A new(old) language for Yugoslavia?
- Thread starter Uruk
- Start date
Old Church Slavic's closest living relative is Bulgarian. That might cause some issues.
As such though Church Slavic (Russian Usage) was a big influence on modern South Slav languages anyway during the re-creation of national written standards.
But dialects and alphabet's turn it into a flamming mess. Or rather are another bottle of gas thrown onto the flaming mess.
It was a literary language based on the languages of the medieval Moravian and Pannonian Slavs, which were close enough to *South Slavic because Slavic divergence is pretty late. Bulgarian sacred literature formed the basis for Church Slavonic elsewhere as Bulgaria became the pre-eminent Slavic state once Moravia fell.
By the 19th c. there were some small but notable divergences not only between different South Slavic languages but also between them and the Church Slavonic, and even different types of Church Slavonic as practised by national churches. Russian Church Slavonic was taken as a model by many nationalists to help create a modern literary language and replace borrowings from neighbouring non-Slavic languages - not replace the local language but supplement it or standardise it.
At the same time there were intellectuals who preferred codifying from the local vernaculars (Vuk Karadzic for example).
It's admittedly all very similar to those not overly into the minutae of it all.
germany and austria are doing just fine with an excessive amount of dialetcts. here in austria every valley has its own dialect, some very hard to understand if you're not from the state. austrians in german tv are very often shown with subtitles.
as for the alphabet, people dont learn cyrillic exclusively.
The thing with Glagolitic is that, although it was for a brief period used all over the territory in Yugoslavia, at some point after 1000 it rapidly fell out of use everywhere except for a few Croatian areas. Thus, it would be seen not only as 1) supremely weird but also 2) more of a Croatian than a true "all-Yugoslav" alphabet.
The Bosnian Cyrillic aka Bosančica would have the same problem. The Serbian/Bosnian/Croatian quasi-Arabic alphabet, the same problem, only even more so. And with that we have pretty much exhausted our supply of South Slavic historical scripts
The Bosnian Cyrillic aka Bosančica would have the same problem. The Serbian/Bosnian/Croatian quasi-Arabic alphabet, the same problem, only even more so. And with that we have pretty much exhausted our supply of South Slavic historical scripts
abc123
Banned
a) nobody on Earth understands old-Slavic language either in 1918 or 1945
b) nobody in their sane mind will try to force people to learn totally unknown language
c) any attempt of building of Yugoslav identity ended in defeat and larger damage than if old identities were left alone, second Yugoslavia was ( at least theoreticly ) deliberately given up of trying to make Yugoslavian identity, and for a good reason
a) see Hebrew and further see Latin as official languages in Croatia and Poland
b) see Israel and basicly every colony
c) now this made me curious how did the Yugoslav identity harm Yugoslavia and they maybe in theory gave it up post 1945 but still introduced Serbo-Croatian and introduced Yugoslav as a nationality for those not wishing to chose one of the other official nationalities
abc123
Banned
Hebrew and Israel are totaly wrong examples here.
Colonies and Latin too.
Because nationalists on all sides saw introducing any Yugoslav identity by the Government as destroying of their nation, and neither Yugoslavian nation did not want that. So, naturally, they will resist the country/Government who tries to do that.
And one of the founding myths of second Yugoslavia was that they will be better than first Yugoslavia in solving of "National question" in Yugoslavia- that means to give each nation in Yugoslavia equal opportunity to develop his own national identity.
Serbo-Croatian is one thing ( because two/three-four today ) languages are very similar, but nobody tried to include Slovene or Macedonian language there. And even that died-off after 1974. About Yugoslavian nationality, yes, they have allowed to declare itself as Yugoslav, but nobody forced you to do that, if you wanted to do that, you could, but nobody forced you. And that was mostly the choice for those from mixed marriages ( mostly in B-H ) and Communists ( local version of communist internationalism ).
It strikes me that Yugoslavia is rather too large, uneducated, and historically burdened with its different languages.
With Iceland you had a pretty small population to work with and creating Icelandic was creating their identity.
With Hebrew in Israel you had a somewhat small and mobile population that tended towards being educated and already had a lot of basic understanding of the language and a lot of investment in it working out.
With Yugoslavia and a Yugoslavian language...too transparent an attempt to destroy identities and create something new. Creating a new identity is good and will be supported by many, but if you want to destroy the old identity first...
With Iceland you had a pretty small population to work with and creating Icelandic was creating their identity.
With Hebrew in Israel you had a somewhat small and mobile population that tended towards being educated and already had a lot of basic understanding of the language and a lot of investment in it working out.
With Yugoslavia and a Yugoslavian language...too transparent an attempt to destroy identities and create something new. Creating a new identity is good and will be supported by many, but if you want to destroy the old identity first...
