Mr. Champion,
In your Wall Street Journal article "Western-Trained Finance Ministers Are
Ramping Up Serbia's Recovery" published on May 8, 2002, I found an error
that is both offensive and untrue. During an economic meeting between
Albanians, Croats, Romanians, Bosniacs, Bulgarians, Moldovans, Macedonians,
and Serbs, you wrote:
While the common language for the dinner was English, it wasn't long before
Serbo-Croatian took over, especially at the Serb-Macedonian end of the
table.
The “Serbo-Croatian” language simply does not exist. These two languages
are very similar, in the same way as Norwegian and Swedish, or Flemish and
Dutch, but are absolutely not the same. The term “Serbo-Croatian” became
popular under the Serbian dictatorship when Yugoslavia was forcefully
created in 1918. It was a Serbian scheme meant to unite the South Slavic
people under the false impression that they spoke an identical language and
had the same history and culture. This could not be farther from the
truth. In reality, “Serbo-Croatian” became the Serbian language imposed on
the unwilling non-Serbian population of Croats, Slovenes, and Macedonians
in the former Yugoslavia. The Declaration Concerning the Name and Position
of Croatian Literary Language was written in March 1967 and firmly states
that the two languages are not equal. Even though they are derived from
the same Indo-European branch of languages, they use different spelling and
pronunciation of words, and thousands of different nouns and verbs.
Croatian and Serbian are even written in two different alphabets: Latin and
Cyrillic, respectively. In essence, many scholars find it no longer
academically or politically responsible to claim that these two independent
languages are one. Croatia is a free and sovereign nation and has its own
language. So please correct the way in which you refer to these two
languages. To do otherwise is to continue to spread Serbian propaganda.
Jeffrey Bacic
Rancho Palos Verdes, CA
Distributed by www.CroatianWorld.net. This message is intended for Croatian Associations/Institutions and their Friends in Croatia and in the World. The opinions/articles expressed on this list do not reflect personal opinions of the moderator. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, please delete or destroy all copies of this communication and please, let us know!
|
   |
| |
