Language
Montenegrins speak the Ijekavian variant of the Shtokavian dialect of the Serbo-Croatian language. Neo-shtokavian Eastern-Herzegovinian sub-dialect is spoken in the North-West (largest city Niksic), and old shtokavian Zeta subdialect is spoken in the rest of Montenegro, including capitals Podgorica and Cetinje, and eastern Sanjak. The North-Western, Eastern-Herzegovinian is also base of Serbian standard language.
The Zeta dialect features additional sounds: a voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative (/ɕ/), voiced alveolo-palatal fricative *(/ʑ/, (occurring in other jekavian dialects as well) and a voiced alveolar affricate (dz, shared with other old-štokavian dialects). Both subdialects are charactericized by highly specific accents (shared with other old-štokavian dialects) and several "hyper-ijekavisms" (i.e. nijesam, where the rest of shtokavian area uses nisam) and "hyper-iotations" (đevojka for djevojka, đeca for djeca etc.) (these features, especially the hyper-iotation, are more prominent in Zeta subdialect), that are common in all Montenegrin vernaculars.
On sociolinguistic level, the language has been classified as a dialect of Serbian, being previously a dialect of Serbo-Croatian. The Montenegrin constitution currently defines Montenegrin as the official language. Since the campaign for independence, a movement for recognition of the Montenegrin language as separate from Serbian has emerged, finding the basis for separate language identity mostly in above-mentioned dialectal specifics. The current pro-independence government did not particularly embrace the movement, but did not oppose it either; trying to overcome the situation, the language school classes were renamed from "Serbian language" to "native language", with fierce opposition from pro-Serbian circles. In the 2011 census, 42.88% of Montenegrin citizens stated that they speak the Serbian language, while 36.97% stated that they speak Montenegrin. Today the Montenegrin language is taught in schools in Montenegro.
Read more about this topic: Montenegrin People
Famous quotes containing the word language:
“Surrealism is not a school of poetry but a movement of liberation.... A way of rediscovering the language of innocence, a renewal of the primordial pact, poetry is the basic text, the foundation of the human order. Surrealism is revolutionary because it is a return to the beginning of all beginnings.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)
“Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man.”
—Martin Heidegger (1889–1976)
“The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book—a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)