Re: Debian in Yugoslavia
On Sun, Sep 24, 2000 at 02:35:30AM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> > Since there is no Serbo-Croatian language, they could only translate it into
> > Serbian, as there's already a Croatian translation of the web site.
>
> Stop me if I remember this incorrectly, since I'm just an ignorant American
> who's trying to become less ignorant:
>
> Serbo-Croat is a spoken language which is the same in both Serbia and
> Croatia, modulo any regional, dialectal differences, but there are two
> written forms of this spoken language, called Serbian and Croatian. Serbian
> uses the Latin alphabet and Croatian uses the Cyrillic alphabet.
>
> Have I got all that straight?
Although this has little or no connection to the charter of this mailing
list :) I'll answer in detail as your question was rather detailed.
No. The spoken and written language of the two nations is different, plus
the dialects. They are similar enough for us to understand each other fairly
well (unless you're an ill-minded extremist), but that still doesn't mean we
speak the same language.
The oldest written mention of Croatian is from year 1100, a text written in
a large block of stone :) Through history, we used and refined that
language, which includes poetry, prose(sp?), drama etc. The modern Croatian
lanugage was established formally by writing a grammar and spelling book[1]
in 1830. That's the language and the people around me I speak in RL, for the
most part. :)
"Serbo-Croatian language" was (I think) a term invented in ex-Yugoslavia, it
was supposed to help the two peoples bind together or something. However,
the belligerent portion of Serbs (led by the infamous Slobodan Milosevic)
used it as (yet another) means of assimilation of Croats in late 20th
century, violent attempts of which led to war in the end.
I gather the Nordic people understand each others' languages (correct me if
I'm wrong); yet it is recognized that they all speak different languages.
Please make the same distinction for us southern Slavic people.
P.S. some trivia: the old Republic of Dubrovnik, a city-state inhabited by
Croats, was the first (or among the first) country to accredit the
sovereignty of United States of America. I reckon they didn't write the
acknowledgement in "Serbo-Croatian" ;)
[1] er, I don't know the right English word - it's a set of rules for
grammar and spelling.
--
Digital Electronic Being Intended for Assassination and Nullification
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