I presented a preliminary version of this paper at a panel on language and ideology at the 1998 annual meeting of the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages in San Francisco. I would like to acknowledge the short-term travel grant from the International Research and Exchanges Board, whose funds were provided by the U.S. Department of State (Title VIII program) and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The IREX grant provided me with the opportunity to conduct research in Serbia and Montenegro in 1998. I would also like to acknowledge the grant from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, which provided me with fellowship support during the summer of 1999. Special thanks are due to my two research assistants, Geoffrey Anisman and Jeffrey Upchurch, who helped edit and prepare the manuscript for publication.

1. See Article 12 of the Constitution of the Yugoslav Republic of Croatia which asserted the official status of the Croatian language and the Latin script. According to Robert Hayden, the Serbs officially retained the term Serbo-Croatian until the founding of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1992. See Hayden, , “Constitutional Nationalism in the Formerly Yugoslav Republics,” Slavic Review 51, no. 4 (Winter 1992): 654-73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. For details on post-1991 Croatian, see Greenberg, Robert, “In the Aftermath of Yugoslavia's Collapse: The Politics of Language Death and Language Birth,” International Politics 36, no. 2 (1999): 147-50Google Scholar. For a list of separatist Croatian language manuals, see Mogus, Milan, Povijest hrvatskoga knjizevnoga jezika (Zagreb, 1995), 210 Google Scholar.

3. For a more detailed discussion on the Novi Sad Agreement, see Greenberg, “In the Aftermath,” 144-47.

4. New journals produced by the Serbian linguists included Srpskijezik (published by Belgrade University's Philology Faculty) ,Jezik danas (published by the Serbian philological society, Matica Srpska), Riječ (published by Nikšić's Philosophy Faculty), and Znamen (published in Petrinja, formerly Serb-held territory in Croatia). In 1994, two polemical conferences were held in Nikšić and the proceedings were published. Four new orthographic manuals appeared in 1993-95 alone. New grammars included Branislav Ostojić, Kratka pregledna gramatika srpskoga jezika (Nikšić, 1998); and Ljubomir Popović and Zivojin Stanojčić, Gramatika srpskoga jezika (Belgrade-Novi Sad, 1992). Publications on the future of Serbian include Radmilo Marojević et al., Shvo o srpskom jeziku (Belgrade, 1998); and Miloš Kovačević, U odbranu jezika srpskoga (Belgrade, 1997). See also Radovanovic, Milorad, ed., Srpskijezik na kraju veka (Belgrade, 1996)Google Scholar. This special volume was published by the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences.

5. Vuk Stefanović Karadžić (1787-1864) was instrumental in reforming the Serbian language. He advocated adopting the Serbian vernacular as the basis for the literary language. This decision represented a radical break from the artificial Slaveno-Serbian language of the eighteenth century. Vuk's two dictionaries, Srpski rječnik (Belgrade, 1818) and an expanded second edition in 1852, formalized his proposed orthography, which included new Serbian Cyrillic letters and the phonetic principle of “Write as you speak, speak as you write.” Vuk's principles were later elaborated upon by his disciple, Djura Danicic (1825-1882), who was a prominent linguist devoted to establishing a joint literary language with the Croats.

6. Pavle Ivić et al., Prilozi pravopisu (Novi Sad, 1989).

7. Mitar Pesikan, Jovan Jerković, and Mato Pižurica, Pravopis srpskoga jezika (Novi Sad, 1994).

8. The ijekavian pronunciation is characteristic of the Serbs of Croatia, Bosnia- Herzegovina, western Serbia, the Sandzak, and Montenegro. In the literature, it is frequently referred to as the southern dialect or the dialect of western Serbs.

9. The official sanctioning of two equal variants of Serbo-Croatian was part of the 1954 Novi Sad Agreement, which envisioned the publication of an authoritative dictionary of the unified language. Two volumes of the dictionary were published in the late 1960s; however, the Croats complained bitterly that this joint dictionary favored the Eastern (Serbian) variant and withdrew from the joint project. In the aftermath of the Novi Sad Agreement, the Croats feared Serbian linguistic domination, which had previously soured Serb- Croat relations in royalist Yugoslavia. For a more detailed discussion on the polemics of the late 1960s and early 1970s, see Greenberg, Robert, “The Politics of Dialects among Serbs, Croats, and Muslims in the Former Yugoslavia,” East European Politics and Societies 10, no. 3 (1996): 402-4.Google Scholar

10. Kovačević, U odbranu jezika srpskoga, 129-36. The subheading of the chapter entitled “Za i protiv (ne)srpskog pravopisa” (For and against the (un)Serbian orthography) is “(Ne)srpski pravopis Matice Srpske” (The (un)Serbian orthographic manual of Matica Srpska).

11. Marojević also required students to study Russian as their second language in the Philology Faculty. His policies provoked strong protests from the students and the faculty, and according to the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (see their website at www.iwpr.net, which I last visited on 16 February 2000), the student protests forced Marojević's resignation in February 1999, although Marojević claimed that he left the deanship in order to pursue a project in Moscow. His departure has reduced the influence of his Orthodox faction, and many of Marojević's policies at the Philology Faculty have been reversed.

12. See Marojević et al., Slovo o srpskom jeziku.

13. Marojević, Radmilo, “Lingvistička razmatranja iz fonologije i ortografije,” Riječ l, no. 2 (1995): 79 Google Scholar.

14. For the Neo-Vukovite Orthographic Manual, see Božo Ćorić, Miloš Kovačević, Branislav Ostojić, Radoje Simić, and Stanojčić, Zivojin, Pravopis srpskoga jezika sa rjecnikom (Belgrade-Nikšić, 1993).Google Scholar

15. The republican academies included the Slovene Academy of Arts and Sciences (Ljubljana), the Yugoslav Academy of Arts and Sciences (Zagreb), the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences (Belgrade), the Bosnia-Herzegovina Academy of Arts and Sciences (Sarajevo), the Montenegrin Academy of Arts and Sciences (Titograd, now Podgorica), and the Macedonian Academy of Arts and Sciences (Skopje).

16. One such joint interacademy commission was the Odbor za dijalektologiju (Commission for dialectology), which constituted the Yugoslav working group for the Common Slavic Linguistic Atlas project (OLA)—a pan-Slavic effort to document specific dialectal phenomena across the entire Slavic speech territory. All Slavic-speaking countries were involved in this project with the exception of Bulgaria, which objected to OLA's recognition of Macedonian as a separate language.

17. See Pravopis srpskohrvatskoga knijizevnogjezika (Novi Sad-Zagreb, 1960).

18. Kovačević, Miloš, “Lingvisticki i politicki aspekti pravopisa,” SPONE 26, nos. 5-6 (1994): 31–33.Google Scholar

19. By the late 1960s and early 1970s the Croats attempted to publish their own orthographic manual. See Babić, Stjepan, Finka, Bozidar, and Mogus, Milan, Hrvatski pravopis (London, 1984)Google Scholar. This volume was published in Zagreb in 1971, but all printed copies were quickly destroyed when Tito took action against the leaders of the Croatian Spring movement in that same year. Another manual by Ajanović, Mustafa, Diklić, Zvonomir, and Markovic, Svetozar, Pravopisni prirucnik (Sarajevo, 1972)Google Scholar was less controversial. Subsequently, several orthographic manuals or updates to the 1960 Pravopis were published, including Anic, Vladimir and Silic, Josip, Pravopisni prirucnik hrvatskoga Hi srpskoga jezika (Zagreb, 1986)Google Scholar; Simić, Radoje, Srpskohrvatski pravopis (Belgrade, 1991)Google Scholar; and Ivić et al., Prilozi pravopisu.

20. The official name of the committee was Medjuakademijski odbor za proucavanje ortografske i ortoepske problematike (Interacademy commission for the study of orthographic and orthoepic problems).

21. See Ćorić, Kovačević, Ostojić, Simić, and Stanojčić, Pravopis srpskoga jezika sa rjecnikom.

22. Dešić, Milorad, Pravopis srpskog jezika: Prirucnik za skole (Belgrade, 1995)Google Scholar; and Pesikan, Mitar, Jerković, Jovan, and Pižurica, Mato, Pravopis srpskoga jezika: Skolsko izdanje (Novi Sad-Belgrade, 1995)Google Scholar. Ironically, the MS and BN manuals were not readily available in Belgrade bookstores in the summers of 1997 and 1998 when I tried to purchase both manuals. I was told that the MS manual was sold out and that the BN manual had been withdrawn from the bookstores because it was not an officially sanctioned orthographic manual. I was able to purchase only Dešić's manual. In 1998, however, I was able to find the BN manual at the bookstore of the Philosophy Faculty in Nikšić. My Montenegrin colleagues told me that the BN manual was considered “official” in Montenegro.

23. Kovačević, U odbranu jezika srpskoga, 114.

24. In a similar manner, in the late 1950s Serb and Croat linguists fought bitterly over relatively minor issues such as capitalization rules and the placement of a period in the writing of dates.

25. Before 1991, the Latin and Cyrillic scripts were used interchangeably in Serbia, especially in urban centers. The Cyrillic script was the one introduced by Vuk, while the Latin script was identical to that used in Croatia.

26. Of these graphemes, the Croats accepted only Danicic's d into their orthography alongside its variant, dj.

27. I borrowed the phrase “orthographic chaos” from the title of the paper Božo Ćorić presented at the conference. See Božo Ćorić, “Pravopisni haos,” SPONE 26, nos. 5 - 6 (1994): 38-39.

28. See Vujičić, Dragomir, “Izmedju dvanova pravopisa,” SPONE 26, nos. 5-6 (1994): 14 Google Scholar: “Pojavu ova dva pravopisa ne treba shvatiti kao nekakvo zlo, jer monopol ni u jednom strucnom i naucnom poslu nije dobro odrzavati.“

29. Simić, Radqje, “Lazna zabrinutost nad laznim problemima: Zakljucci naucnog skupa,” SPONE 26, nos. 5-6 (1994): 78–79 Google Scholar: “Postqje, kako vidimo, mudri ‘Akademici’ sa pravom da brinu o dobru otadzbine, i neodgovorni profesori koji su uzurpirali pravo da predaju bespomocnim studentima, i pored toga sto su tako neposlusni i neodgovorni pa nesto nazivaju pravopisom, drugo gramatikom… . Grmi sa svoga akademskog Olimpa, … , poziva ‘mladje zastupnike univerzitetske lingvistike’ na red i disciplinu, na odricanje od sopstvenih shvatanja u ime poslusnosti prema ‘starijima'; zastrasuje i preti najvecim kaznama. Ti obicaji su primetni na dva znacajna plana: na planu naucnom i na planu ljudskom.“

30. Since this article was written, Montenegro has taken new steps toward independence from the FRY, including the introduction of the German Mark as its currency, and the prospect of a referendum to vote on secession from the FRY, should its plans for a looser federation not be approved in Belgrade.

31. Ivić, Pavle, “Emocionalac kao kriticar,” Riječ 2, nos. 1-2 (1996): 107-23Google Scholar. Ivić was reacting in particular to criticism from Marojević; see Marojević, “Lingvistička razmatranja iz fonologije i ortografije,” 77-98.

32. Marojević, Radmilo, “Kriticar kao emocionalac (Kritika lingvistickog autoportreta Pavla Ivića),” Riječ 3, no. 1 (1997): 79–93.Google Scholar

33. These two graphemes were frequent in Old Church Slavic Cyrillic manuscripts and in later Church Slavonic texts, t survived several Russian orthographic reforms but was eliminated from Russian Cyrillic in 1918. was frequently joined to a vowel to indicate the presence of the j-glide. Otherwise, this letter served as a variant for the vowel / i / . Marojević proposed a reintroduction of this letter to replace Serbian j in all positions.

34. Prior to the breakup of Yugoslavia, the ijekavian dialect was spoken widely among Serbs in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Montenegro. Within Serbia proper, it was found only in portions of western Serbia and the Sandzak. The ijekavian dialect was the only dialect of the formerly unified language to be shared by the four Serbo-Croatian speaking peoples of socialist Yugoslavia.

35. Miro Kašići claims to correct all “delusions and distortions” regarding the relationship between Croatian and Serbian in his monograph, published by the Institute of Linguistics of Zagreb University's Philosophy Faculty. See Miro Kašići, Hrvatski i srpski: Zablude i krivotvorine (Zagreb, 1995). His work was translated into English in 1997. Many similar polemical publications have appeared, especially in Croatia.

36. Miroslav Samardzic, Tajne Vukove reforme (Kragujevac, 1995). According to this line of argumentation, Vuk's choice of ijekavian alienated the “southern Serbs,” that is, the Macedonians, who also mosdy use ekavian reflexes of the Common Slavic vowel jat'.

37. Ivić, Pavle, Srpski narod i njegovjezik, 2d ed. (Belgrade, 1986).Google Scholar

38. Naylor, Kenneth, “The Sociolinguistic Situation in Yugoslavia with Special Emphasis on Serbo-Croatian,” in Bugarski, Ranko and Hawkesworth, Celia, eds., Language Planning in Yugoslavia (Columbus, 1992), 81–82.Google Scholar

39. Quote taken from Božo Ćorić, “Neka aktuelna pitanja nauke o srpskom jeziku,“ Znamen 1, no. 2 (1995): 7: “Srpskohrvatski jezik je jedan od slovenskih jezika i jedan od jezika kojim se govori u Socijalistickoj Federativnoj Republici Jugoslaviji. Njime se govori pre svega, u cetiri socialisticke republike: Srbiji, Crnoj Gori, Bosni i Hercegovini i Hrvatskoj. Srpskohrvatski jezik ima vise dijalekata, a na nivou knjizevnog jezika ima ove varijante: istocnu i zapadnu. Istocna varijanta ima dva izgovora—ekavski i ijekavski. U osnovi ovog udzbenika nalazi se istocna varijanta srpskohrvatskog knjizevnog jezika i to njena ekavska realizacija.“

40. For the exact quote from the Novi Sad Agreement, see Mogus, Povijest hrvatskoga knjizevnoga jezika, 201.

41. Ivić, “Emocionalac kao kriucar.“

42. Ranko Bugarski./eziA od mira do rata (Belgrade, 1995), 166: “To je politicki dekret bez presedana, svqjevrsno nasilje nad jezikom i njegovim govornicima, zasnovano na ideologiji velike Srbije, cirilicne i ekavske, u kqjoj svi koji se ne uklapaju u tu shemu mogu u najboljem slucaju da racunaju na status podstanara.“

43. Djurovic, Radosav, ‘Jatove varijacije i standardni jezik,” Znamen 1, no. 2 (1995): 71–76.Google Scholar

44. Ćorić, Božo, “Ijekavsko-ekavsko dvojstvo srpskog knjizevnog jezika,” Vaspitanje i obrazovanje 3 (1994): 60 Google Scholar: “Buduci da su varijacije vazan segment svakog knjizevnog jezika bitno je drzati se principa koji obezbedjuje uslove za ravnopravnu koeksistenciju svih jezickih sredstava srpskog knjizevnog jezika … i to ne svim prostorima gde se srpski govori i pise.“

45. Dešić, Milorad, “Nepodobna ijekavica,” Vaspitanje i obrazovanje 3 (1994): 48.Google Scholar

46. Djukanovic, Petar, “Oktroisana ekavica,” Riječ 2, no. 1 (1996): 86.Google Scholar