Bosnian (bosanski jezik) is an official language of Bosnia and Herzegovina, alongside Croatian and Serbian. Its name derives from that of the country. It is spoken above all by Bosniaks, both at home and in the diaspora, and is also recognised outside Bosnia and Herzegovina, for example in Montenegro and in the Sandžak region of Serbia.
Basis and scripts
Bosnian is based on the Shtokavian dialect in its Ijekavian pronunciation, as in “mlijeko” (milk) or “rijeka” (river). It is closely related to Croatian, Serbian and Montenegrin, and speakers understand one another without difficulty. It is written in both the Latin alphabet (latinica) and the Cyrillic alphabet (ćirilica), with Latin script predominating in everyday use. Both alphabets have 30 letters that correspond to each other one to one, and words are largely written as they are pronounced. In medieval Bosnia, Bosančica, a distinct form of Cyrillic known from charters and from inscriptions on stećci, was widespread. Later came Arebica, the Arabic script adapted to the language, in which the so-called Alhamiado literature was written.
History
The charter of Ban Kulin of 1189 is among the oldest linguistic monuments in the region. An important early testimony is the dictionary written in 1631 by the poet Muhamed Hevaji Uskufi from the Tuzla area: this Bosnian–Turkish dictionary in verse refers to the vernacular as “Bosnian”. Under Austro-Hungarian administration, “Bosnian language” was for a time the official name; in 1890 a “Grammar of the Bosnian Language” was published for schools. In 1907 the provincial government abolished this name and replaced it with “Serbo-Croatian”. In Yugoslavia, too, the language was officially regarded as part of Serbo-Croatian. Only in the 1990s was the name “Bosnian language” officially reintroduced; the Dayton Agreement of 1995 was also drawn up in Bosnian, among other languages. In 1996 Senahid Halilović’s “Pravopis bosanskoga jezika” provided a separate orthography.
Features
A characteristic of Bosnian is its rich vocabulary of Turkish, Arabic and Persian origin, known as Orientalisms, such as “čaršija” (old town, market), “sokak” (lane), “merhamet” (compassion) or “dunjaluk” (the earthly world). Many of these words are also known in the neighbouring languages, but they are particularly alive in Bosnian. Another hallmark is the sound h, preserved in words such as “lahko” (easy), “mehko” (soft) or “kahva” (coffee), where other standard languages use “lako”, “meko” and “kafa” or “kava”. Grammatically, Bosnian, like its neighbours, has seven cases and three genders. Bosnian is thus a standard language in its own right, with a long history that reflects the country’s diversity.
Summary by the Glas za Bosnu editorial team.