6 ms·

This is unfortunately complete baloney, and I really cannot find a better word. The differences between the languages are not greater than the differences betwe

This is unfortunately complete baloney, and I really cannot find a better word. The differences between the languages are not greater than the differences between American and British English or German in Germany and Austria. In fact the language spoken by the Swiss cannot be understood by almost all Germans, yet it is still called German. The only artificial part are the names which stem from the inability to come to a compromise, e.g. neither side can accept to speak the language of the others. It needs one name because it is for all intents and purposes one language. Everything else is just politics. This view has recently also been supported by a group of linguists in the region, see: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_on_the_Common_Language https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_on_the_Common_La...

lima 5y ago
> In fact the language spoken by the Swiss cannot be understood by almost all Germans, yet it is still called German. It's called "Schweizerdeutsch" (Swiss German) and is indeed a separate language. In fact, every region in Switzerland has a different dialect :-)
- locallost 5y ago
  I speak German and as most others in Germany I do not understand Swiss German. My point was simply this: the similarities between those two are so tiny to a point that people who only speak one of those two would not be able to communicate. Yet they still find a way to put German into the language spoken by the Swiss. The differences between Serbian and Croatian are so tiny that people speaking only one of those would absolutely be able to understand each other. And this is true even after decades of partial isolation from one another.
  - dragandj 5y ago
    Even stronger: the differences in internal regional dialects within Serbia and Croatia, are sometimes larger than the differences between official Serbian and Croatian (although even these small differences in official languages are often artificial and politically forced into).
  - Keyframe 5y ago
    That's true only for areas near border. Zagorje people will not understand a lot of things from Sumadija and vice versa, too many different words. Even Zagorje people will not understand a lot of things from Dalmatia and vice versa. Core difference being a standard language both Zagorje and Dalmatia share that they can use, a standard Croatian language. Same within Serbia, etc. If you need an example, there was one written ad hoc using the two standard ones as one of the reactions for that declaration. Both variants using everyday words and language, worda that do not really exist in others language dictionary or have other meaning... Whereas people near the border (or older generations) would understand most of it (I'm fourty and have learned serbo-croatian in elementary school and even I don't have idea about some of these words): --- Imam automobil s dobrim strojem na unutarnje izgaranje. Krenuo sam u trgovinu u neboderu. Mislio sam, bit će tamo hljeb kruha i za mene. Nemam svoj vrt stoga kupit ću još malo sira, mrkvu, krumpir, špinat, raznog drugog povrća, gljive i tjesteninu, sve to ću staviti u posudu za kuhanje i u svom stanu na drugom katu skuhat ću dobru povrtnu juhu. Prljavo posuđe ću staviti u perilicu, a onda opeglati rublje. Zamolio sam prijatelja u Beogradu da napravi isto, ali i da to i napiše. Evo kako je on to uradio. Imam automobil sa dobrom mašinom na unutrašnje sagorjevanje. Krenuo sam u dućan u soliteru. Predmnjevao sam, biće tamo hleba i za mene. Nemam svoje bašče, zato ću da kupim još malo kačkavalja, šargarepu, krtole, spanać, raznog drugog povrća, pečurke i makarone, sve to ću da stavim u šerpu i u svom stanu na drugom spratu ću da skuvam supu od povrća. Prljavo suđe ću da stavim u mašinu za pranje sudova, a onda ću da opeglam veš. https://m.vecernji.hr/vijesti/antideklaracija-ili-otvoreno-pismo-autorima-i-potpisnicima-deklaracije-o-zajednickom-jeziku-1159511 https://m.vecernji.hr/vijesti/antideklaracija-ili-otvoreno-p...
    - dragandj 5y ago
      This must be a comedy article, at least judging by the supposedly Belgrade version (" Imam automobil sa dobrom mašinom na unutrašnje sagorjevanje. Krenuo sam u dućan u soliteru. Predmnjevao sam, biće tamo hleba i za mene. Nemam svoje bašče, zato ću da kupim još malo kačkavalja, šargarepu, krtole, spanać, raznog drugog povrća, pečurke i makarone, sve to ću da stavim u šerpu i u svom stanu na drugom spratu ću da skuvam supu od povrća. Prljavo suđe ću da stavim u mašinu za pranje sudova, a onda ću da opeglam veš.") which I attest is not written by anyone living in Belgrade, nor Serbia. What gives it out is that, although it mainly uses "correct" words, with some obvious slips, makes some pretty obvious gramatical and ortographical errors. I guess that it's written by a Croatian journalist, who obviously can speak, read, and write "Serbian" rather well, but who wrote several things wrongly because he imagined that Serbian uses these distinctive features. I can attest that I understand all words in the "Croatian" version without any help, and that the "Serbian" version sounds closer to what is spoken in Belgrade, but only to an extent (it sounds silly and artificial to my ears).
- samch93 5y ago
  Native swiss here and would not sign that swiss german can‘t be understood by germans and that it is a separate language. Austrians and germans who live at the border can very well understand us and their dialects share many features with swiss german, more so than with some german dialects from the north. I think that categorizing swiss german as a separate language is very much an act of balkanization. It is part of the german language whichs spans a large geographic area with many different variations.
- valvar 5y ago
  To add to that (as I guess many will not know this — I certainly didn't until recently), the group of dialects is called Alemannic German, and is not exclusive to Switzerland. There are similar dialects spoken in all of the surrounding countries — including, of course, Germany. Linguistically and historically it's part of the same language continuum as standard German, so the name "Swiss German" is not misinformative as some may assume from the fact that standard German speakers often can't understand Swiss German. There are other (probably many, though I only know of a few) similar examples of languages where people might assume the dialects are mutually intelligible, but they really aren't — Italian also being one. I suppose it's even the case in most countries/languages that there'll be dialects that are only barely mutually intelligible.
input_sh 5y ago
At least in Bosnia, it's not that uncommon to refer to the language as just naš (our). But yeah, while I 100% agree it's one language, naming it is tricky. I tend to use BHS (short for Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian).
wizzwizz4 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_an_army_and_navy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_a... Really, all languages are basically the same language. Draw a circle around any <del>50km</del> 5km area and almost everyone in there will understand each other, with only minor differences in speech. Think this is wrong? Okay, then: English should be divided into Romantic and Germanic. It's two languages (basically French, and basically Dutch) that have been mashed together, with a splash of Celtic influence. These are all bad takes. So's yours.
- locallost 5y ago
  Here is a quote from the late Serbian linguist Ivan Klajn: "Experts have the viewpoint that if 70 percent of the words between two languages are common, then they are not languages but variants of the same language. And in our case it is not 70, but over 90 percent". Original quote in Serbian: http://www.rtv.rs/sr_lat/drustvo/govore-li-srbi-hrvati-bosnjaci-i-crnogorci-isti-jezik_815058.html http://www.rtv.rs/sr_lat/drustvo/govore-li-srbi-hrvati-bosnj...
  - wizzwizz4 5y ago
    Okay… but then where do you draw the boundaries between the Germanic languages? What constitutes a language will always be political, until the day we stop drawing borders between languages.
    - locallost 5y ago
      Try playing a German movie without subtitles to an English person and then do the same with a Serbian movie and a Croatian person and you will have your answer. People either understand each other or they don't. There's absolutely nothing political about that.
      - wizzwizz4 5y ago
        Try playing a German movie without subtitles to a Dutch person, and then do the same with a Geordie movie and a Yankee. Speaking of… Wikipedia (Dutch): > Wikipedia is een online encyclopedie die ernaar streeft inhoud te bieden die vrij herbruikbaar, objectief en verifieerbaar is. Het project is gebouwd op vijf zuilen. De Nederlandstalige versie startte op 19 juni 2001 en is, gemeten naar het aantal lemma's, met meer dan 2 miljoen artikelen de op vijf na grootste taalversie. And Wikipedia (German): > Das Ziel der Wikipedia ist der Aufbau einer Enzyklopädie durch freiwillige und ehrenamtliche Autoren. Der Name Wikipedia setzt sich zusammen aus Wiki (entstanden aus wiki, dem hawaiischen Wort für ‚schnell‘), und encyclopedia, dem englischen Wort für ‚Enzyklopädie‘. Ein Wiki ist ein Webangebot, dessen Seiten jeder leicht und ohne technische Vorkenntnisse direkt im Webbrowser bearbeiten kann. Different languages. Neither is too hard for an English speaker. (If in doubt, try pronouncing the words.) While I'm at it, Wikipedia (French): > Wikipédia est un projet d’encyclopédie collective en ligne, universelle, multilingue et fonctionnant sur le principe du wiki. Ce projet vise à offrir un contenu librement réutilisable, objectif et vérifiable, que chacun peut modifier et améliorer. Also a different language! But just you tell me you don't understand that.
yorwba 5y ago
> In fact the language spoken by the Swiss cannot be understood by almost all Germans, yet it is still called German. This is not a good analogy, because there's a separate Alemannic Wikipedia (covering slightly more than Swiss German) https://als.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Houptsyte https://als.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Houptsyte
dkjaudyeqooe 5y ago
I think you're missing the point. There seems to be endless discussion around this question, but it is purely academic and doesn't affect people who speak one language or the other in the least. It's irrelevant. If (some significant number of) Croatians say they speak Croatian then these is a language called Croatian spoken by Croatians. It doesn't matter if it has a striking resemblance to another language or if it is unique. People have a right to linguistic self-determination as much as anything else. The language you speak is entirely political. Academics or historians don't get to determine what languages people speak, people do that for themselves.
- locallost 5y ago
  People, whoever they are, can speak whatever they want and they can take any position they want. Including that the Earth is flat. But what I was replying to made a different claim, that a mutual language does not exist and was made artificially. This is objectively not true, and you can see it in practice (many examples available). The opposite is true: the differences are artificially magnified as a part of a political project, very similar to the actual situation on Wikipedia we are supposed to be commenting on.
  - dkjaudyeqooe 5y ago
    The mutual language was made artificially, in the sense its naming was political. It was a political construct as much as the Croatian language is a political construct. They're not identical languages and people in general do not consider some exact degree of difference as decisive, even if (some) academics do. It's not like calling the earth flat since that is not a matter of degree. For example, Dutch is derived from, and similar to, German as is Swiss German, but no-one is saying that Dutch should be called Dutch German, and the Dutch would surely vigorously object to that. Croatians have every right to reject the notion that they speak Serbo-Croatian or that such a language even exists. Can you say there's only 10% difference between the two languages? Absolutely. Does that give someone the right to declare the languages the same outside of Academia? No. There is no objective standard to rest your claims of objective truth on.
Keyframe 5y ago
Aside the fact you have linked to a declaration linked to political platform initiatives, one of the core serbian propaganda machinery during the 90's wars and breakup of Yugoslavia was denying identities and right for self-determinism across constitutive nations in said country. Prime example was (and is) throughout denial of montenegrin nationality and language, the other (among many) establishing a never in history existing one (not common base) language platform which would solidify serbian tendencies to tie-in languages and outside of its area, and thus people, into its own agenda. Our children, at least in Croatia, have trouble understanding a large volume of lexicography from swrbian language, and I am sure there's the opposite as well. Notable is the absence of Bulgarian in the story, which to a large extend is also understood by our yugoslavian-schooled peers, no different than macedonian or slovenian for that matter. Any and all discussion around languages in these matters have started and stopped by politics and ultimately even supported by academia. Is there a common understanding and overlap between languages? Of course. Are there differences? Of course, and as time goes by they grow larger - new generations have no idea what the other one are talking about for a lot of even trivial examples. Whomevwr says differently either does not love in the region or lives in a bubble. Whether that's anecdotal or a docimented fact (exercise to a reader to find reactions in each country to said declaration that followed promplty lole fire from all levels from academia to politics in all countries) is a sideshow to the following: apart from yugoslavian period and a bit before there's no shared history (500+ years of ottoman empire does that to one part of the region whereas the other wasn't in it), there's no shared literature throughout history (since it's a wikipedia post, find history of croatian literature and then serbian), how come it's called serbo-croatian or croato-serbian excluding all other nationalities/countries (and how come it's only ex-yugoslavia centric?), and ultimately and the only unarguable reason relevant to the topic is that language is one of the key components to national identities which region has struggled (wars over) within recent decades - tha ultimate reason why this won't happen ever, as exemplified even by this small universe of replies within.. which was my whole point.
boomskats 5y ago
Worth noting, a group of linguists led by Noam Chomsky.

lima 5y ago

> In fact the language spoken by the Swiss cannot be understood by almost all Germans, yet it is still called German. It's called "Schweizerdeutsch" (Swiss German) and is indeed a separate language. In fact, every region in Switzerland has a different dialect :-)

locallost 5y ago
I speak German and as most others in Germany I do not understand Swiss German. My point was simply this: the similarities between those two are so tiny to a point that people who only speak one of those two would not be able to communicate. Yet they still find a way to put German into the language spoken by the Swiss. The differences between Serbian and Croatian are so tiny that people speaking only one of those would absolutely be able to understand each other. And this is true even after decades of partial isolation from one another.
- dragandj 5y ago
  Even stronger: the differences in internal regional dialects within Serbia and Croatia, are sometimes larger than the differences between official Serbian and Croatian (although even these small differences in official languages are often artificial and politically forced into).
- Keyframe 5y ago
  That's true only for areas near border. Zagorje people will not understand a lot of things from Sumadija and vice versa, too many different words. Even Zagorje people will not understand a lot of things from Dalmatia and vice versa. Core difference being a standard language both Zagorje and Dalmatia share that they can use, a standard Croatian language. Same within Serbia, etc. If you need an example, there was one written ad hoc using the two standard ones as one of the reactions for that declaration. Both variants using everyday words and language, worda that do not really exist in others language dictionary or have other meaning... Whereas people near the border (or older generations) would understand most of it (I'm fourty and have learned serbo-croatian in elementary school and even I don't have idea about some of these words): --- Imam automobil s dobrim strojem na unutarnje izgaranje. Krenuo sam u trgovinu u neboderu. Mislio sam, bit će tamo hljeb kruha i za mene. Nemam svoj vrt stoga kupit ću još malo sira, mrkvu, krumpir, špinat, raznog drugog povrća, gljive i tjesteninu, sve to ću staviti u posudu za kuhanje i u svom stanu na drugom katu skuhat ću dobru povrtnu juhu. Prljavo posuđe ću staviti u perilicu, a onda opeglati rublje. Zamolio sam prijatelja u Beogradu da napravi isto, ali i da to i napiše. Evo kako je on to uradio. Imam automobil sa dobrom mašinom na unutrašnje sagorjevanje. Krenuo sam u dućan u soliteru. Predmnjevao sam, biće tamo hleba i za mene. Nemam svoje bašče, zato ću da kupim još malo kačkavalja, šargarepu, krtole, spanać, raznog drugog povrća, pečurke i makarone, sve to ću da stavim u šerpu i u svom stanu na drugom spratu ću da skuvam supu od povrća. Prljavo suđe ću da stavim u mašinu za pranje sudova, a onda ću da opeglam veš. https://m.vecernji.hr/vijesti/antideklaracija-ili-otvoreno-pismo-autorima-i-potpisnicima-deklaracije-o-zajednickom-jeziku-1159511 https://m.vecernji.hr/vijesti/antideklaracija-ili-otvoreno-p...
  - dragandj 5y ago
    This must be a comedy article, at least judging by the supposedly Belgrade version (" Imam automobil sa dobrom mašinom na unutrašnje sagorjevanje. Krenuo sam u dućan u soliteru. Predmnjevao sam, biće tamo hleba i za mene. Nemam svoje bašče, zato ću da kupim još malo kačkavalja, šargarepu, krtole, spanać, raznog drugog povrća, pečurke i makarone, sve to ću da stavim u šerpu i u svom stanu na drugom spratu ću da skuvam supu od povrća. Prljavo suđe ću da stavim u mašinu za pranje sudova, a onda ću da opeglam veš.") which I attest is not written by anyone living in Belgrade, nor Serbia. What gives it out is that, although it mainly uses "correct" words, with some obvious slips, makes some pretty obvious gramatical and ortographical errors. I guess that it's written by a Croatian journalist, who obviously can speak, read, and write "Serbian" rather well, but who wrote several things wrongly because he imagined that Serbian uses these distinctive features. I can attest that I understand all words in the "Croatian" version without any help, and that the "Serbian" version sounds closer to what is spoken in Belgrade, but only to an extent (it sounds silly and artificial to my ears).
samch93 5y ago
Native swiss here and would not sign that swiss german can‘t be understood by germans and that it is a separate language. Austrians and germans who live at the border can very well understand us and their dialects share many features with swiss german, more so than with some german dialects from the north. I think that categorizing swiss german as a separate language is very much an act of balkanization. It is part of the german language whichs spans a large geographic area with many different variations.
valvar 5y ago
To add to that (as I guess many will not know this — I certainly didn't until recently), the group of dialects is called Alemannic German, and is not exclusive to Switzerland. There are similar dialects spoken in all of the surrounding countries — including, of course, Germany. Linguistically and historically it's part of the same language continuum as standard German, so the name "Swiss German" is not misinformative as some may assume from the fact that standard German speakers often can't understand Swiss German. There are other (probably many, though I only know of a few) similar examples of languages where people might assume the dialects are mutually intelligible, but they really aren't — Italian also being one. I suppose it's even the case in most countries/languages that there'll be dialects that are only barely mutually intelligible.

input_sh 5y ago

At least in Bosnia, it's not that uncommon to refer to the language as just naš (our). But yeah, while I 100% agree it's one language, naming it is tricky. I tend to use BHS (short for Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian).

wizzwizz4 5y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_an_army_and_navy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_a... Really, all languages are basically the same language. Draw a circle around any <del>50km</del> 5km area and almost everyone in there will understand each other, with only minor differences in speech. Think this is wrong? Okay, then: English should be divided into Romantic and Germanic. It's two languages (basically French, and basically Dutch) that have been mashed together, with a splash of Celtic influence. These are all bad takes. So's yours.

locallost 5y ago
Here is a quote from the late Serbian linguist Ivan Klajn: "Experts have the viewpoint that if 70 percent of the words between two languages are common, then they are not languages but variants of the same language. And in our case it is not 70, but over 90 percent". Original quote in Serbian: http://www.rtv.rs/sr_lat/drustvo/govore-li-srbi-hrvati-bosnjaci-i-crnogorci-isti-jezik_815058.html http://www.rtv.rs/sr_lat/drustvo/govore-li-srbi-hrvati-bosnj...
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  Okay… but then where do you draw the boundaries between the Germanic languages? What constitutes a language will always be political, until the day we stop drawing borders between languages.
  - locallost 5y ago
    Try playing a German movie without subtitles to an English person and then do the same with a Serbian movie and a Croatian person and you will have your answer. People either understand each other or they don't. There's absolutely nothing political about that.
    - wizzwizz4 5y ago
      Try playing a German movie without subtitles to a Dutch person, and then do the same with a Geordie movie and a Yankee. Speaking of… Wikipedia (Dutch): > Wikipedia is een online encyclopedie die ernaar streeft inhoud te bieden die vrij herbruikbaar, objectief en verifieerbaar is. Het project is gebouwd op vijf zuilen. De Nederlandstalige versie startte op 19 juni 2001 en is, gemeten naar het aantal lemma's, met meer dan 2 miljoen artikelen de op vijf na grootste taalversie. And Wikipedia (German): > Das Ziel der Wikipedia ist der Aufbau einer Enzyklopädie durch freiwillige und ehrenamtliche Autoren. Der Name Wikipedia setzt sich zusammen aus Wiki (entstanden aus wiki, dem hawaiischen Wort für ‚schnell‘), und encyclopedia, dem englischen Wort für ‚Enzyklopädie‘. Ein Wiki ist ein Webangebot, dessen Seiten jeder leicht und ohne technische Vorkenntnisse direkt im Webbrowser bearbeiten kann. Different languages. Neither is too hard for an English speaker. (If in doubt, try pronouncing the words.) While I'm at it, Wikipedia (French): > Wikipédia est un projet d’encyclopédie collective en ligne, universelle, multilingue et fonctionnant sur le principe du wiki. Ce projet vise à offrir un contenu librement réutilisable, objectif et vérifiable, que chacun peut modifier et améliorer. Also a different language! But just you tell me you don't understand that.

yorwba 5y ago

> In fact the language spoken by the Swiss cannot be understood by almost all Germans, yet it is still called German. This is not a good analogy, because there's a separate Alemannic Wikipedia (covering slightly more than Swiss German) https://als.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Houptsyte https://als.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Houptsyte

dkjaudyeqooe 5y ago

I think you're missing the point. There seems to be endless discussion around this question, but it is purely academic and doesn't affect people who speak one language or the other in the least. It's irrelevant. If (some significant number of) Croatians say they speak Croatian then these is a language called Croatian spoken by Croatians. It doesn't matter if it has a striking resemblance to another language or if it is unique. People have a right to linguistic self-determination as much as anything else. The language you speak is entirely political. Academics or historians don't get to determine what languages people speak, people do that for themselves.

locallost 5y ago
People, whoever they are, can speak whatever they want and they can take any position they want. Including that the Earth is flat. But what I was replying to made a different claim, that a mutual language does not exist and was made artificially. This is objectively not true, and you can see it in practice (many examples available). The opposite is true: the differences are artificially magnified as a part of a political project, very similar to the actual situation on Wikipedia we are supposed to be commenting on.
- dkjaudyeqooe 5y ago
  The mutual language was made artificially, in the sense its naming was political. It was a political construct as much as the Croatian language is a political construct. They're not identical languages and people in general do not consider some exact degree of difference as decisive, even if (some) academics do. It's not like calling the earth flat since that is not a matter of degree. For example, Dutch is derived from, and similar to, German as is Swiss German, but no-one is saying that Dutch should be called Dutch German, and the Dutch would surely vigorously object to that. Croatians have every right to reject the notion that they speak Serbo-Croatian or that such a language even exists. Can you say there's only 10% difference between the two languages? Absolutely. Does that give someone the right to declare the languages the same outside of Academia? No. There is no objective standard to rest your claims of objective truth on.

Keyframe 5y ago

Aside the fact you have linked to a declaration linked to political platform initiatives, one of the core serbian propaganda machinery during the 90's wars and breakup of Yugoslavia was denying identities and right for self-determinism across constitutive nations in said country. Prime example was (and is) throughout denial of montenegrin nationality and language, the other (among many) establishing a never in history existing one (not common base) language platform which would solidify serbian tendencies to tie-in languages and outside of its area, and thus people, into its own agenda. Our children, at least in Croatia, have trouble understanding a large volume of lexicography from swrbian language, and I am sure there's the opposite as well. Notable is the absence of Bulgarian in the story, which to a large extend is also understood by our yugoslavian-schooled peers, no different than macedonian or slovenian for that matter. Any and all discussion around languages in these matters have started and stopped by politics and ultimately even supported by academia. Is there a common understanding and overlap between languages? Of course. Are there differences? Of course, and as time goes by they grow larger - new generations have no idea what the other one are talking about for a lot of even trivial examples. Whomevwr says differently either does not love in the region or lives in a bubble. Whether that's anecdotal or a docimented fact (exercise to a reader to find reactions in each country to said declaration that followed promplty lole fire from all levels from academia to politics in all countries) is a sideshow to the following: apart from yugoslavian period and a bit before there's no shared history (500+ years of ottoman empire does that to one part of the region whereas the other wasn't in it), there's no shared literature throughout history (since it's a wikipedia post, find history of croatian literature and then serbian), how come it's called serbo-croatian or croato-serbian excluding all other nationalities/countries (and how come it's only ex-yugoslavia centric?), and ultimately and the only unarguable reason relevant to the topic is that language is one of the key components to national identities which region has struggled (wars over) within recent decades - tha ultimate reason why this won't happen ever, as exemplified even by this small universe of replies within.. which was my whole point.

boomskats 5y ago

Worth noting, a group of linguists led by Noam Chomsky.