Serbs aren't the only ones who play politics with Serbo-Croatian

But, other people don't like to admit that.

Getting my ire up on this?

A map of second languages in European Union member states. The most common second language in Slovenia is listed as "Croatian."

NOT "Serbo-Croatian."

Wrong!


And yes, Jakub Marian, that's what it is. Calling "Croatian" a "variety" still doesn't make it a separate language. Per many language scholars, the Croatian and Serbian varieties of Serbo-Croatian are closer than Dutch and German. His disclaimer that he's going by EU data listings is passing the buck. 
Wiki gets the big picture right on its entry for Serbo-Croatian. More on that below. 

Suffice this quote to start us:

The linguistic debate in this region is more about politics than about linguistics per se.

I suspect that Marian, a Czech, also knows that.

First, back to his buck-passing.

The EU is passing the buck because Croatia, like Slovenia, is a member of the EU and Serbia of course is not.

As I told him, the parallel would be not to say that "English" is the most common second language in Spain, but rather, "British English." Or "American English."

Second, his map doesn't list Croatia as an EU member, or at a minimum, an EU member for which second-language data were available.

Why? The hyper-skeptic me and the cynic me agree that this is probably because, per the EU's own standards, "Serbian" would then be the most common second language in Croatia, and post-breakup, no Croatian is going to admit that.

And, although they are separate entities, their politics have an overlap.

The "they" is not Serbia and Croatia, but rather the EU and NATO.

Croatia, and Slovenia, are both members of NATO as well as the EU. Serbia (of course) is not.

That's despite Croatia, as well as Serbia, having Bosnia-bloody hands, among other things.

Back to Wikipedia, which has this as its first key point of Serbo-Croatian as one language.

It can be written in Serbian Cyrillic or Gaj's Latin alphabet, whose thirty letters mutually map one-to-one, and the orthography is highly phonemic in all standards.

Simple enough. Culturally, the alphabets — and Croatian Catholicism vs. Serbian Orthodoxy — may divide the two. Still one language.

Let's look further at Wiki's article (which is extensively footnoted):

Daniel Bunčić concludes that it is a pluricentric language, with four standard variants spoken in Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The mutual intelligibility between their speakers "exceeds that between the standard variants of English, French, German, or Spanish". Other linguists have argued that the differences between the variants of Serbo-Croatian are less significant than those between the variants of English, German, Dutch, and Hindi–Urdu.

So, that not just ties into my "British English" and "American English" comment, it trumps it! (Oh, and on the original Wiki page, in that last sentence, speaking of footnotes? There's one for each of the four languages after Serbo-Croatian.

That said, what is a "pluricentric language"?

Glad you asked.

Wiki has an article there too.

Now, at the link, Wiki does note that Serbian and Croatian varieties may be becoming more "autonomic" due to the political separation.

However, that's still different than two entirely separate languages.

Therefore, the likes of Brittanica (other than it also noting politics is involved) is also wrong.

==

Marian has responded by telling me to not be a dick.

Lemme see.

If he had first responded one way or the other to my British English vs American English analogy, maybe I'd never have written this post.

He then ignores my "politics" comment.

As for Croatia not being shown on his map? He says it's based on 2012 EU data.

So, he's running an outdated map. (And outdated it may well be, based on migration from the Middle East.) And without a link.

Next, he says let people call their languages what they want. That's fine for an imprecise take; however, he bills himself as a linguist. That's not fine in this case. Not in my book.

Finally, he says it's not the first time he's had to debate alleged idiots about his "maps," plural.

Hmmm. 

A new example of why I call myself a #skeptical left-liberal

I do, in terms of US politics at least, consider myself a left-liberal. But, along the likes of Doug Henwood of Left Business Observer, I maintain a healthy skepticism about more wild-eyed economic ideas of some left-liberals. (Henwood was good at shooting down sillier ideas from Occupy Wall Street a year or two ago.)

In the foreign-policy side of things, we have this: Counterpunch Magazine, nuttier than anything that comes from Alternet, Truthout, or similar.

For example, in light of possible intervention in Syria (which I oppose) Jeffrey St. Clair has updated an old piece about Bosnia and Serbia that he co-wrote with the now-deceased founder of Counterpunch, Alexander Cockburn.

And, it's over-the-top indeed.

Even if Clinton did oversell some things about Serbian asshattery, nonetheless, having just read an excellent book on the run-up to WWI, "The Sleepwalkers," and another, "Kosovo: A Short History" about 2 years ago, about the history of Serbia/Serbian identity from the famed battle of Kosovo on, I can say bluntly, as I Tweeted St. Clair, that Serbs have been thugs for at least a full century, since the two Balkan Wars of 1912-13. Maybe they didn't resort to (too much? as much?) murder then, but, ethnic cleansing by thuggery short of murder was a regular practice in the new lands they acquired after those two wars.

Noel Malcolm, in his "Short History" of 500 pages, documents that Serbia was doing ethnic cleansing a century ago.  Christopher Clarke, in "Sleepwalkers," ties this in with general Serbian expansionism in the two wars, including refusal to let go of disputed territory when directly confronted by a combination of other Balkan states PLUS Austria-Hungary.

I normally reject the idea of "cultural DNA," but with the people and land of Serbia, I am more than willing to make an exception.

And, if I use "cultural DNA" more loosely, I'm willing to use it about Counterpunch, too.

St. Clair's been wrong in the past on some environmental issues, his putative specialty, because of ax-grinding. Cockburn more than once stuck at least one toe over the line of anti-Zionism into anti-Semitism. Paul Craig Roberts is less of a left-liberal than a non-socialist left-libertarian of some sort with one foot back in David Stockman's world.

At times, while not being anti-American overall, the St. Clair-Cockburn duo do, though, seem to be opposed to any major action of whatever American president/polity is in power "just because." And, the Bosnia story, based on what I've actually read about Serbia, is a tipping point.

Beyond that, the Bosnia-Serbia situation was much more "clear" as far as bad and not-so-bad actors than Syria is. Either St. Clair and Cockburn knew that 20 years ago, or their duplicity is matched by their stupidity.

So, for now, Counterpunch is unlinked from my link list.

U.S. allegedly protected Karadzic

A Serbian paper is reporting, via AFP, that until 2000, the CIA was on the down low with Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, as long as he withdrew, and kept withdrawn, from political life.

What happened then? He was caught on cell phone talking with old associates.

There’s some HUGE questions to be answered.

1. How high up in the CIA was this known?
2. Who officially signed off on it?
3. And, the biggest, who knew about it outside the CIA? Clinton Administration members could be sitting on a land mine.

Personal refrigerators, coffee makers and microwaves will also be verboten from classrooms if the new policy is adopted.