Comment by velcro | Hacker News Reader

Comment by velcro | Hacker News Reader

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Thats only partly true on a very broad macro level - for example someone mentioned Kajkavian, which is dialect of Croatian but sounds a lot more Slovenian :)

In fact its the dialect spoken by the majority of people in Croatia (even though Stokavian is the "official" Croatian) and sometimes argued to be more than just a dialect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kajkavian

Personally I always found the comparison "Croatian vs. Serbian is the same as US English vs. British" a great oversimplification. It's not just an intonation or alphabet, it's also a lot more different words (that might mean the same things) than for example between the variants of English. Yes, people understand each other - but they're also attuned to all the different dialects within the "main language groups" so they actually know/learn more words for same objects (for example Croatians will be happy to list different words for bread/tomatos/etc i.e. synonyms that they might know the meaning of but don't necessarily use daily - and those different synonyms depending on the dialect might be closer to Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian, Italian, Turkish, Hungarian or old Austrian).

In a way I think this invalidates the premise of the article - that there is "a peculiar form of theater going on" and that the governments are pretending by needing court translators. If the countries are using not only different alphabets, but in part also different words (even though that other surrounding countries might somewhat understand those different words) - whats a viable alternative then?

British, American and Australian use different words too, and even have different meanings for the same words (eg. fanny, boot, thongs). Yet anybody requesting translation between these would be laughed out of court, and rightly so.

Also, doesn't your claim that BCS speakers are attuned to different dialect groups and understand their terms even further undermine the claim that there's an actual need for translation? By and large, speakers of English aren't (although thanks to Hollywood everybody knows some American), but an Aussie in NYC or a Brit in Melbourne is not going to have any real issues communicating.

Yes of course there are synonyms in all languages - but I specified "a lot more words". If you look at the link I included in my first reply under "vocabulary comparison" you'll see an example of what I mean. And thats just the biggest one - there are islands in Croatia where I (as a native speaker) might have better luck understanding Czech than the local variants.

Don't think that undermines my claim at all - they understand the words because they're familiar within the slavic language group in general (even though they might be derivations and used or spelled differently). Its like saying Italian/Spanish are the same because speakers might understand words between them. With the translation argument - you also of course have to ignore the fact that Serbia writes in cyrillic and Croatia in latin alphabet.

As a Serbian speaker from Belgrade, I'll understand a Croatian from Zagreb better than I'd understand Serbian spoken in Pirot.

Basically, the point is about what defines a language as a distinct one.

Grammar is pretty much the same with one standard preferring one form or the other (eg. infinitive vs "da" + present). Vocabulary is over 90% identical, though I am sure top 500 words in both spoken dialects have a larger discrepancy. Alphabets are different, but they are almost bijectively mapped (only differ orthographically in digraphs like NJ/Nj/nj where Cyrillic has only Њ/њ), and you may have missed it, but Serbian population actually uses Latin script for >80% of all Serbian writing.

The article mentions a push to differentiate languages further, probably most evident in Croatia in early 90s.

But three students in Bosnia speaking identical language (grammar/vocabulary thougj the script might differ) of 3 different nationalities would officially claim they speak three different languages. If you don't see the absurdity in that, that's up to you.

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