Overview
Bosnians are known as a friendly, hospitable people. In Muslim houses, it is traditional to remove one's shoes and put on a pair of slippers. Kissing is a common form of greeting for both men and women. Three kisses on alternating cheeks are customary. The language is highly influenced by the rich history surrounding the country with all of the different cultures that have dominated it.The main languages in Bosnia and Herzegovina now; Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian; are heavily influenced by the the ruling empires of its past, as well as its geographic location and neighboring countries. The Bosnian language comes from the original peoples of the region, the Bosniaks, who inhabited the region since the times of the Roman rule. They are the largest ethnic groups of the country, making Bosnian a very popular language within the country. The Serbian language comes from the nearby country of Serbia which has ruled the country in the past. Many Serbians have immigrated into the area of Bosnia and Herzegovina because it is so close and as a result Serbian is the second largest ethnic group in the country. The final language of Bosnia and Herzegovina is Croatian. This language comes from Croatia, another neighboring country to Bosnia and Herzegovina and the third largest ethnic group of the country
The Bosnian Langauge
The Bosnian language is the most widely spoken language of the country because the Bosniaks who speak it make up almost half of the population of the country (CIA). All three of the languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina are varieties and dialects of the Serbo-Croatian language. Bosnian is based on the Shtokavian dialect of Serbo-Croatian and uses a Latin alphabet. Bosnian has required a multitude of Turkish, Arabic, and Persian loanwords along with various Germanisms that are left over from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, largely due to the trading ties the language had to these countries. Although the Croatian and Serbian languages are still in the same family they do not identify the language as Bosnian because they feel it implies to the entire country. Instead they tend to prefer the term Bosniak to isolate the language to its' original peoples (Bosnian Language). The first Bosnian dictionary was wrote in the seventeenth century and the language has become increasingly popular within the last century. The language had its own alphabet, Bosnian Cyrillic, that was used with the language until it was later replaced by the Latin alphabet but can also be used interchangeably with Serbian Cyrillic. Yugoslav Braille is used because the braille translations were made while the of Bosnia and Herzegovina was part of Yugoslavia during the mid twentieth century. The language is spoken in Bosnia and Herzegovina and surrounding countries but is mainly concentrated in the northern Bosniak ruled region of the country.
The Serbian Langauge
The Serbian language is the second largest spoken language in Bosnia and Herzegovina because Serbians are the second largest ethnic group in the country; largely due to the Serbian control of the country throughout its history, the close geographic location, and the welcoming immigration policy (CIA). Serbian is spoken in countries around Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as countries all along the Mediterranean Sea due to the frequent contact the people, and their language, had with other people all around the Mediterranean Sea. Serbian is digraphiac, meaning that it has two official alphabets for the language. These alphabets are the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet and the Latin alphabet, Serbian Cyrillic was the main alphabet used for the language until Latin was later adopted in the early twentieth century due to the prevalent number of neighboring and surrounding countries using Latin, unifying the Mediterranean region under a single alphabet making learning each other's languages far less complicated (Official Language). Since both alphabets are frequently used, different television broadcasts and other media will use the different alphabets interchangeably and at their own discretion, therefore it is useful to know both of the alphabets. The Serbian language has also picked up a large amount of loan words from countries that previously ruled the land, such as Austro-Hungarian, German, Italian, Greek, Roman, Turkish, and many more (Serbian Language).
The Croatian Language
Although it is the oldest, the Croatian language is the least popular of the three official languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatians are also the smallest ethnic group in the region (CIA). Although it is small in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Croatian language is older than both Serbian and Bosnian by several hundred years and it is spoken widely throughout the Mediterranean region, it is even an official language of the European Union (Croatian Language). It it written in Gaj’s Latin alphabet, an alphabet designed by a Croatian linguist by the name of Ljudevit Gaj. Gaj based the design of his alphabet after the Polish and Czech alphabets, and largely mirrored Serbian Cyrillic. Gaj attributed each symbol in the Latin alphabet to a sound in the language, making his own “Croatian Cyrillic” alphabet (Gaj’s Latin). Croatian is by far the most divergent of official languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina, some even recognize it as its own independent language, completely separate from the Serbo-Croatian and Eastern Herzegovinian dialects that distinguishes Croatian as a sister language to Bosnian and Serbian. The support for this stems from the fact that Croatian only has one alphabet, Gaj’s Latin alphabet, and is not written in cyrillic. Although these languages are considered to be mutually intelligible, or understandable by speakers of another language, Croatian refuses to identify with the Serbo-Croatian label because the term was deemed artificial because it was invented by socialist Yugoslavia as a political tool to unify two separate and independent peoples. Despite efforts by the Croatians, the Croatian language is still identified under the Serbo-Croatian, Neo-Shtovakian dialects.