I think it would be this
Kajkavian:Slovenes
Cakavian:Croats
Stokavian:Serbs
Torlakians:Bulgarians or Macedonians
Croats = Catholic Serbs
- Thread starter yugo91aesop
- Start date
- Status
Kajkavian:Slovenes
Cakavian:Croats
Stokavian:Serbs
Torlakians:Bulgarians or Macedonians
If you look at a map of the dialects in the 16th century you can see that the chakavian language covered a much larger territory (approximately the core territories of the croatian kingdom) than it does today.
No, but parts of todays Croatia were.Was Croatia ever part of (or ruled by) Serbia at any point in the Middle Ages?
Well the 'Greater Serbian' argument is that the majority of Croats (i.e. Stokavian Croats excluding Kajkavian and Cakavian speaking Croats) are Roman Catholic Serbs. Basically one has to accept the 19th century notion of European nationalism that a nation is defined by the language its people speak. When you look at the Balkans, you then see that all Serbs speak Stokavian, which then implies that Stokavian is the Serbian language. And since language is what defines a nation, then all Stokavian speakers, regardless of whether they are Catholic or Muslim are then taken to be Serbs
Nah, although I as a Croat speaking with Shtokavian dialect am very much inclined to facepalm at the notion of me being classified as a Serb by the first map with dialects.
P.S - if anyone wants to witness some real art of trolling and flamewars I direct you good sirs to BSN ( Bioware Social Network ). These pre ME3 days are bringing the very best from people.
Croatia is a very special case. The Croatians speak three different languages: Chakavian, Kajkavian and Shtokavian, but only the shtokavian language (in Croatia those are called "dialects" for political reasons, but in reality there are so much differences between them that they can be counted as separate languages) is the only standardised literary language (based on the ijekavian subdialect, which is if you compare the map showing the dialects and an ethnic map, almost exclusively spoken by orthodox Serbs)
On this map the ijekavian subdialect is labeled as "eastern Herzegovinian".
In the 19th century the populations of Bosnia, Herzegovina, Slavonia, Slavonia and parts of Croatia Proper were considered as Serbian("Serben"), while the Croatians ("Chorwaten") were limited to the area around Zagreb (outlined blue), as you can see in this map from 1845:
The speakers of the chakavian Language are shown on a small part of the adriatic coast (outlined blue), but they were more widesprad (almost all of Istira and the islansd of the dalmatian coast).
Whole map:
http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/ser...7~160089:Ethnographische-Karte-der-Osterreic#
The austrian population statistics for the year 1851 are also very interesting:
Woah kudos on the map...very interesting.
Could I ask you a very big favor and translate the population statistics you posted for 1851? I don't know German at all but am very interested in looking at those numbers. I'm writing a paper in school right now on Serbs and Croats in the 19th century and that information would be quite useful
Woah kudos on the map...very interesting.
Could I ask you a very big favor and translate the population statistics you posted for 1851? I don't know German at all but am very interested in looking at those numbers. I'm writing a paper in school right now on Serbs and Croats in the 19th century and that information would be quite useful
Sure, no problem, here you go:
II. Serbo-Croat Clan: 2.757.602
a.) Croats: 1.329.814
1. Sloveno-Croats in civil and military Croatia: 625.028
2. (Serbo-) Croats in the croatian military frontier: 480.494
3. (Serbo-) Croats in Carniola: 17.583
4. (Serbo-) Croats in Istria and the Quarner Islands: 88.343
5. Croatian linguistic enclaves in Lower Austria: 6.460
6. Croatian linguistic enclaves in Moravia: 720
7. Croatian linguistic enclaves in Hungary: 71.926
8. Croatian linguistic enclaves in the Voivodeship and Banat: 2.860
Croats in the austrian military: 36.400
b. Serbs: 1.427.788
1. In Dalmatia: 378.676
-1.a Morlachs: 143.780
-1.b Ragusans (Ragusa = Dubrovnik): 45.834
-1.c Bokeljs (Bay of Kotor): 31.720
-1.d Inhabitants of the dalmatian coast and islands: 157.342
2. In the Voivodeship and Banat: 384.046
-2.a Orthodox Serbs: 321.110
-2.b Shokci and Bunjevci: 62.936
3. In Slavonia (Slavonians): 222.062
4. In the military frontier: 310.964
5. Istrian Serbs (Morlachs): 44.160
6. Serbian linguistic enclaves in Hungary: 62.880
Serbs in the austrian military: 25.000
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Wow that is very interesting. So basically Serbs were considered to live in all of Dalmatia??
Also in terms of the Croats, do you know what the difference would be between the Sloveno Croats and the Serbo Croats? Is that referring to Stokavian and Kajkavian speaking Croats?
Eastern Herzegovian is not a synonym for the ijekavian subdialect, it's one of the ijekavian subdialects - most of the dialects in Croatia and Bosnia are ijekavian.
Also, eastern Herzegovinian is spoken by all three ethnicities and in fact forms the basis of the literary language of all three.
Slovenian is close to Kajkavian but I don't think that most linguists (or for that matter, the actual Slovenes and Kajkavians) would consider it the same language. Unless the criteria is that they use the same word for "what", in which case Torlakian shold be classified as Bulgarian (which considering how most Serbs are unable to understand it, is not that far fetched)
I warn you this will be a long one so if you want to read it pour yourself something to drink and take your time reading as I don't want any misunderstandings.
Before I reply to some posts in this topic I will first adress the possibility if Croats could start considering themselves as Catholic Serbs with a POD in the 19th century.
It could happen but the level of improbablity is astronomic. The only way I can see that happening is to butterfly the medieval kingdom of Croatia that with various levels of autonomy and with greatly flexible borders survived into the 19th century and served as the focal point for the creation of Croatian national feelings rather than the language the people spoke.
Now to other subjects:
1. The Language
Though I would probably get lynched if I spoke that outloud on the main square in Zagreb but Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, Montenegrin, Slovenian and maybe Bulgarian speaches are a single language with several dialects. The only proper way to call that language is the South Slav Language Gradient (SSLG from here on). It is important to differ SSLG as well as various speaches of people in the field from the official Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian... language as the areas they cover don't always corespond to each other. Within the SSLG there are two vectors, the west-east and north-south with the second one being more pronounced due to geography.
The cause of modern headaches with official Croatian and official Serbian language are the result of cooperation between Gaj and Karadžić in hoping to create an linguistic unity between the greatest amount of south slavs as possible. So the G-K duo took two neighbouring speaches, west herzegovinian shtokavian for the Croatian and east herzegovinian for the Serbian official language and so the Serbo-Croatian language of the late 19th and 20th century was born. Today the similarities between the official Serbian and Croatian ahve grown apart since the disolution of Yugoslavia and linguistic reasearch shows the tendency to continue their separate evoulution. Now to get back to Gaj. It is a little known fact that west hertegovinian shtokavian was his second attempt at producing an official Croatian language. His first choice was a speach of the kajkavian dialect spoken around the town of Krapina in Croatian Zagorje (area north of Zagreb). Had he stayed with his original "Croatian" language in the 20th century we wouldn't have the discussion weather official Croatian and Serbian are one language but weather official Crotian and Slovenian language are one and the same language with a two names.
The Ottoman Wars caused alot of migartions that broke the linguistic disposition that was created in the centuries following the migartion of the Slavs to these parts but it would be wrong to say a certain dialect represents a certain Ethnic group in the middle ages since we (under we I mean historians and archeologists) are not certain what exactly back then means to be a "Croat" or a "Serb". It could represent the name for every person ruled by a Croat or Serb liege or it could represent just the tribe from which the rulling class originated and the country was made out of several different tribes but only the name of the dominant one remmined for posterity or it could only represent the nolibity so maybe only the nobles were "Croats" or "Serbs" and the others were something else that we today no longer know what.
Also the notion that only Chakavian dialect is the true Croatian language is nonsense mostly supported by right wing nutjobs and was to an extent advocated by the Ustasha regime (when they were not claiming Serbs were just Croats that were unfortunate to become Orthodox).
The existance of the three main dialects (Shtokavian, Kajkavian and Chakavian) is also a half truth and the variation is far greater. They are (I will be using Croatian letters for the ease of writing) based on the question word "what" and these are the various forms found in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina:
Kajkavian
Kaj
Kej
Koj
Ke
Štokavian
Što
Šta
Šte
Ša (a border form towards Chakavian dialect)
Šća (a border form towards Chakavian dialect)
Čakavian
Ča (a border form towards Kajkavian dialect in Slovenia)
Ća
Ca
Ce
To complicate things even further there are four ways of expresing the slavic "jat" sound and they are
Ijekavica - Mlijeko (Milk)
Jekavica - Mljeko (Milk)
Ekavica - Mleko (Milk)
Ikavica - Mliko (Milk)
So when you combine the "jat" expressions with the variations with the "what" word you get a hodge podge of local speaches that are only artificialy united into official langugages based on the political and ethnic orientation of the people speaking them. Though certain shifts can be followed through history, such as Shtokavian Ikavica speakers were once Chakavians since prior to the Ottoman expansion Ikavica was confined to the area where Chakavian was spoken along the Adriatic coast and to the western Ukraine aka Galicia.
2. Croatian Identity
It is true that croatian nation as we see it today originated in the 19th century but the croatian identity is much older. Though De Administrando Imperio (10th century) of Emperor Konstantin VII speaks about Croats in the 7th century there is no material evidence that allows to distinguish a separate Croatian identiy form the generic Slav one. What we can follow starts in the 9th century when the word "Croats" is first mentioned. The first prople that we are 100% sure we our rulers call themselves Dux Chroatorum and the land he rules Regnum Chroatorum. These two things can roughly be translated Ruler of the Croats(Dux is usually translated as Duke in english and that is then translated as Knez into Croatian but research has showed that the word Knez was not known in Croatian until the late 11th and early 12th century and the corect term based on the writing of Gottschalk would be Vladanje, a term not dissimilar to later Serbian term Vladika, and Vladanje translated to english would be Ruler) and Realm of the Croats. So for the question for some time now has been "who and what are these Croats".
Considering the other info about the realm of Croatia in the 9th - 11th century we know there were people in Croatia that were not considered as Croats and were distinctive enough even for the outside sources to recognise them as distinct. Based on the documents that have survived from the developed middle ages we now know there were two groups of people that were described as Croats. The first group that called themselves Croats were the so called noble Croats/plementi H(o)rvati and they were as their name says the nobility of the land and had lands and possessions all over the kingdom. The other group were just Croats/H(o)rvati and were even geographicaly located to a distinct area by other people in the Kingdom and by outsiders, especialy those living in Dalmatian towns. Up until the early 20th century, though you might even hear it today from the old geezers in the coastal towns like Zadar, the hinterlands of dalmatian coast were known under the name Hrvati/Croats and the person saying he was going to the hinterlands would say Idem v Hrvate(h) / I go into the Croats. The term has been testified as early as 14th century in the various records of coastal towns. Today the region is divided into several official regions; Dalmatinska Zagora / Damatian Hinterlands, Ravni Kotari / Flat District, Bukovica and Sinjska Krajina (I am not sure how to translate Krajina into english other than "local land"). Unfortunately we do not know how far inland Hrvati went but it is possible they incorporated the Livno, Duvno and Imotsko field. Meaning the area called Hrvati whould then roughy cover the same area as covered by the counties answering directly to the Croatian ruler.
Fast forward a few centuries and we come to the time of the Ottoman expansion when the old Croatian kingdom nearly disapeared but the people and the nobliity carrying the identity survived in several ways. Most of Croatian nobility fled north (though the slow migration started two hundred years earlier ) into the region then known as Slavonia now known as central Croatia. Before I carry on I should devote a few sentances to Slavonia. First, today's Slavonia does not corespond in most of its territory to medieval Slavonia. Medieval Slavonia covered the land between roughly todays Croatian-Slovenian border in the west and the town of Pozega in the east and river Drava in the north and rougly to the Karlovac-Banja Luka line in the south. Up until the 13th century Croat name is not mentioned in it, also the todays disposition of the surname "Croat" in Slavonia, Slovenia and Hungary shows they migrated there later and were in a minority at the time surnames formed. What was the name for the identity of the people living in Slavonia, before they mostly accepted the Croat identity, outside that they were slavs is unknown.
Since Slavonia (in borders described above) was from time to time completely or partialy ruled in the 10th and 11th century by the rulers of Croatia it became ever more connected especially after both ended as part of the dual Hungarian-Croatian kingdom (though this is still under heavy discussion wether it was a dual kingdom of Hungary-Croatia under the personal union of the Arpad familiy or was it just the Kingdom of Hungary and Croatia was one of it's parts). In the 16th century when most of Croatia was conquered by the Ottomans as well as most of Slavonia, the name of Croatia spread to incompase both of these lands for reasons that are not yet clear and Zagreb was suddenly in Croatia. During the Hubsburgh-Ottoman wars of the 17th and 18th century the lands between Drava and Sava were taken from the Ottomans and the name Slavonia expanded to include them ending with most of its territory not being Slavonia prior to the Ottoman expansion. At the same time Venice expanded from the coast into the interior and with the venetian expansion the name of Dalmatia spread to include what was called Croatia prior to the Ottoman expansion. So after those wars area known as Croats became part of Dalmatia, what was once Slavonia was Croatia and Slavonia moved east to cover the area no one is sure what was called (though there are some possibilities). Cofusing, yes?
Now to get back to Croatian identity. The first recorded mention of an individual (that is not a noble) stating for himself that he is a Croat (what ever that ment for him) comes from early 17th century from the region called Vinodol, south of Rijeka/Fiume. At the moment I do not remember the name of the person and the book is at the university library but he was a so called glagolitic priest. These were the priest that conduced the mass in the local language (rather than latin) and wrote in glagolitic script rather than latin script. The second and third mention come also from the same region and than spread to the venetain controled islands of Krk and Cres. It is important that this early indentification is quite probably connceted with the distribution of glagolitic priest in the region. By the late 17th century the coast is firmly aware of their Croat identity and some people in the inland centres such as Zagreb, Karlovac and Varazdin also start identifying themselves as Croats. The identity of the nobility was never in question since their political position came out of indentify themselves as Croats, though to many it was a supreficial name used for political gains.
By the time of Napoleon the Croat identity was in full swing in the lands under Habsburg control but would only explode into the public scene some 25 years later. As far as Dalmatia is concerned the situation is a lot murkier since fewer writen documents have survived. But it is important to note that the first newspapers writen in "Croatian" (Chakavian Ikavica) came from Dalmatia, the first person that adressed the Croatian sabor in the "Croatian" language (he spoke Shtokavian Ikavica) was a Dalmatian. While the Croatian identity was brewing a number of intelectuals tried to create an Illyrian indentity based on the pan-slavic idea supported by bishop Strossmayer. That created a lot of mess and caused divided agendas and feelings among the elite but was rejected by the ordinary folk. The delay that was caused by the Illyrian idea allowed the Serb idea to overtake the Croatian idea in its development, not to mention having a (semi)independent state helped the Serb identity to be more easily recognised by non-south slavs. Also the Austrian and Hungarian actions at trying to suppres the Croatian identity didn't help. As a result the religious divide occured that was not as pronounced as before, almost all orthodox south slavs became Serbs, while the overwhelming number of catholic south slavs became Croats but even today there are some Serb catholics and Croat orthodox. For the Croat orthodox I know from first hand since some of my ancestors were orthodox but since they were Croatian nobility their identity was Croat. So by the end of the 19th century what we have today came to pass.
I'll stop now to let you digest
Before I reply to some posts in this topic I will first adress the possibility if Croats could start considering themselves as Catholic Serbs with a POD in the 19th century.
It could happen but the level of improbablity is astronomic. The only way I can see that happening is to butterfly the medieval kingdom of Croatia that with various levels of autonomy and with greatly flexible borders survived into the 19th century and served as the focal point for the creation of Croatian national feelings rather than the language the people spoke.
Now to other subjects:
1. The Language
Though I would probably get lynched if I spoke that outloud on the main square in Zagreb but Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, Montenegrin, Slovenian and maybe Bulgarian speaches are a single language with several dialects. The only proper way to call that language is the South Slav Language Gradient (SSLG from here on). It is important to differ SSLG as well as various speaches of people in the field from the official Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian... language as the areas they cover don't always corespond to each other. Within the SSLG there are two vectors, the west-east and north-south with the second one being more pronounced due to geography.
The cause of modern headaches with official Croatian and official Serbian language are the result of cooperation between Gaj and Karadžić in hoping to create an linguistic unity between the greatest amount of south slavs as possible. So the G-K duo took two neighbouring speaches, west herzegovinian shtokavian for the Croatian and east herzegovinian for the Serbian official language and so the Serbo-Croatian language of the late 19th and 20th century was born. Today the similarities between the official Serbian and Croatian ahve grown apart since the disolution of Yugoslavia and linguistic reasearch shows the tendency to continue their separate evoulution. Now to get back to Gaj. It is a little known fact that west hertegovinian shtokavian was his second attempt at producing an official Croatian language. His first choice was a speach of the kajkavian dialect spoken around the town of Krapina in Croatian Zagorje (area north of Zagreb). Had he stayed with his original "Croatian" language in the 20th century we wouldn't have the discussion weather official Croatian and Serbian are one language but weather official Crotian and Slovenian language are one and the same language with a two names.
The Ottoman Wars caused alot of migartions that broke the linguistic disposition that was created in the centuries following the migartion of the Slavs to these parts but it would be wrong to say a certain dialect represents a certain Ethnic group in the middle ages since we (under we I mean historians and archeologists) are not certain what exactly back then means to be a "Croat" or a "Serb". It could represent the name for every person ruled by a Croat or Serb liege or it could represent just the tribe from which the rulling class originated and the country was made out of several different tribes but only the name of the dominant one remmined for posterity or it could only represent the nolibity so maybe only the nobles were "Croats" or "Serbs" and the others were something else that we today no longer know what.
Also the notion that only Chakavian dialect is the true Croatian language is nonsense mostly supported by right wing nutjobs and was to an extent advocated by the Ustasha regime (when they were not claiming Serbs were just Croats that were unfortunate to become Orthodox).
The existance of the three main dialects (Shtokavian, Kajkavian and Chakavian) is also a half truth and the variation is far greater. They are (I will be using Croatian letters for the ease of writing) based on the question word "what" and these are the various forms found in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina:
Kajkavian
Kaj
Kej
Koj
Ke
Štokavian
Što
Šta
Šte
Ša (a border form towards Chakavian dialect)
Šća (a border form towards Chakavian dialect)
Čakavian
Ča (a border form towards Kajkavian dialect in Slovenia)
Ća
Ca
Ce
To complicate things even further there are four ways of expresing the slavic "jat" sound and they are
Ijekavica - Mlijeko (Milk)
Jekavica - Mljeko (Milk)
Ekavica - Mleko (Milk)
Ikavica - Mliko (Milk)
So when you combine the "jat" expressions with the variations with the "what" word you get a hodge podge of local speaches that are only artificialy united into official langugages based on the political and ethnic orientation of the people speaking them. Though certain shifts can be followed through history, such as Shtokavian Ikavica speakers were once Chakavians since prior to the Ottoman expansion Ikavica was confined to the area where Chakavian was spoken along the Adriatic coast and to the western Ukraine aka Galicia.
2. Croatian Identity
It is true that croatian nation as we see it today originated in the 19th century but the croatian identity is much older. Though De Administrando Imperio (10th century) of Emperor Konstantin VII speaks about Croats in the 7th century there is no material evidence that allows to distinguish a separate Croatian identiy form the generic Slav one. What we can follow starts in the 9th century when the word "Croats" is first mentioned. The first prople that we are 100% sure we our rulers call themselves Dux Chroatorum and the land he rules Regnum Chroatorum. These two things can roughly be translated Ruler of the Croats(Dux is usually translated as Duke in english and that is then translated as Knez into Croatian but research has showed that the word Knez was not known in Croatian until the late 11th and early 12th century and the corect term based on the writing of Gottschalk would be Vladanje, a term not dissimilar to later Serbian term Vladika, and Vladanje translated to english would be Ruler) and Realm of the Croats. So for the question for some time now has been "who and what are these Croats".
Considering the other info about the realm of Croatia in the 9th - 11th century we know there were people in Croatia that were not considered as Croats and were distinctive enough even for the outside sources to recognise them as distinct. Based on the documents that have survived from the developed middle ages we now know there were two groups of people that were described as Croats. The first group that called themselves Croats were the so called noble Croats/plementi H(o)rvati and they were as their name says the nobility of the land and had lands and possessions all over the kingdom. The other group were just Croats/H(o)rvati and were even geographicaly located to a distinct area by other people in the Kingdom and by outsiders, especialy those living in Dalmatian towns. Up until the early 20th century, though you might even hear it today from the old geezers in the coastal towns like Zadar, the hinterlands of dalmatian coast were known under the name Hrvati/Croats and the person saying he was going to the hinterlands would say Idem v Hrvate(h) / I go into the Croats. The term has been testified as early as 14th century in the various records of coastal towns. Today the region is divided into several official regions; Dalmatinska Zagora / Damatian Hinterlands, Ravni Kotari / Flat District, Bukovica and Sinjska Krajina (I am not sure how to translate Krajina into english other than "local land"). Unfortunately we do not know how far inland Hrvati went but it is possible they incorporated the Livno, Duvno and Imotsko field. Meaning the area called Hrvati whould then roughy cover the same area as covered by the counties answering directly to the Croatian ruler.
Fast forward a few centuries and we come to the time of the Ottoman expansion when the old Croatian kingdom nearly disapeared but the people and the nobliity carrying the identity survived in several ways. Most of Croatian nobility fled north (though the slow migration started two hundred years earlier ) into the region then known as Slavonia now known as central Croatia. Before I carry on I should devote a few sentances to Slavonia. First, today's Slavonia does not corespond in most of its territory to medieval Slavonia. Medieval Slavonia covered the land between roughly todays Croatian-Slovenian border in the west and the town of Pozega in the east and river Drava in the north and rougly to the Karlovac-Banja Luka line in the south. Up until the 13th century Croat name is not mentioned in it, also the todays disposition of the surname "Croat" in Slavonia, Slovenia and Hungary shows they migrated there later and were in a minority at the time surnames formed. What was the name for the identity of the people living in Slavonia, before they mostly accepted the Croat identity, outside that they were slavs is unknown.
Since Slavonia (in borders described above) was from time to time completely or partialy ruled in the 10th and 11th century by the rulers of Croatia it became ever more connected especially after both ended as part of the dual Hungarian-Croatian kingdom (though this is still under heavy discussion wether it was a dual kingdom of Hungary-Croatia under the personal union of the Arpad familiy or was it just the Kingdom of Hungary and Croatia was one of it's parts). In the 16th century when most of Croatia was conquered by the Ottomans as well as most of Slavonia, the name of Croatia spread to incompase both of these lands for reasons that are not yet clear and Zagreb was suddenly in Croatia. During the Hubsburgh-Ottoman wars of the 17th and 18th century the lands between Drava and Sava were taken from the Ottomans and the name Slavonia expanded to include them ending with most of its territory not being Slavonia prior to the Ottoman expansion. At the same time Venice expanded from the coast into the interior and with the venetian expansion the name of Dalmatia spread to include what was called Croatia prior to the Ottoman expansion. So after those wars area known as Croats became part of Dalmatia, what was once Slavonia was Croatia and Slavonia moved east to cover the area no one is sure what was called (though there are some possibilities). Cofusing, yes?
Now to get back to Croatian identity. The first recorded mention of an individual (that is not a noble) stating for himself that he is a Croat (what ever that ment for him) comes from early 17th century from the region called Vinodol, south of Rijeka/Fiume. At the moment I do not remember the name of the person and the book is at the university library but he was a so called glagolitic priest. These were the priest that conduced the mass in the local language (rather than latin) and wrote in glagolitic script rather than latin script. The second and third mention come also from the same region and than spread to the venetain controled islands of Krk and Cres. It is important that this early indentification is quite probably connceted with the distribution of glagolitic priest in the region. By the late 17th century the coast is firmly aware of their Croat identity and some people in the inland centres such as Zagreb, Karlovac and Varazdin also start identifying themselves as Croats. The identity of the nobility was never in question since their political position came out of indentify themselves as Croats, though to many it was a supreficial name used for political gains.
By the time of Napoleon the Croat identity was in full swing in the lands under Habsburg control but would only explode into the public scene some 25 years later. As far as Dalmatia is concerned the situation is a lot murkier since fewer writen documents have survived. But it is important to note that the first newspapers writen in "Croatian" (Chakavian Ikavica) came from Dalmatia, the first person that adressed the Croatian sabor in the "Croatian" language (he spoke Shtokavian Ikavica) was a Dalmatian. While the Croatian identity was brewing a number of intelectuals tried to create an Illyrian indentity based on the pan-slavic idea supported by bishop Strossmayer. That created a lot of mess and caused divided agendas and feelings among the elite but was rejected by the ordinary folk. The delay that was caused by the Illyrian idea allowed the Serb idea to overtake the Croatian idea in its development, not to mention having a (semi)independent state helped the Serb identity to be more easily recognised by non-south slavs. Also the Austrian and Hungarian actions at trying to suppres the Croatian identity didn't help. As a result the religious divide occured that was not as pronounced as before, almost all orthodox south slavs became Serbs, while the overwhelming number of catholic south slavs became Croats but even today there are some Serb catholics and Croat orthodox. For the Croat orthodox I know from first hand since some of my ancestors were orthodox but since they were Croatian nobility their identity was Croat. So by the end of the 19th century what we have today came to pass.
I'll stop now to let you digest
I have put that in a thread recently on some random ATL ideas - albeit I'd liked to see kinda more a grand X...
A Grand BOSNIA.
A Grand BOSNIA.
First of all, you are VERY lucky everyone is acting civilised and not flaming, as Balkan threads tend to do.
Anyways, it isn't really correct to say that Croats, Bosniaks and Serbs are defined only by religion. Whilst religion is popular in all those regions, it's not the only defining or distinctive factor. This may be somewhat true of Bosniaks, however, who only emerged as a distinctive ethnic identity after conversion to Islam under the millet system. But Croats and Serbs have significantly different historical experiences. Serbia was long under Ottoman rule, and lacking significant population in coastal regions, have a quite 'continental' Slavic culture. By contrast, Croatia was Austro-Hungarian, and therefore Catholicism was encouraged, but the Austrian king also had the title of "king of Croatia", which preserved nationalist identity. In addition, although there are some cultural differences between Dalmatians and inland Croats, Dalmatian influence puts its culture somewhere between Slavic and Mediterranean (although they are a Slavic people)
The problem with Karadzic's logic is clear. If a black African spoke Serbian, would he be considered Serbian, certainly not in Serbia.
To be honest, to have Croats as Catholic Serbs, it requires a very early POD, at least before the Hungarian inheritance of Croatia. We might be able to have Rascia inherit Croatia instead. To be honest, it's easier to have Serbs consider themselves Orthodox Croats.
That would a grand idea to write about and also probably the only country that could create an unified South slavic state excluding Bulgarians.
How so? If you have the Kingdom of Croatia survive, vassalising Serbia (or at least parts of it) you can have assimilation, especially if you give Serbs incentives to convert like the Turks gave Bosniaks in OTL. Even if you don't have it as all of Serbia, if you have Croatia take Montenegro (not particularly unlikely) you can at least have Montenegrins as Catholic 'Serbs'.
I don't think you can really include Bulgarian and Slovenian in the same language. While there is a dialect continuum, there is little mutual intelligibility between most dialects of Bulgarian and BCS (Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian) and the grammar and phonology is quite different. Similarly there doesn't seem to be mutual intelligibility between Slovenian and BCS, except perhaps Kajkavian (though fairly there is low mutual ineligibility between the various Slovenian dialects). Meanwhile if one looks to BCS and most specifically Štokavian there seems to be little difference across a very large territory.
Of course, its probably foolish to divide a language only on the basis of a single word (or a single vowel) but isn't it a fact that the dialects which are usually referred to as Čakavian and Kajkavian have only limited mutual ineligibility with Štokavian, with Kajkavian being closer to Slovenian?
Eastern Herzegovian is not a synonym for the ijekavian subdialect, it's one of the ijekavian subdialects - most of the dialects in Croatia and Bosnia are ijekavian.
Also, eastern Herzegovinian is spoken by all three ethnicities and in fact forms the basis of the literary language of all three.
Slovenian is close to Kajkavian but I don't think that most linguists (or for that matter, the actual Slovenes and Kajkavians) would consider it the same language. Unless the criteria is that they use the same word for "what", in which case Torlakian shold be classified as Bulgarian (which considering how most Serbs are unable to understand it, is not that far fetched)
Yeah well i'm Serbian and I'd agree that most Macedonians were probably Bulgarian before being absorbed into Serbia
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