A few words on Serbian language...
Part Two
Short history of Serbian language
Serbian language has much evolved during centuries of it's existence. This article aims to present that evolution in a short manner. The categorization that will be used is the most excepted one, and the one that is commonly taught in Serbian schools. It describes the most fundamental changes that shaped the literary Serbian language, from the early medieval times, to present days.
Staroslovenski (Old Slavonic) The Old Slavonic language was the first literary Slavic language. It came to existence as a result of the first standardization of the Slavic languages, which was necessary for the Christianization of Slavs. In year 863, Knyaz of Great Moravia asked the Byzantine Emperor to send out missionaries who would preach Christianity in the native language of his people, thus making it more understandable and appealing to them. That year, two Greek brothers from Thessalonica, Cyril and Methodius, started their laborious work of translating the essential religious manuscripts, to Slavic. For that reason, they had to create a new alphabet, which they based on a Greek one. This new alphabet (later called "Glagolitsa", from Slavic word "glagoliti"= "to speak"; "glagol" still means "a verb" in Serbian today) allowed them to write down all of the sounds used in Slavic languages. Their work was much valued, and the brothers are still worshiped as major saints in Slavic countries around Europe. Perhaps even greater honor to them is the fact that the same standardized language they created is still in use as a liturgical language, in Orthodox Christian Slavic churches, 12 centuries later.
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| St. Cyril and Methodius |
Srpskoslovenski (Serbo-Slavonic) Serbo-Slavonic (rough translation of the Serbian "Srpskoslovenski"), was essentially a Serbian redaction of the Old Slavonic language. It originated during the middle ages, and reached it's peak during the rule of the Nemanic dynasty. Many important works have been written using this language, during centuries of it's use, most valuable being "The Miroslav's Gospel"- a religious manuscript from 12th century, and "Dusan's Code" - a ground braking code (as it comes to freedom) for it's time, that is 14th century. The language itself continued to be in use until the 18th century when it was replaced by Ruso-Slavonic.
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| Tsar Dusan holding his Code |
Ruskoslovenski (Russo-Slavonic) After the Serbian Despotate fell under Ottoman rule, remnants of Serbian nobility fled across the rivers of Danube and Sava, to north, where, at the time was the Kingdom of Hungary, and offered their military services to the King. They drove more and more civilians with them, and the area that was once populated by Slavs, centuries before, once again became home to ever larger Serbian community. After the battle of Mohacs, Hungary came into rule of Habsburgs, which influenced Serbs in the south of the country as well. After the Turkish expansion slowly decreased, and eventually ceased in the late 17th century, the Austrians started pushing them back fiercely, with Serbian soldiers playing a key role in the initiative. The military luck changed soon, however, and brutal Turkish revenge against the Serbian rebels resulted in great migrations of both soldiers and civilians (see "Great Migrations of Serbs") who sought protection north of the Danube and Sava rivers. They were granted religious and educational autonomy in turn for military services as a part of the Military Frontier (see "Vojna krajina"). Since Austrian authorities relied heavily on Serbian people, for protection of it's southern borders, their strives to turn them to Catholicism could not be as violent as towards Protestants, but over a long period of time made substantial results. For that reason, the leaders of the Serbian people, and especially the Serbian Orthodox clergy, sent requests to Russian Tsars, to send out scholars, who would teach the Serbian youth, in an Orthodox and Slavic manner, in contrast to the Catholic and Latin language based education offered by the Austrians. The Russian scholars brought the Russo-Slavic (rough translation from the Serbian "Ruskoslovenski"), that is the Russian redaction of the Old Slavonic language, which took it's own development route, for centuries, to the Serbian people in Habsburg Monarchy.
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| Mojsije Putnik - Metropolitan of Sremski Karlovci (1781-1790), the man responsible for arrival of the Russian scholars |
Slavjanoserbski (Slavo-Serbian) It did not take long for the Russo-Slavonic to intermix with Serbian, creating an artificial language that was only used by the most educated members of the nation. New regulations were being added to the language all the time, and eventually not many could understand it, or read the texts written in it, let alone write, or speak it. That meant that it was destined for doom, but it managed to survive for decades, before it actually ceased to be the official literary language.
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| Jovan Hadzic - one of the greatest opponents to the Vuk's Reform |
Narodni jezik (The People's language) Until now, our story has spoken about the development of the literary Serbian language, but what about the real, live language spoken by Serbian people in day to day conversation? Just like in most other European countries in the past, the official language of the state varied substantially from the one spoken by it's people, and sometimes did not even have any connection to whatsoever (as in case of Latin being the official language in many Catholic countries of Europe). While the official literary Serbian language, took it's shape under strong influence of the nation's elite, as well as due to specific political and social circumstances, the real, spoken language - that is, the language of the People, had a completely different way of development, driven by only one force, which, ultimately is the reason why languages exist - a practical need to communicate. Differences between the spoken and the official language reached their maximum in the late 18th and early 19th century, during the time of Slavjanoserbski. That is when the educated began to realize that things have gone to far, and the time has come to make some radical changes. The first ideas of harmonizing the literary language with the spoken one began to appear, but immediately saw fierce opposition from the Serbian elite (including the clergy), who knew that introduction of the common language would make them loose their favored position of being the only literate, and enlighted, thus giving them right to rule the others. That position remained strong in the center of the Serbian culture of the time - the Habsburg Monarchy, but with things rapidly changing south of Sava and Danube, introduction of the People's language became unstoppable. Serbia was on it's way to regaining it's statehood, and becoming one of the most advanced countries in Europe of the time, in terms of freedom and cultural trends. That was possible due to fact that the leaders of the Serbs south of the great rivers, actually came from the people itself, and they had no intention of preserving the existing hierarchy, because it did not exist. What it meant for the innovative Serbian scholars from the Habsburg Monarchy, was that they could come to the newly liberated Serbia to implement their ideas. The center of Serbian culture was once again shifting south, but it was a very slow process, and it would take a whole life of a man for the People's language to get recognized as official.
That man was Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic. This article will not deal with his biography, but will try to explain his reform, and it's effects, in brief. Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic was himself a man from the people, and although many of his ideas were not original, he was the one who had the strength to implement them. The first thing he has done was to refine and modernize the Cyrillic alphabet. At the time many of the sounds used in day to day Serbian language had to be written using combination of several symbols, while some other symbols of the Cyrillic alphabet had no sound equivalent, and therefore, were never pronounced. Vuk Karadzic removed all of these "useless" symbols, changed those which, as a group, made for a single sound, with new symbols which represented a mixture of the previously used ones, and added completely new ones, all for a single goal - to allow him to fully implement the idea of "One sound - one symbol". This provided a basis for implementation of the most famous of his ideas and that is : "Write like you speak, read like it is written". This made the Serbian language the first language with the completely phonetical alphabet, which in turn had astounding effects on increase of literacy amongst the people. The harder part of his battle was to fight for the recognition of the People's language as the official one, which he dedicated his life to. He standardized it, wrote dictionaries, and made translations using it, which caused leading European linguists to admire him, but was not enough to please the conservative cultural elite of the Serbs. The triumph of his reform did eventually come, but he did not live long enough to witness it.
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| Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic |
*The picture used in this series is an illumintaion from the 12th century Serbian book - "The Miroslav's Gospel" (sr. "Мирослављево Јеванђеље" / "Miroslavljevo Jevanđelje"), enlisted on the UNESCO's Memory of the World Register
