Bosnia and Herzegovina. Bosnian language: history of development and features Official language of Bosnia and Herzegovina

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Once in Bosnia and Herzegovina they spoke the Serbo-Croatian language, they studied it at school, they wrote books in it. Now the country has three official languages: Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian. There are differences, but they are of such a nature that only native speakers distinguish these nuances, and even then not always: 99% * identical grammar, 95% ** common vocabulary, but the remaining five percent make music.

To better understand these differences, let's visit three restaurants: with the cuisine of Bosnian Muslims (Bosnak), with Croatian cuisine and with Serbian cuisine.

In a Serbian and Muslim restaurant, they will put a “tanir” in front of you, and in a Croatian “tanyur”, a plate, that is. If you order chorba (I recommend), then in order to eat it, you will need a “kashika”, a spoon. In a Croatian restaurant, "kashika" will not be given to you, but they will bring you "zhlitsa".

Elena Arsenievich, CC BY-SA 3.0

In good restaurants, they bake their own bread, and in the best restaurants, they also bake bread from flour, which is ground with stone millstones. Muslims and Serbs bake “khlieb” or “khleb” from this wonderful flour, and Croats bake “kruh”.

Elena Arsenievich, CC BY-SA 3.0

Delicacy dish - veal. Sach is a heavy cast-iron lid with which meat is covered, and hot coals are poured on top. Two hours under such a lid - and the meat melts in your mouth. They cook it in Sarajevo, and in Travnik, and in Mostar, and veal is especially good in a restaurant near, in the west of Herzegovina. You won't find it on the menu. It will say "veal from under the peka." Peka is no different from sacha, except for a set of letters. Interestingly, only Herzegovinian Croats call sach peka, Bosnian Croats, like Bosnian Muslims, call sach sach.

Elena Arsenievich, CC BY-SA 3.0

Photo gallery

ISO 639-3 bos Glottolog part of 53-AAA-g This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other characters instead of Unicode characters. For a guide to MP symbols, see Help: IPA.

Bosnian is based on the most common Serbo-Croatian dialect, Shtokavian, more specifically Eastern Herzegovinian, which is also the basis of the Croatian, Serbian and Montenegrin standard. Until the dissolution of the SFRY, they were treated as a single Serbo-Croatian language, and the term is still used in English language to sum up the common base (vocabulary, grammar, and syntax) that today are officially the four national standards, although the term is controversial for native speakers, and is paraphrased, such as "Serbo-Croatian-Bosnian" (SCB) or "Bosnian-Croatian- Serbian" (BCS) is thus sometimes used instead, especially in diplomatic circles.

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School Books of Latin and Bosnian, 1827

Bosnian Grammar, 1890

Standardization

Even though Bosnians, at the level of colloquial idioms, are linguistically more homogeneous than either Serbs or Croats, unlike those countries, they did not codify a standard language in the 19th century, at least two factors are decisive:

The Bosnian elite, so closely intertwined with Ottoman life, wrote predominantly in foreign (Turkish, Arabic, Persian) languages. The slang of literature written in Bosnian since the Arebica script was relatively thin and sparse.
The national emancipation of the Bosnians lagged behind the Serbs and Croats, and because confessional rather than cultural and linguistic issues played a decisive role, the Bosnian language project did not arouse much interest or support among the intelligentsia of the time.

latin		A	V	WITH	Č	Ć	D	Dž	Đ	E	F	G	HOUR	I am	J	TO	L	Lj	M	N	New Jersey	O	P	R	S	Š	T	U	V	Z	Ž
Arebica	isolated	آ	ب	ڄ	چ	ڃ	د	ج		ە	ف	غ	ح	اى	ي	ق	ل	ڵ	م	ن	y tools	ۉ	پ	ر	س	ش	ت	ۆ	و	ز	ژ
	elementary	آ	ب	ڄ	چ	ڃ	د	ج		ە	ف	غ	ح	اى	ي	ق	ل	ڵ	م	ن	ٮ ݩ	ۉ	پ	ر	س	ش	ت	ۆ	و	ز	ژ
	median	آ	ب	ڄ	چ	ڃ	د	ج		ە	ف	غ	ح	اى ى	ي	ق	ل	ڵ	م	ن	ٮ ݩ	ۉ	پ	ر	س	ش	ت	ۆ	و	ز	ژ
	final	آ	ب	ڄ	چ	ڃ	د	ج		ە	ف	غ	ح	اى ى	ي	ق	ل	ڵ	م	ن	y tools	ۉ	پ	ر	س	ش	ت	ۆ	و	ز	ژ

In literature, the so-called "Bosnian revival" of the early 20th century was written in idioms that were closer to the Croatian standard than to the Serbian one: it is a Western Shtokavian dialect with an Ijekavian accent and uses a Latin script, but had recognizable Bosnian lexical features. The main authors were polymath, politician and poet Safvet Beg Baseijik and storyteller Edkhem Malabdik.

The modern Bosnian standard took shape in the 1990s and 2000s. Lexical, Islamic-Oriental borrowed more often; phonetic: phoneme /x/ (letter h) are restored in many words as a distinctive feature of Bosniak common speech and linguistic tradition; In addition, there are some changes in grammar, morphology, and orthography that reflect the Bosnian Pre-World War I literary tradition, mainly that of the Bosnian renaissance in the early 20th century.

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Controversy and recognition

The name "Bosnian" is a contentious issue for some Croats and Serbs, who also refer to it as the "Bosnian" language (Serbo-Croatian: bošnjackki/ boshka; ). Bosnian linguists however insist that the only legitimate name is "Bosnian" language ( bossan ), and that this is the name that Croats and Serbs should use. The dispute arises because the name "Bosnian" may seem to mean that it is the language of all Bosniaks, while the Bosnian Croats and Serbs reject this indication of their idioms.

The language is called Bosnian in 1995 the Dayton Accords and the conclusion of the observers gained legitimacy and international recognition at that time.

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the United States Council on Geographical Names (BGN), and the Standing Committee on Geographical Names (the permanent bureau for the transcription of geographic names) recognize the Bosnian language. In addition, the status of the Bosnian language is also recognized by bodies such as the UN, UNESCO, as well as translation and interpretation accrediting agencies, including Internet translation services.

Most English-speaking language encyclopedias (Routledge, Glottolog, Ethnologue, etc.) register the language solely as a "Bosnian" language. The Library of Congress registered the language as "Bosnian" and gave it an ISO number. Slavic language institutes in English-speaking countries offer courses in "Bosnian" or "Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian" rather than in "Bosnian" (e.g. Columbia, Cornell, Chicago, Washington, Kansas). The same is true in German-speaking countries, where the language is taught under the name Bosnisch , not bosniakisch (eg Vienna, Graz, Trier) with very few exceptions.

Some Croatian linguists (Zvonko Kovac, Aivo Preinjkavik, Josip silic) support the name "Bosnian" language, while others (Radoslav Katisik, Dalibor Brozović, Tomislav Ladan) believe that the term Bosnian is the only appropriate one, and that, respectively, the terms Bosnian and Bosnian refer to two different things. Croatian government agencies, such as the Central Bureau of Statistics, use both terms: the language "Bosnian" was used in the 2001 census, while the 2011 census used the term "Bosnian" language.

Most Serbian linguists believe that the term Bosniak language is the only suitable one that was agreed back in 1990.

The original form of the Constitution of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina did not name the language "Bosnian language", until 2002, when it was changed in Amendment XXIX to the Constitution of the Federation by Wolfgang Petric. The original text of the Constitution of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina was agreed upon in Vienna, and was signed by Krešimir Zubak and Silajdzic on March 18, 1994.

Constitution Republika Srpska, the Serb entities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, do not recognize any language or ethnic group other than Serbian. Bosniaks have been largely expelled from Serb-controlled territory since 1992, but immediately after the war they demanded the restoration of their civil rights in those territories. The Bosnian Serbs refused to make reference to the Bosnian language in their constitution, and as a result there were constitutional amendments introduced by High Representative Wolfgang Petric. However, the constitution Republika Srpska treat him like language spoken by Bosnians because the Serbs were required to recognize the language officially, but wished to avoid recognizing its name.

Serbia includes Bosnian as an elective subject in primary school. Montenegro officially recognizes the Bosnian language: its 2007 Constitution specifically states that while Montenegrin is an official language, Serbian, Bosnian, Albanian and Croatian are also in official use.

Historical use of the term

In work The legend of izjavljenno about pismeneh, which was written between 1423 and 1426, by the Bulgarian chronicler Konstantin the Philosopher, in parallel with Bulgarian, Serbian, Slovenian, Czech and Croatian, he also mentions the Bosnian language.
The notary book of the city of Kotor dated July 3, 1436 recounts the duke buys a girl who is described as: "a Bosnian woman, a heretic and in the Bosnian language called Djevena".
Work Thesaurus Polyglottus, published in Frankfurt am Main in 1603 by the German historian and linguist Jerome Megyser, mentions the Bosnian dialect alongside Dalmatian, Croatian and Serbian ones.
The Bosnian Franciscan Matija Divkavik, considered the founder of the modern literature of Bosnia and Herzegovina, claims in his work "AN krstjanski za narod slovinski" ("Christian teaching for the Slavic peoples") from 1611 his "translated from Latin into the real and true Bosnian language" (" A privideh from- dijačkog u right I istinit jezik Bosani“)
Bosniak poet and alhamiado writer Muhamed Khevaji Askufi Bosnevi, who refers to the language in his 1632 dictionary Magbuli-Arif like Bosnian.
One of the first philologists, the Jesuit priest Bartolomeo Cassio names the language used in his work from 1640 Ritual Romanski(Roman Rite) like naski("our language") or bossan("Bosnian"). He used the term "Bosnian" despite the fact that he was born in the Chakavian region: instead he chose to adopt " mutual language» ( lingua society) based on the Shtokavian version of Ikavian.
The Italian linguist Jacobus Micalia (1601–1654) who states in his dictionary Blagu jezika slovinskoga(Thesaurus Lingue Illyricae) from 1649 that he wants to include "the most beautiful words", adding that "of all the Illyrian languages Bosnian is the most beautiful" and that all Illyrian writers should endeavor to write in this language.
The 18th century Bosniak chronicler Mula Mustafa Beisskiž, who states in his yearbook of collected Bosnian poems, that "Bosnian" is much richer than Arabic, because there are 45 words for the verb "to go" in Bosnian.
The Venetian writer, naturalist and cartographer Alberto Fortis (1741-1803) is referred to in his work Viaggio in Dalmazia (Travel to Dalmatia) Morlach language in Illyrian, Morlach and Bosnian.
The Croatian writer and lexicographer Matija Petr Katancic published six volumes of biblical translations in 1831 described as "translated from the Slavic-Illyrian pronunciation of the Bosnian language".
Croatian writer Matija Mazuranic refers to the work Pogled U Bosnu(1842) into the language of Bosniaks as Illyrian (19th century synonym for South Slavic languages) mixed with Turkish words, with the further claim that they are speakers of the Bosniak language,
Bosnian Franciscan Yukic state in his work Zemljopis i Poviestnica Bosna(1851) that Bosnia was the only Turkish land (i.e. under the control Ottoman Empire) , which remained perfectly clean, without Turkish speakers, as in the villages and so on the highlands. He further states that "[...] a language other than Bosnian is not spoken [in Bosnia], most Turkish [i.e. Muslim] gentlemen only speak Turkish when they are on the Vizier.”
Kukulevich-Sakcinski, a 19th-century Croatian writer and historian, stated in his work Putovanje po Bosni (Travel to Bosnia) since 1858, as "Turkish" (i.e. Muslim) Bosnians, despite converting to the Muslim faith, have retained their traditions and Slavic mood, and that they speak the purest variant of the Bosnian language, refusing to add the Turkish word to their vocabulary.

Differences between Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian

The differences between Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian literary standards are minimal. Although Bosnian works over Turkish, Persian and Arabic loanwords—commonly referred to as Orientalisms—it is very similar to both Serbian and Croatian in written and spoken form.

The Bosnian language, as a new normative register of the Shtokavian dialect, was officially introduced in 1996 with the publication Pravopis bosanskog jezika in Sarajevo. According to this work, Bosnian differed from Serbian and Croatian in some basic linguistic characteristics, such as: sound formats in some words, especially "chas" ( kahwa compared to Serbian cafes ); significant and deliberate use of Eastern ("Turkish") words; writing the future tense kupit Ĉu ) as in Croatia, but not Serbian ( kupicu ) (both forms have the same pronunciation).

Kosovo is the subject of a territorial dispute between the Republic of Kosovo and the Republic of Serbia. The Republic of Kosovo unilaterally declared independence on February 17, 2008, but Serbia continues to claim it as part of its own sovereign territory. Both governments began to normalize relations in 2013, as part of the Brussels Agreement. Kosovo received official recognition as an independent state out of 193

After Yugoslavia broke up into several independent republics. Today, Bosnian is spoken in Bosnia and Herzegovina, however, knowing it, you can safely travel around Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia, without encountering a language barrier.

A bit of history

The Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian and Montenegrin languages are based on the same dialect, which makes all these languages almost identical. During the existence of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, there was no official division: there was one common Serbo-Croatian language.

To date, the Bosnian language does not have a single recognition. The point is that there is literary language Bosniaks, that is, ethnic Muslims, while the Bosnians are the Bosnians themselves, and the Bosnian Orthodox Serbs, and the Catholic Croats.

Influence of the East

Bosnian is the language of part of the South Slavs living in Bosnia and in a certain area in Serbia (the so-called Novopazar Sanjak, on the Serbian-Montenegrin border). It is also one of the official languages in Kosovo.

Although Bosnian is similar to Serbian, Montenegrin and Croatian, it still has one distinct difference from all. Ever since the dominion of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans, it was the Bosnians, as Muslims, who adopted into speech many Turkishisms, as well as Persianisms and Arabisms. Serbs also use Turkish borrowings, but much less frequently.

Islam came to the Bosnian territories along with the Turks, and local feudal lords, under the threat of deprivation of their property, converted to this religion. Thus, in the 16th century, Islam completely replaced Christianity in the upper strata of the population, greatly influencing vocabulary language.

Features of the Bosnian language

As mentioned above, the state language of Bosnia and Herzegovina differs from its neighbors primarily by a large number of Turkish words. Turkishisms are considered to be not only the original words of the Turkish language, found in pure form in Bosnian, but also words that eventually adjusted to the Slavic word formation.

You can take for example the word kapija, which means "gate / gate" in Bosnian. This is the Turkish word kapı, which translates as "gate". Or the Bosnian (and not only) word jastuk (pillow), which was formed from the Turkish yastık (pillow).

Among other Turkishisms, the following are found:

Ahlak moral - good behavior.
Čardak (chardak) - the top floor in the house. Interestingly, in Serbian, the word Čardak refers to a small storehouse for corn.
Divaniti - to talk.
Džennet - paradise.
Džemat - company, circle of friends.

This is far from full list Turkish borrowings in Bosnian. However, this is not its only feature. In addition to the fact that Bosnian is heavily Turkishized, blotches from the Serbian language are gradually being squeezed out of it and replaced by Croatian ones, although some stable Serbian words remain, for example, niko (no one), and not the Croatian nitko in the same meaning.

And the third feature of the Bosnian language is the use of the consonant phoneme h in some words:

How to learn Bosnian

The language spoken in Bosnia and Herzegovina is very multicultural. As mentioned earlier, it is a Slavic language with a large admixture of Turkish, Persian and Arabic. However, people who have previously learned, for example, the Croatian language, will easily understand Bosnian.

It is quite easy for a Russian-speaking person to learn the Bosnian language, because it is similar to Russian. In addition, today there is a huge selection of applications and sites for learning foreign languages, even not very popular ones. It is worth entering "we learn the Bosnian language" into the search engine line, and it will give out a huge number of different sites, dictionaries, phrasebooks, and methods for learning this language.

- Sanjaka. As an independent language, Bosnian stood out in 1990 after the collapse of the state of Yugoslavia. In 1994, it became one of the official languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina, along with Serbian and Croatian. Currently, Cyrillic and Latin alphabets are used in writing in parallel, with the latter predominating.

In total, approximately 2.5 million people speak the Bosnian language, 1.8 million of them live in Bosnia and Herzegovina, another 245 thousand are citizens of Serbia, and more than three hundred thousand Bosnians immigrated to the countries of Europe and North America.

History of the Bosnian language

During the years of the existence of the SFRY, the Bosnian and Montenegrin languages were considered dialects of the common Serbo-Croatian language. The basis of all the listed languages is the Shtokavian dialect, so the languages are very similar. After the division of Yugoslavia into independent states, the peoples inhabiting these lands began to restore the traditional national languages. The Bosnian language is currently one of the new languages, the formation of which has just begun. At this stage of language development, borrowed words are introduced, pronunciation is standardized.

The origin of the Bosnian language is attributed to the Middle Ages. The self-name of the speakers of the Bosnian language is Bosniaks, the language is accordingly called bosniak. Bosniaks profess Islam, therefore the Bosnian language differs from Croatian and Serbian in numerous lexemes, and is of Turkic origin. The tradition of such an entry was fixed at a time when the Ottoman Empire dominated the Balkans.

Traces of the Ottoman presence are clearly reflected not only in the Bosnian language, but also in the architecture and traditions of the Bosnians. Sarajevo - the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina - is decorated with ancient minarets and mosques. Ancient city, founded in the 13th century, at first was called Vrhbosna. The city got its current name in the 15th century and comes from the Turkic “barn”, which translates as “palace”. The Turks built a governor's palace in the captured city, and thanks to this, the city received a new name.

In the XVIII century, after the end of the Austro-Turkish war, Bosnia went to the Austrians, but by this time the vast majority of the local population had already converted to Islam. Nevertheless, in Orthodox monasteries during all the years of the rule of the Turks, they continued to copy books written in the ancient Serbian language, created chronicles and thus preserved the traditions of Christian literature using the Cyrillic alphabet. The first Muslim Bosnian writers appeared only in the 17th century.

The culture of the peoples of the Balkan Peninsula is very specific, which is explained by many external influences. Bosnian grammar is simpler than Russian, vocabulary is much poorer, but the words of the Bosnian language are often ambiguous.
The oral language of Bosniaks differs from Croatian and Serbian in greater homogeneity. Efforts made in the nineteenth century to streamline grammar were unsuccessful. The first dictionary of the Bosnian language was the glossary of Muhamed Khevayi Uskufi, compiled in 1631.
For a long time Bosnians preferred to use foreign languages, basically, or . The Bosnian language can be said to have been abandoned in favor of religious issues, which interested ethnic Bosniaks much more. A short revival of interest, observed at the beginning of the 20th century, allows today to revive the national language.

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After gaining independence in 1992, this Balkan republic went its own way, and three were proclaimed as state languages at once - Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian. The close connection of the peoples who once lived as one family on the territory of the SFRY made itself felt.

Some statistics and facts

The population of the country is just under 3.8 million people. Of these, 43.5% are Bosniaks or Muslims, 31% are Serbs and 17.5% are Croats.
Every tenth inhabitant of the republic is a gypsy.
The literacy rate of Bosnians, despite the low economic standard of living, is very high and there are 98% of educated people here.
All three official languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina are mutually intelligible and are dialects of Serbo-Croatian.
The Republic has signed the European Charter for Regional Languages, according to which the dialects of many national minorities are recognized in it. In the country you can hear Polish and Romanian, Yiddish and Albanian, Italian and Hungarian.

Muslim language

The self-name of most of the inhabitants of Bosnia and Herzegovina "Muslims" speaks of their religion. It is Muslims who prefer Bosnian as their native language, and its main differences from related Serbian and Croatian are in a special kind of borrowing. They appeared during the reign of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans and came from Turkish, Arabic and Persian languages. The Bosnian language is spoken by almost one and a half million people, including in neighboring Kosovo. Bosnian is adopted as official in the regions and in several communities.
As an alphabet, Muslims use two scripts at once - Latin and Cyrillic-vukovica.

Tourist notes

The level of foreign language proficiency among the inhabitants of Bosnia and Herzegovina is not too high, but in the capital and large cities you can find English-speaking staff in hotels, cafes and restaurants. Things are much better in the ski and beach resorts, where Bosnia and Herzegovina is striving to reach the level of European class in all respects and is desperately fighting for tourists. In such places there is a chance to meet Russian-speaking staff and get the necessary and important information in their native language. The abolition of visas for Russian travelers and attractive prices for everything also greatly contribute to the increase in the tourist flow to the Balkan Republic.