Fwd: Montenegrin

Milos Rancic millosh at gmail.com
Wed Jun 16 10:27:15 CEST 2010


(Resending my and CE Whitehead's email to the list. I sent to him
email personally by accident.)


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: CE Whitehead <cewcathar at hotmail.com>
Date: Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 17:47
Subject: RE: Montenegrin
To: millosh at gmail.com


Milos:

Hi!  You sent this to me only?  Did you mean this to go to the list?
If so you need to send your original email to the list!
Then I will reply to you on the list.

In the meantime I've written a quick reply (below).

Thanks.
> From: millosh at gmail.com
> Date: Tue, 15 Jun 2010 11:21:50 +0200
> Subject: Re: Montenegrin
> To: cewcathar at hotmail.com
>
> Many arguments from both sides are at least not correct and some
> stronger words could be used.
>
> For example, claim that distinctive Montenegrin phonemes are just
> allophones is not based on any research, but on a claim of Serbian
> professor from Montenegro (Jelica Stojanovic) in a daily newspaper,
> which main field is not phonology but history of Serbian language.
> Such strong claim, however, needs research, not just partisan speech.
>
> The other side is, also, full of such pseudoscientific claims:
>
> On Tue, Jun 15, 2010 at 03:38, CE Whitehead <cewcathar at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > I went to the www.montenegro.org site url provided by Peter:
> > "This premise was based on the fact that they can communicate together to a
> > greater or lesser degree. To Vuk Stefanovic-Karadzic, correct meant "widely
> > in use". Everything that did not fit within this "norm" was declared
> > incorrect and non-literate; for example, three sounds unique to the
> > Montenegrin language (that are used in spoken language even today) were left
> > out of this standardization. This created an artificial division between
> > oral and written language. Even today in Montenegro, many older people and
> > village folk still use the original non-standard language, which is
> > generally more expressive and poetic. "
> > This suggests that the orthographic difference has a corresponding
> > dialectical/pronunciation difference.
>
> This is the classical example of difference between standard language
> and dialect. Moreover, in some parts of Croatia and Serbia dialects
> are so distant, that inhabitants are practically bilingual.
What dialects are inhabitants practically bilingual in?  Croatian and
Serbian?  How do the dialects mesh with political borders -- and are
those that are considered Croatian particularly distinct from those
that are considered Serbian?
>
> > http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8520466.stm
> > ""Montenegrin is different in many ways," she says. "Take the word for
> > 'milk', for example. In Serbian it's 'mleko', in Croatian 'mljeko' and in
> > Montenegrin 'mlijeko'." "
> > http://www.esiweb.org/index.php?lang=en&id=271
> > Adnan Cirgic is a proponent; he plant to catalogue the differences
> > apparently:
> > 'According to him, the most important difference is the dialectical usage of
> > long e (e in Serbian, je, ije in Montenegrin).
>
> "Montenegrin from" is standard in Serbian and Croatian, while nobody
> except Montenegrins are pronouncing it. It is incorrect to write
> "mljeko" in Croatian and Serbian (Iyekavian), although it is
> pronounced as is.
Do you mean that in Croatian mljeko is the pronunciation of but not
the way to write this word?
>
> > "In addition to the 30 letters in Serbian, Montenegrin has three more
> > distinct sounds, of which two are widely used all across the Montenegrin
> > linguistic space. This has also been acknowledged by Serbian linguists.
> > These consonants should therefore find their way into our standard language.
> > Besides, Montenegrin has a handful of other sounds produced by the
> > conversion of the long e which are unknown to Serbian… I am currently
> > working on the differences between Serbian and Montenegrin language. The
> > number of such differences is more than obvious and sufficient to speak
> > about a separate Montenegrin standard.'"
>
> > Jelica Stojanovic is an opponent who says that the geography is not right to
> > call this dialect Montenegrin:
> > ''Speaking of dialects, the territory of today's Montenegro fits perfectly
> > (and always did!) into the wider continuum of the Serbian language, as its
> > inalienable part – no speech, no dialect nor a single linguistic specificity
> > or a trait ends on the borders of Montenegro, none of it is 'only
> > Montenegrin', nor 'generally Montenegrin', as the non-scientific circles
> > attempt to portray it. As for the traditional and cultural identification
> > and name-giving, the language in Montenegro, ever since it has a name, has
> > been only Serbian.' "
>
> Using term "Serbian language" in the sense of diasystem is politically
> motivated. It is hard to use any other term in that sense except
> "South Slavic diasystem".
>
> > Regarding Leif's comment that Montenegro is divided between about 60%
> > Serbian speakers and about 40% Montenegrin -- my understanding is that this
> > number has changed recently; many more used to identify their language as
> > Serbian but decided that since they were Montenegrins they should call it
> > Montenegrin (it's still the same dialect that each speaks . . . )
> >
> > For me the variant subtag is an acceptable solution but this does not give
> > any Montenegrin standard the weighting that Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian
> > standards have  -- at least not in the opinions of some.
>
> Naming languages is not a matter of linguistics, but a matter of
> politics, as well as coding languages is. Hindi, Urdu (and a number of
> other languages common for India and Pakistan), Serbian, Croatian,
> Bosnian etc. -- are some of the examples. If there is a clear
> political will to name some language in some way, it should be
> respected.
>
For sure there are some political issues in the increasing tendancy to
break languages into smaller components (for example, to distinguish
North from South Levantine Arabic; Irianian Persian from Dari), and to
not break up or merge other code elements.
> Yes, it is confusing when linguists are arguing around political
> issues, but it is necessary to make that distinction. Arguing around
> Montenegrin looks like arguing about the existence of God or Thing or
> whatever.
>
> ISO 639 codes are [linguistically] broken and they will stay broken
> until they are trying to make sense in discrete naming of languages.
I think language is fluid; our political ideas of it are fluid; I do
not expect a real 'final fix' but anyway this is unimportant; there
may be some imbalances in our current approach.
> A
> mixed genetic and areal approach, with taking on count all important
> contemporary changes (extremely higher mobility during the last half
> of century, telephones, electronic media, Internet) -- could be a much
> better approach for categorization and tagging languages, or better --
> language systems.
I thought we looked at genetics, differences in pronunciation, use on
the internet and off, existence of a literature, national acceptance.

>
> In the mean time, the priority should be how not to make more damage
> because of a [broken] bureaucratic approach.
>
> However, someone already mentioned and I agree with that, Montenegro
> and Montenegrins didn't define their will clearly. All official
> Internet pages are still written in standard Serbian named as
> Montenegrin, while their television practices new Montenegrin.
>
So Montenegrin is used on television but not really on the web?
Why do you suppose this is so?  Any ideas?

> Thus, my suggestion is to wait for Montenegrin authorities to decide
> what do they want and to tell that to the relevant international
> institutions. And after that to do what do they want.
Hmm -- did you see SIL's/ISO 639-3's response to the request for a
code element -- at ietf-languages?

Best,

C. E. Whitehead
cewcathar at hotmail.com


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