Talk:Serbo-Croatian

Primary language of SCBM

@Surtsicna, you reverted my edit, replacing it with the statement that the "primary language" of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Montenegro is Serbo-Croatian. If a person from Istria is born čakavian and speaks only čakavian, can his/her primary language be the pluricentric Serbo-Croatian, which is strictly štokavian? The statement is unreferenced, do you mind providing one (or three)? I know many sources will disagree on the issue, and I'd like to see more neutral language in that part. We can also discuss the other two statements from my edit that you reverted with no explanation, the last one being exactly what the reliable source says. Thanks, Ponor (talk) 21:24, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

@Ponor: "Primary" language obviously means the most spoken language, the one that is mostly used in everyday communication. The fact that there are places in Croatia where people speak different languages/dialects does not prove that Serbo-Croatian is not primary language. For example, people from Sterzing speak German, but is that proof that Italian is not the primary language of Italy? No. Also, you conflate two different things: vernacular language and standard language. This sentence you cite speaks about the standard Serbo-Croatian language, while you speak about vernacular Chakavian. Vanjagenije (talk) 22:33, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

@Vanjagenije, there seems to be a lot of confusion with some basic notions in all our BCSM articles here. If S-C is "one standard language": who in 2023 sets the standard, and how come there are 3-4 standardized varieties of that one standard language (1 standard = 3-4 standards)? Can you find any native speakers of the language(s) that'll actually call S-C their native language? You're allowed, for linguistic purposes, to group languages the way you want if it makes studying them easier, but you also need to admit that there are other criteria when deciding what to call those languages. People are unhappy (I've seen it all over wikipedias) because, for example, Scandinavian languages (three nations, four mutually intelligible languages, four wikipedias) get different treatment than Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian; it's a "sin" to say that Croatian is the primary language of Croatia, God forbid, that's so nationalistic, while no one has issues with saying that their primary languages are Bokmål or Nynorsk or Danish or Swedish. Thanks to an IP editor I was curious to see what prof. Ronelle Alexander had to say in his BCS grammar; I think he came much closer to our WP:NPOV that we did.

As for the primary language, that, according to this very wikipedia, is "mother tongue, native tongue, first language, the first language or dialect that a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period". So if you're from Čakovec your primary language is most likely kajkavian, if you're from Hvar it's most likely chakavian, and so on. Only at the age of 8, 9 or 10 you'll know enough of the Croatian "standard variety" that has BCS shtokavian as its "core" (Alexander's terminology). Croatian journalist Jurica Pavičić recently said it this way (google translate who needs and wants): "Kasapović pritom propušta uočiti da to lingvističko i kulturološko jedinstvo prethodi Jugoslaviji upravo i jedino zato što ilirska/proto-jugoslavenska ideja prethodi Jugoslaviji. Činjenica je da Bosanka Kasapović i ja - potomak hvarskih težaka - danas polemiziramo u novinama... pri tom svi čitamo i razumijemo isti jezik. Kasapović zaboravlja da ta činjenica nije nastala po duhu svetom, nego je rezultat tendencioznog ... rada proto-jugoslavenske ideologije. Da nije bilo nje, ja bih danas pisao na svom materinskom jeziku (čakavskoj ikavici), Kasapović bi pisala sličnim jezikom kojim piše i sada, a Zagrepčani nas ne bi ni mogli čitati jer bi bili kajkavci. Uzimajući BSCM jezični prostor kao 'samorazumljiv' i nešto 'što oduvijek postoji', prof. Kasapović pokazuje tipičnu aroganciju štokavskog heartlanda: ona ne shvaća da su se kulture poput moje odrekle vlastitog materinjeg jezika da bi - u bi u ime ilirske ideologije - pisale i govorile, pa, da se ne lažemo - njezinim." So if the goal here is to reach neutrality, I'd like to see the voices like Pavičić's heard.

When it comes to the problematic statement "the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Montenegro is Serbo-Croatian", that's an unsourced statement. If it's common knowledge it should not be hard to find four references that have "primary language", "Serbo-Croatian" *and* Serbia/Croatia/Bosnia/Montenegro in the same sencence. It's as simple as that. And then as a neutral, knowledgable editor to find other references that say that the four countries have the respective languages as their primary languages. Unreferenced material can only be removed (Because a lack of... / WP:EDITING). Ponor (talk) 00:32, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

This gets so tiring with the sloppiness of wording for a linguistic reality. "Serbo-Croatian" is not a "standard" language. A "standard language" is an arbitrary non-linguistic term for a single variety of a language that is given "official" status. A single language can have more than one "standard" form when it is used in different countries, even though the spoken languages (which is primary in linguistic usage) in those countries are simply different varieties of a single language. Thus, in the US the "standard" variety (although there is no official "standard", but only a common variety that is accepted for television broadcast and universally taught in schools for writing) is different than the "standard" variety in Britain and the "standard" variety in New Zealand. Yet these "standards" are not different languages, but different formally accepted varieties of the single language that is spoken in all of them. As there is no "Standard English", there is no "Standard Serbo-Croatian". There is "Standard US English", "Standard British English", and "Standard New Zealand English", just as there is "Standard Serbian", "Standard Croatian", and "Standard Bosnian". Yet there is but one English language (although expressed in more than one variety) and only one Serbo-Croatian (or Serbian-Croatian-Bosnian or Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian) language (although expressed in more than one variety). There are a wide variety of sources that say this very thing. You can find a useful bibliography at the entry for Glottolog. It gets so tiring having this same discussion here and at Talk:Croatian language and Talk:Serbian language. The opposition to the linguistic reality is too often tinged (both subtly and overtly) with nationalism. --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 03:58, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

@TaivoLinguist, if people find the B+C+S+… articles problematic, maybe there is a problem with them after all? I don't think that your English language examples are suitable in this case; all those EN varieties didn't start splitting before 1850s, and by that time there was already enough EN "standardization" and overall literacy. Those people were on different continents, there was prob. no need for "nationalism through language".

On enwiki, Czech language and Slovak language are not treated as "standardized varieties of (some attempted) Czechoslovak language". Czech-Slovak is not "a language" but "languages". If Serbo-Croatian (neutral: BCSM) is not a standard language but a continuum of languages (dialects/whatever), then we should always say so. If

• "Czech is a West Slavic language of the Czech–Slovak group"

why would it be wrong to say

• Croatian is a Western South Slavic language of the BCS(M) group (etc.)

That'd make many more people happy for sure.

Nobody calls 1) Danes, 2) Swedes or 3) Norwegians nationalists because of their four (4!) standardized mutually intelligible Scandinavian languages, yet I'll be called a nationalist for even trying to rectify some things on BCS (worry not, true "nationalists" consider me just the opposite of that). Like it or not, nationalism has always been a driving force of language differentiation, language and the idea of nation go hand in hand. Language, somewhere and sometimes, does serve as one's national/ethnic identity (we have that in First language). Ideally, all Earthlings would be speaking the same language, but somehow we never agreed whether that'd be Latin, French, English, Spanish, or... hm... Russian.

UC Berkeley's prof. Ronelle Alexander in his BCS grammar describes this "reality" (→neutrality) much better than we do: to all POV-pushers of "one language" vs. "multiple languages" he answers "the language is simultaneously one and more than one". Wikipedia should describe what is, as opposed to what should be, and that includes how things (languages) are called. We have different models for that, as shown above for two other continua. But let's start with Czech and Slovak, they're so similar that you'll be allowed to write your PhD thesis in Slovak at a Czech university. How do they deserve different treatment than B/C/S/…? Ponor (talk) 16:37, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Linguists do NOT consider Czech and Slovak to be one language because the differences between them are greater than the differences between the Serbo-Croatian varieties. Czech and Slovak, Serbian-Croatian-Bosnian. It's subjective linguistic reality from the judgment of a wide variety of real linguists (plural and representing a substantial number over time), not any kind of "bias" being pushed by people with a political ax to grind. --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 17:34, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

TaivoLinguist, I'm pretty sure you're aware of Wikipedia's core content policies (neutrality, verifiability, reliable sources, no original research), and I'm almost sure you know there are different views on what makes a language a language. Britannica is a reliable tertiary source, and on BCMS it says:

BCMS, formerly Serbo-Croatian language, term of convenience used to refer to the forms of speech employed by Serbs, Croats, Montenegrins, and Bosniaks. These forms of speech have often been termed “a language,” but they are also seen as separate languages: Serbian, Croatian, and in recent years also Bosnian and Montenegrin. Neither view is completely right or wrong; the concept “language” has multiple definitions, and the status of BCMS will depend on the definition one adopts. (Written by prof. emeritus of Cornell University W. Browne)

Another emeritus, prof. Alexander, unlike me and you (anonymous Wikipedia editors) is also a reliable source. In his Grammar he says:

The question of whether what has been described herein is one language or more than one has occasioned a great deal of discussion among professionals and laymen alike. The answer, of course, is that both statements are true: the language is simultaneously one and more than one.

This is Neutrality we need to have in our articles. You can't pick sources that you like and disregard the sources you don't.

When it comes to your links to glottolog: yes, it's a scheme a few people have come up with by their meta analysis; it's probably reliable, though unorthodox because it hasn't gone through a normal scientific publication peer-review process. It lists many references, some of which are for Croatian grammars, Serbian grammars, S-C grammars, C-S grammars, BCS grammars etc. Those links make one valuable viewpoint, but as I said, there are others.

As for the comment you posted and deleted (Special:Diff/1157742948): I might note in that regard that Czech and Slovak were treated as separate languages long before their political separation and the constituent varieties of Serbian-Croatian-Bosnian were not.

You do realize that "missing history" of all these languages (when it's said they've all always been one "Serbo-Croatian language", or derive from it) *is* one of the main complaints: Serbo-Croatian as a term did not exist until the first half of the 1800s, and it took many decades to establish it as the "core" of the languages. The title page of Judita (1501) says it's written in "in Croatian verses".

Anyway... It's been three weeks since I politely asked for sources. I'd like to do some work in this article and articles alike. Statement^{[reliable source]} and no unsouruced material. Per our policies here. Please. Ponor (talk) 14:18, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

"It's been three weeks since I politely asked for sources." Those sources were politely provided by me immediately following the request made by you (or perhaps by your anon IP in a prior Wikipedia existence) above. Simply scroll up to find them. I'm not obliged to continually repeat the effort of providing the same sources over and over and over again to editors who haven't read the previous discussion (or they may be at Talk:Croatian language page because all these discussions blend together and are horribly repetitive). And your two sources, reliable or not, are insufficient to contradict the dozens of reliable sources that unequivocally state that Serbian-Croatian-Bosnian is one, and only one, pluricentric language, but that Czech and Slovak are two using solid linguistic scientific methodology. --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 15:06, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

And, as a general note, Encyclopedia Britannica is a very poor quality reliable source (being, as you admit "tertiary") to any secondary reliable source written by a linguist for specialist audiences. --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 15:08, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

You can look at this thread, about halfway down or so to see the bibliography I mentioned above. The bibliography at Glottolog (a very widely respected reference work among linguists specifically on the question of the languages of the world) is also extensive. --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 15:16, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

@TaivoLinguist, excuse me, but why would you say that was MY ANON IP? This has to stop now, you're not acting in good faith.

When people ask for sources, that means "Author. Year. Title. Page number" of a published, reviewed work that explicitly says "Serbo-Croatian language" is the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Montenegro". You can challenge Brittanica as a reliable source where reliable sources are challenged; I cannot take your word for it. Ponor (talk) 15:25, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

My apologies for thinking you were the anon IP at Talk:Croatian language. As I said, this is a repetitive discussion that has been going on for years (literally) here, at Talk:Croatian language, Talk:Serbian language, and now also at Talk:Kajkavian. It is repetitive and differs little from site to site over the last few years as a new editor arrives to push the same agenda. Sorry, User:Ponor, but you are just the latest in a long line of "separatists" and none of your arguments and sources are new or different. None of you has taken the time to read the pages of discussion that has already taken place on any of these pages, so frustration from older editors like myself is somewhat justified. You all just blend together after a while. If you read back through the discussions and archives here or at the other pages that I've mentioned, you will find extensive references to sources, dates, page numbers, exact quotes, etc. Perhaps I should just store them in a Word document so that I can cut and paste every time that a new editor shows up thinking they're plowing new ground. --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 15:47, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

@TaivoLinguist, this is a free encyclopedia. That gives you freedom to not discuss things with me, and that gives me freedom to question things and check if due processes are followed (bold editing, revert-discuss cycles etc.). I don't think they are, because I see way too much WP:OWNership, lack of proper sourcing (=WP:OR), impatient and rushed reverts. Sources are dismissed as being "nationalistic", users are dismissed as being "nationalistic", etc. One way or another, that is biased editing.

I am just reading what you said about Alexander's BCS grammar with sociolinguistic commentary: "It's a pretty substantial work. I've read it and it's sound." So why not use Alexander more? My mother was "professor of Croatian or Serbian language and Yugoslav literature" and I've read quite a few books of hers; Alexander's book was my first BCS grammar written by an English author. It's a good one. It doesn't take sides, doesn't call people names. It would be most wikipedic if we could follow his approach (from the Commentary), and be open to other views – because they exist, and because we're here to present them, and not to tell which ones are wrong or right. (Both Alexander and Browne say everyone's a little wrong & a little right)

I came here because I saw this reverted appeal on Joy's talk page; I don't know who that user is, and I don't need to know. But it made me curious enough to read a few chapters of Alexander's grammar and see how his book can be used in BCMS articles. Here totally in good faith with more WP:NEUTRALity in mind. I'll see what I can do about it. I'm hoping for more constructive collaboration and no unexplained, rushed reverts.

Britannica? We know the author, it's a respected name. As a tertiary source it "can help provide broad summaries of topics that involve many primary and secondary sources and may help evaluate due weight, especially when primary or secondary sources contradict each other". Ponor (talk) 16:42, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

User:Ponor, I just looked at that revert on Joy's Talk Page. That's an easy one. It was not written in English. This is the English Wikipedia and the first rule of the English Wikipedia is that everything must be written in English or translated immediately following (in the case of short quotes). If you write your comment in anything but English, it will be immediately reverted. End of story. That goes for whatever you wrote above in whatever dialect of Serbo-Croatian it was written in. It can be ignored in all further discussion. It is not the other editors' job to "run it through Google Translate", it is YOUR job to translate before posting. --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 05:30, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

I do own Alexander's grammar and it is a good one that I have used as a reference in the past, but I think that you have misinterpreted her sociolinguistic commentary with the linguistic reality that she also makes clear. Sociolinguistic definitions of "language" are not recognized by linguists as valid criteria for determining whether two speech forms are one language or more than one. Here is where she clearly states that this complex is one language right on page xvii: "What is clear to everyone, however, is that all these languages share a common core, a fact which enables all their speakers to communicate freely with one another." Her use of "languages" is based on her emphasis on sociolinguistic realities, where speakers claim to be speaking different languages. But her reference to "communicate freely with one another" is the linguistic definition of a single language: mutual intelligibility. So because she doesn't want to offend the speakers of the various forms of this language by labeling it as one language, she defines it in loud and clear words that any trained linguist will recognize as the unequivocal definition of a single language--"communicate freely with one another". The reason she can mention different "languages" rather than insisting on calling it one language is because there are three standard written forms of this language which differ slightly from one another and are used for official purposes in each of the three countries where it is spoken. So there is one spoken common language, but three different official "languages". This is the definition of a pluricentric language: one spoken language with different official written standard forms. It is similar in many ways to the different standard forms of English found in the US and Britain--different details of spelling, pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary, but not so much as to inhibit mutual intelligibility. --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 17:39, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Let me compare this with a situation that I have often heard in my work among the Native communities of the Great Basin where the Numic languages are spoken. It is almost always required when speakers of these seven languages gather for meetings for them to declare that "We all speak the same language". Yet, they never conduct their business in their native languages, but always switch to English because they cannot actually understand one another. That's not the case with the forms of Serbian-Croatian-Bosnian. They can understand one another quite well when speaking their native "languages" because they are not speaking different languages, but one language with slightly different dialects. --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 17:45, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Why do speakers of Serbian-Croatian-Bosnian claim to speak three languages when they speak just one, but speakers of Numic languages claim to speak one language when they speak seven? Because there are social and political factors with no basis in linguistics that influence the decisions of people on how to label their speech forms relative to others. It is common to see American English labelled as "the American language" even though it is a dialect of English. Labeling it a "language" emphasizes that the American people are not the British people. But there's no linguistic science underneath the label. --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 17:50, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

@TaivoLinguist, actually no, I have not misunderstood what a polycentric language means; I understand why you use it in linguistics when you try to organize things. The term, though, has disappeared from public discourse (even when C-S and S-C languages were officially taught, they were always colloquially called C and S), and that somehow needs to be addressed.

I think it would help to have Alexander's sociolinguistic part introduced early in the articles. I like how she (oh!) labels the common language as "the core", and I think using the same term would help many readers understand what all this is about. The thing is, very few native speakers (<1%) of BCMS will call their language Serbo-Croatian/Croato-Serbian, and forcing the name upon them feels like someone is trying to rebrand all their history, and all the history of their language. A few little tweaks is all I'm asking for; by naming things differently we can show respect for the feelings of those people. Prof Alexander is a linguist; if, in her book, "she doesn't want to OFFEND the speakers of the various forms of this language by labeling it as one language", WHY WOULD WE? We're not going to say that the core language is not the same, but we're going to say that "language is also being viewed as a symbolic system ... for ethnic identity" and that, despite all linguist. reasoning, "three languages – Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian – have been officially recognized". If she can write about these aspects in her book, so can we. Our article is not nothing-but-linguistics; and if someone thinks it is - it shouldn't be.

Finally, it would help have the article renamd to B-C-M-S (or B-C-S, for now), to make it more inclusive so that Bosnian or Montenegrin people don't feel threatened by dem nationalists in Croatia and Serbia who claim they're all Croats or Serbs. I'd think Britannica is more conservative when it comes to naming things, but they renamed their article in 2020, and we're still stuck with Mr Grimm. Would that be a problem, what's your (educated) opinion? Ponor (talk) 22:08, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

First of all, these are not "three languages". They are three slightly different national standards of one language. Any other formulation is not linguistically sound. And the notion of "pluricentricity" is not a dead concept at all. ("Pluricentric" is the correct term, not "polycentric".) I was at a conference in Europe a couple of years ago on that very topic and it was very much a topic of discussion. If there is a large degree of mutual intelligibility (Alexander implies that it is at least over 90% in her phrasing), then they constitute different varieties of one language, not three. From her description it seems quite apparent that mutual intelligibility between the Croatian, Serbian, and Bosnian varieties is greater even than that between Scottish English or Australian English and most varieties of American English. South African English is even less intelligible to Americans, probably as low as 80% or so, which is usually taken as the bottom limit of calling them one language. So sociolinguistics can be mentioned, I have no objection to that, but trying to use sociolinguistic antagonism as a marker of multiple languages is not linguistically sound and I will object to such a justification for calling these three national standards "different languages".

Second, Wikipedia generally uses the most commonly occurring name for a language in English language linguistic literature. In the majority of English language linguistic literature up until the last couple of decades, "Serbo-Croatian" was the common term for "non-Slovenian West South Slavic". Recently, however, composite terms such as "Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian" or "Serbian-Croatian-Bosnian" or the unwieldy mouthful "Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian" or just about any other alphabetic or non-alphabetic combination of these names have become more common. But, and here is the important point, no single combination has achieved widespread usage to the point of meeting Wikipedia's standard of "common English usage". Common English usage is beginning to trend towards some combination, but no particular combination has risen to the top of the pile in terms of usage. Alexander, perhaps the most common grammar in English for this language, uses Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian, but Glottolog, perhaps the most widely accepted classification of the world's languages, uses Serbian-Croatian-Bosnian. No standard source currently includes Montenegrin (and I daresay that none ever will because, with the exception of a couple of rare African and Papuan languages, three names in combination is unwieldy and four is simply too much). Thus, until English language linguistic literature generally settles on one of the three-name combinations then renaming this article is premature.

Third, you don't seem to understand what Alexander means by "core language". By using the singular term "core language" she is describing the very same thing that unites British English and American English--the vast common elements of different dialects or varieties of a single language. That's what makes them one language. Just because different varieties or dialects of a single language have slight differences in phonetics, morphology, syntax, and lexicon does not make them different languages at all. As long as mutual intelligibility is not excessively hindered by these differences then they are still one language. Alexander makes that crystal clear when she says that "all their speakers [can] communicate freely with one another".

And, finally, Britannica is not the "gold standard" for Wikipedia usage. Wikipedia treats all tertiary sources as reliable, but secondary sources are generally preferable since the scholarship is closer to the source. Wikipedia follows its own set of rules and those rules don't always match Britannica's. --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 23:33, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

"As long as mutual intelligibility is not excessively hindered by these differences then they are still one language." If it was ine language it wouldn't have 2 names. You are arguing for disregarding Bosnian language because you say so, same with Montenegrin, with the faulty argument above. SC as a language doesn't exist and people of Bosnia want their place, as we have had always. Please don't rebrand Bosnian as anything other than Bosnian. 95.156.146.133 (talk) 07:49, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

We go by what the academic reliable sources say, not what you think to avoid "offending" some nationality. HammerFilmFan (talk) 03:49, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 16 June 2023

Hi there, Serbo-Croat doesn't exist! In any case it is not spoken in Croatia. Could you please remove any references to Croatia from the page. Or I will create an account and edit it myself. 185.207.71.146 (talk) 10:36, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

 Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. In this case, the article is sourced quite well; what makes you think that the subject "doesn't exist"? It seems extraordinarily unlikely that this is the case. Actualcpscm (talk) 11:22, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Of course it does. Please cease and desist trolling this article's TP. HammerFilmFan (talk) 03:47, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

The 'Old Church Slavonic' and 'Arebica' paragraph

to quote: "In the 9th century, Old Church Slavonic was adopted as the language of the liturgy in churches serving various Slavic nations. This language was gradually adapted to non-liturgical purposes and became known as the Croatian version of Old Slavonic. The two variants of the language, liturgical and non-liturgical, continued to be a part of the Glagolitic service as late as the middle of the 19th century. The earliest known Croatian Church Slavonic Glagolitic manuscripts are the Glagolita Clozianus and the Vienna Folia from the 11th century."

this seems false to me unless I'm missing something? Croatian, as well Bosnian, Serbian, Montenegrin and any non-standardized form of the language, are a separate South Slavic language from Old Church Slavonic which was based and essentially is Bulgarian and was, thus, definitely not "gradually adopted to non-liturgical purposes" unless this is meant to convey adoption of some errant vocabulary. But this is then given undue weight in the first paragraph and with the strong implication of an entire language shift. Serbo-Croatian was and is in the western branch of South Slavic languages and Bulgarian is in the eastern branch, they aren't even that close. Bulgarian has only two grammar cases which is a development, I believe, as a result of the Turkic Bolghar conquest of the Slavic Bulgarians and language simplification similar to what happened to Old English after Norman conquest.

And then the next paragraph seems even more obviously wrong to me. To quote: "The beginning of written Serbo-Croatian can be traced from the tenth century and on when Serbo-Croatian medieval texts were written in five scripts: Latin, Glagolitic, Early Cyrillic, Bosnian Cyrillic (bosančica/bosanica), and Arebica, the last principally by Bosniak nobility. Serbo-Croatian competed with the more established literary languages of Latin and Old Slavonic in the west and Persian and Arabic in the east."

this entire paragraph seems highly suspect. Unless I'm very misinformed, Arabic script was never used to write Serbo-Croatian during the middle ages, it's a script that was adopted by literate Bosnians who converted to Islam after the Ottoman Conquest of Bosnia in 1463. The way this is written strongly implies that Arabic competed with Latin, Greek, Cyrillic and Glagolithic scripts for use in medieval Bosnia, especially with the "the last principally by Bosniak nobility". Muslim Bosnian local provincial elite after the Ottoman conquest, yes, but not before as this seems to say. Unless there are examples of pre-1463 texts written in Arabic in Bosnia, Croatia, Montenegro or Serbia I say that's just false. 109.175.48.164 (talk) 05:43, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

The first part (about Old Church Slavonic) looks ok to me. It says that Old Church Slavonic was first used as the language of the liturgy and then was also adapted to "non-liturgical purposes" (like writing books). That looks correct. As about the other part (Arebica), I think you are correct and Arebica should be removed from that paragraph. Vanjagenije (talk) 08:55, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Recent Revert

Moved from User talk:TaivoLinguist#Recent Revert

 – Vipz (talk) 19:47, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

(I am copying this discussion from my Talk Page to here since it now includes three participants. --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 21:10, 4 January 2024 (UTC))

Hello TaivoLinguist. In you recent revert of my edit on the Serbo-Croatian article, you mentioned it is not a commonly used term. While Serbo-Croatian appears to be the commonly used term, Croato-Serbian seems significant enough as even in the infobox “hrvatskosrpski” (Croato-Serbian) is denoted in the line “srpskohrvatski / hrvatskosrpski” right under the Serbo-Croatian term. So it seemed logical to me. Why would it be less worthy or common an alternative than “Serbo-Croat-Bosnian (SCB), Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS), and Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS)”? I’m a bit confused on this reasoning.

Britannica also states “Croato-Serbian” as a direct alternative which seems to imply it is a commonly known alternative term. “In 1945 the victorious communist-led Partisans under Josip Broz Tito reestablished Yugoslavia. The new government at first treated Croatian and Serbian as separate languages, alongside Slovene and newly standardized Macedonian. But soon it began pressing for a unified Serbo-Croatian (or Croato-Serbian).” Here is another example were both are stated as if commonly interchangeable.”Some 17m people in Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia and Montenegro speak variations of what used to be called Serbo-Croatian or Croato-Serbian.” Hence why I went ahead with the edit and didn’t figure it would be contested really.

It’s already listed here as well: Serbo-Croatian_(disambiguation)

Also you mentioned that a few of the other alternative names in the lead are unnecessary. Which specifically were you referring to? Cheers. OyMosby (talk) 16:00, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

According to WP:LEAD, only "significant alternative names" should appear in the lead sentence. Other names can, and should, occur in the "Name" section. The title of the article is still the most common name used and the others are scattered without any consensus on what might replace S-C, therefore none of them should occur in the lead sentence as far as I'm concerned and they all should be listed at the front of the Name section. The fact that there is a name in the Croatian language that begins with hrvatsko- is immaterial because the English Wikipedia is based on English language usage only. "Serbo-Croatian" is presently and historically the primary name used by linguists, and there is no consensus on what the "new" name should be that includes "Bosnian" (no English-speaking linguists are using "Montenegrin" at this time because Montenegrin doesn't differ from Serbian as much as Bosnian and Croatian do). I have a grammar of the language that puts them in alphabetical order (BCS), but all the other grammars and book chapters in my library are just S-C. The problem is that someone writing for Bosnians or as a Bosnian will use BCS, a Serbian will use SCB or SBC, and a Croatian will use CBS or CSB. There is simply no generally accepted version that is more popular than any other. So clutter in the lead sentence is death to Wikipedia. All "clutter" should be placed in the section where it belongs, in this case, in the Name section. And I caution you against using Britannica as some sort of authority above and beyond all others. It's not. It's no more authoritative than the New York Times as far as Wikipedia is concerned. --TaivoLinguist (Taivo) (talk) 10:59, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

FWIW, I agree with TL on this. Move everything but S-C to the names section. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 11:25, 4 January 2024 (UTC)