[Serbiangnome-lista] Re: Serbian (sr) language translation team: maintainer unresponsive

[Danilo Segan]

Karl Eichwalder wrote:

> Danilo Segan <address@hidden> writes:
>
>  
>
> > Not exactly. They were quite similar, and convereged to the somewhat
> > same language (Serbo-Croatian"sh") during the time both were used in the
> > same country. But, since the dissolve of former Yugoslavia, they're
> > diverging again, and it's not rare for one word to be common in one, but
> > non-existant in the other.
> >    
>
> Aside, different word usage does not constitute a different language.
>
> In Switzerland, Austria and Bavaria many a lot words are used which are
> unknown in the Germany (okay, Bavaria is a part of Germany ;) ).  But
> they all speak variants of the German language.  Thus the Language Code
> in all the countries is 'de', and if somebody thinks the northern
> German word usage does not fit for Austria, he goes for 'de_AT', etc.
>  
Certainly so, but I'd elaborate a bit in here.

When the Slavs (Russians, Serbs, Croats, Poles, Czech, Ukranians and 
others) lived all in the same place, they spoke mainly the same 
language, now called Old slavonic (or "church slavonic", since it's 
still used in all churches of orthodox religion).

When the Serbs and Croats moved into the Balkan, Serbs went much more to 
the south, while Croats stayed on the northwest. The same as the 
languages of Russians and Serbs is nowdays quite different, these two 
languages diverged, but to a lesser extent because of geographical 
proximity. One (Serbian) was largely under the influence of Byzantian 
(Greek), while Croatian was influenced by Italic and Germanic languages. 
So, at that time, these were farely different languages, so, at least at 
one point in time, two *distinct* languages really did exist.

With the conquest of Serbia by Ottoman empire, Serbs started moving 
north and to the west, thus settling in parts of Croatia (actually 
Habsburg monarchy), serving as soldiers. So, the convergence of 
languages started again, but only partly, because Serbian as spoken in 
Serbia started accepting words from Turkish (quite a few words in 
today's Serbian are of Turkish origin). After the fall of Ottoman 
empire, Serbs and Croats lived in two distinct states (one in their own, 
other in Habsburg monarchy), except for Bosnia where they lived together 
(some of them having accepted the Islam, or settling from Turkey 
beforehand). This was again a source of another divergence in languages.

Again, the World War I came, and the Serbs and Croats made a one 
kingdom, restarting the process of convergence of the languages again. 
For politcal reasons, language such as "Serbo-Croatian" was created, 
using combinations from each language (eg. dot in Serbian was "tačka" 
and in Croatian "točka", and comma was "zapeta", and "zarez" 
respectively; so "tačka-zarez" was used for semicolon in the new 
language, as a compromise).

At the resolution of former Yugoslavia, divergence started again, 
especially with the need to translate all the english technology related 
terms to native language. The Croats have done that much better and to a 
greater extent, and there are quite a few new words no Serb can 
understand). Also, some forms are regular in one language, while the 
others are expected in the other (so it's not only words, I remember 
finding some document from USA Library of Congress which explains 
differentiating the Serbian and Croatian language).

Of course, the political issues were very important, but these languages 
existed long before the language "Serbo-Croatian" was invented.  
Differences are probably on the level of Ukranian (uk) and Russian (ru) 
differences, though I don't quite know (it's just a guess).


Hope I didn't bore anyone (or at least not too much).

Cheers,
Daneelo