Post on 20-Apr-2023
M. Riđanović (2015), ms.
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AN AMERICAN LINGUISTIC TRAGEDY
Alexander, Ronelle. Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, a Grammar: With Sociolinguistic
Commentary. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2006. xxi + 464 pp.
Alexander, Ronelle and Ellen Elias-Bursać. Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, a Textbook: With
Exercises and Basic Grammar, Second edition. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin
Press, 2010. xviii + 510 pp.
Reviewed by: Dr. Midhat Ridjanović, professor emeritus of English and linguistics,
University of Sarajevo
r.midhat@gmail.com
In this review the first of these two books will be briefly called Grammar and the second
Textbook. We will also occasionally use B, C, and S as abbreviations for Bosnian, Croatian,
and Serbian.
For the past eight years the twin volumes under review have been the major resource in the
U.S.A. for teaching what used to be called Serbo-Croatian before the break-up of Yugoslavia
in 1992. After the Yugoslav wars of 1991–1995, new splinter states were created, each
naming its language after their new name. Thus were born Croatian, Serbian, and Bosnian,
and, in 2007, Montenegrin too (the four „languages“ will henceforth be referred to as BCMS
and, without Montenegrin, as BCS). Naturally, the new names didn't change what was spoken
by the four nations, in spite of efforts by normativists in each of the four countries, especially
Croatia, to make the language of their country different from the other three „languages.“ In
the Preface to my book Bosnian for Foreigners: With a Comprehesive Grammar (Rabic,
Sarajevo 2012), I say: „In spite of their different names, the four „languages“ constitute
basically the same language, whose speakers have no difficulty whatsoever in communicating
with each other [...]. Grammatical differences between the four „languages“ are negligible,
and lexical differences are also few and far between. [...] It is hard to measure differences
between varieties of the same langage, but it is safe to say that British and American English
are more distant from each other than B, C, M, and S are from each other. Misunderstandings
between speakers of British and American English do occur, but linguistic misunderstandings
between speakers of the different variants of BCMS are unheard of.“
The authors set out to write a joint grammar and textbook of three varieties of the same
language. While it may be possible to write a single book on the grammar of two or three
closely related varieties of a language by describing their common grammatical core and
adding information about special grammatical features of the individual varieties, it is
impossible to write a good textbook which would enable the user to acquire a solid command
of one or more varieties, in both spoken and written form. The irrefutable proof of this claim
is the fact that no such textbook has ever been written for both British and American Emglish.
The authors of the books under review tried to perform this impossible feat for BCS and, of
course, failed.
In spite of the commercial success of the two books under review, especially the second one, I
claim that they might well be counted among the worst foreign-language textbooks ever
published. They are filled with errors of every kind: ungrammatical word forms, phrases, and
sentences; meaningless clusters of words; incoherent dialogues; sloppy or wrong grammatical
rules; omissions of important rules; wrong accents; and false allocations of individual words
or grammatical forms to one of the three „languages“ in the BCS complex. This is to mention
only the major, recurrent errors.
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The Grammar volume includes some 50 pages of „Sociolinguistic Commentary,“ which, even
if well written, has no place in a BCS textbook. The Commentary is basically a history of
squabbles among Balkan linguists over insignificant details of usage, mostly in relation to
claims of a separate B, C, or S language. It contains nothing new that cannot be found in
published books and articles or on the Internet, and was obviously incorporated into the book
to impress the reader, to compensate for the lack of indispensible grammatical rules, to make
the book look bigger, and to raise its price.
I think that the most serious error committed by the authors is the acceptance of artificial
forms of words proclaimed as „correct“ by linguistically ignorant and nationalistically
oriented Balkan „linguists.“ Any disinterested observer of the postwar political situation in the
Balkans can see that the new splinter states are run by fascistoid governments, which are dead
set on reestablishing the traditional attributes of nation states for their fiefdoms; since
language is a hallmark of nationhood, they have searched for and found „linguists“ who
would produce „scientific evidence“ that the language of their particular state is a separate
language, worthy of a name of its own. The „evidence“ was usually no more than a handful of
words or word forms supposed to be peculiar to a particular „language.“ A laughable example
of a new word form supposed to be specific to Bosnian is found in the Textbook: the Bosnian
version of the dialogue on page 38 ends with Onda, lahku noć! (Then, good night!). The
official orthographic guide for Bosnian (Pravopis bosanskog jezika) prescribes the use of the
sound/letter h in about half a dozen words, which were indeed pronounced with h by most of
the Muslim population of Bosnia (and are now spontaneously used only in villages); one such
word is lahak 'light; easy', used in the greeting Laku noć (literally '((I wish you a) light night').
But Muslims never used this greeting; their traditional parting greeting used at all times of day
was Alahemanet ('I leave you in Allah's care'). So Lahku noć is doubly wrong: (a) The
greeting itself has never been used by traditional (believing) Muslims; (b) Muslims who use
this greeting – and most city Muslims do – wouldn't dream of pronouncing lahku (with h)
because they are aware of the fact that the greeting was „borrowed“ from Christians, who
have always used the form laku (without h)!
Another major error committed by Prof. Alexander has to do with the designation of the
territory on which a particular Balkan „language“ is spoken. Everybody accepts the fact that
Serbian is the name of the language spoken in Serbia and that Croatian is the language of
Croatia; there is a sizable national minority of Serbs in Croatia and of Bosnians in Serbia,
whose members call their languages by their national names, though all the inhabitants of
each of the two countries speak in the same way. But Bosnia-Hercegovina is more
complicated. The most important fact about the language of this country is that all its
inhabitants speak in exactly the same way. The only logical name of that language would be
Bosnian in the territorial sense (the country was called only Bosnia from the creation of the
first medieval Bosnian state in the 10th century to the mid-19th century, when Hercegovina
was added to its name). Besides, Bosnian Serbs and Croats are, in fact, descendants of
Bosnian Orthodox people and Catholics who were „converted“ to Serbs and Croats in the
course of the 19th century. Therefore, historically speaking, there are no Serbs and Croats in
Bosnia.
The different names of the Bosnian language were created in the aftermath of the Dayton
Peace Agreement of 1995. Every informed person knows that the Agreement was signed
hastily in order to put an end to the hostilities and that grave errors were made by carving up
what had for centuries been one country and by dividing a nation which had been marked by a
common language and culture for more than a millenium. The Serbian and Croatian
aggressors in the 1992–95 war killed or persecuted tens of thousands of people in order to
create „ethnically clean“ areas and, unfortunately, the Dayton Agreement largely legalized
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their illegal and immoral „ethnic cleansing.“ The tragic result is a total demographic
redistribution of the country's population, so that Serbs now constitute 90% of the population
of the Republika Srpska while Bosniaks account for nearly half of the total population of the
Federation of Bosnia-Hercegovina. Ethnic cleansing also resulted in the ludicrous situation in
which one language was called by a variety of different names – Serbian in the Republika
Srpska and Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian in the Federation of Bosnia-Hercegovina. This, in
turn, gave rise to the totally crazy situation in schools, which divide children of different
„nationalities“ because they must be taught different „national groups of subjects“
(nacionalne grupe predmeta) in language, literature, history, and religious instruction. Every
bit of this abominable ethnic cleansing on all levels — from territorial to linguistic — is
recognized and reinforced by Professor Alexander in her book on Bosnian, Croatian, and
Serbian. One example is the use of names in the dialogues appearing in individual lessons:
according to the authors of the Textbook all Bosnians are Muslims, although they constitute
less than half of the population of the Bosnian Federation and though thousands of Bosnian
Christians call themselves Bosnians; all Croatians and Serbs are Christians, though there are
large populations of Muslims in both Serbia and Croatia, who mostly call their language by its
official „state“ name. The bitter irony is in how the authors state their main intent in the
Preface to the Textbook (p. xii): „Our intent has been to give as true a picture as possible of
existing usage within a framework that is accessible to students and usable in the classroom.“
Whether this beautifully framed intent was the authors' true intent, we will never know, but
what they have produced is the exact opposite: as I will show in the remainder of this review,
their picture of „existing usage“ is filled with non-existing words and word forms in each of
the three „languages.“
Page 1 of the Textbook contains the following information: „Two alphabets are in use in the
region where B, C, and S are spoken, called “Latin” and “Cyrillic.” S uses both alphabets
while B and C use the Latin alphabet. Learning to pronounce B, C, or S is easy, because each
alphabet letter corresponds to only one sound.“ The claim that all Bosnians and Croats use the
Latin alphabet is a sweeping statement as there are quite a few Bosnians who use the Cyrillic
alphabet, at least occasionally, and Bosnian schools are obliged by law to teach both
alphabets. But that is a minor error compared to the claim that learning to pronounce B, C, or
S is easy, because each alphabet letter corresponds to only one sound. In the Latin alphabet
three BCS sounds are represented with two letters each (lj, nj, dž) and a learner who is new to
such spelling of single sounds will have to be warned not to pronounce the two letters
separately. Besides, even if s/he knows that lj, nj and dž represent single sounds, s/he may
have difficulty pronouncing them (many foreigners never learn to pronounce lj and nj). Other
sounds and consonant clusters foreigners find dfficult to pronounce are r (especially in its
vocalic function), tr, dr, tl, dl, mn, and the „notorious“ distinction between č and ć and dž and
đ. Instead of saying that learning to pronounce BCS is easy, the authors should have said that
the relation between pronunciation and spelling is simple in BCS, as individual letters
correspond to individual sounds, except in the case of lj, nj, and dž. Learning to pronounce
BCS sounds is a totally different matter – it is hardly ever easy and can be quite difficult for
people who are not good mimics and who don't have a background in learning foreign
languages.
The authors follow strictly the rule that falling accents can occur only on the first syllable of a
word. The rule was concocted in the early 20th century by linguists of the neogrammarian
school, which has long since been on the garbage dump of history. Unfortunately, the 1954
Novi Sad Agreement on the Pravopis codified many artificial forms and rules invented by
these old-fashioned linguists, including the rule for the falling accent being limited to the first
syllable. Strict observance of this rule gives rise to monstrous sounding pronunciations, which
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even television anchors, who are supposed to speak „correctly,“ cannot produce. I have yet to
hear a news reader who has not stumbled trying to pronounce „correctly“ words like
Australija Australija, paradajz 'tomato', and Kolorado Colorado, i.e. with the prescribed short
rising stress on the second syllable instead of the natural pronunciation with a falling accent
on the third syllable.
Now get ready for what is probably the most incredible statement in a foreign-language
textbook. In the Preface to the Textbook, on page xvi, the authors say: „It is not necessary to
teach all elements of this complex accentual system [i.e. the BCS accentual system, M.R.]
either at the outset or at all [emphasis mine], since one can communicate perfectly well by
simply knowing the place of accent and a few important instances of vowel length.“ We all
know that there are ways to communicate without using words – sign language, pantomime,
gesture and body language in general – so why learn languages, why write foreign-language
textbooks?! The statement which writes off BCS accents as irrelevant to communication is
analogous to one that would appear in an EFL textbook in which the authors claim (God
forbid!) that it is not necessary to teach all elements of the complex system of English verbal
tenses at the outset or at all, since one can communicate perfectly well by using the present
tense all the time, and pointing with a finger behind oneself when indicating a past event and
in front of oneself when indicating a future event! The truth is that the functional load of pitch
accents and vowel length in BCS is higher than the functional load of many pairs of
segmental phonemes, and we all know that contrasts with higher functional load are more
important in a teaching context than ones with lower functional load. Whoever has taught
BCS to foreigners must have witnessed cases of the learners' neglect of the rules for the use of
suprasegmental phonemes affecting comprehension. This often happens when the meaning of
a sentence hinges on the interpretation of a form of a noun segmentally identical in the
genitive singular and plural, but with a long final vowel in the plural. The following headline
appeared recently in the major Bosnian newspaper Oslobođenje: „Dolazak predstavnika EU u
Sarajevo“ (Arrival of EU representative(s) in Sarajevo). This may mean the arrival of one, or
more than one, EU repesentative in Sarajevo, because predstavnika with a short final a is
genitive singular and with a long final a genitive plural. There are literally thousands of
minimal pairs of words differing only in pitch on the stressed syllable and/or vowel length on
one or more syllables, accented or unaccented.
The dialogues appearing in every lesson are usually stilted and artificial, sometimes even
senseless. The authors made what I believe is the worst mistake in writing foreign-language
textbooks: they composed dialogues which will illustrate specific grammatical elements
and/or lexical items they want to teach in the particular lesson, paying little attention to the
content of the dialogues so that some are unnatural and sometimes border on crazy; this is
illustrated by the following excerpt from the dialogue appearing on page 6 of the Textbook:
2. George je profesor, a Mary je profes rica. (George is a professor, and Mary is a woman
professor.)
3. A njihov pas? (And their dog?)
2. jihov pas n je profesor. as n je č vjek! (Their dog is not a professor. A dog is not a
man.)
The authors of the Textbook must be very fond of dogs. So they compose a dialogue,
appearing on page 24, to prepare the learner of BCS to buy a dog when s/he gets there, rather
than a ticket at a bus station. The learner is offered a yellow dog [!!!!] but her/his brother, for
whom s/he is buying the dog, doesn't like yellow dogs, he prefers red ones (the closest to a red
dog I have ever seen is a white-and-orange spotted dog). What the authors have failed to do is
compose a dialogue between the American learner of BCS and the Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian
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airport employee who will have to enlighten her/him about the complicated regulations
connected with transporting the dog by plane across the Atlantic!
Other examples of ludicrous sentences in the dialogues:
Pod djèvojkama su stòlice. 'Under the girls are chairs' (p. 113)
Dòručak je u djèvojkama. 'Breakfast is in the girls' (p. 113)
Dòručak je u mirnoj djèci.1 'Breakfast is in the quiet children' (p. 115)
Bez bàlkanskih jezika nema sreće. 'There can be no happiness without Balkan languages' (p.
119)
Pjevam pjesme bàlkanskim jèzicima. 'I sing songs to Balkan
languages, i.e. I serenade Balkan languages' (p. 119)
S bàlkanskim jèzicima divno je žìvjeti. 'It is beautiful to live with Balkan languages' (p. 119)
O, bàlkanski jèzici! 'Oh, ye Balkan languages!' (p. 119)
Ispod čèga je stòlica? 'What is the chair under?'2 (page 120)
Participants in the dialogues are introduced with numbers rather than with A, B, C, as is
customary. Thus, on page 57 we find the question Zašto broj 2 nije žedan? 'Why is number
two not thirsty?'. Numbers cannot be thirsty, but A's, B's, and C's can.
Having examined closely the first 70 pages of the Textbook, I have found enough errors to
show that this book should not have been published, even if it had been heavily edited (a
discussion of all the errors on its 510 pages would no doubt fill a mid-sized book!). The
following are illustrations of different types of errors found on the first 70 pages of the
Textbook.
Wrong allocation of words and/or their meanings to B, C, or S
You don't have to go far in the Textbook to find examples of wrong allocation of words and
grammatical elements to a particlar „language.“ The important and highly frequent yes-no
questions are introduced in Lesson 1. As it happens, BCMS has two forms for these
questions: they can be constructed (a) by using the question marker li immediately after the
finite predicate verb appearing in sentence-initial position, as in Znate li engleski? 'Do you
speak English?', and (b) by using the dummy Da at the beginning of the question and
following it with li, as in Da li znate engleski?. On page 2 in Lesson 1 the former type of yes-
no questions is said to be Croatian, and the latter type Bosnian and Serbian. But the Bosnian
version of the short dialogue on the same page contains the „Croatian“ question Je li tvoja?
How come? Probably smuggled into Bosnian by a Croatian nationalist! On page 10 of the
Grammar volume Prof. Alexander gives a muddled explanation of the use of the two ways of
signaling yes-no interrogative sentences, but the basic message is still that Bosnian and
Serbian use the Da li version of yes-no questions almost exclusively, and Croatian the version
without Da li; apart from the error mentioned above, all the dialogues in the Textbook
observe this „rule“ strictly. There might be a slight preference in Croatian for the version
without Da li, but the truth is that both versions are used in all three „languages,“ with the Da
1 Almost every dialogue in the Textbook contains wrongly accented words. The one on page 115 has
three forms of the irregular plural djèca 'children' – djèci, djècu, djèco – stressed with short rising
accent instead of short falling. Wrong direction of pitch in an accent grates on the native speaker's ear
even more than an accent occurring on a wrong syllable. 2 This question is related to the statement Pod djevojakama su stolice. Since djevojke (girls) are human
beings and not things, the corresponding question, however ludicrous to begin with, should have been
Ispod koga su stolice 'Who are the chairs under?'. The only answer to the question Ispod čega je
stolica? that would make any sense would be Ispod djevojčine stražnjice 'Under the girl's behind'.
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li version sounding slightly more formal in some situations. Clear proof that the Da li version
occurs in Croatian can be found in the major book on Croatian grammar Hrvatska gramatika
by Barić et al. (Školska knjiga, Zagreb, 1997): on page 447 both versions are described and
illustrated with examples from Croatian literature, with no mention of any difference between
them! On the other hand, the „Bible“ of Serbo-Croatian grammar, Savremeni srpskohrvatski
jezik (Contemporary Serbo-Croatian Language) by Mihailo Stevanović (vol. II, aučna
knjiga, Belgrade, 1986) gives numerous examples of yes-no questions without Da li from
works of Serbian writers (see pp. 12–14). If the two grammar books are not accessible to you,
just pick up any work of fiction by a contemporary Croatian or Serbian author, and you will
find both versions of yes-no questions in either „language.“ Questions beginning with Da li
are rarely found in books written by Bosnian Serbs because, in Bosnia, such questions have a
formal ring to them and are rarely used in conversation.
Here is a list of words wrongly allocated to a particular language or languges of the BCS
complex:
Page 3 – Sveska 'notebook' is said to be Serbian, the corresponding Croatian word being
bilježnica and Bosnian teka. The fact is that sveska is used a lot in Bosnia, maybe even more
than teka, which is also commonly used in Croatia. Bilježnica is a formal synonym of teka in
both Croatian and Bosnian, as is the ekavian form of the word, beležnica, in Serbia. In Bosnia,
a workbook is always radna sveska; there is no such thing as radna teka. Besides, Razlikovni
rječnik srpskog i hrvatskog jezika (Dictionary of Differences Between Serbian and Croatian)
by Vladimir Brodnjak (Hrvatska sveučilišna naklada, Zagreb, 1993) tells us that bilježnica is
the ijekavian form of a Serbian word imposed on Croatian during Serb-dominated
Yugoslavia.
Pages 6 and 7 – The vocabulary list on page 6 informs the reader that drug and prijatelj, both
glossed as 'friend', are distributed among the three „languages“ so that drug is not used in
Croatian and prijatelj is not used in Serbian. This is contradicted in a note on page 7, where it
is claimed that „drug is used more frequently in S in the meaning, „friend, companion,“ while
prijatelj is used in this meaning in B and C (and all three use prijatelj in the meaning “life-
long friend”).“ A clear implication of this claim is that drug is used in Croatian too and that
prijatelj can also be used in Serbian! The truth is that both words are used in all three
„languages“ and the dominant factor favoring the use of one or the other is context, which is
hardly ever invoked by the author as a factor in the interpretation of the sense of a particular
word.
Page 26 – The vocabulary list on this page says that 'cash register' is blagajna in Bosnian and
Croatian and kasa in Serbian. Not true – both words are used as synonyms in all three
„languages.“
Page 38 – The Bosnian and Serbian dialogues on this page begin with the greeting Dòbro
veče (Good evening), the Croatian version of the greeting being Dòbra večer. While some
Bosnian upstarts may use the Serbian version of the greeting because they think that Croatian
or Serbian are more „elegant,“ most Bosnians will use the traditional Bosnian version
Dobàrveče, which is a single phonological word stressed on the second syllable with a short
rising accent.
Page 47 – In the vocabulary for Lesson 4 the Bosnian word for Spain is said to be both
Španija and Španjolska. The authors frequently claim that B, C, or S use two (mostly similar)
words for a single thing or notion but tell us nothing about their distribution. Are they in free
variation? Is one of them obsolete? Is one stylistically marked? Is one used by people with
blond hair and the other by dark-haired people? Španjolska is pure Croatian, hardly known by
the masses in Bosnia before the recent war, when Bosnians who could gain by pretending to
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be Croatian – all Bosnian-Croatian politicians and most public figures of Catholic religion or
descent – started using pure Croatian words. The same vocabulary list gives two Bosnian
forms for 'also' – takođe and također. The form takođe has practically vanished from Bosnian
usage, as anybody can see by browsing through a Bosnian newspaper (također is Croatian and
„correct“ Bosnian according to the new Pravopis).
Page 51 – The vocabulary list on this page gives parče 'piece' as both Bosnian and Serbian.
This is a typically Serbian word (though of Turkish origin) that would not even be recognized
out of context by most Bosnians.
Page 67 – The vocabulary list on this page and the dialogues underneath the list show sudija
as the Bosnian and Serbian word for 'judge' and sudac as the Croatian word. This was true of
Bosnian before the war but it no longer is. For reasons that are hard to explain, Bosnian has
been heavily Croatianized since the war. As a result, many Bosnian words which used to be
shared with Serbian have been replaced with the corresponding Croatian words or word
forms. Thus, the Croatian word sudac has practically ousted the former sudija. Another
Croatian word that has been adopted into Bosnian, especially in formal language, is okoliš
'environment' (we even have Ministarstvo okoliša 'Ministry of Environment'). Whatever our
attitude to this strange phenomenon, the new Croatian words used instead of traditional
Bosnian ones are a reality which cannot be ignored and every writer of a textbook for BCS as
a foreign language must state the facts of usage as they are.
The vocabulary list on the same page also includes three words for 'woman doctor', of which
lekarka is designated as S, liječnica as C, and ljekarka as B and (ijekavian) S. In Bosnia a
woman doctor is nearly always called doktorica; if a Bosnian wants to use another word, it
would most likely be liječnica rather than ljekarka. In this vocabulary list, as in many other
places in the Textbook, two variants of the same word are said to be Serbian. Although the
authors state that Serbian is ekavian in Serbia but ijekavijan elsewhere, this information is
hardly sufficient for the student, who must be confused by the maze of „languages“ s/he has
to cope with, which, to top it all, includes two different „Serbians.“ The only right, scientific
approach to this problem would have been to call the language spoken by everbody in Bosnia-
Hercegovina Bosnian in the territorial sense, and then add the information that the language is
officially called Serbian in Republika Srpska.3
The following is the most important instruction to users of the Textbook regarding the
allocation of words and word forms to the individual languages of the BCS complex:
„The vast majority of words in B, C, and S are used by all speakers of B, C, and S with the
same meaning. A number of words, however, are clearly recognized as either Croatian or
Serbian, and these words are marked [C] and [S], respectively, in vocabulary lists. Thus, pairs
like vàni and napolju “outside,” kàzalište and pòzorište “theater,” kìno and bioskop “cinema,”
vlak and voz “train,” and tjedan and nèdelja “week,” are markedly C vs. S words. Sometimes
B will use both (as in the case of “outside”); sometimes it will prefer the Serbian word (as in
the case of “theater” and “train”); sometimes it will prefer the Croatian word (as in the case of
“cinema”); and in a few instances it will have its own word altogether, as in the case of family
terms.“ (p. 70).
The last sentence in this quote tells us that Bosnian uses Croatian and Serbian words, i.e. that
it is a mélange of the other two languages and makes use of its own words only „in a few
3 If the Balkans continue to be as politically turbulent as they have been during the past century or so,
the political map of Bosnia may change again, bringing about a change of the name(s) in the language
of the people of Bosnia. Therefore, the only safe thing to do is to call the language by the geographical
area in which it is spoken.
M. Riđanović (2015), ms.
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instances.“ This racist view of Bosnian is found in references to Bosnian by extreme Croatian
and Serbian nationalists and needs no further comment, though it should be pointed out that
the earliest lengthy written record of Bosnian predates Croatian and Serbian records of any
significance, and it is quite possible that some Bosnian words found their way into Croatian or
Serbian, rather than the other way around.
Bad or missing BCS grammar in the Textbook and Grammar
On page 1 (in Lesson 1) the learner is presented with the verb zvati se used in BCS to say
what one's name is. This will no doubt be a real „bomb“ for learners who are native speakers
of English; they will wonder:
- Why doesn't this language have something corresponding to my name is; how is it
possible to say 'my/your name is' using just a verb?
- If the infinitive of the „name verb“ is zvati se, why is the present-tense form zovem se?
Where did the o in zovem se come from? Is there a rule explaining this strange
difference between the infinitive and the present tense in the root of the verb, or is it
an exception?; if it is an exception, what is the more general rule? Using an irregular
verb to introduce the regular present tense paradigm could be compared to using took
as the model to introduce the past tense forms in English!
- The authors say that the particle se „accompanies the verb“ – does it accompany every
verb and if it doesn't, which verbs does it accompany? Everything has a function in
grammar – what is the function of this particle?
- The authors say that the particle does not always follow the verb and must be placed in
the „second“ place in the sentence. The particle is not identified as an enclitic at this
point and the reader is referred to a section in Grammar where the placement and
mutual order of enclitics are discussed extensively. Because this segment of BCS
grammar is complex and very important for foreign learners of the language, we will
discuss it in a separate section below.
- All forms of the present tense of the verb zvati – zovem, zoveš, zove, etc. – have the
vowel in the second syllable underscored to show that the e is long. It is true that the e
is long according to standard dictionaries (such as the six-volume one published by the
two Maticas), but accents have changed drastically during the past 50 years or so. In
contemporary Serbian (as spoken in Serbia) and standard Croatian as spoken by
educated people in Croatia, there are no long vowels after the main accent of a word.
In Bosnia a long vowel after the accented one in the present tense of zvati and other
verbs from the same accentual paradigm is a mark of rural origin and lack of
education.
For all these reasons the „crazy“ verb zvati se should have been avoided in the first lesson of a
textbook for beginners.
We will now take up the important matter of proper placement of the particle se and similar
function words used as enclitics. This topic is dealt with in Grammar on pages 13–15 and
350–3. On page 13 the author, Prof. Alexander, introduces the notion of clitic, but shows that
she doesn't know what a clitic is because she uses it as the more frequent synonym of enclitic!
Mistaking clitics for enclitics, she says that they are „short words [....] which never bear
accent in the sentence.“ She doesn't even say whether clitics precede or follow the accented
word but she does liken them to contracted forms of auxiliary verbs in English such as I'm,
she'll, you're. She concludes the paragraph on clitics by saying „This term is sometimes
encountered in the form of enclitic.“ [!!!!!!!!] A Harvard hD in languages doesn't know what
every student who has taken Linguistics 101 knows: clitic is the general term for short
M. Riđanović (2015), ms.
9
unaccented function words occurring immediately before or after accented words; clitics
occurring before accented words are called proclitics, those after the accented word are
enclitics; in some languages the accent of the accented word may shift to the proclitic.
The explanation of the placement of enclitics in BCS sentences given by Prof. Alexander is a
rigamarole of muddled and incorrect statements. She doesn't like any of the rules devised by
previous grammarians over a period of some 200 years, so she decides to set up new rules.
Having said that enclitics must be placed in the „second“ place in the sentence, she goes on to
identify the first place and defines it as first significant unit. Of course, this term is worthless
because significant can be applied to any meaningful stretch of language, from morpheme to
the entire sentence. Then she says „A more precise linguistic term for this significant unit is
constituent.“ Anybody with a basic knowledge of grammar knows that consituent refers to
every functional element in a sentence, regardless of its place, which is part of the next higher
functional element in the hierarchy of the grammatical structure of the sentence. Since even a
single morpheme can be a constituent, it is obvious that this grammatical notion is useless in
determining the place occupied by enclitics in BCS sentences. After this rambling discussion
of possible candidates for „first place in the sentence“ the author says: „When it comes to
clitic placement, in fact, the rules of BCS are so complex that it is better to use a different
term altogether, one chosen specifically for the purpose.“ Having rejected all previous ideas
for determining the „first“ place in the sentence, which can be used profitably for setting up
rules of clitic placement in BCS (constituent just needs to be defined more specifically), she
goes on to set up a new unit, which she calls rhythmic constituent (RC), which cannot be used
in devising those rules!! We all know that rhythm is a pattern of repeated sounds and that an
average-sized sentence in every language can be pronounced with at least 10 different
rhythms. A sentence like Can you believe that she killed two of her husbands? may be
pronounced with only two major stresses, on believe and two, with three major stresses, on
believe, killed, and two, and with four major stresses, on believe, killed, two, and husbands; if
the speaker wants to emphasize the extreme incredulity of her/his statement, s/he may stress
every single lexical word in the sentence. Obviously, every time the pattern of word stresses
changes, the rhythmic structure of the sentence changes too. This means that there can be no
fixed sentence-initial rhythmic constituent, which we can identify with any precision for the
purpose of placing BCS enclitics in the right place. The idea of using rhythm as the basis for a
grammatical rule is ludicrous in itself and is not worth talking about. What is worth pointing
out, however, is that the author claims that a single short word may be a RC; this incredible
claim is expressed on page 350 of Grammar with the following sentence: „Obligatory RC's
fall into two groups: subordinating conjunctions and question words.“ This implies that a
rhythmic unit – whether in music or language – may consist of a single element!!! This makes
no more sense than saying that a group of people may consist of a single person. Anybody
who thought that the title of this review „An American Linguistic Tragedy“ is too harsh
should reconsider their view after this „finding.“ A comparison of Prof. Alexander's
misleading description of the grammar of BCS enclitics with the thorough coverage of the
same topic in my Bosnian for Foreigners (see pp. 558-65) will convince every unbiased
reader that students at 40-odd American universities where BCS is taught with Prof.
Alexander's book have been duped for the past two years by being deprived of my book
(published in the summer of 2012).
On page 2 of the Textbook we find the following introductory information on the highly
frequent verb biti: „The usual forms of the verb biti “to be” are short, and cannot occur alone
at the beginning of a sentence. They are always placed in the second position of the word or
clause.“ ext to this information is a „box“ containing the paradigm of short forms of biti.
The all-important paradigm of this all-important linking verb is introduced with its short
M. Riđanović (2015), ms.
10
forms in a „usually“ rule!! Imagine a textbook for English as a foreign language in which the
verb to be is introduced with a sentence like „The usual forms of the verb to be are short: 'm,
're, 's, 're“ with no additional information about long forms (which may not exist, for all the
reader knows!). The „short“ forms of biti should have been called by their standard name,
enclitic forms, which would enable the learner to use them properly once s/he learns the rules
covering all enclitics. The authors' short forms are contrasted to „longer“ forms (i.e. full
forms), which are introduced on page 7 of the Textbook in the following way: „There are two
sets of longer forms for this verb, which are given in the chart to the right. One set is used to
express negation and the other is used in questions and for emphasis.“ But of the three types
of questions used in BCS, only one type – yes-no questions beginning with the finite predicate
verb – uses full forms of biti! The other two types of questions – yes-no questions introduced
with dummy Da and standard wh-questions – cannot possibly use full forms of biti! Also, it is
strange to separate the affirmative forms of a verb from the corresponding negative ones and
present them as quite different sets in view of the fact that formal relations between the two
sets of forms are – barring exceptions – systematic in every human language. (The negative
forms of the present tense of biti are generated by a simple rule: merge ni with the enclitic
form of the appropriate verbal form.)
Talking about the formal and informal forms of the BCS word for 'you' on page 2 of the
Textbook, the authors omitted an important but somewhat strange morphological rule: the
second person plural of predicate verbs and adjectives in sentences used in polite address are
always masculine, even when we adress women.
A general observation is called for at this point about the way grammar is presented in the two
books: a majority of strict grammatical rules are expressed in sentences whose predicates are
modified with words like usually, mostly, often, commonly, generally; the predicates
themselves are often expressed with, or include, verbs of indeterminate meaning, such as may
occur, tends to occur, etc. Examples can be found on almost every page of the two volumes
under review.
Talking about prepositional phrases in which the preposition is followed by a noun, the author
says: „For most speakers of BCS the accent remains on the noun, although in a few instances
it can move back onto the preposition. In Bosnian, however, the accent frequently moves back
onto the preposition if the noun object carries a falling accent. These accent shifts do not
occur with all nouns or with all prepositions but they tend to be common with prepositions
that take the accusative case.“ (Grammar p. 26). This rule is worthless on at least three
counts: (a) Indeterminate phrases like:
for most speakers
in a few instances
frequently moves back
do not occur with all nouns/prepositions
they tend to be common
make it impossible to apply the rule in a way that will enable the learner to use the proper
accent on the proper syllable. The language of this rule is typical of weather forecasts and it
must be admitted that grammar and meteorology use very different kinds of discourse. (b)
There is a contradiction in the rule: We are first told that in BCS „the accent remains on the
noun.“ The next sentence begins with „In Bosnian, however, ...“ But if BCS includes Bosnian,
which it obviously does, what is this new contrasting information about Bosnian?! (c) The
only logical interpretation of the statement „the accent moves back onto the preposition if the
noun object carries a falling accent“ is that the accent shifted onto the preposition is also
M. Riđanović (2015), ms.
11
falling. But it is not – it can be rising or falling, the occurrence of one or the other type of
accent being regulated by rules, which are not given in either of the two volumes. Also, a
falling accent can be short or long – does the shifted accent copy the length of the stressed
vowel of the noun or does the vowel of the preposition keep its inherent feature of length?
Since the falling accent also shifts from verb forms to the negative particle ne, one would
expect that all cases of accent shift would be dealt with in one place in the book, because the
relevant rules are the same. But the shift of falling accent in a verb to the particle ne is
described – you won't believe it: in the Preface (p. xvi) – along with Acknowledgments,
Guide for students, Organization of lessons, and such other orientational paraphernalia. The
authors claim that only present tense forms shift their falling accent to the negative particle,
when in fact every verbal form which can be preceded by the particle ne and has a falling
accent on the first syllable shifts the accent to the particle. The authors say that the shifted
accent on ne is always short rising – not true: most negated aorist forms have a short falling
accent on ne! The shift of falling accent to the proclitic is thoroughly described in several
places in Ridjanović (2012) but mostly on pages 517-8.
On page 20 of the Textbook we read the following „rule“: „Nouns take different endings to
indicate different functions. When a person is being addressed, the ending -e is often added to
a masculine name (for instance, Mehmede!), and the ending -a on a feminine name is
sometimes replaced by -o (for instance, Nado!).“
The authors try to avoid the grammatical term case, which is unavoidable because a noun
with the same ending, i.e. the same case, may have many different functions. The wrong
introductory sentence of this „rule“ is then followed by an „often“ rule and a „sometimes“
rule.
On page 21 of the Textbook the authors introduce BCS personal pronouns by showing the
nominative case for each pronoun and the enclitic form of the accusative, without previously
giving the full forms! Still, the accusative is introduced as follows: „There are two types of
accusative case object pronouns [sic] – “clitic” (short form) and “full” (long form).” Of
course, the reader longs for long forms but is disappointed because s/he is not even told where
they can be found in the book! Then comes another sloppy rule: „The clitics, which are used
in most instances, are unaccented...” How is the learner to know in which instances s/he
should use the clitics?! The use of BCS clitics is regulated by grammatical rules of the
strictest kind; there is no regional or social variation in their use, and a breach of any clitic
rule grates badly on native speakers’ ears. Though it is true that clitics are unaccented (which
both books repeat umpteen times, although the statement is redundant because clitics are
unaccented by definition), the authors omitted to say that there is a grammatical environment
in which we must use full but unaccented forms of personal pronouns: in prepositional
phrases in which the object of the preposition is a personal pronoun, the accent is on the
preposition and the pronoun, though unaccented, must occur in its full form, e.g. zà_mene ‘for
me’, òd_tebe ‘from you’, kòd_na:s ‘with us’, dò_va:s ‘next to you’ (I mark vowel length with
a colon). Learners should be warned that although full and corresponding clitic forms of
personal pronouns are very different (mene – me, njega – ga), the accusative forms of first
and second person plural pronouns differ only in the length of the nuclear vowel; hence the
long vowels in the pronouns in kòd_nas and dò_vas.
A boxed paradigm of personal pronouns on this page shows only nominative and accusative
clitic forms. What about genitive and dative/locative forms? – asks the reader. Well, s/he is
referred to page 87 of Grammar, where we find both full and enclitic forms of the genitive
and dative/locative cases. Obviously, full accusative forms are missing and cannot be found
anywhere in the two volumes! Something else that is missing and is very important is the
M. Riđanović (2015), ms.
12
information that the genitive and accusative forms, both long and short, are identical (as in
animate masculine nouns ending in a consonant). The “icing on the cake” of the Textbook
story about personal pronouns is the following “gem”: “There are two forms for the feminine
singular accusative, je and ju. Croatian uses both, more or less interchangeably. Bosnian and
Serbian, however, use ju only in certain past tense constructions.” While it is true that ju is
used in colloquial Croatian in ways which break the rules of standard Croatian, the rules for
the use of ju in all three standard variants are very strict and simple: use ju in place of je
whenever this form has to occur before the enclitic form je occurring as the auxiliary in the
compound past tense; for instance, On je je vidio ‘He saw her’ corresponds to the standard On
ju je video.
„Rules“ for fleeting a are presented in the two books in about half a dozen places (which is
nothing compared to the gentive case, explained in no fewer than 37 places!). Prof. Alexander
calls one and the same fleeting a in BCS 'fleeting vowels'!! Her „rules“ are tidbits, each
dealing with a particular case of the fleeting a occurring in the dialolgue of a particular lesson.
Thus, the fleeting a in adjectives is discussed, briefly and incorrectly, on page 23 of the
Textbook, the fleeting a in nouns is mentioned first on page 24, where the authors relate its
use to a morphological rule, and again on page 48, where it receives only a passing mention.
A two-page section in the Grammar book (pp. 373-4), entitled „Fleeting vowels“, is devoted
to the „theory“ of the fleeting a in BCS. There are two approaches to the analysis of fleeting
vowels in Slavic languages. One starts from the truncated stem of a noun or an adjective,
obtained by deleting the ending of an oblique case form of the noun or the feminine or neuter
ending of an adjective, and inserting the fleeting a between the two final consonants of that
stem; for instance, the truncated stem of vrabac 'sparrow' is vrapc-; if we insert a between the
last two consonants of this stem, we get *vrapac, which is wrong because the nominative is
vrabac! ow the advocates of this approach will cry out: „The truncated stem is vrabc- in
underlying structure!“ Fine, it may be, but how is the learner to know that (or, for that matter,
how is the child acquiring the language to know that?). The second approach starts from the
citation form of a noun or adjective, the other forms being made by dropping the fleeting a.
Thus, vrabac drops the second a to become the truncated stem vrabc- used for making the
other case forms. But there is a general phonological rule in BCS, called regressive
assimilation rule, by which clusters of obstruents must have the same voicing feature; the rule
works „backwards“ so that a later obstruent gives its vocing feature to the preceding one(s).
This rule makes the stem vrabc- into vrapc- and everything is as it should be. I will not pass
judgment on this debate but would urge teachers of BCS as a foreign langage to use the
second approach, as it allows us to make simple and comprehensive rules (found in
Ridjanović (2012) on pages 399-402 and 492-4).
The major rule for the fleeting a in adjectives, appearing on page 23, is worded as follows:
„The masculine nominative singular form of many adjectives ends in a consonant preceded by
–a; this -a- is called a “fleeting vowel” because it disappears in all other forms of the
adjective; for instance pametan, pametno, pametna. If this vowel appears in the suffix -ak, its
loss will sometimes cause the preceding consonant to shift to another consonant; for instance
nizak, n sko, n ska.“
This „rule“ doesn't tell us whether the fleeting vowel is short or long. The fact is that only the
short a may be fleeting. This is mentioned in the Grammar on page 373 but only in passing,
and will probably be missed by most readers. We are then told that the fleeting vowel
disappears in all other forms, which suggests that the disappearance of the fleeting a is
morphologically conditioned. (The author's other fleeting a rules are also explained
morphologically.) But the fleeting a is a purely phonological phenomenon, the major rule
being simply „Drop the fleeting a in nouns and adjectives whenever the final conosonant is
M. Riđanović (2015), ms.
13
followed by a vowel in a related (grammatical) word.“ The final sentence of the authors' rule
mentions the suffix -ak, i.e. a morphological entity, to explain why nizak becomes nisko. The
learner is again told that this suffix „will sometimes cause the preceding consonant to shift to
another consonant.“ To what other consonant? When „sometimes“? In warm weather? Is it
possible that a sane person can do what Prof. Alexander does: she talks about voicing
assimilation in one place, defines it (however incompletely), and then doesn't refer the reader
to that place in the book when talking about it on several other occasions?
In the dialogues on page 26 of the Textbook, participant „1.“ asks the salesperson in a
bookstore if they have a new German dictionary, to which the salesperson replies: Imamo ga.
Želite li ga? 'We have it. Do you want it?'. The first of these two sentences is ungrammatical
in the context in which it is used (it should have been just Imamo), and the second one would
have been acceptable only if Želite li ga had been followed by kupiti 'to buy'; without this
complement verb, željeti means 'desire', and we don't normally desire dictionaries. A little
later in the same dialogue the same participant asks the salesperson if s/he can buy a wordlist
notebook, and the salesperson answers Imamo je (because teka 'notebook' is feminine), which
is also ungrammatical. Every normal native speaker of every language will tell you if a string
of words in her/his language is grammatical or not. Prof. Alexander is not a native speaker of
BCS, although her co-author of the Textbook, Ellen Elias-Bursać (a Croat), is. This is a case
of sheer negligence on the part of the authors, which brought them to the verge of obscenity
because Želite li ga? may refer to a man and can therefore be interpreted as 'Do you desire
him?'!!!
The following sentence appears on page 54 of the Textbook: „Evo, eno – The person or thing
being identified is usually [emphasis mine] marked by genitive case endings.“ Evo is close in
meaning to 'Here is/are' and Eno to 'There is/are' (and to French 'Voici' and 'Voilà') and must
be followed by a complement nominal in the genitive case. Using a different case ending of
the nominal would be a gross grammatical error and would sound like „English“ *Here is
their decisions and *There are my book!!!
We said on page 12 that the present tense forms of the verb zvati se as accented in the
Textbook reflect a dying, mostly rural pronunciation. Both books are filled with wrong accents
of every kind (I include length marks under accents): non-existent accents, obsolete or archaic
accents, accents on wrong syllables, missing accents. If we consider all the different types of
incorrect accentuation, we might say that about every fourth BCS word has a wrong accent
mark. Prof. Alexander's greatest mistake was to copy the accents from „standard“ BCS
dictionaries. A large proportion of accents in such dictionaries are either obsolete or artificial,
having resulted from „rules“ concocted within the neogrammarian tradition. We have
previously mentioned cases of wrong accents in the Textbook; we now give other examples of
incorrect accentuation in the same volume:
All three genders of the adjective dobar on page 4 and drag on page 22 are without accent
marks, which means that they bear a falling accent. Not true – only the masculine form has a
falling accent, the feminine and neuter have short rising accents in dobar and a long rising one
in drag.
Page 7 – Enclosed in a box on this page are the negative and the full affirmative forms of the
present tense of biti 'to be'. All six forms of the negative paradigm have wrong accents: the
proper accent is long rising in all forms except the 3rd person singular, which has a short
falling accent. While the latter form (nije) may be pronounced with a rising accent by some
people, by far the most frequent pronunciation of this form in standard BCS is with short
falling accent.
M. Riđanović (2015), ms.
14
Page 12 – The vocalic r in Crna, appearing in the name of the country Crna Gora
Montenegro, is shown as long. Even at the time of Vuk Karadžić, the long vocalic r was
limited to rural areas in Bosnia, Serbia, and Montenegro but has since completely vanished so
that now all vocalic r's are short and are phonetically realized as a combination of schwa plus
an alveolar flap, which together function as one phoneme. Other wrongly accented words on
this page are Albànija, which should be Àlbānija, and Italija, Mađarska, and Jadransko
Adriatic, shown as stressed with a short falling accent on the first syllable but in fact have a
short rising accent on that syllable.
The authors rarely give rules which would explain changes of accent in a paradigm,
inflectional or derivational. Thus, several names of nationalities are given on page 6 of the
Textbook in which there is a change of accent as the masculine noun is changed to feminine:
Amerikà:nac – Amerìka:nka American, Bosà:nac – Bòsa:nka Bosnian, Crnogò:rac –
Crnògo:rka Montenegrin. Any careful observer, even one who is not lingustically trained, can
see that the masculine noun in each gender pair is stressed on the penultimate syllable with a
long rising accent and that the feminime form in each case is obtained by stressing the
preceding antepenultimate syllable with a short rising accent, while keeping the penultimate
syllable long but unstressed. This is a very wide ranging rule, which also applies to dozens of
common nouns with the same accentual pattern (such as gimnazijà:lac – gimnazìja:lka 'high
school student'). This accentual rule, along with all major rules governing changes of accents
in paradigms of individual lexical categories, can again be found in Ridjanović (2012).
In conclusion, I would like to say that I am absolutely convinced that a student who tries to
learn BCS using Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, a Textbook: With Exercises and Basic Grammar
and its companion volume Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, a Grammar: With Sociolinguistic
Commentary would produce hundreds, if not thousands, of wrong BCS word forms, phrases,
or sentences.
My own Bosnian for Foreigners: With a Comprehensive Grammar has been available for
purchase since August 2012. There has been only one order from the United States. The book
was announced on the American Slavic Linguistic Society website in December 2012 and on
the Linguist List in March 2013. Information about the purchase of the book can be obtained
at http://www.rabic.ba/english.html.
This is what Professor Wayles Browne of the Department of Linguistics at Cornell
University, one of the world's leading Slavists, said about my book:
"The book is a product of many years of research and writing. Professor Ridjanović brought
to bear his life-long involvement in language teaching and linguistics on a book that he
modesty calls a textbook, although the 345-page grammatical part is a full-fledged grammar
which includes many rules that were not observed in two centuries of grammatical
investigation of the language now called by four different names."
The book's main parts are: 40 lessons each with about ten exercises (255 pages), Bosnian
grammar (345 pages), Bosnian-English glossary (100 pages), and a brief English-Bosnian
glossary. It comes with a CD on which are recorded most of the lessons. There is an electronic
version of the grammatical part of the book, which was produced at the request of the
international translation and marketing company Lionbridge and is being used by them in the
construction of BCS language technologies; the version is entitled Bosnian Grammar and can
be purchased on my website at http://midhatridjanovic.ba/book-preview/.
American teachers of BCS who may have been put off by „Bosnian“ in the title of the book
have said more about themselves than about the book. They fell victim to the propaganda of
the fascistoid governments of the new Balkan states that the people who speak what used to
M. Riđanović (2015), ms.
15
be called Serbo-Croatian should be divided into four nations, each with a language of its own.
This artificial, politically motivated division of a single language into four is, of course,
rejected by all sane people living in former Yugoslavia. My own view on the matter is
expressed in an excerpt from the Preface to Bosnian for Foreigners, quoted on page 1 of this
review.
Among the victims of the nationalist propaganda forced on the masses by the new power-
hungry Balkan politicians is Melissa Witcombe of the Slavic Department at Indiana
University, the author of the only review of my book (published in South and East European
Journal, Volume 57, Number 3, pp. 516-7). Introducing the book, she says: “Bosnian for
Foreigners should serve as an essential resource for learners of Bosnian, particularly students
who have prior experience with Serbian and/or Croatian.” How would you react if you were
to read the following sentence in the preface to a textbook of American English: “American
English for Foreigners should serve as an essential resource for learners of American English,
particularly students who have prior experience with British and/or Canadian English.”
Several American friends of mine said they would think that someone is trying to be funny.
The only proper approach to the “languages” descended from Serbo-Croatian is to say that
Bosnian is another word for Croatian, Serbian, and Montenegrin, i.e. that former Serbo-
Croatian now has four names. Isn’t it interesting, and rather disgusting, that the same
politicians and their academic sycophants who now vehemently argue for the independence of
the language of their particular fiefdom never even questioned the integrity of the Serbo-
Croatian language (realized in two variants, eastern and western (not even Serbian and
Croatian!)) before the last Balkan wars?
How does one teach a polycentric language to foreigners, i.e. a language which has two or
more standard variants? Normally, one teaches the variant used in the country where the
language is taught or the variant that students want to learn for whatever reason. I claim that
teaching two variants in the same course, let alone three or four, is impossible, and is bound to
create a mess in the student’s mind, which will make her/him produce occasional mixtures of
variant forms. (Of course, textbooks whose titles tell naive prospective buyers that they will
learn three variants of a language sell a lot better than ones which teach you only one variant!)
I think that the only thing we can do when teaching polycentric languages to foreigners is
what I did during my time as Fulbright lecturer at Ohio State University in 1984-85. I taught a
course in Serbo-Croatian attended by about half a dozen students. There was a Croatian
student, who expressed a wish to be taught Croatian. He was quite happy with how I taught
him Croatian: when I came across a Serbian word which was different from the corresponding
Croatian one, I simply told him what the Croatian word was and he simply wrote it down! An
American teaching American English to foreigners could do a parallel thing in a class which
included students who, for one reason or another, sought at least passive knowledge of British
English - s/he can just tell the students that American movies is British pictures, that truck is
lorry, etc. An alternative approach to teaching polycentric languages could be one implied by
Melissa Witcombe in her review of my book; if consistent, she would give the following
advice to a foreign learner of English: “First learn American English, and then take a course
in British English; your experience with American English will be a good resource in learning
British English.”
I was able to make contact with Melissa before she started writing her review of my book. I
called her attention to some new syntactic rules which I discovered for BCS, and which, as far
as I was able to ascertain, had parallels in other Slavic languages, including Russian, but had
not yet been discovered in the other languages. They include nine functions of the particle se,
what I call “futile” perfect and pluperfect (indicating actions which took place in the past but
have been undone before the time of speaking), čovjek ‘man’ as a “modal” and a generic
M. Riđanović (2015), ms.
16
pronoun, new insights into the use of verbal aspects, the use of absolute comparative and
superlative in Slavic languages, and several other rules that are most likely valid in other
Slavic languages. It is, of course, impossible for me to claim with certainty that my new rules
are new in other Slavic languages, but I strongly suspect that they are. Melissa, however,
didn’t even try to confirm or dispel my suspicion.
Why has my book been ignored in the United States? I think the main reason is to be found in
the new mentality of most Americans, created by probably the cruelest capitalist system in the
world, to which they are doomed. The American working masses have to struggle to survive
and, in doing so, try to save their energy, both mental and physical, because they need every
bit of it just to make ends meet. The psychologists’ principle of least effort has been converted
by toiling Americans to the “minimum effort that I can get away with.” So if I am teaching,
say, Croatian using a textbook entitled Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, I am okay. Questions
about the quality of the textbook s/he is using or about the availability of other BCS textbooks
hardly ever cross the mind of the teacher because nobody seems to care how s/he is teaching,
so why bother? S/he either hasn’t heard of my book because s/he doesn’t keep up with
developments in the academic disciplines related to her/his job, or s/he has heard of my book
but ordering it is a bit of a hassle, and if s/he did order it and started using it, s/he wouldn’t
gain anything by it and the possibility for her/him to improve the quality of her/his teaching
doesn’t even go through her/his mind - who cares about quality in this day and age?!
I came to know two American professors of BCS, who happened to be native speakers of the
language. Both displayed rather weak linguistic knowledge. In my correspondence with one
of them, a double PhD and a professor of Slavic languages and applied linguistics at Arizona
State University, I discovered that he didn’t know exactly what a grammatical rule is. In
January 2013 I sent him an e-mail to tell him about the publication of Bosnian for Foreigners.
He acknowledged receipt of my mail and said that he had watched the very complementary
video that Prof. Browne sent me for the launch of my book. But he never ordered a copy of
the book! It seems that once you get installed as a professor at an American university, you
become untouchable and don’t need to worry about improving your performance, either in
teaching or research.
I understand that there are close to ten Bosnian-American teachers who teach BCS at
American universities. They, at least, cannot use the excuse that the textbook Bosnian for
Foreigners is not the textbook of their „native“ language. Still, after hearing of my book none
of them bothered to even ask me about it (my e-mail address has been on my website for
years now). Apart from lethargy, one reason for their indifference is no doubt their extremely
low level of linguistic education. There is a folk belief that native speakers of a language can
teach the language to foreigners better than people who are not native speakers. I think that
the ONLY factor by which we can measure the quality of a foreign-language teacher is her/his
linguistic sophistication. Being a native speaker of a language you are teaching to foreigners
may be a disadvantage. Language is the product of an instinct, just as digestion is. Does the
fact that we digest food mean that we can teach the biochemistry of digestion?
This is not a promotional plea for my book. The book is selling quite well and the first edition
of 500 copies may soon be out of print. I doubt that any of those who teach BCS in the States
or who make decisions about teaching BCS will be moved by this review or by the
information that the textbook currently used in the US to teach the language is trash, while
there is another textbook on the market which could seriously compete for the best foreign-
language textbook ever published. The atmosphere of lethargy prevailing in today’s America
cannot be cured overnight; in fact, I believe it cannot be cured at all within the foreseeable
future - on the contrary, it can only get worse because the factors which brought it about are
increasing in both number and intensity.