# Croatian and Bosnian (BCS): |ć| and |đ|



## Gnoj

MOD NOTE: Moved from THIS thread.



iobyo said:


> The Macedonian dialect that borders the Gora dialect pronounces these sounds just as in *BCS*


I think "C" (Croatian) should be excluded here because Croats pronounce Č and Ć (Ч and Ћ) the same way.


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## iobyo

Gnoj said:


> I think "C" (Croatian) should be excluded here because Croats pronounce Č and Ć (Ч and Ћ) the same way.



Standard Croatian nevertheless prescribes /ć/ and /đ/.


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## DenisBiH

Gnoj said:


> I think "C" (Croatian) should be excluded here because Croats pronounce Č and Ć (Ч and Ћ) the same way.



By right, a majority of both Croatian *and Bosnian* speakers should be excluded (myself included among them), but standard Croatian and Bosnian do distinguish between those two sounds. There was a very interesting proposal by the late Ivo Škarić, a Croatian linguist, to do away with č/ć and dž/đ distinction (and ije/je, as well) in Croatian, and write only č and đ (and je) but I don't think it met with much approval. 

I am personally a supporter of such a reform, and most Bosnian speakers I've talked to about the possibility of merging those two pairs (and ije/je) seem quite enthusiastic about the idea. One day, perhaps. Doing that reform, and perhaps allowing the negation to be written together with the verb (neznam, nevidim) would probably eliminate something like 90% of spelling mistakes in standard Bosnian, make us much more literate on average, and make school much easier.


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## Gnoj

iobyo said:


> Standard Croatian nevertheless prescribes /ć/ and /đ/.


I know, but what you were comparing was their pronunciation in Gora dialects and in BCS.


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## iobyo

Gnoj said:


> I know, but what you were comparing was their pronunciation in Gora dialects and in BCS.



I must be mistaken because I understood "BCS" to refer to the standard varieties of Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian.


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## Gnoj

iobyo said:


> I must be mistaken because I understood "BCS" to refer to the standard varieties of Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian.


I was talking about standard varieties as well. You said that Gora dialects and standard BCS share the identical pronunciation of Ć and Đ, isn't that right? What I said was that that "sharing" is between Gora dialects and standard Serbian only (I wasn't sure about Bosnian), not the whole BCS group.


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## iobyo

Gnoj said:


> What I said was that that "sharing" is between Gora dialects and standard Serbian only (I wasn't sure about Bosnian), not the whole BCS group.



But /ć/ and /đ/ _are_ prescribed in all three standard varieties; pronouncing /č/ in place of /ć/ is widespread (as Denis confirmed) albeit substandard.


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## Anicetus

Gnoj said:


> I was talking about standard varieties as well. You said that Gora dialects and standard BCS share the identical pronunciation of Ć and Đ, isn't that right? What I said was that that "sharing" is between Gora dialects and standard Serbian only (I wasn't sure about Bosnian), not the whole BCS group.



No, you're wrong. The *standard* Croatian pronunciation of _ć_ and _đ_ is indeed /tɕ/ and /dʑ/, as little sense as that may make. The orthoepic norm is a part of the standard as much as the orthographical norm is, that's what they've been telling you.


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## DenisBiH

It's kinda funny, when you think about it; a Macedonian speaker from that area bordering Gora that iobyo mentioned could teach many Croatian and Bosnian speakers about the difference between and proper pronunciation of č and ć and dž and đ.


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## Gnoj

iobyo said:


> But /ć/ and /đ/ _are_ prescribed in all three standard varieties; pronouncing /č/ in place of /ć/ is widespread (as Denis confirmed) albeit substandard.


I already said I knew that, didn't I? But you are still missing the point. You were talking about how they are pronounced, not how they are prescribed. Here's what you said again:

*pronunciation *of Ć and Đ in Gora = *pronunciation *of Ć and Đ in *BC**S*

The flaw of that statement is: Croatian and Bosnian should be excluded. Prescribed letters have nothing to do with that.


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## Anicetus

No, Gnoj, you're the one missing the point.  Let's try again: phonemes of a standard language are prescribed just as letters are. Standard language prescribes not only orthography (the way of writing), but also orthoepy (the way of speaking, pronunciation). The letters _ć_ and _đ_ represent the phonemes /tɕ/ and /dʑ/ in *standard* Bosnian and Croatian.


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## Gnoj

Anicetus said:


> No, you're wrong. The *standard* Croatian pronunciation of _ć_ and _đ_ is indeed /tɕ/ and /dʑ/, as little sense as that may make. The orthoepic norm is a part of the standard as much as the orthographical norm is, that's what they've been telling you.


It was about time a Croat interfered.  I'm only saying what I hear, and when I listen to Croatian speakers I can't tell Ć from Č in their pronunciation. That's all I'm saying. I'm perfectly familiar with the difference between their etymological roots etc.


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## iobyo

Gnoj said:


> I already said I knew that, didn't I? But you are still missing the point. You were talking about how they are pronounced, not how they are prescribed. Here's what you said again:
> 
> *pronunciation *of Ć and Đ in Gora = *pronunciation *of Ć and Đ in *BC**S*
> 
> The flaw of that statement is: Croatian and Bosnian should be excluded. Prescribed letters have nothing to do with that.



The real flaw of that statement is that the Gora dialect cannot have a prescribed script because it itself hasn't been standardized.

Anyway, it's my fault, I should have been more precise: slashes usually signify phonemes, while angle brackets are reserved for glyphs. I wanted the reader to assume /ć/ meant the phoneme represented by <ć>.


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## Gnoj

Anicetus said:


> No, Gnoj, you're the one missing the point.  Let's try again: phonemes of a standard language are prescribed just as letters are. Standard language prescribes not only orthography (the way of writing), but also orthoepy (the way of speaking, pronunciation). The letters _ć_ and _đ_ represent the phonemes /tɕ/ and /dʑ/ in *standard* Bosnian and Croatian.


I didn't miss that point at all.  I'm also aware of the orthoepy you are talking about, but I guess I was seeing it as an unpractised rule on paper. But being a Croatian speaker yourself changes things, surely you know better than me about pronunciation of your own language. As I said in my last post, I was only saying what my ears tell me.


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## DenisBiH

Gnoj said:


> I didn't miss that point at all.  I'm also aware of the orthoepy you are talking about, but I guess I was seeing it as an unpractised rules on paper.



This would actually be a very interesting topic for another thread. I'm not sure what the exact situation with č/ć and dž/đ in educated speech on state and other media in Croatia or Bosnia-Herzegovina is (someone who distinguishes better between them should comment), but one could ask a similar question about accentuation in modern standard Croatian: if the standard on paper says one thing, and a large number of speakers in very official contexts consistently use another thing, which is actually the standard: the de iure one or the de facto one.


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## Gnoj

iobyo said:


> I wanted the reader to assume /ć/ meant the phoneme represented by <ć>.


Yeah, this is what I was smart-ass-ing about.


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## iobyo

DenisBiH said:


> I'm not sure what the exact situation with č/ć and dž/đ in educated speech on state and other media in Croatia or Bosnia-Herzegovina is (someone who distinguishes better between them should comment),


 
I was just watching Dnevnik on HRT and that presenter Sandra (?) distinguished between them in her speech, but then they were interviewing someone during some folkloric festival and they did indeed have /č/ for /ć/, but their /đ/ was unaffected!


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## DenisBiH

iobyo said:


> ... but then they were interviewing someone during  some folkloric festival and they did indeed have /č/ for /ć/, but their  /đ/ was unaffected!



That would then be in line with Škarić's idea to keep č and đ in writing. From an article by Ivo Škarić (written following this new orthography of his):



> *Svođenje č-ć na č i dž-đ na đ*
> Da je za večinu Hrvata, napose urbanih, u opčem jeziku več završena defonologizacia fonemske opreke č-ć, a pogotovu đ-dž, te da se nerazložno gubi energia pri opismenjavanju i trud oko ispravnosti pisanja č-ć i dž-đ, što rezultira unatoč svemu tomu dvostruko večim brojem pogrešaka neko što je njihova čak izvankontekstualna razlikovnost, pa da stoga grafisko razlikovanje bez fonemskog pokriča predstavlja veči komunikaciski šum nego što bi širilo komunikaciski kapacitet, utvrđeno je u vrlo rigoroznom empiriskom istraživanju (Škarić, 2000). Istina, opreka č-ć i rjeđe dž-đ žive u nekim hrvatskim dialektima, *ali u vrlo raznolikom glasničkim ostvarenjima, pa se onda u opčem govoru te opreke potiru. *



It would be interesting to read this 2000 study of his.

There is an interesting parallel to what Škarić is saying in Dževad Jahić's overview of the situation in Bosnian ("Bosanski jezik u 100 pitanja i 100 odgovora"). While it seems that we have merged the two pairs into ć and đ rather than č and đ, it is, or rather was before the war, characteristic of about half of our dialects. He outlines where the merger occurs dialectally:



> "Izgovor jednog afrikatskog para karakterističan je za srednju Bosnu, za  govore Bošnjaka na liniji Zenica - Travnik - Gornji Vakuf - Sarajevo, a  javlja se i u dijelovima istočne Bosne i Sandžaka, centralne i zapadne  Hercegovine, pa i u međuriječju Une i Vrbasa" (Dževad Jahić, Jezik  bosanskih Muslimana, 15.).



In particular, it is also characteristic of the original speech of Sarajevo. What Škarić said about urban Croatian speech leading in the merger of these two seems to be true for Bosnian as well, at least according to Jahić. It would seem that even before 1992 the speech of Bosniaks in urban centers even in those areas that normally distinguish between č and ć and dž and đ had this merger:



> Za ovu pojavu, međutim, značajnije je da je ona tipična za upravo za  govore bosanskohercegovačkih čaršija kao centra bošnjačke i uopće  bosanske kulture. Dakle, u Bosni i Hercegovini imamo situaciju da se u  govorima tih centara javlja umekšavanje tih afrikatskih parova čak i u  onim slučajevima kad su čaršije smještene na onom dijelu terena na kojem  su u izgovoru očuvana oba para. Tako npr. govor  Foče, okružen  bošnjačkim govorima koji su uglavnom sačuvali oba para afrikata, i sam  zna samo za jedan par, a tako i govori Rogatice, Višegrada, Trnova i sl.



The majority of Bosnian speakers of the East Herzegovina dialect which seem to better preserve the č/ć and dž/đ distinction have been uprooted in the last war, and now reside either outside B-H or in centers such as Sarajevo where the tendency to merge them seems to prevail, so that by now the situation could be significantly different than what it was like in 1992. It would seem that younger generations are especially prone to this merger, again according to Jahić.


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## Prijatelj

iobyo said:


> I was just watching Dnevnik on HRT and that presenter Sandra (?) distinguished between them in her speech...


Sandra Križanec is from Osijek, which is in the easternmost part of the country. In Croatia, the rule is, the further you go to the North-West (deeper in the area of the Kajkavian dialect), people have a harder time distinguishing č from ć and đ from dž - which literally culminates in Slovenia where they only have č and no đ nor dž. There are some exceptions - Split is, for example, another place where you can't realy hear the difference in spoken č/ć.

Škarić's ideas have mostly been disregarded here. His proposals, to me and to most people mentioning his ideas on the Internet, are ridiculous. The inability to differentiate between these sounds is something which should be taken care of by teachers and speech-imparment professionals in elementary schools.

He thought that "the prestiguous elite living in Zagreb (who have a hard time telling apart these sounds because of their Kajkavian background) were the ones who ought to win the battle against the language of uneducated peasants (Štokavian)." Which is ironic, because where I come from, those who don't distinguish č from ć are regarded as uneducated. This man was basically someone who grew up among people who never learned to properly differentiate between these sounds, deemed them unnecessary and decided to impose this notion on others... He incorporated this into his idea to separate Croatian from other languages of former Yugoslavia as much as possible...

The connection with urban areas in general, which has been mentined here, is logical because "butchering the spoken language" is characteristic to fast-paced environments where people are often proud of their local vernaculars, _their own kind of street-talk,_ and where they intentionaly don't want to use the _proper_ language except in formal situations - shortening words, mispronounciations, disregarding all possible rules and reducing the language to it's bare essentials. You have this in all languages.



DenisBiH said:


> Doing that reform, and perhaps allowing the negation to be written together with the verb (neznam, nevidim) would probably eliminate something like 90% of spelling mistakes in standard Bosnian, make us much more literate on average, and make school much easier.


What? Make one more literate by simplifying the language? Why don't we eliminate our whole mathematical education because, on average (I'm making a guess here, but I don't think it's that far from the truth), the majority of people would say that math was the hardest subject throughout their education?



			
				netko na nekom forumu said:
			
		

> Istraživanje je proveo na studentima u sklopu nekog kolegija koji je predavao... Pustio im je pojedine glasove izrezane iz riječi. Kažu mi ljudi koji su u tome sudjelovali da zapravo nisu čuli ništa osim šuma; pokušavali su nešto čuti u prvih pet-šest slučajeva, a onda shvatili da ne čuju ništa pametno i ispunili formulare metodom eci-peci-pec. Naravno da je dobio očajne rezultate, a iz toga je onda morala proizići očajna ideja.


To je to rigorozno istraživanje po kojemu je "za večinu Hrvata, napose urbanih, u opčem jeziku več završena defonologizacia fonemske opreke č-ć, a pogotovu đ-dž"... Ne znam kako je samo spremao to istraživanje kad ni sam nije najbolje razlikovao te glasove (do fakulteta je živio u Splitu)...


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## DenisBiH

> What?  Make one more literate by simplifying the language? Why don't we  eliminate our whole mathematical education because, on average (I'm  making a guess here, but I don't think it's that far from the truth),  the majority of people would say that math was the hardest subject  throughout their education?



No, make one more literate by adapting the standard language to the reality of the day. The same way that, for example, the idea of having a special letter for the etymological yat was finally abandoned in the 19th century, and we still manage without it. I don't see where mathematics fits into this. Language changes, mathematical laws don't. And I believe there is a tendency in modern linguistics to refrain from using the terms "butchering" and "speech impairment" in relation to language change, although of course such usage may be common among ordinary people.

I don't know about Croatia, but in Bosnia-Herzegovina the merger of č/ć and dž/đ is definitely not a new phenomenon, it was recorded already in the late 19th century in Sarajevo, and possibly there are even earlier attestations. 

As for your last quote, while I appreciate personal input from any forero, as I give my own as well, what you are using is double hearsay; you are quoting an anonymous person saying, on an Internet forum, that they heard from a person, again anonymous, who supposedly took part in Škarić's test, that...

Not very reliable. I think we would need to see both Škarić's original findings and methodology used, and criticism of such findings from someone in the scientific community, to be able to judge whether his findings are valid or not.

On the other hand, IMHO it is often enough to visit any Croatian or Bosnian Internet forum or YouTube comments section for videos from the BCMS area to get a feel for just how widespread the merger is. After all, you yourself acknowledge that the merger is in fact reality for many Croats. In fact, you associate it with the two largest population centers in Croatia - both Zagreb and Split.


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## itreius

Prijatelj said:


> The inability to differentiate between these sounds is something which should be taken care of by teachers and speech-imparment professionals in elementary schools.


Children don't learn a language from their teachers nor do they adopt the phonological system from them. By the time they're in school, the language learning process has already been completed. To say that people need a speech-impairment professional because their phonological system is different than an arbitrary standard, one that's based on a very distant dialect, is completely ridiculous. Would you like it if I said that you need to see a psychologist? Or perhaps that you should go and see a linguist to tell you more about the process of learning a language?



Prijatelj said:


> He thought that "the prestiguous elite living in Zagreb (who have a hard time telling apart these sounds because of their Kajkavian background) were the ones who ought to win the battle against the language of uneducated peasants (Štokavian)." Which is ironic, because where I come from, those who don't distinguish č from ć are regarded as uneducated.


I don't see how that's "ironic" - Zagreb _was_ (and still is) the cultural, economic and educational center. Perhaps you find it wholly natural that a country's standard is based on a dialect which is the furthest from its cultural, economic and educational center? I most certainly do not.



Prijatelj said:


> This man was basically someone who grew up among people who never learned to properly differentiate between these sounds, deemed them unnecessary and decided to impose this notion on others..


Luckily, as we can see, the č/ć and đ/dž differentiation isn't being imposed on _anyone_, right?



Prijatelj said:


> The connection with urban areas in general, which has been mentined here, is logical because "butchering the spoken language" is characteristic to fast-paced environments where people are often proud of their local vernaculars, _their own kind of street-talk,_ and where they *intentionaly* don't want to use the _proper_ language except in formal situations - shortening words, *mispronounciations*, disregarding all possible rules and reducing the language to *it's* bare essentials.


Are you now butchering the English language? Do you believe the content of your message would have been worth more without those spelling mistakes? Would that have made you much more literate?




Prijatelj said:


> What? Make one more literate by simplifying the language?


Language is more than just its orthography. Well-read and eloquent people will always be able to make themselves noticed by others, no matter the pronunciation or spelling skills they possess. By the same token, employing the č/ć differentiation in one's speech will not make said person any more literate than they'd have been without - only to the unobservant eye.
Also, your insinuation that the language is being _simplified_ is entirely subjective.



Prijatelj said:


> Why don't we eliminate our whole mathematical education because, on average (I'm making a guess here, but I don't think it's that far from the truth), the majority of people would say that math was the hardest subject throughout their education?


That's an absurd analogy. Language changes. Trying to stifle language change or language use, whether it be due to a change in the phonology, lexis or any other area is a totally pointless endavour by those who are out of touch with reality.



> you are quoting an anonymous person saying, on an Internet forum



...and a troll, at that. The person who wrote that has quite the aversion to anyone doubting his/her authority on _any_ matter at all and he/she constantly uses hyperboles.


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## DenisBiH

For some more anecdotal evidence: a few months back I stumbled upon a website with the collection of those tongue twisters in BCMS. Among them was _Čokanjčićem ću te, čokanjčićem ćeš me_. Now, I kept repeating it and wondering "Why the heck is this phrase listed as a tongue twister when it is obviously very straightforward to pronounce?", until I realized I was pronouncing all the č and ć sounds in it (more or less) the same way.


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## Prijatelj

itreius said:


> Children don't learn a language from their teachers nor do they adopt the phonological system from them. By the time they're in school, the language learning process has already been completed. To say that people need a speech-impairment professional because their phonological system is different than an arbitrary standard, one that's based on a very distant dialect, is completely ridiculous. Would you like it if I said that you need to see a psychologist? Or perhaps that you should go and see a linguist to tell you more about the process of learning a language?


I wouldn't mind anyone telling me to see a psychologist or a linguist because I really might be in need for these specialists - why would I oppose to that? I don't mind "not being right", "not having a clue about linguistics", or being informed about "having psychological problems." You're projecting your own personality here. Why would I mind people trying to advise me on something, if they don't mean it in a sarcastic or insulting way?

Are you implying that a grown up foreigner doesn't have a chance learning the difference between č and ć and using them correctly in spoken form?


> I don't see how that's "ironic"


The _irony_ is in the part that some štokavians might consider someone yelling "hoču iči kuči!" uneducated, while that someone might think the same about them also based on their speech alone - neither of which has to be true. How is this _not_ ironic?


> Are you now butchering the English language? Do you believe the content of your message would have been worth more without those spelling mistakes? Would that have made you much more literate?


Of course I am and of course it would?! It's incorrect = it's not English. Where's the limit to my mistakes? The point at which they become an inhibition to comprehension? Who draws the line? I can't think of the last time when I was consciously aware of the difference in pro_noun_ce - pro_nun_ciation, and I thank you for pointing that out; I'll be doubly more careful careful in the future. The lack of available time on this world forces me to take such (and many other) things for granted - and I have no problems with that.


> Also, your insinuation that the language is being _simplified_ is entirely subjective.


How can it be _only_ subjective when the whole point of the proposal is to _cast out_ a couple of letters to make it easier? There's less things to keep on your mind - it's simpler.


> That's an absurd analogy.


He wrote, that, to eliminate mistakes and make some people more literate, we should eliminate the thing which people make mistakes on. Would you mind explaining how extrapolating the same thing to a whole school subject is absurd? My Croatian language grades are low because of Č/Ć. We eliminate Č/Ć. My grades are now high. > My GPA is low because of math. We eliminate math. My GPA is now high. The absurdity of this analogy eludes me.


> Luckily, as we can see, the č/ć and đ/dž differentiation isn't being imposed on _anyone_, right?


It has been imposed on everyone ever since the dawn of the Standard. A lot of time has passed since then, a lot of people decided not to make the Standard their own language, which is perfectly ok, diversities are always welcome, but some of them are now complaining about the Standard, wanting to impose on it their own way of speaking... Without proof that those who want this fairly big change outnumber those who don't - this will never pass.

*Your whole point, which is identical to Škarić's, is that Zagreb is Croatia's all-encompassing center and that our language should also indicate that. I could only accept this if the majority, on a referendum, votes yes on this.* I should've just written these two sentences instead of loosing my time on these inane irrelevancies up there...

I just saw that Denis replied something before your post but I'll have to read that some other day, or some other week, I don't think I have anything more to say about this...


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## DenisBiH

As for referenda and such - back before the 1990s while the unity of Serbo-Croatian was still acknowledged in our region, in this or that form, it was normal for it to have two different orthographies, one Ekavian and the other Ijekavian (actually, more than just orthographies, but let's leave that aside for now). I don't see why this couldn't be an option again for Croatian and/or Bosnian, one "old" orthography with č/ć and dž/đ, and the other, new one, with only č and đ. Have the children learn the old way in the elementary school, but by the time they reach secondary education let them choose from then onwards which orthography to use. That way a greater measure of continuity could be kept, at least for a time, and there is less force involved. Just an idea.

Perhaps it is unfeasible, but what I'm trying to point out to Prijatelj is that I don't think this thread should devolve entirely into passionate defense of or attacks on Škarić's ideas. Yes, perhaps he was partly motivated, as Prijatelj says, by the desire to further differentiate Croatian from Serbian. But unlike some other orthographic ideas with the same thing in mind (revival of Šulek's diete/djeteta comes to mind), which I don't find that interesting from my own perspective (as a Bosnian speaker), most of Škarić's ideas seem good for practical reasons as well.

One practical thing they are definitely not good for is maintaining a very high degree of closeness to Serbian and Montenegrin. A person unable to differentiate between č/ć and dž/đ would be illiterate in those two, should Croatian and/or Bosnian decide to go for the reform.


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## DenisBiH

I'm not sure how relevant this is, but it might be interesting from a historical perspective. There seems to exist a difference in the treatment of Oriental loanwords with palatalized k' and g' in different dialects in Bosnia-Herzegovina. It would seem that Shchakavian dialects, especially western ones (Bosanska Krajina) borrowed these words using k and g: _šeker_, _sirke_, _gerdan_, _gerdek_; on the other hand, East Herzegovina dialect and easternmost Shchakavian dialects (including Sarajevo) borrowed the same with ć and đ: _šećer_, _sirće_, _đerdan_, _đerdek_. 

I wonder if this could be evidence for difference in the articulation of ć and đ between, roughly, western Shtokavian (Shchakavian) and eastern Shtokavian, even at the time of the Ottoman conquest, and if so, if that could have somehow affected the later č/ć merger.


And now back to the 19th century. According to Lejla Nakaš ("Književnojezički izraz Bošnjaka u austrougarskom periodu"), the nondistinction of č and ć shows through in a limited number of examples in the printed editions of the works of some late 19th and early 20th century Bosniak (Muslim) authors. 


> Zabilježeno je relativno malo primjera nerazlikovanja ovih glasova. Mora  se ipak uzeti u obzir da bi samo uvid u rukopisne primjerke djela mogao  dati tačnu sliku o ovoj pojavi kod pojedinih pisaca. Na osnovu prvih  štampanih izdanja dalo bi se zaključiti da su Ćatić i Bjelevac imali  problema sa razlikovanjem glasova č i ć, kao i to da je Mulabdić ove  glasove dobro razlikovao (tumaćiti Č4; ružićni trak Ć5; rijeć Ć10;  pozlačenih Ć11; uopče H14; ne htijuči HB1,100; štičenika HB1,100; lomaća  Đ5; izreće Đ5).


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## el_tigre

Gnoj said:


> MOD NOTE: Moved from THIS thread.
> 
> 
> I think "C" (Croatian) should be excluded here because Croats pronounce Č and Ć (Ч and Ћ) the same way.



Not true. Some Croats do the same way but huge quantity does* not*.


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## el_tigre

Prijatelj said:
			
		

> itreius said:
> 
> 
> 
> Children don't learn a language from their teachers nor do they adopt the phonological system from them. By the time they're in school, the language learning process has already been completed. To say that people need a speech-impairment professional because their phonological system is different than an arbitrary standard, one that's based on a very distant dialect, is completely ridiculous. Would you like it if I said that you need to see a psychologist? Or perhaps that you should go and see a linguist to tell you more about the process of learning a language?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I don't see how that's "ironic" - Zagreb _was_ (and still is) the* cultural*, economic and *educational* center. Perhaps you find it wholly natural that a country's standard is based on a dialect which is the furthest from its cultural, economic and educational center? I most certainly do not.
Click to expand...

The *bold* words are disputed.


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## Anicetus

iobyo said:


> But /ć/ and /đ/ _are_ prescribed in all three standard varieties; pronouncing /č/ in place of /ć/ is widespread (as Denis confirmed) albeit substandard.



Actually, I'd say most speakers use something roughly halfway between Serbian _č_ and _ć_ for both phonemes. I'm not sure how this pronunciation would be marked in IPA, but I have the feeling that Serbian _č_ is noticeably "harder".




iobyo said:


> [...] but their /đ/ was unaffected!





DenisBiH said:


> That would then be in line with Škarić's idea to keep č and đ in writing.



That actually makes sense if you think about it -- _đ_ is much more widespread and older than _dž_. I think it's safe to assume that _dž_ never even existed in many dialects. In the standards _dž_ is mainly found in Turcisms, which many of these dialects don't have, as a voiced _č_ in words invented by philologists such as _svjedodžba, jednadžba, narudžba_ and in Anglicisms, which are quite recent borrowings. _Đ_, on the other hand, was derived from _d_ by the Common Slavic iotation. I've heard _ž_ in place of _dž_ (_svjedožba_ and _žungla_, for example) from older people, and I believe some dialects also have _žep_.




Prijatelj said:


> Sandra Križanec is from Osijek, which is in the easternmost part of the country. In Croatia, the rule is, the further you go to the North-West (deeper in the area of the Kajkavian dialect), people have a harder time distinguishing č from ć and đ from dž - which literally culminates in Slovenia where they only have č and no đ nor dž. There are some exceptions - Split is, for example, another place where you can't realy hear the difference in spoken č/ć.



Not quite, the traditionally Štokavian Dubrovnik doesn't differentiate _ć_ from _č_ either, for instance. I think most of coastal Dalmatia doesn't. Split is no "exception". From a paper by Mate Kapović I've found via Google:



			
				Mate Kapović: Hrvatski standard – evolucija ili revolucija? Problem hrvatskoga pravopisa i pravogovora said:
			
		

> U najvećim gradovima razlike nema – u Zagrebu, Splitu, Rijeci i Osijeku. U manjim gradovima se negdje čuva, negdje ne. U kontinentalnoj se Hrvatskoj č i ć primjerice razlikuju u Đakovu, Požegi, Slavonskom Brodu, Novoj Gradišci i Petrinji, u gradovima se na zapadnoj obali Istre – npr. Puli, Umagu, Rovinju, Poreču itd. č i ć ne razlikuju (iako se redovno razlikuju u seoskom čakavskom zaleđu), č i ć se izvorno ne razlikuju u Sinju, a to je također tipično i za Dubrovnik, kao i za bosanske gradove. Zanimljive su situacije kao one kod Imotskoga i Sinja gdje se u samom gradu č i ć ne razlikuju, a u seoskoj okolici da.





Prijatelj said:


> The connection with urban areas in general, which has been mentined here, is logical because "butchering the spoken language" is characteristic to fast-paced environments where people are often proud of their local vernaculars, _their own kind of street-talk,_ and where they intentionaly don't want to use the _proper_ language except in formal situations - shortening words, mispronounciations, disregarding all possible rules and reducing the language to it's bare essentials. You have this in all languages.



And who decides what kind of language is "proper"? Why would urban speech be inferior to rural speech? Anyway, the merger of _č_ and _ć_ is most definitely *not* "street talk". It's a dialectal change which occurred centuries ago.



> What? Make one more literate by simplifying the language? Why don't we eliminate our whole mathematical education because, on average (I'm making a guess here, but I don't think it's that far from the truth), the majority of people would say that math was the hardest subject throughout their education?



You didn't give a single argument why maintaining the č-ć distinction in standard Croatian is important and useful. Are there minimal pairs other than _spavačica - spavaćica_? Most likely yes, but they can probably be counted on fingers.

Anyway, my opinion is that dropping _ć_ in the standard orthography would be impractical above all (which is also what the author of the paper I cited above says). Think of everything that would have to be reprinted. Making _ć_ optional is the largest change that would make sense. Insisting that all speakers make the distinction in their speech doesn't seem to have much point, though, as the č-ć distinction can hardly resolve any ambiguity. On the other hand, I disagree with the claim that the current orthography is particularly hard to learn. What is English spelling if č-ć is difficult to master? I don't differentiate between _č_ and _ć_ in my speech, but I've never had any problems with spelling. It is easily acquired through reading and whether _č_ or _ć_ should come can often be simply determined by obvious etymology. The č-ć distinction has etymological justification if nothing else (_ije_ for the long reflex of yat, pronounced /je:/, makes much less sense). And after all, as Denis said, learning to distinguish between _č_ and _ć_ in spelling makes Bosnian and Croatian speakers literate in Serbian and Montenegrin and helps in learning some other Slavic languages as well. 




el_tigre said:


> Not true. Some Croats do the same way but huge quantity does* not*.



Just how much is "a huge quantity"?



el_tigre said:


> The *bold* words are disputed.



Which city is the cultural and educational centre of Croatia in your opinion, then?? Honestly, Zagreb's position within Croatia is so firm and obvious that it feels silly having to prove it. I don't know where to begin with arguments -- with the fact that the University of Zagreb was the only one in Croatia as late as 40 years ago, still is the only one with some kind of international recognition, has the broadest range of faculties, by far the most students, that young people from all over Croatia come to Zagreb to study at the university or that Zagreb houses the Ministry of Culture, the headquarters of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, the National and University Library (to name only a few institutions), a multitude of museums and theatres, that most nationwide TV channels and publications are based in Zagreb...


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## DenisBiH

> Actually, I'd say most speakers use something roughly halfway between Serbian _č_ and _ć_ for both phonemes.



That's what I've always thought I do, as well. At times I do sense that I pronounce them differently in some words, but I'm not sure whether that is bona fide č/ć distinction in those cases or simply allophones in specific different environments.



> I'm not sure how this pronunciation would be marked in IPA,



I also don't know about IPA, but what some here do in school is to write a c with a horizontal line above it to make it more difficult for the teacher to tell whether č or ć was meant.  Our Bosnian teacher of course made it a practice to mark all words spelled in such a manner as incorrect. 



> but I have the feeling that Serbian _č_ is noticeably "harder".



On the other hand, I feel the Serbian ć as being noticeably "softer". 

Slavistički komitet u BiH (Slavist Committee of B-H, an association of linguists) seems to be involved in preparing a study about the dialectal situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the late 20th century, so we may soon have something a bit more up-to-date where B-H is concerned.



> On the other hand, I disagree with the claim that the current  orthography is particularly hard to learn. What is English spelling if  č-ć is difficult to master? I don't differentiate between _č_ and _ć_ in my speech, but I've never had any problems with spelling. It is easily acquired through reading and whether _č_ or _ć_  should come can often be simply determined by obvious etymology. The  č-ć distinction has etymological justification if nothing else (_ije_ for the long reflex of yat, pronounced /je:/, makes much less sense)



But this, at least in Bosnia-Herzegovina, seems to depend on the school one goes to. I happen to have attended a somewhat prestigious school where they made it a point to hammer the č/ć and dž/đ (and ije/je) distinction into us. I rarely make those mistakes today, but I remember, after every written essay, the teacher would spend an entire class just listing and discussing the most common mistakes we made (usually having to do with č/ć, dž/đ and ije/je). She also made us read *a lot* (certainly more than average here). Not everyone can (choose to) go to the best school with the most competent and/or motivated language teachers, though. And not everyone would care about going to such a school just to be able to distinguish between two phonemes that their great-grandfathers couldn't distinguish between either. 

Slovenian seems to have an interesting solution for ć, by the way:


> The Western *Q*, *W*, *X*, *Y* are excluded from the standard language, as are some South Slavic graphemes, *Ć*, *Đ*,*  however they are used as independent letters in encyclopedias and  dictionary listings *(not always all of them), for foreign Western proper nouns or toponyms are often not transcribed as they are in some other Slavic languages, such as partly in Russian or entirely in Serbian.



So a partial reform that would keep ć and dž in some contexts (thus  avoiding having to reprint everything, change government records etc.,  at least at once) would not result in something entirely new to the world.  (TNP, please correct me if this only applies to q, w, x, y and not to ć and đ)



> (_ije_ for the long reflex of yat, pronounced /je:/, makes much less sense)



Somewhat off-topic here, but I've read somewhere that pre-Vienna Literary Agreement Bosnian Croat authors that wrote in (I)jekavian (for some of them wrote in Ikavian) mostly represented both modern -ije- and -je- the same way (as -ie- or some such). I don't know about Ragusan authors. So, merging -ije- and -je- in writing would in fact be going back to the pre-Vienna literary tradition. I also know of some that wrote _ne _together with the verb, by the way. Perhaps we should open a new thread for ije/je?



> Are there minimal pairs other than _spavačica - spavaćica_? Most likely yes, but they can probably be counted on fingers.



And moreover, I am pretty confident that there are many, many more examples of homographs due to our not recording the accent and length in writing, but we still manage.


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## iobyo

Anicetus said:


> That actually makes sense if you think about it -- _đ_ is much more widespread and older than _dž_. I think it's safe to assume that _dž_ never even existed in many dialects. In the standards _dž_ is mainly found in Turcisms, which many of these dialects don't have, as a voiced _č_ in words invented by philologists such as _svjedodžba, jednadžba, narudžba_ and in Anglicisms, which are quite recent borrowings. _Đ_, on the other hand, was derived from _d_ by the Common Slavic iotation. I've heard _ž_ in place of _dž_ (_svjedožba_ and _žungla_, for example) from older people, and I believe some dialects also have _žep_.



That's quite interesting because the same can be observed in a number of Macedonian dialects too; for example, _жам _instead of _џам_.

Just as /dž/ is foreign, so too is /f/. So this may also be why other dialects have _вајде/вајда _for _фајде/фајда_, even _вабрика_ and _вудбал_! Is there anything similar in Croatian dialects?


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## DenisBiH

iobyo said:


> That's quite interesting because the same can be observed in a number of Macedonian dialects too; for example, _жам _instead of _џам_.
> 
> Just as /dž/ is foreign, so too is /f/. So this may also be why other dialects have _вајде/вајда _for _фајде/фајда_, even _вабрика_ and _вудбал_! Is there anything similar in Croatian dialects?



I do know that some BCMS dialects have (or had) p for f, as in the name Pilip (no longer given, I believe, but some surnames keep it, e.g. Pilipac, Pilipić, Pilipović. see the onomastics section here). There is also Stjepan (Croatian) and Stevan (Serbian) along with Stefan. A late 19th century study in B-H ("Pitanja o govoru prostoga naroda", 1897) found the above _Pilip _instead of _Filip_ in the speech of Muslims, as well as _pratar _for _fratar_.

There is _kava _in Croatian for_ kafa _in BSM, but I'm not sure what the exact sound changes involved there were.

Where đ is concerned, I believe some western Shtokavian dialects may have exhibited in the past another phenomenon not unlike the case in Slovenian, i.e. they have (or at least had in the past) -j- for -đ-. An example would be the name _Juraj _(and modern hypocorisms-turned-names _Jure_, _Jurica_; compare with _Đurađ_, _Đorđe_) and the associated _Jurjev(o) _(_Đurđevdan_). 

Another interesting example is _meja _for _međa_ (< Common Slavic *medja); HJP lists the associated term _mejaš_ (_kamen međaš_). I believe this is attested in Bosnia as far back as the early 14th century, in a charter by ban Stjepan II Kotromanić (_...ot mee do mee i u niju dva grada Kluč' i Kotor'..._). 

Some associate this with Chakavian, but a late 18th/early 19th century Sarajevan author, Mula Mustafa Bašeskija, also has _Jurjev_ in his Sarajevan chronicle, and the aforementioned study from 1897 also found _Jurjev _in the speech of Muslims as opposed to _Đurđevdan _for Orthodox Christians (but also seemingly found _tuđi, mlađi, slađi, krađa, pređa, žeđa, među njima, rođen_ as common to all, so _Jurjev _could also be a borrowing or some sort of a fossil). Perhaps this is due to the fact that Chakavian may have been much more widespread before the Ottoman conquests; if so, Anicetus could perhaps shed some more light on it.


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## TriglavNationalPark

MOD NOTE: We seem to be drifting away from the topic of this thread -- |ć| and |đ| in various forms of spoken Croatian and Bosnian.


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## el_tigre

My point was: most people from contemporary Zagreb have problems distinguishing Č/Ć ,  DŽ/Đ, IJE/JE and other thing presented here by linguist Mate Kapović

http://www.matica.hr/kolo/kolo2006_4.nsf/AllWebDocs/Najnovije_jezicne_promjene_u_zagrebackom_govoru


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## el_tigre

DenisBiH said:


> I do know that some BCMS dialects have (or had) p for f, as in the name Pilip (no longer given, I believe, but some surnames keep it, e.g. Pilipac, Pilipić, Pilipović. see the onomastics section here). There is also Stjepan (Croatian) and Stevan (Serbian) along with Stefan. A late 19th century study in B-H ("Pitanja o govoru prostoga naroda", 1897) found the above _Pilip _instead of _Filip_ in the speech of Muslims, as well as _pratar _for _fratar_.



Among Croats also exist ikavian forms *Stipo* and *Stipe*, as well as *Stipan*. Although, Stipan is almost extint and replaced with ijekavian Stjepan.
Similar situation with Montenegro where old form *Šćepan*  (survived in last names like *Šćepanović*) was replaced with Serbian Stefan/Stevan.



DenisBiH said:


> Another interesting example is _meja _for _međa_ (< Common Slavic *medja); HJP lists the associated term _mejaš_ (_kamen međaš_). I believe this is attested in Bosnia as far back as the early 14th century, in a charter by ban Stjepan II Kotromanić (_...ot mee do mee i u niju dva grada Kluč' i Kotor'..._).
> 
> 
> Some associate this with Chakavian, but a late 18th/early 19th century Sarajevan author, Mula Mustafa Bašeskija, also has _Jurjev_ in his Sarajevan chronicle, and the aforementioned study from 1897 also found _Jurjev _in the speech of Muslims as opposed to _Đurđevdan _for Orthodox Christians (but also seemingly found _tuđi, mlađi, slađi, krađa, pređa, žeđa, među njima, rođen_ as common to all, so _Jurjev _could also be a borrowing or some sort of a fossil). Perhaps this is due to the fact that Chakavian may have been much more widespread before the Ottoman conquests; if so, Anicetus could perhaps shed some more light on it.




Both things are related to the same problem. Chakavian and kajkavian as well some štokavian speeches do not have sound represented by graphem "đ"  (instead of foreign loanwords i.e. from Italian). And that is sometimes reflected on personal names.


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