southeastern europe

After a close referendum result on independence back in 2006, Montenegro held its first post-statehood Census this spring and its statistical service started releasing the data generated earlier this week. The 2011 Montenegro Census data were anticipated with both eagerness and trepidation as they had the potential of destabilising or consolidating the process of state building. Just prior to the Census the government and political parties had engaged in campaigns charged with nationalist rhetoric using posters, leaflets and promotional videos to promote their particular preferred outcomes. The outcome seems to have protracted a sense of societal insecurity among the Montenegrin population which seems quite split on issues of identity.  As on Monday Monstat released the first results of the April 2011 census  various political parties and ethnic leaderships have been trying to deploy their own narratives as to their meaning. The Croat National Council urged their p...

I must admit I am envious of the linguistic capabilities of many of the citizens of the republics that used to make up Yugoslavia who, on top of already mastering "Serbian", "Croatian" and "Bosnian" - languages that I was taught back in the early 1990s as variants of "Serbo-Croat" -  and being able to understand and function in Slovenian, in a single day, on the 27th of July, became proficient in yet another, little known language, Crnogorski - Montenegrin. Jelena Susanj from Matica Crnogorska holding a book on the Montenegrin language Thanks to the dilligent efforts of Montenegro's Skupština, the country's students who were taught a language that comprised Serbian, Montenegrin, Croatian and Bosnian as its regional variants, will from now on be instructed in Montenegrin (Crnogorski). This is the newest chapter in a long history of language politics in the small post-YUgoslav republic. In 2004, in a clumsy yet potentially positive a...