Vernacular Spoken in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Vernacular Spoken in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Summary/Abstract: Bosnian language has long been, and continues to be, a sensitive question to discuss about. This paper will present the language history of Bosnia and Herzegovina, introduce some linguistic features such as high and low variety of Bosnian language, codification, pragmatics, prestige etc. Besides the issues that are affected by the standardization of Bosnian as individual language. I will also discuss about how much politics affected language in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Politics is everywhere around us, so it is also involved in Bosnian language. Politics affected the development of Bosnian language a lot. How much war in Bosnia affected the progress of language? The war, between Bosnian and Serbs, that lasted long 4 years, from 1992-1996. This war was so long, it destroyed many lives and it also affected the progress of language. This is also political issue that I will discuss throughout the paper. All of these issues will be presented throughout this paper. “Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian (BCMS) language is a South Slavic language. Because it has four standard variants, it is a pluricentric language” (Blum, 2002: 8). The language was finally standardized in the mid 19th century, decades before a Yugoslav state was established (Ibidem, 130-132.). Croats and Serbs differ in many ways. First of all they have different religion and they have historically lived under different territory, and have adopted different literary forms as their respective standard variants. Since independence, Bosnian has likewise been established as an official standard in Bosnia and Herzegovina. All four standard variants are based on the same dialect (Štokavian).

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