Bijelo polje Bosnian Language forum - Institute of Language Days

The International Mother Tongue Day was marked by the visit of the Language Institute representatives in Bijelo Polje. Namely on 21 February 2018, the Bosniak National Council in Montenegro, in cooperation with the Language Institute, organized the Public Forum on topic “Bosnian language in the context of the International Mother Tongue Day.” The Institute representative, Dr. Alen Kalajdžija, Director spoke on the topic of literary output in Bosnian for centuries. He noted that, apart of the Austro-Hungarian, in the Ottoman era, Bosnian was official language of education, outside the present BH borders - for example in Novi Pazar, Sjenica and Nikšić. At the end, he stressed today's Bosnian language presence in the region: Macedonia, Kosovo, Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro, where the Institute also provided significant support. Author Hadžem Hajdarević said that the relationship of Bosniaks to their mother tongue was conditioned by gaps in remembering and forgetting, and when one was ignorant, it was easy to spread confusion. Dr. Sc. Jasmin Hodžić spoke about the relation of individual languages in the Balkans to the Serbo-Croatian as the former common language and the criterion of comprehensibility among our individual languages. He noted that Bosnian as a special language has been nurtured through centuries, except in the period between 1918 and 1960s, when it started returning to the scene. The Institute director gave several Language Institute’s publications to the Bosniak National Council.