Language fuels the Balkans' ethnic tensions, linguist says
Thursday, June 27, 2013 - 08:01
in Mathematics & Economics
(Phys.org) —Nowhere has linguistic research involved more discord than in the Balkans. Serbian and Bulgarian linguists have both attempted to prove that Macedonian – one of the official languages of the Republics of Yugoslavia after World War II – was a degenerated dialect of their own languages, thus supporting their respective rights to rule. Horace Lunt's classic work on Macedonian grammar, identifying it as its own language, met with nasty criticism, says linguistics professor Wayles Browne, a former student of Lunt.