Language and Nationalism in Yugoslavia.

N

16

Bilingualism; Cultural Influences; Cyrillic Alphabet; Dialect Studies; Diglossia; Geographic Regions; Language Role; Language Standardization; Multilingualism; Mutual Intelligibility; Nonstandard Dialects; Official Languages; Regional Dialects; Serbocroatian; Slavic Languages; Slovenian; Sociolinguistics

Yugoslavia, a country with a population of about 20,000,000, has as official languages Macedonian, Slovenian, and Serbo-Croatian. The latter is the cause of much controversy, for while Croatian and Serbian indisputably have a common linguistic base, the political and economic tensions between the two "nationalities" augment disagreement on the different usage of the two dialects and prevent the establishment of a single "standard" for the entire republic. The author concludes that "scholarly work in Serbo-Croation/Serbian/Croatian linguistics has come to a virtual standstill" and that future contributions will come "from outside the country." (MK)

1969

ED024915