Okej, evo moje verzije pa je mozes a)proslijediti tipu, b)dati mi/nam njegov mail pa da se dopisujemo i c) (osobno preferiram) dati mu adresu ovog topica na ovom forumu pa neka se ukljuci u raspravu s potpitanjima.
The question if two or more languages are identical is generally a tricky one. I know for sure that some linguists don't even want to go into that matter because there are so many conflicting interests - political, cultural, probably even financial - that can distort and blur the purely scientific arguments. This especially works for the issue of Southern Slavic language(s). Croats and Bosnians have a political interest to claim their languages are different while the Serbs have a political interest to claim they're not. So, basically, since linguists are just people, some of them will decide to evade the topic, some will embrace a particular policy, while some will try to be neutral and discuss the problem objectively. The problem is distinguishing between all of them (of course, except the first, and it's a fact that even the third gruoup can't agrre among themselves).
One of the main issues is what makes a language different from others. If you take the principle of "being able to understand each other", the we have a serious problem; Croats, Serbs, Bosnians and Montenegrians can officially understand each other if they all speak ther "proper languages"; I myself can also understand most of Slovenian (ex-YU compatriots with an officially reckognised "different language") and some Russian. However, my girlfreind gets in serious trouble wher trying to talk to a Slovenian and a friend of mine who grew up in the same town as me has the same problem with the Russian. After some thought, I realised why this was so: when I was a kid, we watched a lot of Slovenian TV and I simply "picked up" some of the vocabulary and synthax which made it easier for me to later understand Slovenian. As for the Russian language, when I was a kid I watched TV a lot and there were a lot of Russian films on. My friend, however, was an "outside" type of kid: he played football and was hanging around a lot so he didn't watch those films.
There is also the fact that a lot of peasents from villages in Northern Croatia (that's what I'm sure about, there are probably other examples) that are 10 km apart - who supposedly share the same dialect - can't understand each other. But nobody in their right mind would claim that they speak different languages. Also, I met some guys from Serbia when I was in Bulgaria, another Slavic country. I remember that I could understand less than 30% of what the locals were saying, but these guys were communicating, well, not exactly fluently, but they were communicating, although they never actually *studied* Bulgarian. However, geographically, Serbia is placed exactly between Croatia and Bulgaria, so go figure.
As for 99% mutual understandability of Croatian and Serbian, I believe it's a consequence of around 150 years of planned merging of the languages and 70 years of living together in the same state. We had the same legal system, shared TV shows, films, series, news, books, sometimes newspapers, basically everything. So, eventually, one gets to understand the language pretty perfectly. Well, almost perfectly. I can recall some funny stories people used to tell from the time they were in the military, and I can witness that I myself once took a Serbian mathematical book thinking "hey, it's Serbian, what's there *not* to understand?" After I opened it, I gazed at the pages for about fifteen minutes and realised it'd save me a lot of trouble if I tried some other language instead. English, for example.
There is also the principle of historical development, but that one is even more feeble. Norwegean language was born after Norway gained independance from Sweden, when the Norwegeans deliberately took one of their dialects most different from Swedish and made it their official language. Today nobody argues that Norwegean is different from Sweden. Well, maybe someone would if they could understand any of them?
Anyway, as for historical development, it is a fact that the language was just one of many fronts of nationalist/separatist movements that used the difference in dialects to prove one had the right to have one's own nation, while the unitarian movements used the similarities to prove that "they're all one happy nation". So I think it would be better if we don't go into that?
Now, all these examples don't prove a thing. What could be used in some kind of a scientific proof are the following facts:
- Serbian and Croatian are 90% identical in vocabulary (that's just my estimate, it could be anywhere between 66 and 99%)
- there ARE grammar differences; minor, but official and solid
- there are a few "spelling" differences (I've put quotes because "spelling" in our language(s) isn't quite the same thing as spelling in English)
But what that proof would prove is beyond my grasp. And, as it seems, beyond grasp of most of "official" linguists. Simply, there are arguments to claim both ways: that Croatian and Serbian are identical and that they are separate languages.
This is why I had to make my own theory:
A language is a living thing. It evolves, splits into two, sometimes dies. All rules regarding it are fluid and depend on many things. That is why all language rules are a convention, a deal among people who use it about what they will use and how. The next question is, who gets to take part in this deal, and who gets to be left out. Well, the answer is quite obvious: those who use it have the right to decide on the convention, and those who don't, don't. And here is a quite predictable conclusion: if the Croats are the ones who are the sole users of what some Serbs call "the Latinic/Western/whatever variant of Serbian language", then the Croats are the only ones who have the right to take part in the deal regarding the convention of their language. The convention doesn't regard only the ways of usage, but also the name of the language. And if the Croats say it's a separate language, well, what does anyone have to argue about that? Especially since the Croatian and Serbian are *not* identical. They are similar, but then, it all depends where you put the treshold of identity. So, my amateur argument is: if argument can be made for both sides, and it can, then let the users decide on the convention for themselves.
There is another amateur argument in favour of Croatian and Serbian being separate languages. American and British English have officially separated 200 years ago and have been developing separately since, but today they are more similar than Croatian and Serbian that had been planningly merged for the last 150 years. Why would they remain so different if they hadn't been even more different in the beginning?
Of course, as I sad in the beginning, I'm not an expert. But I'm a physicist and physicists like to think that when you know the fundamental facts of the Universe, it only a matter of time until you deduce everything else
As for Bosnian, most of the things I said work for it, too. Except the fact that I think Bosnian was never officially reckognised as a language in Yugoslavia. The first time they started talking about it was after they gained independance.
And now for your questions (although, as you may have guessed by now, I believe your questions are not the right ones, or at least there is not enough of them):
1. Yes
2. Yes
3. During Yugoslavia Bosnia was 50-50 (I think, but I should check that), but today there is no more Cyrillic there, except in the exclusively Serbian parts (which is 49%).
4. Serbians do; I'm not sure for Bosnians.
5. If they learned it. Cyrillic was never a part of Croatian heritage; it is exclusively Serbian/Bulgarian/Ukrainian/Russian alphabet (I'm not sure about the Belarus). In Yugoslavia it was obligatory for everyone to know both (hence the term half- or semi-literate). But as soon as Croatia separated, it was no longer the case.
