Snježana Kordić quotes

Snježana Kordić is a Croatian linguist, author, and university professor, recognized for her work in sociolinguistics and language policy. Her research has been influential in discussions on language standardization and the political aspects of language in the Balkans. She is widely known for challenging nationalist perspectives on language and advocating for linguistic equality. Here are 5 of her quotes:

The long-form endings have pushed away the short-form endings completely in the oblique cases. In the last few years, there are attempts in Croatia to bring back again the short forms in the usage. This attempts are the part of the new sociolinguistic politics to bring back the archaic words and forms in the usage and to construct new words, neologisms, in place of customary words - all that with the aim to make the language in the west of the Serbo-Croatian language community as different as possible from the language in the east of the Serbo-Croatian language community. Leaders of the new language politics proclaim as incorrect what was customary, and as correct what was rare, archaic or even did not exist in the usage, and then they carry it out in practice through the control of the media, text-books etc. Such inversion of the criteria for what is correct and what is not correct in the language usage makes the native speakers unsure and frustrated.

Snježana Kordić

Croatian linguists proscribe words that are common to the majority of the Croatian people just to make a difference to the language in Serbia.

Snježana Kordić

Cases where several nations speak the same language are treated in linguistics as pluricentric languages.

Snježana Kordić

Purism increases nationalism because it teaches that everything should be classified as Croatian or non-Croatian, and what comes from their own nation must be good, while what comes from other nations must be harmful and evil.

Snježana Kordić