Serbian, Croatian or Serbo-croatian - Informations please!

[bozoli]

@piranna

Is Serbo-Croatian doomed to be a dead language in 50-100 years? Like Latin? Because we don’t speak it anymore once they teach one particular language during most of school years.

Yes, I think so. Interestingly, a good number of the Yugoslavians who have emigrated before 1990 to various countries across the globe still speak Serbo-Croatian. But a language must be learnt in school and used on a daily basis to remain “alive”.

@piranna

Do students still learn to write in both systems, cyrillic and latin, in Serbia?

Yes! In Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Macedonia.

@piranna

Do Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro have SC as the basis of their language?

I would say the situation was reversed. Not that the modern languages had basis in SC, but that SC had basis in those other languages.

A long time before SC was even a thought, the nations and tribes on this area spoke individual languages and dialects. Somewhere in the 18th and 19th century all of them had to partially change their languages to sound more alike to each other. The reason was a movement to bring these neighbouring Slavic nations closer to each other and away from the Austrian, Hungarian, Italian and Turkish influences. At the same time Serbia and Montenegro are also undergoing major changes in spelling, as well as the entire area is adopting more modern and simplistic latin and cyrillic alphabets. This will one day be the basis on which SC as a language came to be.

You could say that they formed SC to be

• the language that was already spoken by the majority of people in that area
• and a language that would be understood more or less by all the nations within the new federation.

Hence, it just so happened that the most practical solution was to mix Croatian and Serbian language.

I already mentioned that after 1990 all the languages naturally (and less naturally) started to evolve away from each other.

Irmar posted one Quora user explaining so well that there is a culturological difference in the way Croatians and Serbians resolve to translate English words which they don’t have yet in their vocabulary. Mainly, Serbians translate so that they keep the root of the English word, but they change it to sound more Slavic, so that the word can be grammatically changed when necessary. Croats, on the other hand, reach deep into their old Croatian language and try to apply their own old words or create a simile. Both approaches have their strengths and weaknesses.

@piranna

1. If I were to move from Serbia or Croatia, do I have to learn a new language, or I can use my Serbian language and learn a few words/expressions to speak with Croatian people or understand their conversations? (apart from the accent, sound or tone)

You don’t have to learn a new language. You might get confused at first, though.

@piranna

■■■■■■■■:
There are people who use really rarely ■■■■■■■■ or don’t answer to surveys, I don’t know if the people who answered on ■■■■■■■■ are representative of the public you have.
It’s like in a vote, you have some who don’t answer, some who don’t go to vote, some who picks. People have to know that a Serbian/Croatian/SC/M group exists on ■■■■■■■■, they have to follow it and they are willing to answer.

Yes, it wasn’t an official poll we did or anything.