The (re)nationalization of the Serbo-Croatian standards
Synopse
The question how many languages are spoken on the language territory of the Neo-Štokavian standards has been a subject of heated debate for a long time. Although many linguists have become reluctant to engage in this topic, the problem is not solved. The two sides still accuse each other of ideologism. But is everybody who deals with this subject actually an ideologist? Or might it be possible that Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian are really no “normal” standard languages, just as Serbo-Croatian is not a “normal” pluricentric language? To be able to meet a decision on this, the characteristics of the speech forms in question have to be compared with those of other languages. Therefore, neither the model of the “literary variants” nor the one of the “autonomous languages” can be used, since these models are valid only for those linguistic situations for which they were developed. In this context Ulrich Ammon’s model is often quoted, the internationally most widely accepted model permitting a decision on what is an individual language and what is a national variety of a language; however, the details of this model in its entirety have not been cited so far by any of the sides. Therefore, in this paper, I present some less commonly known parallels and differences between our speech forms on the one hand and such languages as German, English or Portuguese on the other. This shows that the Serbo-Croatian speech forms really have much in common with the standard varieties of pluricentric languages but that they also exhibit specificities which are not envisaged in Ammon’s model. Above all it can be shown that something really happened around 1991, which on the basis of Ammon’s model can be termed “nationalization” (or “renationalization”). This nationalization explains a great deal of the theoretical problems and demonstrates that the linguistic situation in former Yugoslavia is not as unique a case as is frequently assumed.
Translated from “Die (Re-)Nationalisierung der serbokroatischen Standards” in Kempgen, Sebastian & Gutschmidt, Karl & Jekutsch, Ulrike & Udolph, Ludger (eds.), Deutsche Beiträge zum 14. Internationalen Slavistenkongress, Ohrid 2008, 89–102. München: Sagner 2008. DOI: 10.18716/bun/bkms.
