From: "Peter Jovanovic" <peterzoran-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: AUT: Re: Basque
Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2003 11:42:48 +1100


hi all

This stuff on language is very interesting.

I'd like to add a few comments on the development of Serbo-Croat.

Written Serbian was standardised in the first half of the 19th Century by 
Vuk Karadzic as part of the Serbian nationalist project - Serbia achieved 
de-facto independence from the Ottoman Empire around 1817. Karadzic decided 
that the dialect spoken in Eastern Hercegovina was the most pure Serbian and 
it became the basis for modern Serbian. Prior to Karadzic's work virtually 
the only literate Serbs in Serbia were the clergy and they read and wrote in 
Old Church Slavonic. Serbian Orthodox church services are still conducted in 
OCS.

There are currently two main dialects of Serbo-Croat - ekavski and jekavski 
- which are mutually intelligible. Ekavski is spoken in Serbia, Montenegro 
and Eastern Hercegovina. Jekavski is spoken in Bosnia and most of Croatia.

The breakup of Yugoslavia saw saw a considerable amount of nationalist 
linguistic idiocy as Serb, Croat and Bosnian ideologues tried to declare 
Serbian, Croatian  and Bosnian distinct languages.

According to the daughter of the local Serbian Orthodox priest who wrote a 
linguistics masters on it the Bosnian Serb statelet tried to get Bosnian 
Serbs to change from speaking Jekavski to Ekavski during the war but met 
with little success.

In Croatia the government tried to purge Croatian of foreign words and 
replace them with words derived from Slavic roots. For example airports once 
called 'Areodrom' became  the ludicrous 'Zrakoplovna Luka' which means Air 
Swimmer Harbour.

Rata can probably point out some mistakes in this for which I apologise as 
it's been a while since I read about this stuff.

Chris wrote:
>Secondly, there is the issue of white people fearing the massive
>adoption of Black working class idioms and language uses through
>hip-hop.  Heavy metal did not threaten, but often reinforced, white
>youth's racialization,

As a former teenage metalhead I'd be interested to hear more about this. 
Metal in Australia was/is a largely white phenomenon as in the US. 
Nevertheless some US metal bands from the heyday of the late 80s/early 90s 
tried, unsuccessfully I think, to break down racial barriers. Notably 
Anthrax via their collaborations with rap group Public Enemy.

cheers
peter

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