Question to people from Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro – do you find it offensive, if your language (with its dialects) is called Serbo-Croatian?
I personally don’t. It’s what the language is called.
If talking with Croatians, in Croatia in Croatian though… You should just call it Croatian.
I personally call it Croatian in Croatia, naški in all the other native speaking countries, or whatever is the easiest to understand for a non-native speaker (usually Croatian, but also Serbo-Croatian or BSC).
No. We Croats are all Serbs
Coming from an outsider that was kind enough to do some research before visiting? Not offensive.
Coming from someone with an obvious agenda against Croatia? We’re gonna have a problem here.
I personally wouldn’t find that offensive, it’s just one of many names for our language
I’m not from there but I’ve worked with translators. In casual speech, it’s fine to call it whatever. Translators will either say Serbo-Croatian or Shtokavian, depending on where they’re from.
No problem whatsoever. But I’m in the minority here.
Yeah I dont like it
Edit. Confused this sub with the Balkans sub where I have a flair. I am Croatian, for clarification.
Yes, it’s a stupid term that makes no sense and has no historical basis. It’s largely an invention from the Yugoslavian era.
Other question cause I’ve never understood this when people try to explain it to me: Is Slovenian mutually intelligible and if not, why? As in, what happened to separate Slovenian linguistically from the others so much that it’s not included?
Not really but it’s a bit inaccurate, Serbian doesn’t have “ijekavica” and others do. For example Seebian word for milk, with ijekavica is mlijeko
I dont care. But I prefer to call it Serbian language.
Yes, because it’s not what I’m speaking.
Language is more than just how technically similar it is to some other languages.
Croatian, and others, are a lot more than their standardized forms and similarities between them.
As someone with roots from montenegro if someone asks me i always say yugoslavian is easiest in official documents i write serbo-croatian. I have no problems with it, maybe for someone who are born there it might be different.
Not offensive nut incorect.
We Serbs have our Serbian language just as Croations have Croation languge.
They are similar,but they are two languages
In Croatia one of the tenets of nationalism taught to all kids at school is that “Croatian” and “Serbian” are separate languages and always have been.
But there’s a wide gamut of opinions and the degree to which people are convinced of this.
Linguists know that this is just called “Serbo-Croatian” everywhere in the world, and don’t think about it too much.
But ordinary people tend to have passionate, and usually ill-informed, opinions about it. They sre taught to have them.
But at the end of the day, these are just labels. And “Serbo-Croatian” isn’t really used anwhere anymore outside of linguistic circles.
(And even back then, the language was referred to as “Croato-Serbian” in Croatia.)
Since neither Croatian nor Serbian are no longer called that in Croatia or Serbia, it didn’t make sense to keep calling it that in Bosnia and Montenegro, hence the rise od the two new standards.
Whether someone would get offended depends on the context. Most of us are aware that this is petty and that foreigners can’t really understand what the fuss is about.
If you don’t want to offend anyone you can just speak the same language and refer to it as whatever label is used locally lol
People do like to see their national label in drop-down menus, and the one-country-one-language principle is kind of baked into Balkan nationalism, which is the default mindset.
I don’t find it offensive, no. If someone asks me if I speak Bosnian/Croatian, I say I do cause I do 😅. So all those names are fine by me from Croato-Serbian to naški.
personally i take no issue with it, as serbian is more similar to standard croatian than most croatian dialects are to standard croatian.
but then again i belong to a post-war generation and i realise that some people who have lived through the war and/or lost someone due to it don’t feel as comfortable with the term
Not Balkan but surely using the snobby “Illyrian” would solve any ethnic tensions the name of this language creates.
Yes… and I don’t get the insisting on using Serbo-Croatian when each country is learning their own version / dialect for decade
Why don’t we say Swedo-Norwegian for example? There’s like the same level of variation.
Franco Belgian, Helveto Austrian…
I’m not offended at all, but I will always call it Serbian.
My in-laws call is *naš*, of course, so when I speak about the language with them or my partner in their language (*njihov*?), I call it *vaš* or I speak of “Serbian” if I mean the way it is spoken in Serbia, and Croatian when I want to ask Croats and Montenegrin when Montenegrinians how they call stuff in their particular variety and so on.
We Serbs don’t find it as offensive as Croats and Bosnians at most neutral, but the few nationalists will find it in negative way.
After all Croatian linguistics are finding each year more and more new words to replace current ones that are shared, so surely it will be a different language in the far future.
If you’re talking about the shared Shtokavian dialect then it’s fine. But the term Croatian is used to refer to all 3 of the Croatian supradialects and not just the shared one which happens to be the standard. So it’s an incorrect term in some situations.
While it’s isn’t offensive at all, depending on the context it might be just wrong.
Serbo-Croatian isn’t exactly a language. It’s more of a group name for languages spoken here. Using it in context like *”in Croatia they speak Serbo-Croatian”* is wrong, because the official language in Croatia is Croatian. When saying *”in Croatia they speak Serbo-Croatian”*, that would imply that in Croatia all of languages from the group are official, but they’re not.
Using it in context like *”there’s Serbo-Croatian sentence in a movie*” would be correct; because you’re implying that in a movie, there’s sentence from one of the languages spoken here.
It’s worth to keep in mind that even though we do have a lot of words in common, I wouldn’t say the difference is like British and American English.
In those two, difference is minor and you still know what would person be talking about (like *color* vs *colour*). Words that are different in Croatian and Serbian are completely different and if you don’t know them, you won’t know what the person is talking about.
Example:
>*Carrot* in Croatian is **mrkva**. Carrot in Serbian is **šargarepa**.
>*Kangaroo* in Croatian is **klokan**. In Serbian it’s **kengur**.
>*Scooter* in Croatian is **romobil**. In Serbian it’s **trotinet**.
And beside languages being similar, grammar is different and each language has it’s dialects which are only used in specific regions.
Btw I didn’t know *romobil* is called *trotinet* in Serbia; just found out today. 😂
Nope. When talking about this to anybody with average (though it’s mostly below average or non-existent when it comes to an average Balkan person) linguistical knowledge, I just say “Montenegrin” to someone from Montenegro, or “Nashki” to other people. When having a serious discussion with a person that’s very invested and educated when it comes to linguistics, I almost exclusively say “Serbo-Croatian” or “Croato-Serbian”.
I understand that every nation wants to have it’s own language and culture, but when you point out the actual differences between the four languages, one could argue that certain dialects of Serbian and Croatian could be considered separate languages too, though I will not get too much into this.
The last thing I want to point out, which nobody talks about, is the fact that it is actually a miracle that the languages are so similar to each other after centuries of different influences. Most of Croatia was under Austrian, Hungarian and Italian occupation, having the Vatican as it’s main religious influence; not to mention that they used the Glagolitic alphabet for centuries, until Ludevit Gaj reformed the Latinic alphabet so it could be used when writing South Slavic languages. **please correct me if Glagolitic wasn’t used as long as I assumed, it’s been a while since I read about this*
On the other hand, Serbia, Bosnia and Montenegro went through centuries of Ottoman occupation, constant influence from the Russian orthodox church. Bosancica and Arebica were used in Bosnia, while in Serbia and Montenegro, various Cyrillic variants were used until Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic reformed it. Not to mention that, before Karadzic’s reforms, the aristocracy wrote in all kinds of weird variations of Serbian that the average peasant couldn’t even understand, as it was not used in oral speech (Slavonic-Serbian, Russo-Slavonic…).
No, I don’t find the name perfect, but it sums up that we speak the same language whatever you call it.
Only those who are nationalists find it offensive. I personally consider it to be one language with multiple dialects. But I don’t really call it Serbo-Croatian or sth, I guess that name has kind of a stigma. Mainly because I don’t want to argue with people who would find it offensive. If I’m speaking with someone I don’t know too well, but speaks another “dialect”, I’ll just call it “our (language)”. (“Language” isn’t said, it’s obvious from the context, it’s enough to just say “ours”.)
i call it whoever im speaking to and i pretend im a polyglot who speaks 4 different languages
Yes.
My dialect of Croatian language is more similar to Slovenian than to Serbian.
I just call it “Bosanski” which means Bosnian, so I can trigger the Serbs and the Croats simultaneously
32 comments
I personally don’t. It’s what the language is called.
If talking with Croatians, in Croatia in Croatian though… You should just call it Croatian.
I personally call it Croatian in Croatia, naški in all the other native speaking countries, or whatever is the easiest to understand for a non-native speaker (usually Croatian, but also Serbo-Croatian or BSC).
No. We Croats are all Serbs
Coming from an outsider that was kind enough to do some research before visiting? Not offensive.
Coming from someone with an obvious agenda against Croatia? We’re gonna have a problem here.
I personally wouldn’t find that offensive, it’s just one of many names for our language
I’m not from there but I’ve worked with translators. In casual speech, it’s fine to call it whatever. Translators will either say Serbo-Croatian or Shtokavian, depending on where they’re from.
No problem whatsoever. But I’m in the minority here.
Yeah I dont like it
Edit. Confused this sub with the Balkans sub where I have a flair. I am Croatian, for clarification.
Yes, it’s a stupid term that makes no sense and has no historical basis. It’s largely an invention from the Yugoslavian era.
Other question cause I’ve never understood this when people try to explain it to me: Is Slovenian mutually intelligible and if not, why? As in, what happened to separate Slovenian linguistically from the others so much that it’s not included?
Not really but it’s a bit inaccurate, Serbian doesn’t have “ijekavica” and others do. For example Seebian word for milk, with ijekavica is mlijeko
I dont care. But I prefer to call it Serbian language.
Yes, because it’s not what I’m speaking.
Language is more than just how technically similar it is to some other languages.
Croatian, and others, are a lot more than their standardized forms and similarities between them.
As someone with roots from montenegro if someone asks me i always say yugoslavian is easiest in official documents i write serbo-croatian. I have no problems with it, maybe for someone who are born there it might be different.
Not offensive nut incorect.
We Serbs have our Serbian language just as Croations have Croation languge.
They are similar,but they are two languages
In Croatia one of the tenets of nationalism taught to all kids at school is that “Croatian” and “Serbian” are separate languages and always have been.
But there’s a wide gamut of opinions and the degree to which people are convinced of this.
Linguists know that this is just called “Serbo-Croatian” everywhere in the world, and don’t think about it too much.
But ordinary people tend to have passionate, and usually ill-informed, opinions about it. They sre taught to have them.
But at the end of the day, these are just labels. And “Serbo-Croatian” isn’t really used anwhere anymore outside of linguistic circles.
(And even back then, the language was referred to as “Croato-Serbian” in Croatia.)
Since neither Croatian nor Serbian are no longer called that in Croatia or Serbia, it didn’t make sense to keep calling it that in Bosnia and Montenegro, hence the rise od the two new standards.
Whether someone would get offended depends on the context. Most of us are aware that this is petty and that foreigners can’t really understand what the fuss is about.
If you don’t want to offend anyone you can just speak the same language and refer to it as whatever label is used locally lol
People do like to see their national label in drop-down menus, and the one-country-one-language principle is kind of baked into Balkan nationalism, which is the default mindset.
I don’t find it offensive, no. If someone asks me if I speak Bosnian/Croatian, I say I do cause I do 😅. So all those names are fine by me from Croato-Serbian to naški.
personally i take no issue with it, as serbian is more similar to standard croatian than most croatian dialects are to standard croatian.
but then again i belong to a post-war generation and i realise that some people who have lived through the war and/or lost someone due to it don’t feel as comfortable with the term
Not Balkan but surely using the snobby “Illyrian” would solve any ethnic tensions the name of this language creates.
Yes… and I don’t get the insisting on using Serbo-Croatian when each country is learning their own version / dialect for decade
Why don’t we say Swedo-Norwegian for example? There’s like the same level of variation.
Franco Belgian, Helveto Austrian…
I’m not offended at all, but I will always call it Serbian.
My in-laws call is *naš*, of course, so when I speak about the language with them or my partner in their language (*njihov*?), I call it *vaš* or I speak of “Serbian” if I mean the way it is spoken in Serbia, and Croatian when I want to ask Croats and Montenegrin when Montenegrinians how they call stuff in their particular variety and so on.
We Serbs don’t find it as offensive as Croats and Bosnians at most neutral, but the few nationalists will find it in negative way.
After all Croatian linguistics are finding each year more and more new words to replace current ones that are shared, so surely it will be a different language in the far future.
If you’re talking about the shared Shtokavian dialect then it’s fine. But the term Croatian is used to refer to all 3 of the Croatian supradialects and not just the shared one which happens to be the standard. So it’s an incorrect term in some situations.
While it’s isn’t offensive at all, depending on the context it might be just wrong.
Serbo-Croatian isn’t exactly a language. It’s more of a group name for languages spoken here. Using it in context like *”in Croatia they speak Serbo-Croatian”* is wrong, because the official language in Croatia is Croatian. When saying *”in Croatia they speak Serbo-Croatian”*, that would imply that in Croatia all of languages from the group are official, but they’re not.
Using it in context like *”there’s Serbo-Croatian sentence in a movie*” would be correct; because you’re implying that in a movie, there’s sentence from one of the languages spoken here.
It’s worth to keep in mind that even though we do have a lot of words in common, I wouldn’t say the difference is like British and American English.
In those two, difference is minor and you still know what would person be talking about (like *color* vs *colour*). Words that are different in Croatian and Serbian are completely different and if you don’t know them, you won’t know what the person is talking about.
Example:
>*Carrot* in Croatian is **mrkva**. Carrot in Serbian is **šargarepa**.
>*Kangaroo* in Croatian is **klokan**. In Serbian it’s **kengur**.
>*Scooter* in Croatian is **romobil**. In Serbian it’s **trotinet**.
And beside languages being similar, grammar is different and each language has it’s dialects which are only used in specific regions.
Btw I didn’t know *romobil* is called *trotinet* in Serbia; just found out today. 😂
Nope. When talking about this to anybody with average (though it’s mostly below average or non-existent when it comes to an average Balkan person) linguistical knowledge, I just say “Montenegrin” to someone from Montenegro, or “Nashki” to other people. When having a serious discussion with a person that’s very invested and educated when it comes to linguistics, I almost exclusively say “Serbo-Croatian” or “Croato-Serbian”.
I understand that every nation wants to have it’s own language and culture, but when you point out the actual differences between the four languages, one could argue that certain dialects of Serbian and Croatian could be considered separate languages too, though I will not get too much into this.
The last thing I want to point out, which nobody talks about, is the fact that it is actually a miracle that the languages are so similar to each other after centuries of different influences. Most of Croatia was under Austrian, Hungarian and Italian occupation, having the Vatican as it’s main religious influence; not to mention that they used the Glagolitic alphabet for centuries, until Ludevit Gaj reformed the Latinic alphabet so it could be used when writing South Slavic languages. **please correct me if Glagolitic wasn’t used as long as I assumed, it’s been a while since I read about this*
On the other hand, Serbia, Bosnia and Montenegro went through centuries of Ottoman occupation, constant influence from the Russian orthodox church. Bosancica and Arebica were used in Bosnia, while in Serbia and Montenegro, various Cyrillic variants were used until Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic reformed it. Not to mention that, before Karadzic’s reforms, the aristocracy wrote in all kinds of weird variations of Serbian that the average peasant couldn’t even understand, as it was not used in oral speech (Slavonic-Serbian, Russo-Slavonic…).
No, I don’t find the name perfect, but it sums up that we speak the same language whatever you call it.
Only those who are nationalists find it offensive. I personally consider it to be one language with multiple dialects. But I don’t really call it Serbo-Croatian or sth, I guess that name has kind of a stigma. Mainly because I don’t want to argue with people who would find it offensive. If I’m speaking with someone I don’t know too well, but speaks another “dialect”, I’ll just call it “our (language)”. (“Language” isn’t said, it’s obvious from the context, it’s enough to just say “ours”.)
i call it whoever im speaking to and i pretend im a polyglot who speaks 4 different languages
Yes.
My dialect of Croatian language is more similar to Slovenian than to Serbian.
I just call it “Bosanski” which means Bosnian, so I can trigger the Serbs and the Croats simultaneously