# Forum Other Languages Slavic languages Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian  BOSNIA

## Pasha

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

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## Vlacko

> 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.

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## adam562

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

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## Stefani

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

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## 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.

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## Mayita

> 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  ::

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## Galathilien

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...  ::

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## Vlacko

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

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## Galathilien

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

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## Vlacko

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

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## Vlacko

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

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## Galathilien

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

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## TATY

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

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## Vlacko

> 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.

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## iblix

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?

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## 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 !). 
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.

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## Cyphyr

> 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.   

> 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  ::

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## Stjepan

> 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.

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## Cyphyr

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.

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## Jeff

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.

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## Cyphyr

> 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).

 I suppose it's true that the map I posted would not in itself contradict your notions. It's important to know that at least on one of those sides the presence of Serb communities is a more recent development (if I'm permitted to call about 500 years recent  ::  ). I'm talking about the north west of Bosnia. That region did not have a significant Serb population before the Turkish conquest and was certainly not part of the medieval Serbian state. The Ottoman authorities encouraged settlement of these areas by Orthodox communities (which included both Serbs and Vlachs) after they had become depopulated due to wars and plagues. This type of thing happened repeatedly over the years resulting in quite a mixing of populations throughout the country so even the more detailed map above can't really be used to say who were the 'original inhabitants'. I don't think it's a particularly helpful notion anyway. 
I would recommend this book if you're interested in Bosnian history. I bought it when it was originally published in 1994 while the war was still ongoing. I think it was updated some years after but I haven't seen that version. I think it gives a fair account of the history but some Serbian and Croatian nationalists might disagree because it doesn't support their view that Bosnia was an entirely artifical creation of Tito's Yugoslavia.    

> ...and that the Croats and Muslims immigrated later, the Croats mainly from Dalmatia and the Muslims from the southeast (the direction of Turkey).

 Bosnian Muslims didn't just migrate from Turkey. They were overwhelmingly Christian Slavs who converted to Islam. Many from both the Orthodox and Catholic communities. There was also an independent Bosnian church estranged from Rome before the Turkish conquest and it may be that members of this former church formed the nucleus of those new converts to Islam. 
Many strongly nationalistic Serbs and Croats like to contemptuously dismiss the Bosnians as not being a real nation, saying things like "Bosnians don't exist". I was told recently by a Croatian girl that all Bosnian Muslims were either Turks or the descendants of Slav women raped by Turks, but then she also believed that the Illuminati were running the world so I treated her comments with the contempt they deserved.   

> 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.

 It certainly is a fascinating topic. The history of the Bihać area is something I'm interested in as well and I don't know if its origin was adequately explained in the book I mentioned. I can't remember anyway. It does seem strange that such a distinctively Muslim area finds itself so far removed from the rest of the Muslim populated lands and surrounded by Serb and Croat settlements. I can only guess it was another result of a deliberate settlement policy by the Ottoman rulers of the day.

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## Vlacko

> I suppose it's true that the map I posted would not in itself contradict your notions. It's important to know that at least on one of those sides the presence of Serb communities is a more recent development (if I'm permitted to call about 500 years recent  ). I'm talking about the north west of Bosnia. That region did not have a significant Serb population before the Turkish conquest and was certainly not part of the medieval Serbian state. The Ottoman authorities encouraged settlement of these areas by Orthodox communities (which included both Serbs and Vlachs) after they had become depopulated due to wars and plagues. This type of thing happened repeatedly over the years resulting in quite a mixing of populations throughout the country so even the more detailed map above can't really be used to say who were the 'original inhabitants'. I don't think it's a particularly helpful notion anyway.

 Original Slav inhabitans of Balkan peninsula are Serbs and Croats. Serbs had 7 it's states including Bosnia. Croats were settled west from Bosnia. But in Bosnia there were three sides Serb side, Croat side and Heretical side... Heretics had it's own church independent both from Constantinopole and Rome. The main cause of this situation is that there were no bishopric neither Orthodox nor Catholic in Bosnia, which resolved a good base for heretical beliefs... There were three sides in Bosnia but only Serbs were rulers of Bosnia, and the last Bosnian king was Serb, Tomasevic is his surname I can't exactly remember his name. After the Turks came Catholic Slavs in Bosnia kept close with Croats, Orthodox Slavs kept close with Serbs, and heretics since they didn't have strong suport from some church converted to islam. Although throug many years of Turkish ocupation of Bosnia many Serbs because of the hard position converted to islam, and that's a fact.
Saying that a Bosnian muslims are Turkish origin is a notorious lie. They speak Serbo-Croatian, they even have Serbian tipes of surname all ending *-ić*. You can't find any Turkish surname in Bosnia. 
Turkish population colonised Bosnia but they migrated from Bosnia when Bosnia fell under Austro-Ugric ocupation.

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## Cyphyr

That account seems to more or less coincide with my understanding of Bosnian history. However, as far as I can recall, the book I mentioned would not have described the Bosnian state as being a "Serbian state". Certainly, Serbs lived there and have always been an important component of the Bosnian population but I understood that the medieval Bosnian state followed a more independent course and was not always ruled by followers of the Orthodox church. The book also referred to Bosnia (not including Hercegovina) as being more under the influence of the Roman church than the Orthodox church before the Turkish conquest. In any case it was sort of on the 'fault line' between the Eastern and Western churches and, because of its mountainous terrain, somewhat out of the reach of both at times. This probably explains why Islam was better able to take root here than elsewhere in the Balkans. 
I suppose it's a sensitive topic given the recent tragic history in the region. If someone says that the medieval Bosnian state was independent of Serbia then that may be interpreted as a justification for a modern unitary Bosnian state. Likewise, if someone says that the Bosnian state was actually Serbian, then it can be used to justifiy the claim that all of Bosnia rightfully belongs to Serbia. Historians may differ but their conclusions are always likely to be influenced by the modern political situation.

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## Jeff

> they even have Serbian tipes of surname all ending *-ić*. You can't find any Turkish surname in Bosnia.

 I'm confused. Aren't Izetbegović (izzet = 'glory'; bey/beğ = honorific title) and Šaćirbegović (şakirt = 'pupil,' 'disciple'), among others, Ottoman names ?

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## Stjepan

The Ottoman conquest of Bosnia occured before the slavic patrynomic became a surname, so many Bosniaks have surnames which reflect ancestors who lived after islamization had already begun.  Many names are derived from Turkish or Persian words/names, but they developed through exactly the same process that Serbian names did.  Just as someone with the surname Jovanović who is Serbian can conclude that he had an ancestor named Jovan, an Osmanović from Bosnia can conclude that he had an ancestor named Osman.  The names indicate that the founder of the family name may have come from outside Bosnia, but they were absorbed into the slavic population. 
Turks on the other hand did not use surnames.  In actuality, they were only introduced in Turkey by a surname law which was part of Kemal Ataturk's reforming measures after the Republic of Turkey was established.

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## Vlacko

> Originally Posted by Vlacko  they even have Serbian tipes of surname all ending *-ić*. You can't find any Turkish surname in Bosnia.   I'm confused. Aren't Izetbegović (izzet = 'glory'; bey/beğ = honorific title) and Šaćirbegović (şakirt = 'pupil,' 'disciple'), among others, Ottoman names ?

 Yes, but they kept there original Christian surname ending -ić. Took Turkish words ending Serbian -ić. Weird mixture...

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## Jeff

I didn't mean to imply that Bosnians are ethnically different from Serbs and Croats on the basis of genetics. (Such a hypothesis is better left untested—I think most of the world considers ethnicity a cultural, not a genetic trait, anyway.) 
What do Serbs and Croats believe about the origins of their ethnonyms Srb- and Hrvat- ? Most in the West have concluded that they're derived from Scythic (Iranian) languages. This seems far-fetched to me, although there were сіверяни and білі хорвати in early medieval Ukraine.

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## Vlacko

> I didn't mean to imply that Bosnians are ethnically different from Serbs and Croats on the basis of genetics. (Such a hypothesis is better left untested—I think most of the world considers ethnicity a cultural, not a genetic trait, anyway.) 
> What do Serbs and Croats believe about the origins of their ethnonyms Srb- and Hrvat- ? Most in the West have concluded that they're derived from Scythic (Iranian) languages. This seems far-fetched to me, although there were сіверяни and білі хорвати in early medieval Ukraine.

 That is an interesting question. I don't know origin of a word Srbin?

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## Dejan

Stjepan wrote: 
"The "original inhabitants" of the country - the Illyrian tribes present in Roman times - don't exist anymore." 
I spoke with an Albanian man years ago who was of the view that Albanians and the modern day descendants of the Illyrians.  He told me that their language was related to the Latin languages (although distantly) making this sound credible to me.  This would mean that the Illyrians were forced out of Bosnia by Slavic tribes, further south into present day Albania.

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## Dejan

I personally doubt that the words "Srb" or "Hrvat" have any direct Iranian derivation (although, like most European languages, the Shtokavian and Cekavian dialects that gave rise to these terms can trace their origins through time to central/middle asia).  I can't speak for the word "Hrvat" but I am aware of other words sounding like "Srb" being used to describe Slavic people/languages.  Aside from Jeff's examples, consider the "Sorbians" of central Europe.  Jeff's Ukrainian examples are interesting given that it is thought that the ancestral Slavic language originated somewhere between Ukraine and Poland. 
[Edited]   ::   Sorry, I stand corrected.  There seems to be at least a plausible argument that the terms "Srb" and "Hrvat" are non-Slavic in origin.  See: http://www.geocities.com/protoillyrian/serb.html.  The central thesis of this argument is that both terms are derived from the shores of the Caspian sea and relate to the Avar ancestors of the Serbs and Croats.

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## Stjepan

> I spoke with an Albanian man years ago who was of the view that Albanians and the modern day descendants of the Illyrians. He told me that their language was related to the Latin languages (although distantly) making this sound credible to me. This would mean that the Illyrians were forced out of Bosnia by Slavic tribes, further south into present day Albania.

 Yes, it's generally believed that Albanians are the descendents of the Illyrians, or at least one branch of them.  I meant more to say that the Illyrians no longer exist in BiH, although to the best of my knowledge they weren't forced out so much as they mixed with and became assimilated with the Croats and Serbs. 
Also, the person who told you that Albanian is distantly related to Latin is quite correct.  However, Croatian, Serbian, Russian, French, German, Persian, and the languages of India are also distantly related to Latin.  Most of the languages of Europe, Iran, and India belong to the Indo-European family of languages and are all related to each other.

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## Tvrtko_Kotromanic

Bosnian Croats and Bosniaks,and some Bosnian serbs are the real descendants od Illyrians. 
Read this files in Adobe Acrobat:  http://www.geocities.com/marik_8666/bosnia.pdf  http://www.geocities.com/marik_8666/bosnian2.pdf

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