Since Serbia and Montenegro split into two countries in 2007, Montenegro has been pushing for recognition of Montenegrin as its own language. In 2011, Montenegro tried to differentiate itself by adding two extra letters to the Serbian alphabet. The National Library of Montenegro lobbied for nine years to be included in the list of ISO codes, which are used to identify languages in computing, archiving, databases, and more, before being accepted last week.
Yet according to the latest census, more people in Montenegro speak Serbian than Montenegrin. And anyway, the two language are barely different. They are mutually intelligible. And the overwhelming consensus among linguists is that Montenegrin and Serbian, as well as Bosnian and Croatian, are basically the same language. [...]
“Nationalism is increasing by introducing a purist approach towards language in schools and in media, because people, in relation to the choice of words, are trained to associate the term ‘good’ with their own nation, and the term ‘bad’ with other nations,” said Croatian linguist Snjezana Kordic, who has argued that the languages are one and the same.
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