My coworker told me about how she was growing up in Montenegro during the breakup of Yugoslavia and she always referred to the language she spoke at school as Serbo-Croatian. One day things changed and all of a sudden the name of her language class switched to Montenegrin even though the language itself didn’t change. And she is Bosnian.
In practice yes. Offically no. In 2011 the Montenegrin goverment offically adopted Montenegrin language and replaced serbian. Since then Serbian language never even got recognised as a minority language at least. Even tho the majority of the population claims it as their mother tounge.
I think they were referring to the (correct) notion that 3 of the “languages” here are the same language, the only exception being Albanian.
Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS) is one mutually intelligible language with a host of political and ethnoreligious baggage fueling a linguistically unsupported view that they are all different languages.
Montenegro speaks BCMS primarily, with significant Albanian speaking populations close to their border with Albania.
I wish they'd just call the language Yugoslavian and be done with it. No Croatia... you aren't speaking "Croatian" just because you changed the name of "airport"...
The thing with that is the term Yugoslavia is such a controversial one with tons of historical baggage and ties to Serbian nationalism that calling the language that would never work, they'd have to use a new name like South Slavic, Illyrian, Naš jezik (a colloquial name translating to our language) etc. It's a complicated region so of course the language debate is going to be a complicated one too.
The language is unattested with the exception of personal names and placenames. Just enough information can be drawn from these to allow the conclusion that it belonged to the Indo-European language family.
Pardon my ignorance, but I thought Yugoslavia meant south slavia? Changing it in English to South Slavic instead of Yugoslavian (though I'm pretty sure south Slavic is already a term that includes Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Slovene) wouldn't actually change anything in their actual language, right? Its the same word either way, kind of like saying Turkey vs Türkiey?
The issue isn't creating a modern unified name in English but in general across all languages including the language itself, which doesn't have a defined one outside of Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian and Montenegrin as non of them want to use Yugoslavian anymore due to the baggage and ideology behind it, you are correct that South Slavic includes other groups and would technically not be correct for the language but it has been an option talked about both in these nations and by linguists so that's the only reason I included it.
But for what I've heard there are bigger differences between Canarian Spanish and northern peninsular Spanish than between the Serbo-Croatian "languages"
How is he forgetting that languages are often named for political reasons when he literally wrote that the denomination of a language often is politically motivated?
Yeah, it's great that we have hysterical linguistic purism in Croatia resulting in an "official Croatian" completely removed from what people actually speak.
linguistically unsupported view that they are all different languages.
I mean, linguistics doesn't really define a "language", anyways. Why is Luxemburgish a "language", when it's closer to standard High German than some "dialects"? Why is Scots a language? And let's not forget about dialect continuums. It's not hard to define Dutch and High German as two standard forms of the same language - likewise for English and Scots.
A "language" is purely a political/identity thing.
It’s not a supreme and definite metric, but the fact that these four dialects are so mutually intelligible—on the level of British vs US vs Canadian English—proves the point that it’s all one language.
A "language" is purely a political/identity thing.
Indeed. And the idea that Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, or Montenegrin are separate languages is entirely based on politics/identify. At the end of the day, everyone who speaks this language understands everyone else who speaks this language.
Mutual intelligibility
It’s not a supreme and definite metric, but the fact that these four dialects are so mutually intelligible—on the level of British vs US vs Canadian English—proves the point that it’s all one language.
Scots and English are mutually intelligible.
Dutch is perfectly mutually intelligible with some dialects of German, as a dialect continuum would suggest.
The issue becomes, again... what is a 'language'? If Dialect A of German is mutually intelligible with Dutch, then why is German not considered to be? In this case, is it just because High German is a 'standard' language, and that standard form is not? What about English, which has no formal standards, only informal standard forms?
Let's just say that we declared a specific Low German form into a 'standard' language, and it was mutually intelligible with both Dutch and High German. Would they suddenly all just be one language, whereas before they were not? Would we declare that it's two languages, even though both "languages" each contain the same dialect as the other? The issue is arbitrary, which is why linguistics doesn't really talk about it.
Serbo-Croatian was standardized as a single language, as a common project. The 4 standards are all based on exactly the same sub-sub-dialect. They are less different than standard varieties of English or Spanish or German. They're not "mutually intelligible", they're literally the same language.
Yeah like someone above said, the South Slavic languages are like British vs US vs Canadian English. Not like standard Dutch vs Low German or English vs Scots.
Of course it’s not just about mutual intelligibility, but in the case of South Slavic, it’s way more like comparing British English and U.S. English than Scots vs English in general.
The Montenegrin constitution recognizes Serbian, Bosnian, Albanian and Croatian as languages in official use, in that order, unnder article 13. 143 upvotes for lies
I think this statement is way more controversial than you'd assume. Probably the vast majority of people would comfortably say it's only one language, they'd disagree wether it's Montenegrin or Serbian.
For what it's worth, the two are far closer to each other than the English that a Californian and a Dubliner speak. What is and isn't considered a language or people is often defined more by politics than science.
Serbian and Montenegrin in Montenegro are identical, as are Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian in Bosnia. People identify their language by their ethnicity, not by their dialect.
Imagine the day when the Balkans find out you can have different national identities while sharing a language with your neighbour so you don't need to pretend. It'll explode their minds.
Doesn't need to go that far, Austria and Germany, Benelux countries and the French, Dutch and German, etc. Some of those even share the same reasons why the Balkans are split (religion) but don't go as far as to pretend they don't speak the same language.
I mean Austria and Germany got forcefully devided by foreign powers and got forced to sign a treaty to never reunite again. Otherwise they probably would have preferred to remain one country. Same with the Benelux, Belgium is a playball of the great powers to limit French influence in Europe, they didn’t come to be naturally.
More interestingly, nation-states side by side despite speaking the same language. Although that's mostly true for Spanish speaking ones. Portuguese language required a single massive state.
Ah yes, the Americas, how to erase or marginalize tens of thousands of languages from a land and consolidate into two or three by mass genocide of 90% of the indigenous people and forcing the rest to live on infertile lands in perpetuity or stealing their children and raising them in mass under oppressive circumstances, like physical and sexual abuse.
Tbf, I think both the Croatians and Serbians tried that, or something similar. In the 1940s and 1990s, if I recall correctly.
Literally zero diffrence. Both Serb and Montenegrin speaking people's speak ijekavski version and have the same accent. Its more of a political thing rather then an actual language diffrence
Yea but you also have cases were some Montenegrins who see themselfs as serbs still identify as Montenegrins beacuse they see the term Montenegrin as nothing more then a geographic term for serbs from Montenegro. These cases are mostly found in municipalities of Zeta,Podgorica,Kolašin and Nikšić
Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian are all linguistically the same language. There are regional differences similar to what you might find across the UK. Bosnia is a transition area between Serbia and Croatia, and has some features of both (and sometimes has simultaneously both variants, with the regions or even ethnic identity determining which variant they use)
Yea, those are considered dialects of BCSM. There’s a continuum from Slovenia to Bulgaria. Kajkavian is a bit of a transition between shtokavian and slovenian. Just like how Torlakian is considered a transition between Serbian and Bulgarian.
This is why I hate when outsiders speak on our languages. Ijekavian is not only the dominant Serbian dialect in Bosnia and Montenegro, but was dominant in Western Serbia less than 100 years ago. Even today you have older people in western Serbia who speak, if not fully ijekavian, then a mix of the two.
The Balkans are kind of ridiculous when it comes to languages. You’ve got four countries speaking languages that are closer together than the dialects in Germany, Italy, Spain, and France, yet they insist (violently, in some cases) that they are not the same. I guess I understand not wanting to speak a language named after an ethno-religious group you view as a recent oppressor, but come on now.
I agree on one hand but also, Croatia has dialects even worse than Italy and only maybe 25% speaks the one similar to Serbian. Yes, we understand it, we were being thought the language in schools for a century, ofc we understand..
25%?? That seems like a massive lowball considering standard Croatian is the one similar to Serbian.. maybe you just mean as local dialects? But even so, isn’t shtokavian still the dominant dialect in Croatia?
It's much more than 25% now. Kajkavian and Čakavian are spoken only in villages and smaller towns. All the big cities in former Kajkavian and Čakavian areas (Zagreb, Rijeka, Pula, Split, etc.) now speak Štokavian with some phonetics and a few shibboleth words retained from the local substrate. It's why people from Zagreb and Split have no trouble communicating these days without switching to a more formal register.
You’ve got four countries speaking languages that are closer together than the dialects in Germany, Italy, Spain, and France, yet they insist (violently, in some cases) that they are not the same.
tbf only Cetinje and parts of surrounding municipalities (Bar, Danilovgrad, Nikšić) is original 4 nahijas that compromised Montenegro, rest of country was attached much later, especially Boka that was first time part of Montenegro only after ww2 (but was part of Zeta Banovina with rest of Montenegro before that).
Ironically enough Nikšić is ruled by a serb political party (in 2021 won an almost absolute majority while in 2025 had to form a coalition) despite on paper being majority Montenegrin
i went to montenegro a few years ago, i could not find montenegrin on googles translation app, i asked a gentlemen i met about what the official langauge of montenegro was and his dead man reply was "brother, we are all serbian", and athen he walked off.
I genuinely don’t understand why Serbia let go of Montenegro despite being practically the same people, language, religion and has sea access but so insistent on claiming Kosovo..
Also Montenegro barely manage to win its indipendence referendum (by 0.5%). It was higly controversial as there were cases of pressure on civilians to vote for indipendence option like threatening them with jobs and fines,allowing Montenegrin diaspora to vote but not allowing that same diaspora who happened to live in Serbia to vote, the Montenegrin goverment giving citizenships and government jobs on mass to kosovar albanains in montenegro "coincidentally" right before the referendum. Also aroung 50.000 to 70.000 Montengrin citizens were not allowed to vote on the referendum (mostly in Budva and and Podgorica municipalities) for no given reason.
One man. Milo Đukanović the former Montenegrin president who started his political career in the early 90's as a staunch serb nationalist only to switch his agenda to a more western aligened one in the 2000's. He is also known to have large criminal connections involving smuggling,drugs and connections with montenegrin criminal gangs, also a hella allot of corruption. He knew that a Montenegro who was at least somewhat controlled by some form of a central federal goverment jn Belgrade would make it extremely hard for him to continue his criminal enterpriese and an indipendent one would basically alow him to make Montenegro his own criminal playground
It fucking sucks how the 21st century has vindicated the Great Man Theory, but this time lacking the heroic romanticized baggage the theory originally had.
I don't want to get into that convo beacuse i will be deemed to have a strong Serbian bias. But as someone from coastal Montenegro it sure does seem so.
Bosniaks in Montenegro are largely slavicized Albanians. Bosnia isn't their origin country, Montenegro and northern Albania are. Which doesn't mean that their identity as Bosniaks is invalid. Same goes for Serbs in Montenegro. Serbia isn't their "origin country". They came to Montenegro before any Serbian country even existed.
I want that too as someone from costal Montenegro but i am afraid it will never happen. The reason why Montenegro is independent in the first place is beacuse the former leader Milo Đukanović wanted mlre autonomy in the former state union and then later wanted full indipendemce beacuse of his western aligned policies (although he was a serb nationalist before) and beacuse of his crime activities and connections to crime montenegrin families, so an indipendemt Montenegro allowed him much more freedom in the criminal world then the one that is somewhat regulated by the federal central goverment in Belgrade. Also the referendum itself was shady. Fraud cases,people pressured eith jobs and threatened to vote for indipendence, around 50.000 to 70.000 Montenegrin citizens not allowed to vote, the diaspora being allowed to vote except the montenegrins in Serbia,goverment giving citizenships to kosovar albanians on mass randomly before the referendum. Alll lead to Montenegro wining its indipendemce by a massive 0.5% margin.
Why do the boundaries for Montenegrins and Montenegrin not line up? I understand that some Montenegrins identify as Serbs and some don’t, but I’m surprised that self-identified Montenegrins are split on what to call the language
Is Serbian and Montenegrin actually different? I remember hearing somewhere the Slavic "languages" in Yugoslavia are more similar than different German dialects.
What a bunch of mental gymnastics in the comments. Everyone knows "it's the same language". What's controversial is that the current constitution doesn't reflect the reality that Serbian is the most widely used name for it.
I hope so. During the former rulling osrty of DPS and its strongmen Milo Đukanović the idea of "deserbanisation of Montenegro " was in full force but ever since the regime fell in 2020 people have been more free to express themselfs and ever since then serbian identity has been growing more since its no longer state persecuted
Well serb political parties have been growing in popularity, even wining local elections in Montenegrin majority municipalities. And the president of the Montenegrin parliment is Andrija Mandić, a serb nationalist and a supporter of reunification although his party is in a coalition with western centrist party "Europe now"
Very little difference. Some words are different (maybe 1-2%) and some are pronounced differently. Either accent varies or they have one or two different characters in those cases.
All in all they are dialects of the same language. This is also true for Croatian too. I can understand all of these languages even though I can speak only one on paper. It's all political.
OP is incredibly biased and pro serbian in all of the information he provided in this thread
90% of this subreddit is just nationalist shilling, it has more agendaposting and propaganda than fucking /r/PropagandaPosters, at least that sub permits propaganda but prohibits soapboxing.
Depends. Here you have multiple major political groups. Serbs (support). Serbs who identify as Montenegrins (some do support some want an separate Serb centered Montenegro) and Montenegrins who don't. But the referendum in 2006 was insanely controversial beacuse Montenegro won its indipendence by 0.5 margin
Well, it still worked out. Montenegro is still making progress for EU ascension. Serbia is on hold with Vucic at the helm and their close ties to Russia...
Districts are colored based on plurality. More than two... um... labels for varieties of speech are used, so it's possible for the split to be something like 40/30/30 and the plurality to not be a majority.
so 2 languages are spoken in montenegro
My coworker told me about how she was growing up in Montenegro during the breakup of Yugoslavia and she always referred to the language she spoke at school as Serbo-Croatian. One day things changed and all of a sudden the name of her language class switched to Montenegrin even though the language itself didn’t change. And she is Bosnian.
In practice yes. Offically no. In 2011 the Montenegrin goverment offically adopted Montenegrin language and replaced serbian. Since then Serbian language never even got recognised as a minority language at least. Even tho the majority of the population claims it as their mother tounge.
I think they were referring to the (correct) notion that 3 of the “languages” here are the same language, the only exception being Albanian.
Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS) is one mutually intelligible language with a host of political and ethnoreligious baggage fueling a linguistically unsupported view that they are all different languages.
Montenegro speaks BCMS primarily, with significant Albanian speaking populations close to their border with Albania.
I wish they'd just call the language Yugoslavian and be done with it. No Croatia... you aren't speaking "Croatian" just because you changed the name of "airport"...
The thing with that is the term Yugoslavia is such a controversial one with tons of historical baggage and ties to Serbian nationalism that calling the language that would never work, they'd have to use a new name like South Slavic, Illyrian, Naš jezik (a colloquial name translating to our language) etc. It's a complicated region so of course the language debate is going to be a complicated one too.
That’s what Yugoslavian means. Yugo is south. You’re not suggesting they use the English word “South” are you? Lmao
These are just whimsical. Also Illyrian is already a thing.
Was*, RIP, gone but nor forgotten.
Sadly, mostly forgotten. Just not entirely.
Pardon my ignorance, but I thought Yugoslavia meant south slavia? Changing it in English to South Slavic instead of Yugoslavian (though I'm pretty sure south Slavic is already a term that includes Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Slovene) wouldn't actually change anything in their actual language, right? Its the same word either way, kind of like saying Turkey vs Türkiey?
The issue isn't creating a modern unified name in English but in general across all languages including the language itself, which doesn't have a defined one outside of Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian and Montenegrin as non of them want to use Yugoslavian anymore due to the baggage and ideology behind it, you are correct that South Slavic includes other groups and would technically not be correct for the language but it has been an option talked about both in these nations and by linguists so that's the only reason I included it.
"don't call it Yugoslavian, call it South Slavic instead" 💀
It's called Shtokavian
Yugoslavian would be appropriate, indeed.
Not sure I follow the rest of your comment. It’s as “Serbian” or “Bosnian” or “Montenegrin” as it is Croatian.
Everyone uses Aerodrom. But in Croatia they claim to speak "croatian" and say "zračna luka" instead.
Makes me want to roll my eyes.
And how do you suggest politicians get cheap points on the divide if they are for unification?
So, what makes you an expert in naming languages?
There is higher mutual intelligibility between Serbian and Croatian than between many northern and southern German dialects.
The complete linguistic seperation suggested by labeling them as seperate languages is politically motivated and silly.
As silly as when someone asks a Mexican if they speak Mexican.
Or an American if they speak American.
German isn't a very good example of this one...
But for what I've heard there are bigger differences between Canarian Spanish and northern peninsular Spanish than between the Serbo-Croatian "languages"
You're right, but you're forgetting that languages can (and very often are) named for political reasons, not purely linguistic ones.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_an_army_and_navy
So, what makes you an expert in naming languages?
How is he forgetting that languages are often named for political reasons when he literally wrote that the denomination of a language often is politically motivated?
I said he's right, but I disagree with him because he thinks it's bad.
Yeah, it's great that we have hysterical linguistic purism in Croatia resulting in an "official Croatian" completely removed from what people actually speak.
I know a select few passionate and highly educated Slavic language scholars.
But still, we have many South Slavic languages. Go figure.
Well for research purposes there mainly is Serbo-Kroatian and Slovenian.
I mean, linguistics doesn't really define a "language", anyways. Why is Luxemburgish a "language", when it's closer to standard High German than some "dialects"? Why is Scots a language? And let's not forget about dialect continuums. It's not hard to define Dutch and High German as two standard forms of the same language - likewise for English and Scots.
A "language" is purely a political/identity thing.
Mutual intelligibility.
It’s not a supreme and definite metric, but the fact that these four dialects are so mutually intelligible—on the level of British vs US vs Canadian English—proves the point that it’s all one language.
Indeed. And the idea that Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, or Montenegrin are separate languages is entirely based on politics/identify. At the end of the day, everyone who speaks this language understands everyone else who speaks this language.
Scots and English are mutually intelligible.
Dutch is perfectly mutually intelligible with some dialects of German, as a dialect continuum would suggest.
The issue becomes, again... what is a 'language'? If Dialect A of German is mutually intelligible with Dutch, then why is German not considered to be? In this case, is it just because High German is a 'standard' language, and that standard form is not? What about English, which has no formal standards, only informal standard forms?
Let's just say that we declared a specific Low German form into a 'standard' language, and it was mutually intelligible with both Dutch and High German. Would they suddenly all just be one language, whereas before they were not? Would we declare that it's two languages, even though both "languages" each contain the same dialect as the other? The issue is arbitrary, which is why linguistics doesn't really talk about it.
Serbo-Croatian was standardized as a single language, as a common project. The 4 standards are all based on exactly the same sub-sub-dialect. They are less different than standard varieties of English or Spanish or German. They're not "mutually intelligible", they're literally the same language.
Yeah like someone above said, the South Slavic languages are like British vs US vs Canadian English. Not like standard Dutch vs Low German or English vs Scots.
Of course it’s not just about mutual intelligibility, but in the case of South Slavic, it’s way more like comparing British English and U.S. English than Scots vs English in general.
The Montenegrin constitution recognizes Serbian, Bosnian, Albanian and Croatian as languages in official use, in that order, unnder article 13. 143 upvotes for lies
I think this statement is way more controversial than you'd assume. Probably the vast majority of people would comfortably say it's only one language, they'd disagree wether it's Montenegrin or Serbian.
For what it's worth, the two are far closer to each other than the English that a Californian and a Dubliner speak. What is and isn't considered a language or people is often defined more by politics than science.
Serbian and Montenegrin in Montenegro are identical, as are Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian in Bosnia. People identify their language by their ethnicity, not by their dialect.
Imagine the day when the Balkans find out you can have different national identities while sharing a language with your neighbour so you don't need to pretend. It'll explode their minds.
“Balkans hate this one simple trick, learn how the Americas built separate nation-states from Europe despite speaking the same languages”.
Doesn't need to go that far, Austria and Germany, Benelux countries and the French, Dutch and German, etc. Some of those even share the same reasons why the Balkans are split (religion) but don't go as far as to pretend they don't speak the same language.
I mean Austria and Germany got forcefully devided by foreign powers and got forced to sign a treaty to never reunite again. Otherwise they probably would have preferred to remain one country. Same with the Benelux, Belgium is a playball of the great powers to limit French influence in Europe, they didn’t come to be naturally.
Austria and Germany were not united because Austria had a big empire with lots of minorities.
And Belgium wanted independence because they were catholic
After ww1, Austria wanted to unite with Germany. Because of that Versailles forbade this unification explicitly.
Please don't talk about what you don't know.
More interestingly, nation-states side by side despite speaking the same language. Although that's mostly true for Spanish speaking ones. Portuguese language required a single massive state.
Ah yes, the Americas, how to erase or marginalize tens of thousands of languages from a land and consolidate into two or three by mass genocide of 90% of the indigenous people and forcing the rest to live on infertile lands in perpetuity or stealing their children and raising them in mass under oppressive circumstances, like physical and sexual abuse.
Tbf, I think both the Croatians and Serbians tried that, or something similar. In the 1940s and 1990s, if I recall correctly.
“nation-states” lol, lmao even
For a period from 1992 to 2011 (and before during the Kingdom of Montenegro pre yugoslavia) the official language of Montenegro was Serbian
That was the official designation, but make no mistake, it was always BCMS.
During yugoslavia period ofc but serbo croatian only became offical when Kingdom of Serbs Croats and Slovenes was formed
Ok, but then what would you call that shared language?
Colloquially it’s called naški (“Ourish”).
Balkanian
And offend Bulgarians, Macedonians, Slovenes, Greeks, Turks, Romanians and Hungarians? Boom, another war in the Balkans.
We'll fight over musaka recipe, let alone language name
Well, I’m not them, who am I to name other people? Thought it’s usually called Serbo-Croat.
And exclude Bosnians, who were genocided by Croats and Serbs? Boom, another war in the Balkans.
Yusgoslavian or Serbo-Croatian
Yugoslavia included Slovenia and Macedonia, another war in the Balkans.
Serbo-Croatian excludes Bosnia and Montenegro.
How different are Serbian and Montenigrin languages though
Literally zero diffrence. Both Serb and Montenegrin speaking people's speak ijekavski version and have the same accent. Its more of a political thing rather then an actual language diffrence
So I'm guessing the situation is something like:
Serb nationalists identify as ethnic Serbs and linguistically as Serb speaking
Moderate Montenegrin nationalists identify as ethnic Montenegrin but still recognize that they speak Serbian
Hardline Montenegrin nationalists identify as ethnic Montenegrins and Montenegrin speaking
Yea but you also have cases were some Montenegrins who see themselfs as serbs still identify as Montenegrins beacuse they see the term Montenegrin as nothing more then a geographic term for serbs from Montenegro. These cases are mostly found in municipalities of Zeta,Podgorica,Kolašin and Nikšić
Idiots. They're not even Montenegrin geographically. They're Herzegovinian.
Bosnian and Croatian are also very similar. Only a few words are different but other than that a sentence reads the same.
Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian are all linguistically the same language. There are regional differences similar to what you might find across the UK. Bosnia is a transition area between Serbia and Croatia, and has some features of both (and sometimes has simultaneously both variants, with the regions or even ethnic identity determining which variant they use)
Because they are all based on shtokavian? But Croatia has two other -kavian options that, in theory, could have been chosen for the standard.
Yea, those are considered dialects of BCSM. There’s a continuum from Slovenia to Bulgaria. Kajkavian is a bit of a transition between shtokavian and slovenian. Just like how Torlakian is considered a transition between Serbian and Bulgarian.
Bosnian and Montenegrin speak ijekavski, Serbs speak ekavski
In mainland serbia yes. Here we also speak ijekavski
Oh I didnt know this
thanks a bunch :)
Ah, so you speak Croatian then ;). (Ne brinite se, samo šala)
Ma kakvi - to je sve stari hercegovacki :P
Bokeljški!!
This is why I hate when outsiders speak on our languages. Ijekavian is not only the dominant Serbian dialect in Bosnia and Montenegro, but was dominant in Western Serbia less than 100 years ago. Even today you have older people in western Serbia who speak, if not fully ijekavian, then a mix of the two.
Like British English and American English
Basically but even less diffrence
So.. Like "standard" American English and Southern English dialects?
You all vs Y'all?
Like Catholic English vs. Jewish English.
Not even, most Montenegrins are members of the Serbian Orthodox Church still.
New York Catholic vs Connecticut Catholic.
Yea.
Maybe closer to the English variants spoken across the UK
Like New York English and new Jersey English
The Balkans are kind of ridiculous when it comes to languages. You’ve got four countries speaking languages that are closer together than the dialects in Germany, Italy, Spain, and France, yet they insist (violently, in some cases) that they are not the same. I guess I understand not wanting to speak a language named after an ethno-religious group you view as a recent oppressor, but come on now.
I agree on one hand but also, Croatia has dialects even worse than Italy and only maybe 25% speaks the one similar to Serbian. Yes, we understand it, we were being thought the language in schools for a century, ofc we understand..
25%?? That seems like a massive lowball considering standard Croatian is the one similar to Serbian.. maybe you just mean as local dialects? But even so, isn’t shtokavian still the dominant dialect in Croatia?
It's much more than 25% now. Kajkavian and Čakavian are spoken only in villages and smaller towns. All the big cities in former Kajkavian and Čakavian areas (Zagreb, Rijeka, Pula, Split, etc.) now speak Štokavian with some phonetics and a few shibboleth words retained from the local substrate. It's why people from Zagreb and Split have no trouble communicating these days without switching to a more formal register.
Nationalism.jpg
I'm Serbian and haven't met anyone here who thinks they're different.
Try saying “you speak Serbo-Croatian” to a Croat or Bosnian Muslim.
Sure? I only said nobody in Serbia thinks that. I am a little tired of us always being grouped with the rest in this argument
tbf only Cetinje and parts of surrounding municipalities (Bar, Danilovgrad, Nikšić) is original 4 nahijas that compromised Montenegro, rest of country was attached much later, especially Boka that was first time part of Montenegro only after ww2 (but was part of Zeta Banovina with rest of Montenegro before that).
Ironically enough Nikšić is ruled by a serb political party (in 2021 won an almost absolute majority while in 2025 had to form a coalition) despite on paper being majority Montenegrin
Geographicaly speaking most of Montenegro is not Montenegro technically
i went to montenegro a few years ago, i could not find montenegrin on googles translation app, i asked a gentlemen i met about what the official langauge of montenegro was and his dead man reply was "brother, we are all serbian", and athen he walked off.
Well he ain't wrong. Welcome to Montenegro friend
Should've shown Serbian, Montenegrin and Bosnian as different shades of blue.
I genuinely don’t understand why Serbia let go of Montenegro despite being practically the same people, language, religion and has sea access but so insistent on claiming Kosovo..
Beacuse in the constitution of the former state union of Serbia and Montenegro both republics were allowed a referendum on indipendence
But why is that, didn’t Serbia absorb Kosovo and Vojvodina or something like that? Why not Montenegro?
Vojvodina and Kosovo were autonomous provinces not their own separate republics.
Ah
Also Montenegro barely manage to win its indipendence referendum (by 0.5%). It was higly controversial as there were cases of pressure on civilians to vote for indipendence option like threatening them with jobs and fines,allowing Montenegrin diaspora to vote but not allowing that same diaspora who happened to live in Serbia to vote, the Montenegrin goverment giving citizenships and government jobs on mass to kosovar albanains in montenegro "coincidentally" right before the referendum. Also aroung 50.000 to 70.000 Montengrin citizens were not allowed to vote on the referendum (mostly in Budva and and Podgorica municipalities) for no given reason.
en masse.
But why was there a push for secession in the first place
One man. Milo Đukanović the former Montenegrin president who started his political career in the early 90's as a staunch serb nationalist only to switch his agenda to a more western aligened one in the 2000's. He is also known to have large criminal connections involving smuggling,drugs and connections with montenegrin criminal gangs, also a hella allot of corruption. He knew that a Montenegro who was at least somewhat controlled by some form of a central federal goverment jn Belgrade would make it extremely hard for him to continue his criminal enterpriese and an indipendent one would basically alow him to make Montenegro his own criminal playground
Crazy how one man’s ego could change the history of entire nations
Not the first time in history and not the last...
It fucking sucks how the 21st century has vindicated the Great Man Theory, but this time lacking the heroic romanticized baggage the theory originally had.
So the country exists to weaken Serbia?
I don't want to get into that convo beacuse i will be deemed to have a strong Serbian bias. But as someone from coastal Montenegro it sure does seem so.
they're practically the same language anyway
So Bosniaks live at the opposite of their origin country’s borders, huh?
Ye
Bosniaks in Montenegro are largely slavicized Albanians. Bosnia isn't their origin country, Montenegro and northern Albania are. Which doesn't mean that their identity as Bosniaks is invalid. Same goes for Serbs in Montenegro. Serbia isn't their "origin country". They came to Montenegro before any Serbian country even existed.
Montenegrin Language is almost nonexistent.
Beach Serbia speaks Serbian, what a plot twist
Why isn't montenegro and serbia united and do you see a unification in any ways possible in the future
I hope to see them united. And although it isn't impossible I think that it is a long way till we get close to that point
Ah, just like the 4 main languages in Canada: Canadian, American, Australian, and French.
Seems like Serbia and Montenegro should be one country here
I want that too as someone from costal Montenegro but i am afraid it will never happen. The reason why Montenegro is independent in the first place is beacuse the former leader Milo Đukanović wanted mlre autonomy in the former state union and then later wanted full indipendemce beacuse of his western aligned policies (although he was a serb nationalist before) and beacuse of his crime activities and connections to crime montenegrin families, so an indipendemt Montenegro allowed him much more freedom in the criminal world then the one that is somewhat regulated by the federal central goverment in Belgrade. Also the referendum itself was shady. Fraud cases,people pressured eith jobs and threatened to vote for indipendence, around 50.000 to 70.000 Montenegrin citizens not allowed to vote, the diaspora being allowed to vote except the montenegrins in Serbia,goverment giving citizenships to kosovar albanians on mass randomly before the referendum. Alll lead to Montenegro wining its indipendemce by a massive 0.5% margin.
o7 Montenegro, you will be missed
u forgot the wayuu
Why do the boundaries for Montenegrins and Montenegrin not line up? I understand that some Montenegrins identify as Serbs and some don’t, but I’m surprised that self-identified Montenegrins are split on what to call the language
Well Montenegrin as a language only offically became the state language in 2011
Is Serbian and Montenegrin actually different? I remember hearing somewhere the Slavic "languages" in Yugoslavia are more similar than different German dialects.
Its mostly a political thing rather then an actual linguistic diffrence
What a bunch of mental gymnastics in the comments. Everyone knows "it's the same language". What's controversial is that the current constitution doesn't reflect the reality that Serbian is the most widely used name for it.
Is the Serbian identity gaining in Montenegro? Could there be a reunification with Serbia in the future?
I hope so. During the former rulling osrty of DPS and its strongmen Milo Đukanović the idea of "deserbanisation of Montenegro " was in full force but ever since the regime fell in 2020 people have been more free to express themselfs and ever since then serbian identity has been growing more since its no longer state persecuted
I hope so too. Serbia could use some coastline.
Well serb political parties have been growing in popularity, even wining local elections in Montenegrin majority municipalities. And the president of the Montenegrin parliment is Andrija Mandić, a serb nationalist and a supporter of reunification although his party is in a coalition with western centrist party "Europe now"
I thought the only difference between Serbian and Montenegrin languages was the ethnicity of the speaker.
A plurality in their own nation-state, speak serbian mostly
Feels weird
What's the actual difference between Serbian, Montenegrin, and Bosnian as languages?
Very little difference. Some words are different (maybe 1-2%) and some are pronounced differently. Either accent varies or they have one or two different characters in those cases.
All in all they are dialects of the same language. This is also true for Croatian too. I can understand all of these languages even though I can speak only one on paper. It's all political.
Macedonian and Slovenian are different though.
Do people in Montenegro support reunification with Serbia?
According to some latest polls 80% of people do not, OP is incredibly biased and pro serbian in all of the information he provided in this thread
90% of this subreddit is just nationalist shilling, it has more agendaposting and propaganda than fucking /r/PropagandaPosters, at least that sub permits propaganda but prohibits soapboxing.
Depends. Here you have multiple major political groups. Serbs (support). Serbs who identify as Montenegrins (some do support some want an separate Serb centered Montenegro) and Montenegrins who don't. But the referendum in 2006 was insanely controversial beacuse Montenegro won its indipendence by 0.5 margin
Well, it still worked out. Montenegro is still making progress for EU ascension. Serbia is on hold with Vucic at the helm and their close ties to Russia...
Why are there so few Montenegrins in Montenegro?
Beacuse its a political fabricated identity
Technically... every country is... no?
Neat, tho one must remember KOSOVO IS ITS OWN COUNTRY AND SERBIA HAS NO INFLUENCE ON THEM 🇽🇰🇽🇰🇽🇰
Serbian, Bosnian and Montenegrin are the same language.
I am going to be completely honnest. As a European, where the fuck is montenegro?
Go south from the Croatian coast and look for the black mountain.
here
Some districts below 50% are colored blue on the first image
Districts are colored based on plurality. More than two... um... labels for varieties of speech are used, so it's possible for the split to be something like 40/30/30 and the plurality to not be a majority.
Multiple languages spoken in the same municipality l
srry, Monte what?
There used to be a band in Kotor Montenegro named "monteNIG**R"...
Its real
😭😭😭 why did i think it would be censored
Someone explain the Portuguese and Spanish languages to this guy.
i was kidding, downvoted for a stupid joke 😔
Eh don't worry about it man lol, sarcasm is pretty much dead on the internet unfortunately.
I believe it's Italian in this case.