Thread: BOSNIA

Bosnia speak serbo-croat? Today Im going to go and buy a serbo-croat book yaaaayyy!

Originally Posted by Pasha

Bosnia speak serbo-croat? Today Im going to go and buy a serbo-croat book yaaaayyy!

You mean people in Bosnia speak Serbo-Croatian. Bosnia is country and it cannot speak language.

Hi! Yes, the people who live in Bosnia do speak Serbian/Croatian In fact they speak a varient of S/C. However I am sure the people in Bosnia would say that they speak Bosnian. Adam

^ what adam said. It's different and developed in its own.

To be accurate, people in Bosnia speak the Ijekavian dialect of Serbo-Croatian. This is also the same dialect spoken in most of Croatia, and Montenegro, and even some parts of Serbia.

You would be hard-pressed to tell the difference between the way someone from Zagreb and someone from Sarajevo speaks, sometimes even native speakers have difficulty in that.

Originally Posted by Danilo

To be accurate, people in Bosnia speak the Ijekavian dialect of Serbo-Croatian. This is also the same dialect spoken in most of Croatia, and Montenegro, and even some parts of Serbia.

You would be hard-pressed to tell the difference between the way someone from Zagreb and someone from Sarajevo speaks, sometimes even native speakers have difficulty in that.

LOL you are joking right? Zagreb and Sarajevo dialects can be recognised a mile off by native speakers
They are very distinct, different from eachother (Zagreb= very fast and German influenced; Sarajevo= very slow, relaxed and Turkish influenced)

They're both really nice to hear though

Ya, i agree with mayite. Those two dialects are totaly different and it's really easy for native speaker to see that difference. To foreigners it might be a little comfuseing, but......
And yes, it really is nice to hear it...

For me it's pretty funny to hear Bosnian speaker, cause they prolong every word, and for me Serbian speaker is quite funny.

Ya, it might sound a little funny, but since i go there almost every year since i was 10, well, it sounds quite natural to me, lol, but now that i think about it, ya, it is kinda funny... For my taste, it has to many turkish words (wich is perfectly understandable), but it's sometimes kinda annoying... I had quite alot troubles sometimes when someone tells me to give him something and i didnt know what that is, so they usualy laught at me etc so i felt kinda stuped, but, ok... lol

In which town you have family?
I have lot of family in Prijedor.

In which town you have family?
I have lot of family in Prijedor.

I have friends (but really good ones) in Sekovici (hour of ride from Zvornik, near Vlasenica, but that place is between Vlasenica and Sekovici (to be more exact)...) lol

Bosnia-Herzegovina consists of The Fedaration of Bosnia and Herzogovina (Muslim Croats + Bosniaks), and the Serbian Republic (Serbs).



Bosnia-Herzegovina is a complicated country because it is divided in two different ways.

Firstly it is divided into Bosnia and Herzegovina. On the map above I drew on the line in black (note this is only approzimate). Everything south is Herzegovina, and north of it is Bosnia. Then the whole country is divided into the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and a Serbian area called the Republika Srpska. The Fedearation of Bosnia and Herzegovina is made up of Muslim Croats and Bosniaks. The Serbia bit is obviously mostly Serbian (around the edges, the borders with Serbia & Montenegro).

So parts of Bosnia are in the Federation of B and H and parts are in the Serbian Republic, a Herzegovina is divided almost half way between the Federation of B and H and the Serbian Republic.

The Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina occupies about 51% of the country, and the Serbian Republic about 49% of the country.

Bosnia is about 5/6 and Herzegovina is about 1/6 of Bosnia-Herzegovina.


Note: The Serbian republic is sort of like an autonomous republic. Don't confuse it with the country Serbia (part of Serbia & Montenegro). The Rublic of Serbia is NOT part of the country Serbia.


The Serbs speak Serbian, the Croats speaks croat, the Bosniaks speach Bosnian.
I mean it is often considered as a separate language, but it is veeeery similar to Croatian and Serbian.

Serbian uses Cyrillic and Latin
Croatian uses Latin
Bosnian uses Latin

Originally Posted by TATY

Serbian uses Cyrillic and Latin
Croatian uses Latin
Bosnian uses Latin

Official letter of Serbia is cyrillic. Latin script is used but only cyrillic one is official.

I was quite amased in Serbia to see how much latin writing is used. Is there a reason for that? Is there an evolution for more use of latin writing, or does the situation more or less stays the same?
In libraries, many books are writen in it. Are those serbian editions as well or not?

Most Croats are Catholics, not Muslims. Muslims were listed as an ethnic group in Yugoslav census records—these are the SCB-speaking Muslims of Bosnia (Albanian-speaking Muslims of Kosovo were identified as Albanians in censuses). "Bosniak" refers to a subset of Bosnian Muslims, all Bosnian Muslims or all people of Bosnia (depending on whose definition you use !).

BTW, from the map, it's obvious that Serbs are the original inhabitants of B-H, their territory later encroached upon by Croats and Muslims.

Originally Posted by Jeff

Most Croats are Catholics, not Muslims. Muslims were listed as an ethnic group in Yugoslav census records—these are the SCB-speaking Muslims of Bosnia (Albanian-speaking Muslims of Kosovo were identified as Albanians in censuses). "Bosniak" refers to a subset of Bosnian Muslims, all Bosnian Muslims or all people of Bosnia (depending on whose definition you use !).

There's also a Muslim community centred around Novi Pazar in the Sandzak (Sanjak) region along the border between Serbia and Montenegro. They're also SCB speaking and probably consider themselves to be the same ethnic group as the Bosnian Muslims.

Originally Posted by Jeff

BTW, from the map, it's obvious that Serbs are the original inhabitants of B-H, their territory later encroached upon by Croats and Muslims.

The map does not fully reflect the ethnic composition before the war. A strip of territory from south of Bihac along the border with Croatia had a solidly Serb population, while in the East along parts of the border with Serbia there was a Muslim majority. I think it's probably unwise to make claims about who were the 'original' inhabitants based on that map. Actually, it's probably unwise to make such claims anyway, as you always run the risk of provoking a heated debate about history and territory. Unless of course that's what you're seeking to do

Most Croats are Catholics, not Muslims. Muslims were listed as an ethnic group in Yugoslav census records—these are the SCB-speaking Muslims of Bosnia (Albanian-speaking Muslims of Kosovo were identified as Albanians in censuses). "Bosniak" refers to a subset of Bosnian Muslims, all Bosnian Muslims or all people of Bosnia (depending on whose definition you use !).

Bosniak (Bošnjak) is largely the replacement term for Muslim Slavs and is never used to describe all people of Bosnia (Bosanci). As Cyphyr pointed out, the muslim slavs of the Sandzak do indeed identify themselves as Bosniaks.

Also, as Cyphyr said, the current ethnic map of BiH is the result of ethnic cleansing in the last war and doesn't reflect any historic pattern of settlement. The two most obvious changes since the war that he pointed out are Eastern and Western Bosnia which have been completely transformed demographically, but even in the areas where a single nation was in the majority, there were always significant populations of the other nations to be found there as well.

The "original inhabitants" of the country - the Illyrian tribes present in Roman times - don't exist anymore. Also, there have been so many migrations of peoples during the Ottoman wars, with Serbs and Croats both being pushed further north and west and people of both nations converting to Islam (for example, my ancestors lived in Hercegovina until the Ottoman invasions, when they fled to Brač), that the entire notion simply doesn't apply.

What is relevant is that the homes belonging to people of each of the three nations are located there. Saying one group or another is the original inhabitants is a way of saying that the other two have no right to live there. That kind of thinking is not only ahistorical, but it's also conducive only to those people in whichever of the three nations who want to start a new war.

Well said Stjepan.

Here's a map I found on the net years ago (can't recall exactly where now) that gives a better indication of the historic settlement patterns in both Bosnia and Croatia.



Larger version here

It shows clearly the complex ethnic mosaic that Bosnia was before the war. As Stjepan pointed out, there were many areas where no one nation was in a clear majority and the map shows this with the presence of many white 'no absolute majority' areas. In order to carve out "ethnically pure" contiguous statelets, the historical ethnic character of many areas was completely ignored.

You make many good points (and I certainly did not advocate war or even chauvinism). However, I don't think my notions have been contradicted. Viewing B-H as an inverted triangle, many of the districts on all three sides have Serb majorities as do some in the center of B-H. One can surmise that Serbs once formed the majority throughout the country and that the Croats and Muslims immigrated later, the Croats mainly from Dalmatia and the Muslims from the southeast (the direction of Turkey).

This has become an fascinating topic to me. I'm also interested in the origin of the Muslim majorities of the districts surrounding Bihać. But nearly all the materials I have on hand are in Serbo-Croat, a language I can read only with difficulty, unfortunately.