Talk:Bosnian Cyrillic

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Chinese character "Book" This article falls within the scope of WikiProject Writing systems, a WikiProject interested in improving the encyclopaedic coverage and content of articles relating to writing systems on Wikipedia. If you would like to help out, you are welcome to drop by the project page and/or leave a query at the project’s talk page.
Start This article has been rated as start-Class on the Project’s quality scale.
Mid This article has been rated as mid-importance on the Project’s importance scale.

This page has been altered in a way that cannot be justified.

1. the claim that makes a uniform link between the Bosnian script and Bosnian language is ludicrous. Bosnian language is a language that is still in the process of standardization, while the Bosnian script had been identified as a specific version of the Cyrillic script by 19th century philologists who didn't recognize the existence of Bosnian language (they considered it to be a variant of Serbian, Croatian or Serbo-Croatian). Croatian and Serbian literary cultures are, in all effect, more "legitimate" (if this is the word) claimants to the various parts of Bosnian Cyrillic heritage, than the Bosnian Muslim culture.

2. These texts were analyzed by Croatian and Serbian philologists and linguists. Bosnian Muslim ("Bosnian") writers and philologists have never been active in the field of Bosnian Cyrillic studies.

3. the major part of the BC corpus has appeared, or will appear, in the project named "Croatian literature in Bosnia and Herzegovina". Similar projects, covering Bosnian Muslim/Bosniak ("Bosnian language") and Serbian heritage (this one with a few exceptions) in B & H, simply didn't care to include the major part of Bosnian Cyrillic texts because the denominational-cultural associations with these manuscripts and books (initially mainly Bosnian Church-related, but the major part being of Catholic-Franciscan provenance) didn't fit within their respective cultural heritage. Mir Harven 22:49, 7 March 2006 (UTC)


  • 1. Bosnian language was standardized for more than ten years ago during Dayton.
  • 2. They haven't had the need to discuss something which is obvious to them.
  • 3. There are scripts older than 800years mentioning the bosnian language. Bosnian cyrrilic - Bosnian language, do you hear the resemblence? Damir Mišić
These are answers ? Sorry, try next time. Mir Harven 16:38, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
Oh! irony I see, how cultural of you. :) Damir Mišić 00:07, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
Arguments, not shallow ironies, please. Mir Harven 23:27, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Although I am a historian and not a linguist there are some notions here which seem pointless to me since they are stated without much attention given to the era in which "Bosnian Cyrillic" appears (12th to 19th centuries). Firstly, in the Middle Ages there was next to none language standardization. So it is pointless to discuss what kind of cyrillic letters these were. Cyrillic is cyrillic and that's basicaly it. If you know ANY kind of cyrilic letters you will be able to read these documents, if not - you wont. Try it yourself. When Bosnian state incorporated west parts of Serbian state *early 14th c.) nothing changed in the script there for a simple reason - it was the same thing. There are numerous sub-variants in any medieval script and one could even say that every man who could write had his own variant of ortography. So, "BC" is only a variant of cyrillic script which had many more variants in Bosnia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania etc. Secondly, "BC" was used well into 18th c. When in mid 19th c. Ottoman authorities decided to discard Turkish language and Arabic script and introduce a script that the litterate people would understand they opted for Cyrillic, in fact for the same one that was used in Serbia, and we really can't blame the Turks for Serbization of Bosnia, can we? If anyone had any notion about "BC" being something different from other cyrillic scripts than it would be used at least by the Ottomans who had no interest to promote the Serbian side.

[edit] On the Bosnian Cyrillic texts and denominational affiliation

As is evident, there is a tendency to ascribe Bosnian Cyrillic script to the corpus of Serbian literacy. Here, a few things have to be mentioned:

  • Bosnian Franciscan writer Matija Divković called this script "Serbian letters" (sarpskie slova)-although not his language, which he calls consistently Slovin, Illyrian or Bosnian. Maybe there are other instances where the Serbian appellation for this script has been used, but I don't know about it & would be grateful to learn about. All of his predecessors and followers never used Serbian appellation, either for script or language. So, Divković's casual remark stands here as an anomaly.
  • some editors claimed that Serbian Orthodox texts had been written in Bosnian Cyrillic. Which ? There are no known Serbian Orthodox sources written in this script. On the contrary- Bosnian Christian texts, which ended in Orthodox monasteries & were later used in liturgical services, had been invariably modified: Bosnian Cyrillic scriptory characteristics were partially moved & texts modelled according the Resava orthography principles (1400s) of the Serbian Cyrillic-examples are "Divoševo evanđelje"/"Divoš's gospel, XIV century and "Čajničko evanđelje"/Čajniče gospel, 1400s. Mir Harven 13:44, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Article assessment

I've put this article in "start" class. It could probably make "B" class if a table of letters was added. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 03:22, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Suggested improvements

I think this article needs images. I'd love to see an image of the Humac tablet as well as a table of the individual glyphs. We also need to clear up the dates that this alphabet was in use. If the alphabet is extinct, then what writing system replaced it? Cbdorsett 04:21, 15 March 2007 (UTC)