly sharpened by the development of nations.

So the words you use might create a misunderstanding - that Kajkavian and Torlakian essentially were "mixed" dialects, which put in such strong words just would be wrong; while it is certainly true that mixing with other dialects existed the same could be said for Shtokavian dialects, or dialects outside the BCS region.


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## Zokionly

Коста said:


> Based on the criteria listed it is, at least according to Serbian _and _Croatian linguists. Just because it has reduced number of cases doesn't mean it's not. In fact, some have gone so far as to suggest it was the _fourth_ BSC language!
> 
> The eastern Ekavian and Bulgarian have coexisted and mixed for so long that their gramamtical and linguistic differences are not as alien as they would be, say, to someone from western Bosnia, Herzegovina or Croatia. There is also the cultural factor and the influence of the Church that plays a factor in the relative closeness.
> 
> I would say Torkalian is probably similar to Kajkavian in that it represents a blend between two distinct languages (Shtokavian Serbian and Bulgarian, that is Slovenian and Shtokavian Croatian), except that Kajkavian is also a literary language, unlike Torkalian.
> 
> But, as far as Torkalian is concerned, it is not considered standard literary language in its own right. I am not aware of any Torkalian-generated prose, so as such it can not be considered in the spirit of this thread, namely _standard vs. spoken language_.






I've been researching recently in these field and I have attested some references that might be interesting to read.
The speakers of above-mentioned areas are conscious of dialect divisions and identify themselves as Kajkavci,
Čakavci or Štokavci and according to their reflex of jat  as Ekavci,
(I)jekavci or Ikavci. The main divisions, Kajkavski, Čakavski and Štokavski, are named after their words for 'what': kaj, ča, and što or šta (a for o in šta is a laterdevelopment). *So the Prizren-Timok group, sometimes termed a separate group ("Torlak") transitional to Macedonian and Bulgarian (P. Ivić 1958), is generally included in Štokavski (Brozović and Ivić 1988). The jat reflex is important for subdividing each of the three groups. The most recent survey, with detailed maps,
is in Brozović and Ivić 1988; P. Ivić, ed. (1981) describes the sound systems of 77 localities with historical summaries*.


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## sokol

Zokionly said:


> The most recent survey, with detailed maps,
> is in Brozović and Ivić 1988; P. Ivić, ed. (1981) describes the sound systems of 77 localities with historical summaries.


You are right of course, and we know that speakers identify themselves as such (also I've read some works of Ivić and Brozović myself, both of course being accepted authorities in the field): this is the traditional distinction.

But in the same way as it just would not make sense to sub-divide Slovenian into ekavian and ijekavian dialects it could be argued that Torlakian should not be included in the three-dialects-distinction, as suggested by Athaulf, but that this traditional distinction could be extended  to Kajkavian, Čakavian, Štokavian and Torlakian.

To explain my point, the situation in Slovenian which I know better:
In Slovenian the reflex of yat also changes from dialect to dialect - but the point is that the change is not restricted to historical yat but also applied to long /e o/ which does not go back to Old Slavonic yat (for which I use "ě" below, and inexact notation of other sounds as their exact phonetic value is not really relevant here; source: Karta slovenskih narečji 1993).
Thus, Slovenian /ě e: o:/ changed, according to dialect, to /ie e/ and /ue o/ (ziljski narečje; development depends on tonemic accent), or /ai i/ and /au u/ (gorenjsko), and many more combinations; standard language here has the phonemes /e o/ for both accents.
(The accents involved are /ê ô/ = open = _široki e_ vs. /é ó/ = closed = _ozki e,_ so both phonemes also are distinguished in standard language, but depending on accent and not on /ě/; note that tonal accent in Slovene is somewhat different from BCS.)

It would be plainly nonsensical to claim that Slovenian were "ekavian", and that some dialects were "iekavian (jekavian)" while others were "aikavian (ajkavian)" or whatever because this traditional distinction between ekavian, (i)jekavian and ikavian essentially was designed for Štokavian dialects where it describes only the representation of yat /ě/.

I do not know enough about Torlakian to make the same conclusion but what I know about it certainly points in a similar direction: that the dialect differs in so many ways from "ordinary" Štokavian dialects that it may sound justified to deviate from classifications as used by the great Pavle Ivić, and many others.


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## Zokionly

sokol said:


> You are right of course, and we know that speakers identify themselves as such (also I've read some works of Ivić and Brozović myself, both of course being accepted authorities in the field): this is the traditional distinction.
> 
> But in the same way as it just would not make sense to sub-divide Slovenian into ekavian and ijekavian dialects it could be argued that Torlakian should not be included in the three-dialects-distinction, as suggested by Athaulf, but that this traditional distinction could be extended  to Kajkavian, Čakavian, Štokavian and Torlakian.
> 
> To explain my point, the situation in Slovenian which I know better:
> In Slovenian the reflex of yat also changes from dialect to dialect - but the point is that the change is not restricted to historical yat but also applied to long /e o/ which does not go back to Old Slavonic yat (for which I use "ě" below, and inexact notation of other sounds as their exact phonetic value is not really relevant here; source: Karta slovenskih narečji 1993).
> Thus, Slovenian /ě e: o:/ changed, according to dialect, to /ie e/ and /ue o/ (ziljski narečje; development depends on tonemic accent), or /ai i/ and /au u/ (gorenjsko), and many more combinations; standard language here has the phonemes /e o/ for both accents.
> (The accents involved are /ê ô/ vs. /é ó/; note that tonal accent in Slovene is somewhat different from BCS.)
> 
> It would be plainly nonsensical to claim that Slovenian were "ekavian", and that some dialects were "iekavian (jekavian)" while others were "aikavian (ajkavian)" or whatever because this traditional distinction between ekavian, (i)jekavian and ikavian essentially was designed for Štokavian dialects where it describes only the representation of yat /ě/.
> 
> I do not know enough about Torlakian to make the same conclusion but what I know about it certainly points in a similar direction: that the dialect differs in so many ways from "ordinary" Štokavian dialects that it may sound justified to deviate from classifications as used by the great Pavle Ivić, and many others.



I would agree with you on the latter statement. Medieval Slavic had an extra vowel ě (called jat ). Knowing its later reflexesions is important for understanding the classification of dialects, the difference between the standard languages, and the spelling rules of the Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin standards. Reflexes of jat vary geographically, a fact on which one well-known dialect classification is based.Most Eastern Štokavski dialects are Ekavski, having e from jat: rěka > reka 'river',věra > vera 'faith'; this holds for the Ekavski standard. Some north-central and
coastal dialects, termed Ikavski, have consistent i for jat: rika, vira. An area in western Serbia has a separate vowel between i and e, as do
some settlers in non-BCS surroundings. Other central and southern-coastal
Štokavski dialects have a reflex customarily described as ije in long syllables , je in short: rijeka (long), vjera (short); the terms Ijekavski and Jekavski are both used for such dialects.So how this applies to Slovene *I* don't really know.Since Im not familiar  with Slovenian that much and *I* don't have all information about it and I cannot claim all these.But this was kostas post which claims that Torkalian is probably similar to Kajkavian in that it represents a blend between two distinct languages (Shtokavian Serbian and Bulgarian, that is Slovenian and Shtokavian Croatian), except that Kajkavian is also a literary language, unlike Torkalian.And I haven't met such explanation until now, but it also could be true to some extent.


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## sokol

Zokionly said:


> But this was kostas post which claims that Torkalian is probably similar to Kajkavian in that it represents a blend between two distinct languages (...), except that Kajkavian is also a literary language, unlike Torkalian.And I haven't met such explanation until now, but it also could be true to some extent.


I haven't seen an explanation like that either, but I've answered that above already.


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## Zokionly

sokol said:


> I haven't seen an explanation like that either, but I've answered that above already.



Of course, I read it, but I got really into it, sorry for the repetition!Alles gute!


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## Коста

sokol said:


> I don't think so - or at least I haven't read any _linguist _who suggested that Torlakian were the "fourth BCS language".


 
For what's it worth, Wikipedia states 





> "Some linguists classify it as the *fourth dialect* of _Serbo-Croatian language_."


 
What I meant by "blend" is simply that both Kajkavian and Torlakian contain elements of two languages in suffiicent proportion that it is impossible to classify them as being subdialects of a single language.

But you seem to suggest that Kajkavian and Torlakian are not a "product" of two distinct but related languages, but rather as dialects that existed all along and developed, _sui generis, independent _of them?


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## sokol

Коста said:


> For what's it worth, Wikipedia states
> 
> 
> 
> "Some linguists classify it as the *fourth dialect* of _Serbo-Croatian language_."
> 
> 
> 
> What I meant by "blend" is simply that both Kajkavian and Torlakian contain elements of two languages in suffiicent proportion that it is impossible to classify them as being subdialects of a single language.
Click to expand...

Wikipedia essentially does not argue against what I suggested above - that Torlakian could be considered a forth group besides Kajkavian, Čakavian and Štokavian.



Коста said:


> But you seem to suggest that Kajkavian and Torlakian are not a "product" of two distinct but related languages, but rather as dialects that existed all along and developed, _sui generis, independent _of them?


A few Slovenian nationalists have in times long gone*) claimed that Kajkavian were nothing bot a Štokavised variety of Slovenian, and as well some Croatian nationalists have claimed that Slovenian were just a Kajkavian dialect. I guess the same might have been the case in the past with Torlakian.
*) Or at least, I hope so, might be though that some still believe in those theories.

This is a crass oversimplification, to discuss them really leads nowhere. You should imagine the South Slavic dialect continuum as a long chain of dialects:
- Slovenian: 5-7 (8) main groups depending on your point of view, of which the ones in the east are closest to Kajkavian while the ones on the coast show transitional elements towards Čakavian; the dialect border is relatively sharp in Dolenjska (Lower Kranj) where in Croatia, on the other side of the border, partly Štokavian is spoken;
- Croatian: 3 main groups of dialects with many sub-groups where on the coast Čakavian blends slowly into Štokavian, and where in the Kajkavian region Štokavian migrants (settlers from Turkic and post-Turkic times) live in Kajkavian districts: those Štokavians living there speak a dialect sharply distinct from Kajkavian, but linguists (like Pavle Ivić, to mention but one - sorry, I have no quote at hand) think that Slavonian-Štokavian (staroštokavski) dialects once had formed a (now broken) dialect continuum with Kajkavian;
- further in Bosnia the dialect continuum also has been breached by Štokavian migrants (neoštokavski) but there is also evidence that once a gradual dialect continuum existed; and so on.

This once was a chain of dialects which blended into each other very gradually; the dialect continuum was breached:
- by migrants fleeing from the Turks to the west, and later (after the Turkish Empire lost most of the Balkans) again by migrants re-settling devastated regions;
- by Crownlands which were also administrative units during the Habsburg Empire, new dialect borders came slowly into existense on the Crownland borders; and later
- by national states and the rise of the educational level which meant that standard languages spread to the smallest villages, later supported by mass media and television.

So while the dialect continuum is not as visible as it once was it still exists to a degree in some regions, while in other regions the dialect border, as you can observe it in our modern times, looks relatively sharp.
Notwithstanding this, there is absoltuely no doubt that once there was a dialect continuum - and that Kajkavian and Torlakian just were parts of this continuum.

Kajkavian, for once, could not have been a "mix" between Slovenian and Štokavian because it was the literary language of the Zagreb region, thus never Slovenian neither was it ever Štokavian. (I can't say much about Torlakian.) Both centres didn't have great influence on each other; Slovenians even wrote in "Latin/German" style in ancient times (here's a short text of Trubar).

Of course it would have been possible to unite Kajkavian and Slovenian into one language by developping a common standard language, as well as it would have been possible give all dialects spoken from Carinthia down to Niš one standard language (the Illyric movement tried to achieve this).

But this never happened, it seems there just weren't sufficient cultural links between Slovenians and Kajkavian Croats to sustain such a link.

What you see as "elements of different languages in both Kajkavian and Torlakian" are nothing but the remainder of the old dialect continuum. You can spot this also in Central Bosnian dialects, only that here it is a "blend" between Čakavian and Štokavian. There exist in fact some mixed dialects especially in Štokavian Bosnian (see Wiki) due to the fact that speakers of different dialects lived close-by there for centuries, the developmend of dialects which really should be called "mixed" dialects thus is only natural there - while some Kajkavian dialects are in comparison "pure", that is show particularily little influence of other dialects.

Probably you have the notion of Kajkavian being "mixed" because of the situation in Zagreb where indeed there seems to be quite some mixing going on (those who know Zagreb will have more to say about this than I do, as I hardly know Zagreb at all); but then Zagreb is the capital were speakers of different dialects from all over the country live.


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## Duya

Had the course of history been different, maybe we would today call Štokavian as "a mixture of Kajkavian and Torlakian", still barely surviving on the border of two great empires ruled from Varaždin and Niš . 

My point is, "mixture" is in the eye of beholder.


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## Athaulf

sokol said:


> So while the dialect continuum is not as visible as it once was it still exists to a degree in some regions, while in other regions the dialect border, as you can observe it in our modern times, looks relatively sharp.
> Notwithstanding this, there is absoltuely no doubt that once there was a dialect continuum - and that Kajkavian and Torlakian just were parts of this continuum.



Unfortunately, the public perception of this simple and rather obvious fact among South Slavic peoples has been obscured by more than a century of political propaganda, because the very existence of this continuum is often enough to refute various nationalist (and even Yugoslavist) claims. 

It's certainly inconvenient for a Croatian nationalist to admit that many Kajkavians' native language is closer to the language of Slovenians who live close by than to the speech of other Croatians. It's similarly inconvenient for a Serbian nationalist to admit that Torlakian dialects can be closer to Bulgarian spoken across the border than to the language of Serbs from other places. Not to even mention that in Shtokavian regions, all ethnicities speak the same local dialect, but find their co-ethnics from remote regions barely understandable. All this shows the fundamental artificiality of the modern ethnic identifications among South Slavs -- when these identifications are superimposed onto the natural dialect continuum, it's like fitting round pegs into square holes.

Even Tito's Yugoslav ideology stumbled on numerous inconvenient linguistic facts. Its official linguistics recognized Slovenian and Macedonian as separate languages, but insisted on the linguistic unity of Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Again, a modern ideological classification clashed with reality, and all sorts of absurdities ensued. Kajkavians ended up classified as speaking a dialect of Serbo-Croatian -- even those who spoke more or less the same dialect as their Slovenian neighbors, who officially spoke a dialect of Slovenian, a separate language. Torlakian ended up being unnaturally lumped together with Shtokavian, because it was necessary to classify it as separate and distant from Bulgarian and Macedonian to avoid all sorts of inconvenient questions. So, officially, Torlakians and Kajkavians spoke dialects of the same language, even though they would probably understand Russian easier than each other, but their neighbors whom they understood one hundred percent were speaking separate or even foreign languages!

All this folly would be hilarious if it weren't tragic.



> Probably you have the notion of Kajkavian being "mixed" because of the situation in Zagreb where indeed there seems to be quite some mixing going on (those who know Zagreb will have more to say about this than I do, as I hardly know Zagreb at all); but then Zagreb is the capital were speakers of different dialects from all over the country live.


Yes, the modern Zagreb speech is a Kajkavian/Shtokavian mix, but it tends more towards the latter (it's easily understandable to anyone who speaks any variety of standard BCS). I don't think anyone speaks the authentic old Kajkavian Zagreb dialect any more; perhaps you could find some elderly people. This is understandable considering that the city has grown mostly through immigration from all over Croatia and elsewhere.


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## TriglavNationalPark

Athaulf said:


> All this shows the fundamental artificiality of the modern ethnic identifications among South Slavs -- when these identifications are superimposed onto the natural dialect continuum, it's like fitting round pegs into square holes.



But is this unique to South Slavs? Absolutely not, I would argue. There is also a dialect continuum among the West and the East Slavs. In fact, had it not been for the separation of the West and the South Slavic groups, we might be speaking of a pan-Slavic dialect continuum; some northern Slovenian dialects exhibit features transitional to West Slavic, whereas some central Slovak dialects exhibit features transitional to South Slavic. The territory between the Slovenes and the Slovaks was also once inhabited by Slavs; their disappearance is responsible for the missing link. Similar dialect continua exist in other language groups.

I just don't see how the situation among the South Slavs is fundamentally different. Indeed, the South Slavic branch, with its continuum, is still just one of the three Slavic linguistic branches -- nothing more, nothing less.



Athaulf said:


> So, officially, Torlakians and Kajkavians spoke dialects of the same language, even though they would probably understand Russian easier than each other, but their neighbors whom they understood one hundred percent were speaking separate or even foreign languages!
> 
> All this folly would be hilarious if it weren't tragic.



Dialects gave rise to standard languages everywhere, but the process was often as complex, counterintuitive and politically influenced as languages themselves tend to be. In fact, many European "dialects" are, at least in some ways, further removed from their "parent languages" than other languages. I would say that's neither hilarious nor tragic, just a relatively common result of language standardization in Europe. Many Slovenes have an easier time understanding Croats, Serbs and perhaps even Slovaks, for instance, than Resians. Is that a problem? Not really. It only indicates that some degree of language standardization is necessary.


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## Коста

Can anyone tell me what is the _earliest_ evidence of Kajkavian?


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## Athaulf

Коста said:


> Can anyone tell me what is the _earliest_ evidence of Kajkavian?



The first books in Kajkavian were printed in mid-to-late 16th century, and a significant literary tradition developed soon afterwards. I would guess that some Kajkavian fragments probably got written down before that, but I don't know about those.


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## sokol

TriglavNationalPark said:


> But is this unique to South Slavs? Absolutely not, I would argue. There is also a dialect continuum among the West and the East Slavs. In fact, had it not been for the separation of the West and the South Slavic groups, we might be speaking of a pan-Slavic dialect continuum; some northern Slovenian dialects exhibit features transitional to West Slavic, whereas some central Slovak dialects exhibit features transitional to South Slavic.


Yes of course, we Austrians disturbed that Slavic dialect continuum.  (Just kidding. )

No, really - yes, of course: there is not only evidence with northernmost Slovene and southernmost Slovak dialects that a continuum existed, and was breached, but also historical evidence: the Slovene lands most likely were settled in two waves: an earlier one which seems to make up for the 'Western Slavic' elements, and one which came a few decades later and which was Southern Slavic, the one which eventually became dominant.

(This is a broadly accepted theory as for example written down by Štih, Simoniti and Vodopivec in their "Slovenian History", available in Slovene and also in German; also etymological evidence can be found in Lochner von Hüttenbach's "Steirische Ortsnamen" - Styrian toponyms.)


TriglavNationalPark said:


> I just don't see how the situation among the South Slavs is fundamentally different. Indeed, the South Slavic branch, with its continuum, is still just one of the three Slavic linguistic branches -- nothing more, nothing less.


I agree, the situation is not fundamentally different; for example, some claim that the westernmost Ukrainian dialect group - the Rusyns - were a separate language rather than a dialect of Ukraine: this dialect group shows transitional features to Slovak (and some even claim it were a mixed Slovak-Ukrainian dialect - here again, the old dialect continuum within Slavic languages is still visible enough to lead to misconceptions and disagreements concerning how to classify dialects).

Still, there is one thing very special about the South Slavic region - the BCS standard languages, based in very recent times on a particular dialect group: thus, in some regions there is rather little variation between standard language and dialect - which puts speakers of other dialects at a disadvantage.

Also this may lead to speakers of those dialects thinking that they were speaking standard language anyway (which of course is not true as BCS standard languages live a life of their own, as do institutionalised standard languages elsewhere ).


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## Коста

Athaulf said:


> The first books in Kajkavian were printed in mid-to-late 16th century, and a significant literary tradition developed soon afterwards. I would guess that some Kajkavian fragments probably got written down before that, but I don't know about those.


Great! Thank you. Do you have any links?

If there is no older source, how do we know that kajkavski existed way back, and even if it did, in what form? Are there any folk songs older than the 16th century that have been preserved and can be verified as genuine and unaltered?

And if čakavski pre-existed kajkavski (for which there seems to be strong historical evidence), how can kajkavski represent a "continuum?" That continuum would then be a matter of a historical _moment_ when it came into existence. And if it was not there all along, it means it was _derived_ from other dialects and is not, sui generis, a continuum but a product.

Now, please do understand that I am not denying that there is a continuum. I am simply trying to establish how this _theory_ was derived. In other words, some centuries ago we may have a _snapshot_ that shows there is a continuum, but a snapshot in another epoch may show that this continuum did not exist at all.

Language is a "living" phenomenon and not a fossil. It would make sense that new "species" of dialects evolve from dialects pre-existing them, rather than all dialects premordially co-existing at a same time and forming a continuum independent of tribe, culture, historical and polticial factors, etc., in other words based on purely linguistic determinants.

On the other hand, if a dialect is _derived_—if it develops out of a pool of neighboring dialects, historical moments and political circumstances—then it cannot be a "continuum" but a _product_ of two or more dialects. You and others seem to think kajkavski is a continuum, which to me sounds as if kajkavski _co-existed with Slovene and čakavski _for as long as the former and the latter existed! I am seeking evidence for that, and the 16th century is not sufficient to establish that, simply because čakavski existed prior to that.


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## sokol

Коста said:


> If there is no older source, how do we know that kajkavski existed way back, and even if it did, in what form? Are there any folk songs older than the 16th century that have been preserved and can be verified as genuine and unaltered?


You should take into account that Constantin/Cyrill and Method, with their South Slavic dialect, still could communicate easily with Moravians in the 9th century: Slavic then was still more or less "one language" with three main dialect groups (souther, western, eastern).

Even in the Middle Ages the slowly developping dialects still were much closer to each other than modern dialects are.


Коста said:


> And if čakavski pre-existed kajkavski (for which there seems to be strong historical evidence), how can kajkavski represent a "continuum?"


There is a difference between attested first use and existence.
Also, you seem to misunderstand again: it is incorrect to say that Kajkavski were "a continuum" - this doesn't make sense. Kajkavian is a dialect - and this dialect is part of the continuum. As is Štokavian, as is Čakavian.

Čakavian documents date further back than Kajkavian ones, there is even one from around 1100, Bašćanska ploča, written in Old Slavonic, which according to Wiki shows some Čakavian influence.

But it is ridiculous to claim that Kajkavian was "not there" or had "no predecessor" because we have no early Middle Ages documents written in Kajkavian, or showing at least Kajkavian influence. After all this would be like claiming that Albanian did not exist, or had no predecessor, because we do not have any written documents in Albanian from before the 15th century.

Also Kajkavian is not _particularily _close to Čakavian while Čakavian very gradually blends into the Štokavian region (and some linguists believe that some coastal Štokavian dialects once were Čakavian dialects which later have become štokavised), and certainly Kajkavian is not a mix between Slovenian and Čakavian.
Kajkavian in fact is set apart quite abruptly from Štokavian, which is even more obvious because south (and even within) the Kajkavian region Novoštokavian dialect speakers interrupted the old dialect continuum so that a possible gradual dialect continuum no longer is there.

(Probably the Staroštokavian dialects of Eastern Slavonia once have been transitional, but as the continuum is breached by Novoštokavian - the dialect group which developped away from the rest through innovations like the Novoštokavian accent system - there is no way to be sure, one can only guess; see here the Wiki map which shows in yellow the Štokavian dialect which was spread to the west and north by migrants during and after the Turkish regime.)

Anyway, I still cannot see how your "theory" (for which you still have no evidence to show, only guesswork) about Kajkavian being a mixed dialect (mix of what dialects anyway?) should be relevant to the topic at hand.


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## Athaulf

Коста said:


> Great! Thank you. Do you have any links?



The oldest (extant) Kajkavian book was printed by Pergošić in 1574. For the names of other notable old Kajkavian authors, see this article from an old encyclopedia (if you google their names, you should get plenty of information). 

Note also that these old authors used different names for their language, but they all wrote in some Kajkavian dialect spoken on the territory of today's Croatia. 



> If there is no older source, how do we know that kajkavski existed way back, and even if it did, in what form? Are there any folk songs older than the 16th century that have been preserved and can be verified as genuine and unaltered?
> 
> And if čakavski pre-existed kajkavski (for which there seems to be strong historical evidence), how can kajkavski represent a "continuum?" That continuum would then be a matter of a historical _moment_ when it came into existence. And if it was not there all along, it means it was _derived_ from other dialects and is not, sui generis, a continuum but a product.


It seems like you don't understand how Slavic languages evolved. 1,500 years ago, all Slavs spoke more or less the same language, whose local dialects have gradually evolved in different directions since then. The adjacent dialects evolved along more or less the same lines, with the difference in the accumulated changes increasing with distance. There isn't anything peculiar about Slavic languages in this regard. You can find such continuums all over the world, and it's the natural way in which languages evolve if they aren't restrained or displaced by some other process (like e.g. mass migrations or the influence of a centralized standard language). 

Chakavian dialects didn't "pre-exist" Kajkavian ones. It just happened that Chakavian literature emerged somewhat earlier. 



> Language is a "living" phenomenon and not a fossil. It would make sense that new "species" of dialects evolve from dialects pre-existing them, rather than all dialects premordially co-existing at a same time and forming a continuum independent of tribe, culture, historical and polticial factors, etc., in other words based on purely linguistic determinants.


What really happened is that all South Slavs (and all Slavs before that) spoke the same language, which gradually evolved in different directions in different places, thus giving rise to the continuum. The existence of the continuum is evident even nowadays if you observe the few people who can still be found speaking the authentic local dialects. A similar continuum can be observed among the West and East Slavs too, and if it wasn't for the Hungarians who settled in Panonia, there would in fact be a Pan-Slavic continuum.



> On the other hand, if a dialect is _derived_—if it develops out of a pool of neighboring dialects, historical moments and political circumstances—then it cannot be a "continuum" but a _product_ of two or more dialects. You and others seem to think kajkavski is a continuum, which to me sounds as if kajkavski _co-existed with Slovene and čakavski _for as long as the former and the latter existed! I am seeking evidence for that, and the 16th century is not sufficient to establish that, simply because čakavski existed prior to that.


The evidence is that: (1) the remnants of the continuum are visible even today, and (2) the sound and grammatical changes that happened since Common Slavic in each local dialect can be reconstructed with reasonable confidence, thus providing a plausible story along the lines I described above. So, yes, you could say that each local South Slavic dialect has existed continuously ever since the South Slavs settled there, all the time growing increasingly different from others, but remaining similar to its immediate neighbors. 

The continuum is how vernacular languages normally evolve, and if you have a different theory, then you must explain which extraordinary circumstances resulted in this "derivation". It's true that some local dialects, like e.g. the modern Zagreb speech, evolved by mixing due to migration, and this also happened in some places in earlier history. But as Solol wrote, there is no doubt that there used to exist a full South Slavic continuum a few centuries ago.


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## Athaulf

TriglavNationalPark said:


> I just don't see how the situation among the South Slavs is fundamentally different. Indeed, the South Slavic branch, with its continuum, is still just one of the three Slavic linguistic branches -- nothing more, nothing less.
> 
> Dialects gave rise to standard languages everywhere, but the process was often as complex, counterintuitive and politically influenced as languages themselves tend to be.



You are right, of course. It's just that among the greatest part of the South Slavs, the amount of absurdities and falsifications that are commonly parroted to deny this basic reality is larger than in most other places.


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## Коста

sokol said:


> You should take into account that Constantin/Cyrill and Method, with their South Slavic dialect, still could communicate easily with Moravians in the 9th century: Slavic then was still more or less "one language" with three main dialect groups (souther, western, eastern).


Yes of course. But the language Saints Cyrill and Methodius (I am not sure who _Constatin_ was) used already began to differentiate from the western branch, although it was still fully intelligible as is the case with BCS dialects, clearly different but mutually understood.



sokol said:


> Even in the Middle Ages the slowly developping dialects still were much closer to each other than modern dialects are.


 
Depends on the author. Not all linguists are on the same sheet of music; rather, disagreements are not uncommon among them. If you read offical documents, then the 14th century Chakavski is very close to the Shtokvaski of the same period and even fully intelligbile to a Shtokavian speaker today. But if you look at the Chakavian vernacular (an example of which is given in Wikipedia citing Chakavian version of "Paternoster") then the two languages are like night and day.



sokol said:


> There is a difference between attested first use and existence.


Absolutely. However, without some external or internal evidence, attesting to any existence is not possible. It can only be a conjecture.



sokol said:


> Also, you seem to misunderstand again: it is incorrect to say that Kajkavski were "a continuum" - this doesn't make sense. Kajkavian is a dialect - and this dialect is part of the continuum. As is Štokavian, as is Čakavian.


Well, today it certainly is. Whether it _was_ a "continuum" or simply one of many Slovenioan dialects unrelated to Shtokavian and Chakavian is a different story. 



sokol said:


> Čakavian documents date further back than Kajkavian ones, there is even one from around 1100, Bašćanska ploča, written in Old Slavonic, which according to Wiki shows some Čakavian influence.


More like Church Slavonic. And the sources that claim it has Chakavian in it do not elborate. 



sokol said:


> But it is ridiculous to claim that Kajkavian was "not there" or had "no predecessor" because we have no early Middle Ages documents written in Kajkavian, or showing at least Kajkavian influence.


I certainly did not claim that Kajkavain had no predecessor. I am not sure the predecessor was any different than the predecessor of all other Slovenian dialects.



sokol said:


> Also Kajkavian is not _particularily _close to Čakavian while Čakavian very gradually blends into the Štokavian region (and some linguists believe that some coastal Štokavian dialects once were Čakavian dialects which later have become štokavised), and certainly Kajkavian is not a mix between Slovenian and Čakavian.


Which Kajkavian? The one that _is, _or the one that_ was_? 



sokol said:


> Anyway, I still cannot see how your "theory" (for which you still have no evidence to show, only guesswork) about Kajkavian being a mixed dialect (mix of what dialects anyway?) should be relevant to the topic at hand.


I have no theory, Sokol. I simply read what other experts say, and make inquiries. There is no agenda, contrary to some speculations. But when you mention lack of evidence, where is evidence that Kajkavian was a stand-alone continuum all along, that it existed serpatate from the Slovenian language fold from the very beginning, as some have suggested? I am simply saying that Kajkavian, like all othe languges in the world, has been _mixed_ in one way or another to be in the present form. Is there really any doubt about that?


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## Коста

Athaulf said:


> The continuum is how vernacular languages normally evolve, and if you have a different theory, then you must explain which extraordinary circumstances resulted in this "derivation".


Diffrerentiation occurred primarily beacause of physical separation and then by exertion of various immediate influences that followed. 

They were small groups not always adjacent to another, physically closer to strangers than members of their own tribe. They mixed with the local Roman, and Illyrian populations (look at the Bulgarians whose namesakes were not even Slavs), and through this acquired new linguistic and cultural characteristics.

Slavs spoke the same mutually intelligible language when they arrived in the 6th century. Their languages became mutually unintelligible through _discontinuum _and _mixing_. That's how languages evolve.


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## TriglavNationalPark

In his 1936 book _Kratka zgodovina slovenskega jezika_ (A Short History of the Slovenian Language), Slovenian linguist Fran Ramovš identifies four early South Slavic dialect groups in the Alps and the Western Balkans:

*Alpine *(with Slovenian as its modern-day descendant)

*Pannonian* (with Kajkavian Croatian as its modern-day descendant)

*Littoral* (with Chakavian Croatian as its modern-day descendant, surviving only on the western edge of its former territory)

*Raška *(with Shtokavian BCS as its modern-day descendant)

According to Ramovš, significant differentiation into these dialect groups began after the Slavs had settled their territory in the Alps and the Balkans.

Despite its proximity to the Slovene lands, Kajkavian eventually had stronger political ties to Chakavian and Shokavian territory, so the influence of those two dialects became greater later on.


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## Коста

TriglavNationalPark said:


> In his 1936 book _Kratka zgodovina slovenskega jezika_ (A Short History of the Slovenian Language), Slovenian linguist Fran Ramovš identifies four early South Slavic dialect groups in the Alps and the Western Balkans...


Yes, I know of him. Vatroslav Jagić, Aleksandar Belich and his followers (i.e Pavle Ilich) represent the same mindset. This is not to say that they are necessarily correct. Jernej Kopitar, a Slovene, would have disagreed with Ramovš. 



TriglavNationalPark said:


> According to Ramovš, significant differentiation into these dialect groups began after the Slavs had settled their territory in the Alps and the Balkans.


That's interesting. But I would like to know how he documents this claim given that no written documents, or external descriptions of Kajkavian exist prior to the 16th century.

There are linguists who consider Slovenian-Kajkavian one_, _and Shtokavian-Chakavian another language group. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that Kajkavian and Slovenian have more in common than Kajkavian and Shtokavian/Chakavian, just as Macedonian has more in common with Bulgarian than with Serbian. 

I simply don'se see how can Kajkavian be considered part of the BSC language group.



TriglavNationalPark said:


> Despite its proximity to the Slovene lands, Kajkavian eventually had stronger political ties to Chakavian and Shokavian territory, so the influence of those two dialects became greater later on.


Well, that suggests that politics more than linguistics determine which belongs to what. And that applies to supposedly "apolticial" lingusits as well.

If we were to employ the Balkan-style linguistic hair-splitting "science" to the world languages such as English, we would have hundreds of different English langauges within one English-speaking country, each bearing its own name! It's sheer insanity. 

You also have to understand that the degree to which these experts differ in their opinions really puts any science into question. A good summary of what I am talking about is given in this article:  

"Opinions of linguists in former Yugoslavia diverge. 

The majority of mainstream Serbian linguists considers Serbo-Croatian to be still one language with two variants. Also, the majority of Serbian linguists thinks that Serbo-Croatian is essentially a Serbian-based language. A minority among Serbian linguists is of the opinion that Serbo-Croatian had existed, but has, in the meantime, dissolved. A small minority avers that there never existed "Serbo-Croatian" language and that this designates a Croatian variant of the Serbian language.
The majority of Croatian linguists thinks that there was never anything like unified Serbo-Croatian language, but two different standard languages that overlapped sometimes in the course of history. Also, they claim that no language has ever dissolved since there was no Serbo-Croatian standard language. A minority of Croatian linguists deny that Croatian standard language is based on the neo-štokavian dialect; also, another minority of Croatian linguists claims that Serbian language is an offshoot of Croatian since as a system of dialects it is a subset of the Croatian system of dialects.
The majority of Bosniak linguists considers that the Serbo-Croatian language still exists and that it is based on the Bosnian idiom, so that proper name would be "Bosnian language". A minority of Bosniak linguists thinks that Croats and Serbs have, historically, "misappropriated" Bosnian language for their political and cultural agenda."
Need we say more?


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## sokol

Коста said:


> But when you mention lack of evidence, where is evidence that Kajkavian was a stand-alone continuum all along, that it existed serpatate from the Slovenian language fold from the very beginning, as some have suggested? I am simply saying that Kajkavian, like all othe languges in the world, has been _mixed_ in one way or another to be in the present form. Is there really any doubt about that?


Well, lets say it in plain English: you suggest that Kajkavian was originally a Slovenian dialect (and you imply, without saying this out loud, that later influence of Štokavian and/or Čakavian formed modern Kajkavian).

This theory is not new; only the implication that Kajkavian were a "mix" (the traditional dialect probably not spoken anymore in Zagreb, and probably becoming rare already in the countryside - I wouldn't know) - with Štokavian and/or Čakavian as main ingredients - just is a wrong assumption.
When taking a look at Kajkavian it is very much clear that they have more in common with Slovenian than with either Štokavian or Čakavian, but still Kajkavian also have plenty of features making them distinct of Slovenian (the l-participle-ending is not vocalised, final -v is pronounced voiceless, dual is long lost, etc.).

As you say so for yourself:


Коста said:


> There are linguists who consider Slovenian-Kajkavian one_, _and Shtokavian-Chakavian another language group. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that Kajkavian and Slovenian have more in common than Kajkavian and Shtokavian/Chakavian, just as Macedonian has more in common with Bulgarian than with Serbian.


There was never a doubt about this.
Structurally, Kajkavian and Slovenian definitely are closer than Čakavian and Štokavian. I was never arguing against this but only against the picture of Kajkavian being a "čakavised and/or štokavised Slovenian dialect".

"Modern" štokavised Kajkavian (or kajkavised Štokavian, depending on your point of view) like it seems to exist in Zagreb is a different thing of course; this really is a mixed dialect.



Коста said:


> I simply don'se see how can Kajkavian be considered part of the BSC language group.


Kajkavian speakers themselves feel much more linked with fellow Croatians than with Slovenians - that is a cultural (and political) fact.
Linguistically, Slovenian and Kajkavian should be considered as two dialect groups which are closely related - and closer related to each other than to other BCS dialects.
The reason why Kajkavian is considered a dialect of BCS is cultural links and ties, so yes: politics, if you like.

But if history would have gone different then the whole region from Slovenian Carinthian down to Niš probably would have been considered "one language" with Slovene being a "dialect" of BCS. Linguists *do *know that the definition of language as such - what belongs to one language, and where its borders go - is arbitrary.
Or as the saying goes, "A language is a dialect with an army  and navy": this of course is a trivial statement, nothing new about it at all.

Of course, we all do know that language is politics in the BCS region, and that quite some linguists of all BCS nations fail to keep politics out of linguistic research.
(The same occurs of in other regions of the world as well, but with the political situation in BCS this topic is much more salient there.)

Only the core problem here was and is the definition of Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian standard language: what those standard languages are _exactly_, and _how _they are different from the other two.
Dialects as such surely played a role, but the standard language debate really is a different topic.

We have tried already a couple of times to discuss standard languages of BCS thoroughly here but those threads are closed now; it seems it is still not possible to discuss this without too much emotion (which eventually will lead to closing of a thread), thus I suggest we don't do this here.


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## Athaulf

Коста said:


> Diffrerentiation occurred primarily beacause of physical separation and then by exertion of various immediate influences that followed.
> 
> They were small groups not always adjacent to another, physically closer to strangers than members of their own tribe. They mixed with the local Roman, and Illyrian populations (look at the Bulgarians whose namesakes were not even Slavs), and through this acquired new linguistic and cultural characteristics.
> 
> Slavs spoke the same mutually intelligible language when they arrived in the 6th century. Their languages became mutually unintelligible through _discontinuum _and _mixing_. That's how languages evolve.



So you're basically saying that Slovenian and Shtokavian evolved independently, and then at some point came into contact and produced Kajkavian as a mixed intermediate language? Such a theory has at least two fatal problems:

(1) Historically, Kajkavian formed a continuum with all sorts of different dialects on all sides (even though the continuum has been broken in many places by mass migrations, as Sokol explained above). Kajkavian dialects that are remote from each other are in fact hardly understandable mutually; it's a huge simplification when we even talk about a single "Kajkavian". This indicates a natural continuum that evolved by local differentiation of the once unified language, not a novel dialect formed by local mixing, such as e.g. the modern Zagreb speech. 

(2) Linguists can reconstruct the history of sound changes and grammatical changes that occurred in each dialect since the Proto-Slavic times fairly reliably. These changes must conform to a number of universal rules and normally follow certain universal patterns, so by aggregating various pieces of the present and historical evidence, different theories about the historical deveolopment of a dialect can be corroborated or discarded as inconsistent. Now, if Kajkavian really developed according to your theories, then this process would have surely left some influences on its grammar and phonology that contradict the presently accepted continuum theory. But that is not the case, as far as I know. What Sokol wrote above in the post #122 is the scientific consensus on the issue.

You're underestimating the ability of linguists to reconstruct the history of languages. They have much finer tools at their disposal than you seem to think, and you can't just propose theories like that out of the blue if you're not able to provide some compelling evidence for them. This is evident when you say:



> That's interesting. But I would like to know how he documents this claim given that no written documents, or external descriptions of Kajkavian exist prior to the 16th century.


Have you even wondered how Indo-European linguists reconstruct the development of individual IE languages back into the past, thousands of years before the first written documents we have in each of them? You write as if it was just wild speculation. Of course, it is speculative to some extent, but some very reliable conclusions can still be made. And reconstructing the history of Slavic languages and dialects is a significantly easier task, since much shorter time spans must be bridged by reconstruction.


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## Коста

sokol said:


> Well, lets say it in plain English: you suggest that Kajkavian was originally a Slovenian dialect (and you imply, without saying this out loud, that later influence of Štokavian and/or Čakavian formed modern Kajkavian).


Again, I don'thave a theory, Sokol. There are actual _liguists_ who have different theories, and I am simply repeating what they say. Do I think Kajkavian does not belong in the BCS basket? You bet! Why? Because, as a Shtokavian speaker, I do _not_ understand it; it's _not my language_, any more than Danish or Swedeish is German.

Do I understand standard Croatian? Yes. Bosnian? Yes. Are they the same as Serbian? No. But the difference is like between British English and American English - some words are different and some expressions are "typical" of the region. But it's _my_ language. I don't need interpreters and translators to read what they write in Croatia and Bosnia and Montenegro. And I don't need linguists digging into my Indo European roots to tell me that Kajkavian is _also_ "my" language. That's all.



sokol said:


> When taking a look at Kajkavian it is very much clear that they have more in common with Slovenian than with either Štokavian or Čakavian, but still Kajkavian also have plenty of features making them distinct of Slovenian (the l-participle-ending is not vocalised, final -v is pronounced voiceless, dual is long lost, etc.).


I can think of Andalucian dialect in Spain, where _s_ in the middle and at the end is not vocalazied, where _v _morphs into_ b, _where _r_ turns into _l_, _and where _z_, ce, and ci _are pronounced as _s, se, _and _si_, and miraculously it is still considered Spanish!

What I am trying to say is that these almost absurd hair-splitting geographic differences in speech are made from what appears to be an anthill into the mighty Mattahorn when it comes to South Slavic languages. We are talking population that over some 1400 years reached less than _2 million_ speakers in an area the size of _New Jersey_, which claims how many dozens of diverse and mutually _unintelligible_ dialects and variants? 

As I said, if anyone applied the South Salvic language "science" to the rest of the World, we would have at least 50 languages in the United States, and England would probably have 500, each with it own name, grammаr and standardization, and all would claim to be stand-alone dialects.



sokol said:


> Kajkavian speakers themselves feel much more linked with fellow Croatians than with Slovenians - that is a cultural (and political) fact.


No doubt. No one is disputing it. Canadians speak English but they feel linked to the British, the way Swiss Germans feel linked neither to Vienna nor to Berlin. Serbs and Croats use the same standard language yet that doesn't bring them politically closer. The French speaking Belgians pledge their allegiance to the Belgian King and not the Republic of France, right? Language does not necessarily determine loyalty.



sokol said:


> The reason why Kajkavian is considered a dialect of BCS is cultural links and ties, so yes: politics, if you like. But if history would have gone different then the whole region from Slovenian Carinthian down to Niš probably would have been considered "one language" with Slovene being a "dialect" of BCS.


Well, why not all the way to Varna and the Black Sea? The Slavs had their liturgical language and they could have used it to communicate with each other, as the Orthodox Slavs did, thereby keeping the oldest written standard mutually intelligible among each other.

But the Western Slavs did not pursue it and the communication and exchange was lost with the East. Not even 500 years after they received the work of Cyrill and Methodius, the South Salvs were captive nations, not free to mingle and interact, less even to share literature. In another 500 years they grew apart lingusitically, culturally, denominationally, and politically.

To try to ignore that, or erase it, as some are tyring to do, is denying the reality of the Balkans over the last millennium. We can't reduce everything concerning the South Salvic language issues to voicless letters and linguistic acrobatics of our Indo European ancestors.


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## Коста

Athaulf said:


> So you're basically saying that Slovenian and Shtokavian evolved independently, and then at some point came into contact and produced Kajkavian as a mixed intermediate language?


 
I believe that Kajkavian is a member of the group of Slovenian dialects. There are also linguists who propose this view and who reject Kajkavian as a BCS dialect. As a Shtokavian speaker, I _know _I do not understand Kajkavian. It is not my language. I can tell my language because I don't need a translation to understand fully what it says. 



Athaulf said:


> (2) Linguists can reconstruct the history of sound changes and grammatical changes that occurred in each dialect since the Proto-Slavic times fairly reliably. These changes must conform to a number of universal rules and normally follow certain universal patterns, so by aggregating various pieces of the present and historical evidence, different theories about the historical deveolopment of a dialect can be corroborated or discarded as inconsistent.


First, as I said to Sokol, we are speaking of an area the Size of New Jersey. To even posit that such isolation could exist as to render neighboring dialects mutually unintelligible is absurd in a area 89 by 89 miles (8000 square miles) in all (that's the size of the entire Republic of Slovenia). 

Given the diverse immigrant nature of America, we should rightfully expect hundreds of languages subsisting in New Jersey if we were to apply this theory of differentiation Slovenian style. 

And if the continuum was broken, did it not acquire some of the words and characteristics of the new arrivals, the Shtokavian and Chakavian? All evidence seems to point that this is precisely what happened in Zagreb. And why not elsewhere? 

And could it be that if there is any lack of mutual understanding between various Kajkavian areas it is because of those outside influences rather than from internal ones? 

Suffice it to say that Chakavian presence reached all the way to the Sava River between 13th and 16th century and was adjacent with Kajkavian areas (and was the official language of administration!). How can you say that there was no "mixing" or mutual interchange between the two dialects over that period of time? Did Kajkavians live in a vacuum?

And how did Kakjavian originally differ from the rest of the Slovenian dialects? Where is evidence that it was a standalone dialect separate from the rest of the Slovenian family? 

Your own reference shows a note at the very beginning that says: 

_This article does not cite any references or sources_. Please help improve this article by adding citations to be _reliable_ sources​So, why should I take this Wikipedia arcticle as something reliable? To add insult to injury, the internal links the article does make is to a Neogrammarian _hypothesis_ of the regularity of sound change, and then it adds
"Today this hypothesis is considered more of a _guiding principle than an exceptionless fact_" ​It goes on to say that this hypothesis has been criticized for:


"reducing the object of investigation to the idiolect; restricting themselves to the description of surface phenomena (sound level); overvaluation of historical languages and neglect of contemporary ones."​In all fairness, this is no evidence. Perhaps linguists can sit and pat each other on the back for discovering yet another Indo European nasal sound, but that does nothing to help me experience Kajkavian as my own language, despite the fact that these same people insist that Kajkavian is indeed my own language when in fact their own science shows that it is Slovenian!



Athaulf said:


> Have you even wondered how Indo-European linguists reconstruct the development of individual IE languages back into the past, thousands of years before the first written documents we have in each of them? You write as if it was just wild speculation. Of course, it is speculative to some extent, but some very reliable conclusions can still be made. And reconstructing the history of Slavic languages and dialects is a significantly easier task, since much shorter time spans must be bridged by reconstruction.


 
I have no doubt that there are working _hypothesis_ and working models of how all this came about, but let's not forget that dialectical continuum is a theory. How does all that help us understand each other better? It doesn't tell me why is Kajkavian lumped as a BCS language when obviously it is not.

But I can show you the whole _political_ history on how it got to be that way.


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## phosphore

You said that Kajkavian was a mixture of Shtokavian and Slovenian, which is not true, it share features with both Shtokavian and Slovenian because all three are parts of South Slavic dialectal continuum, and it is closer to Slovenian than to Shtokavian because it is also geographically closer to Slovenia than to Eastern Herzegovina, but now you are actually proving that it is not a dialect of so-called BCS, like if someone told you it certainly was? Pirot or Sofia dialects could have both been Serbian or Bulgarian and it was a political decision to draw a border between Sofia and Pirot. Similarly, politics took apart Slovenian and Kajkavian and brought together the latter with Shtokavian, and that has been explained a hundred times.

Your comparison between Slovenia and New Jersey is nonsense: New Guinea is twice as big as Sweden and has has somewhat fewer inhabitants that Sweden does, but yet it has some 750 languages, while Sweden has 5.


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## TriglavNationalPark

Our Czech and Slovak members will be able to tell us more about this, but aren't the dialects of Moravia in the Czech Republic closer to (Western) Slovak than to standard Czech? If so, this parallels the situation with Kajkavian to an extent, again illustrating how linguistic boundaries are often arbitrary and based on historical politics.


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## Mishe

@Kocta: you as a Serbian native speaker say that kajkavian is as Swedish or Danish for you? Wow!!! Maybe you don't feel close to the culture, but certainly linguistically ANY Slavic language would be more understandable for me than Swedish or Danish.


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## itreius

Mishe said:


> @Kocta: you as a Serbian native speaker say that kajkavian is as Swedish or Danish for you? Wow!!! Maybe you don't feel close to the culture, but certainly linguistically ANY Slavic language would be more understandable for me than Swedish or Danish.


I believe what he meant was - he doesn't feel it's any closer to Štokavian than Danish or Swedish are to German, ergo he has trouble considering it a dialect of his mother tongue.


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## Mishe

itreius said:


> I believe what he meant was - he doesn't feel it's any closer to Shtokavian than Danish or Swedish are to German.



I see, I read the post quickly and didn't see that.

Still I think the gap between German and Scandinavian languages is way larger than between SBC and Slovenian / kajkavian.


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## sokol

*Hello guys,

this thread long since seems to have run beyond redemption it seems, so I'm closing here now.

The same opinions are repeated over and over again, and apart from that we've gone off-topic too (and on the verge of a political debate anyway).

If one of you would like to discuss a particular topic which came up in this thread you are very welcome to open a new one about it.

Thank you all for your understanding.
Cheers
sokol
Moderator
*


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