International Mother Language Day: Losing linguistic identity means losing national identity

(Patria) - The Bosnian language was, is and will remain a key dimension of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is grounded in hundreds of years of Bosnian-Herzegovinian history. The Bosniak people and others legitimise themselves through the Bosnian language, point out from the Institute for Research of Genocide Canada.

"There is no phenomenon of consciousness through which the Bosnian-Herzegovinian and Bosniak past, present and future are better reflected than the Bosnian language. The name Bosnian language is an aspiration towards the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, because it originated on Bosnian-Herzegovinian soil. Therefore, denying the Bosnian language is denying the Bosniak people, but also denying the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Bosnian language is an indisputable, scientifically grounded, historical and cultural fact. It is also an international, historical fact.

The Bosnian language completes the picture of Bosnian-Herzegovinian history, culture, and tradition. That is why it is an important developmental force of Bosnian-Herzegovinian society and the state. It is not enough to only declaratively speak about the Bosnian language. It is necessary to work in favour of the Bosnian language. The Bosnian language needs to be adequately positioned in Bosniak and Bosnian-Herzegovinian consciousness. Because in the Bosnian language, the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Bosniaks and all others who speak this language have fundamental descriptions of themselves in their entirety. Regardless of where they are, in or outside Bosnia and Herzegovina, regardless of how many other languages they speak, Bosniaks and all others can present themselves in their entirety only through the Bosnian language, they can only express themselves through that language, because they grew up, developed and formed as people, as a nation, as a nationality through it.

The Bosnian-Herzegovinian diaspora is making efforts to resist linguistic assimilation. Aware that the Bosnian language, as it is now, is very susceptible to assimilation because it is practically a state-unprotected language, aware that the Bosnian language does not have the treatment that a language has in the civilised world, aware that in the Bosniak mentality there are doubts regarding their own language, North American Bosniaks have organised and institutionally opposed the ruthless mechanisms of assimilation processes in the American Melting Pot and the Canadian Cultural Mosaic, which threatened like vacuum cleaners to suck away the linguistic identity of American and Canadian Bosniaks.

And, losing linguistic identity means losing national identity, but what is even more important, losing one's own cultural identity. Thus, in North America, the Bosnian language has been recognised by the American and Canadian governments as a "World Heritage Language".

Based on this recognition, several Bosnian language schools have been opened in the USA and Canada. Thus, citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina living in the USA and Canada found their homeland in their Bosnian language, if they no longer have it in the homeland. Thus, through the recognition of their language in the countries where they are temporarily located, through their Bosnian language schools, they have at least slowed down, if not stopped, the self-alienation from their own spiritual, cultural, traditional and every other root, enabling them not to lose the readiness to accept the other with all their otherness, and to respect that otherness equally as their own, and preserved the connection with the entirety of the world that surrounds them in American and Canadian society. Through the struggle for the recognition of the Bosnian language, as a means of communication and speech, they testified in one of the most developed territories of human existence that the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina is a precious planetary multilateralism of life that has been sedimented for millennia and as such should, by the nature of things, be treated as such by all key centres of power on planet Earth.

Through the struggle for the recognition and preservation of the Bosnian language, they testified that Bosnia and Herzegovina is not a piece of the planet where different faiths, cultures and traditions met and then clashed, but on the contrary – a planetary hub where they met and fruitfully connected", it was stated from the Institute for Research of Genocide Canada.