A few words on Serbian language...

Part One

Introduction
 

     One of the key components of every nation's identity is it's language. Arguably, it is the most important of them all, and the general opinion is that the language was used as the main criteria for classifying people into modern nations, back in the days of the revival of nationalistic spirit in Europe. At least that was the way it worked in most of Europe, but the story of Balkans is a bit more complex. Here, religion and political problems played a much more significant role than the language, and even ancestry, which resulted in creation of numerous small countries across the peninsula. Of course, nations of this region always strived to follow the ideas accepted in the remaining part of Europe, and the same was true for language being the essential part of the nation's identity. Creation of "unique" languages soon started in these newly created countries, which resulted in today's situation of six different, internationally recognized languages being labeled "official" in six different countries, which have combined population of a little over 20 million. An even more interesting fact is that four of these languages are basically the same, while the remaining two are extremely similar. Another thing worth noting is that differences between some of the spoken variations and the officially recognized literary language, in all of these countries, are much greater than the differences between these "unique" official languages themselves. All that only adds to the already tense relations in the region. As Serbian language has the highest number of active speakers, amongst these languages, and was the first to be scientifically regulated, it might be right to name the whole language group "Serbian". Of course that is not an acceptable solution for some of the other nations. For that reason, all efforts to unify the language in the past (in the time of the nations living in a common country), were conducted under names: Serbo-Croato-Slovene (in the days of the Kingdom), which was the name consisting of the "three names of the one nation", as was the official policy of that time; Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian and Slovene, which were all recognized as three unique languages during the time of the Republic. 

     After the break up, all the languages that were already recognized as unique, retained their position, with Serbo-Croatian getting two different names (Serbian and Croatian), instead of the combined one. Recognition of the Bosnian language soon followed, while Montenegrin is the newest addition to the family. 

     Whole this story might sound a little strange, if not funny, and it is, while being horribly sad at the same time. Explaining the reasons which lead to it, however, would require stepping deeply into politics, as well as psychological analysis of Balkan (South-Slavic) mentality. Neither of these is my field of expertise, which only adds to the list of reasons why I will not be dealing with it. I had to get you familiar with the existence of these problems, and complexity of the situation, though, in order for you to understand the story about the history, and today's position of Serbian language, which I will try to tell you in parts Two and Three, that will soon follow.

*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