<http://www.grayfalcon.blogspot.com/> http://www.grayfalcon.blogspot.com/
Wednesday, July 22, 2009 <http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2009/07/linguistic-idiocy.html> Linguistic Idiocy Not being a follower of the Daily Kos, I didn't notice a post that appeared on that site on July 8 until very recently. Apparently, someone named Robert Ullmann (an American who lives in Kenya; <http://robert-ullmann.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/1/21/686971/-the-best-mom ent> see here) flew into <http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/7/8/751262/-linguistic-genocide:-sup pression-of-Croatian-and-Bosnian> self-righteous rage over the "linguistic genocide" allegedly perpetrated by "a small number of Serbian nationalists." You see, there's a debate on <http://en.wiktionary.org/> Wiktionary whether to consider Serbian, Croatian and "Bosnian" as separate languages, or to keep the old Serbo-Croatian listing. And to Ullmann, the fact that some people are advocating keeping the old listing is a surefire sign of intent to create a "Greater Serbia"! To call this a steaming pile of excrement is probably too charitable. Ullmann himself notes that, under this proposal, Serbianwould not be recognized as a proper language. I'm not sure which universe he lives in, but in this one, denying one's own language is hardly a sign of "nationalism" - let alone "genocide." Ironically enough, Serbo-Croatian is the farthest thing possible from some "Greater Serbian language" Ullmann is hallucinating about. Rather, it was a social experiment aiming to further undermine the inconvenient Serb national identity (which, as I <http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2007/12/archive-serbias-missionary.html> explained elsewhere, was considered dangerous to the survival of Communist Yugoslavia). That way no one would have to actually speak Serbian - not even the Serbs themselves. In fact, this went so far that in today's Serbia, 20 years after Yugoslavia's demise, the adapted Latin alphabet used in Serbo-Croatian has almost entirely displaced the native Cyrillic in public life. Spoken Serbian, meanwhile, abounds in imported Croatian phrases, both new and those dating to the "happy days of brotherhood and unity." If anything, this can be classified as Croat linguistic colonialism (though to be fair, not by modern Croatia). It's certainly the polar opposite of "linguistic genocide" that Ullmann alleges. One commenter to Ullmann's post called it a "load of rubbish", and said he'd contacted the instigator of the Wiktionary vote: "he told me that he isn't even a Serb let alone a Serb Nationalist and is in fact a Croat." Oops! As the old adage goes, better to keep one's mouth shut and be thought a fool, than to open it and remove all doubt. There are so many people, telling so many lies, inaccuracies and myths about the Serbs, Yugoslavia, and the Balkans wars of the 1990s that trying to refute, correct or condemn all of them would be a full-time job. Not being a "professional Serb," I try to catch the most egregious, when I can. So the reason I singled out this particular demonstration of idiocy is its inexcusable abuse of the term "genocide." It is an insult to the victims of actual genocides (Armenians and Greeks in the Ottoman Empire, Serbs in the "Independent State of Croatia", Jews in the Nazi death camps) when this word is used so lightly. There is a whole industry dedicated to the claim that what happened in Srebrenica in 1995 was genocide <http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2009/04/mustafas-genocide.html> on par with the Holocaust - a claim that defies logic as well as piety. And now there are idiots seeing "linguistic genocide" in online polls. What's next? Posted by Gray Falcon at <http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2009/07/linguistic-idiocy.html> 13:29 <https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=9230592&postID=308142645495286758&; isPopup=true> 0 comments <http://www.blogger.com/email-post.g?blogID=9230592&postID=30814264549528675 8> Error! Filename not specified. Labels: <http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/search/label/Bosnia> Bosnia, <http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/search/label/Croatia> Croatia, <http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/search/label/genocide> genocide, <http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/search/label/propaganda> propaganda, <http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/search/label/Serbia> Serbia
