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- From: <barr@triples.Math.McGill.CA>
- Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
- Subject: Serbian
- Message-ID: <9207221629.AA06604@triples.math.mcgill.ca>
- Date: Wed, 22 Jul 92 12:29:27 EDT
- Organization: Info-Tex<==>Comp.Text.Tex Gateway
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- Lines: 22
-
- I know I shouldn't clutter up the glass fibers with this, but everyone
- seems to be getting into the act. First, the person who asked the
- original question was undoubtedly asking how to _typeset_ Serbian and
- for that purpose, Serbian differs from Croation as much as, say, Russian
- from Danish. Moreover, a Serbian alphabet is not the same as the Cyrillic
- alphabet. There are a few Cyrillic characters it doesn't use and there
- letters not found in Cyrillic. Just as Danish has three letters not found
- in Roman. So, while I don't know the answer to the original question,
- I don't see that it has been answered. Moreover, the question is not,
- ipso facto, a political statement.
-
- As for the language itself, a friend (who grew up in Atlanta) and I (from
- Philadelphia) once had dinner with another friend whose native language is
- Serbo-Croation (Serbian branch) and my friend from Atlanta (who has lived
- most of adult life in Ohio and thus lost the edge of his southern accent)
- asked, ``Just how different is Serbian from Croation?''. The answer,
- delivered after some hesitation and a sigh, ``I've been out of that
- milieu long enough to admit it. There is less difference than between
- the two of you speaking English.'' I conclude that any claim of there
- being two separate languages is a political, not linguistic, statement.
-
- Michael Barr
-