Talk:Serbs/Archive 1

Serbs in America

The amount of Serbs in USA at 169,000 is greatly understated. To be serbian you do not have to have been born in Serbia. My mother was born in Serbia and my father was born in Germany, they are both Serbs not German and Serb. Just because some serbs were born in America does not make them American. We are speaking of Serbian heritage not Serbian State Nationality. In Chicago let alone somewhere near 350,000 ethnic Serbians are living. Serbians tend to be pretty nationalistic even if it is a 2nd or 3rd generation of being American born or beyond. http://www.lmtonline.com/news/archive/0327/pagea7.pdf (get the info there). Also other sources say 300,000 http://www.transcomm.ox.ac.uk/traces/iss5pg2.htm I can keep posting places where the numbers are much higher. The problem is we have to decide what a Serb is on the population concensus. Whether it can be the "Serbian-American" or strictly Serbian. But I'm not sure how living in a country turns you into that ethnic group. Regions of Belgium of Germans, Many Greeks live in Turkey, The Kurds that live in the Middle East and Turkey.. Are they not of their ethnic group? Or perhaps the Germans that live in Northern Poland do they become Polish? (User:Milan20 3 Aug 2005)

Actually, being born in the U.S. does make them American, because American is not an ethnicity. But they are still ethnically Serbs. -- Jmabel | Talk 04:30, August 4, 2005 (UTC)

Ok thats great and all, but are they not serbian now? do they not count towards statistics for the SERBIAN PEOPLE, my question is that the only figures accounted for outside of Serbia would be ones that were born in Serbia???? that just doesnt make sense to me. And if you are going with the logic serbs born in america ARE american, then what about the Albanians born in Kosovo and Serbia, the Serbs born in Bosnia, ... is it getting any clearer now? --Milan20 19:29, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

As I said, "they are still ethnically Serbs". Yes, clearly they should count towards the statistics for the Serbian people. The U.S. census (which I presume is the basis of the number in the article) systematically undercounts most European ethnicities. Get a good citation for a higher number, and the article should presumably changed to reflect the range of numbers given by different sources. We shouldn't drop the census number (because of its official status) but we should offer the alternative estimate as well. -- Jmabel | Talk 00:16, August 8, 2005 (UTC)

New articles nomination

Tough technically not new, I nominate this for New articles on the main page. Nikola 09:28, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

POV phrases

"ill-intentioned neighbours"? "unavoidable minorities"? "still not united in one state"? Someone still hasn't mastered the art of controlling their chauvinism :o --Shallot 02:24, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

"sometimes ill-intentioned". I've thought for a long time how to translate "ponekad nedobronamernih". "Unavoidable minorities" I wrote in positive sense. And as for the "still not united" - it is a fact. Nikola 07:33, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Molise, Gradišće, Burgenland

The following two passages were recently deleted by User:Nikola Smolenski with the claim that they are "unsubstantiated."

The diaspora languages of Serbian are Molise Serbian, Gradisce & Burgenland Serbian.

3. Molise Serbs (Molise region of Italy), speaking a diaspora language called Molise Serbian + # Montenegrins (Montenegro)

4, 5. Gradisce Serbs and Burgenland Serbs (Burgenland region of Austria), speaking diaspora languages, Gradisce Serbian and Burgenland Serbian

I have no idea of the facts of the matter, but outright deletion is not usually the way to dispute someone's obviously substantive statements. Since I don't know the facts I'm not restoring this. Since it's apparently disputed, it probably should be sourced. Nonetheless, I think it would have been a lot more appropriate for Nikola to challenge the accuracy here on the talk page as a way of starting the discussion, rather than start by a deletion that inevitably threatens an edit war. -- Jmabel 23:11, Jun 13, 2004 (UTC)

I have not deleted them, but Shallot did[1]. I investigated the issue and frankly have no idea wheteher these people are Serbs, Croats, Serbs and Croats, Serbo-Croats, Serbs who think that they are Croats, Croats who think that they are Serbs, or whatever and have chosen to remain neutral to the issue, at least until I find something more about it. It is discussed in more detail at Talk:Slavic peoples. Nikola 10:17, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Sorry if I mistakenly attributed the history wrong. I didn't mean to single out the wrong person. Please, though, in general, deletions like this deserve a comment in the relevant talk page so someone can easily engage the issue.

Given what Nikola said here, I'd think they belong in the article with a statement that their ethnic affiliation is unclear, rather than out of it entirely. -- Jmabel 23:19, Jun 14, 2004 (UTC)

Result of the wars

A recent edit changed, "Results of all the wars were unfavourable for the Serbs" to "Results of all the wars were unfavourable for Serbs, Croats, Bosnians and Albanians." True enough (and things weren't exactly wonderful for the Gypsies, the Jews, or anyone else in the neighborhood), but as I understand it the results of the wars were particularly bad for the Serbs. Can we perhaps say something like "The wars were harmful to all people in the region; the results were particularly unfavourable for the Serbs." -- Jmabel 22:15, Aug 4, 2004 (UTC)

I think "The wars were harmful to all people in the region" is such an obvious statement that it's redundant (are wars ever good to anyone?). The second part of the sentence I would reword as "In all of the wars, Serbian forces suffered defeats and major territorial losses. As a result, hundreds of thousands ..." (etc). How does this sound? -- ChrisO 23:27, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Your new wording seems a bit misleading. Serbs lost effective control of territory, but the borders of Serbia were unchanged. "Serbian forces" tends to imply the forces of the Serbian government. In all but the Kosovar War, it was more a matter of irregulars and militias being defeated. -- Jmabel 00:19, Aug 6, 2004 (UTC)

It is also incorrect. Except in Croatia, and even that is doubtful, Serbian armies haven't suffered defeats and major territorial losses.

As for Jmabel's concers, I think that "Serbian forces" has been used for forces of Serbs outside of Serbia, which, by the way, for the most part weren't irregulars and militias, long enough to not be misleading. Of course, if you present something completely unambigous, I prefer it. Nikola 08:20, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure why you think it was "doubtful" in Croatia. Does the RSK still exist, and where are most of its inhabitants living now? Also, southwestern Bosnia - which was a traditionally Serb-inhabited area - was lost by the Bosnian Serbs in the last days of the war there, and most of the Serb inhabitants (and all of the security forces) have left Kosovo south of the Ibar. So there were definitely major territorial losses and military defeats in Bosnia and Croatia. Kosovo was admittedly a bit different, being a political withdrawal rather than a military defeat, but it would be fair to say that there has been a loss of control there though not (yet) a formal loss of territory.

It is doubtful whether that withdraval was militarily justified or was also a political decision, and I'd say that the loss of southwestern Bosnia was minor compared to teritorry that was kept. Nikola 06:03, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Jmabel has a point about Serb/Serbian. We need to make a distinction between armies of Serbs outside Serbia and Serbia's own armed forces. -- ChrisO 11:30, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

What do you suggest? Nikola 06:03, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Where potentially ambiguous, try to word in ways that you can say, on the one hand "Serbia" or "the Serbian state" and on the other "ethnic Serbs". -- Jmabel 17:42, Aug 8, 2004 (UTC)

Origins

I recently found an interesting article on the origins of the Serb people. Even if the root page is quite nationalistic, the article itself may prove interesting for more sources on where the Serbs really came from:

www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/7681/origins.html

dubious recently added paragraph

Recent anon addition, moved here for discussion:

The proto-Serbs were part of the Caucasian Race much like the Georgians, Mingrelians, Lezghians, Ingush, and spoke a language simmilar to these peoples. At some point in the history of the Serbs, this Old Serb language stood side by side with the Slavic language in White Serbia (Porphyrogenitus) and likely even in the first 300 years leading up to the formation of the Serb state on the Balkans in the 9th century. Even to this day, the Serb language has at least a third as many words in its vocabulary than other Slavic languages. This is because of the influence of Old Serb and Illyrian as well as Turkish on the Slavic language spoken by Serbs today. Here is a list of Old Serb words which exist side by side with Slavic words in the modern Serb language.

(ignoring the misspellings...)

• "Caucasian Race" => part of a discredited 19th century view of race.
• I would need to see several solid scholarly citations before believing that at this date (presumably somewhere around the time of the Roman Empire) the Serbs were clearly distinct from other Slavic peoples, especialy from other Slavic peoples in Illyria.
• "has at least a third as many words in its vocabulary than other Slavic languages" What the heck? They all have "at least a third as many words..." Three times that, in fact. What does this mean? And is this a claim that the Serbian language is somehow richer than Croatian? They are almost indistinguishable.

I suspect there is more wrong with this. If there's anything worth salvaging, please do. Gotta go now. -- Jmabel 18:30, Sep 9, 2004 (UTC)

It is one of the teories which perhaps could be noted, after toning down of course. It is copyvio of http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/7681/origins.html anyway so I'll delete it completely. Nikola 15:39, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Dubious recent edit

User:195.252.86.74 recently made some rather major edits including radically changing population figures without citing any source and removing a lot of names from the list of famous Serbs. I have no idea of the facts of the matter, so I am just posting this here to draw others' attention to it.

As for the population figures: could someone please give some numbers with a cited source? It's easy to say, "You can't replace numbers from a cited source with numbers pulled out of thin air." I can't really say "You can't replace numbers that were pulled out of thin air with different numbers pulled out of thin air." -- Jmabel 00:26, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)

And now another similar edit in the population area "USA: at least 2,000,000" was replaced by "USA:  165,000". Again, I have no idea of the facts, so I'm not reverting, but would someone please add some well-cited numbers? -- Jmabel|Talk 21:52, Oct 11, 2004 (UTC)

I've heard about both numbers. AFAIK, US censa register only race and not ethnicity. So the number of an ethnicity has to be deduced somehow. The lower figure is probably only the number of people registered with the SOC, SUC, SND etc. while the higher is built starting with estimated number of immigrants from Serbia/Yugoslavia and calculating number of their descendants, which today probably includes people of Serbian descent who don't feel like Serbs. Nikola 10:30, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Number sources

The following CIA Fact Book is commonly used for 'facts', though it is uncertain whether the "elevated" threat level (at the main page) refers also to fact book. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html

Language

I cleaned up a sentence that now reads, "Non-Serbs who studied the Serbian language include such prominent individuals as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and J. R. R. Tolkien; see list of Serbian language speakers, learners, etc.". I don't necessarily think this belongs in this article, though it probably belongs in Serbian language. This is about the Serbian language, not about Serbian ethnicity. -- Jmabel | Talk 23:35, Oct 27, 2004 (UTC)

But Serbian language is the language of Serbian ethnicity, and further the reason why were they learning the language is related to Serbian culture (Goethe was learning it so that he could read Serbian poetry in original; I'd love to know why Tolkien was). I think that one sentence can pass. Nikola 10:24, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Nikola Tesla

This is not a topic I care about, and since some anon seems to want to make it an edit war, I'm bowing out of it with this note. Tesla has been in and out of this article repeatedly, presumably in a quiet war about whether he counts as a Serb (since I can't imagine anyone was implicitly contending that he didn't make significant contributions to science and engineering or that those don't count as contributions to humanity). I had hoped to resolve this by writing, "Nikola Tesla (although several other ethnicities also claim him as their own)..." This qualifier has now been deleted with the comment "Croats don't claim him only that he is born in Croatia". I've run into Croats who claim him as their own. I've run into Hungarians who claim him as their own. I'm not saying they have good basis, but they do. I leave it here, others can duke this out. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:43, Nov 21, 2004 (UTC)

Nikola Tesla's father was a Serbian Orthodox priest. I'm sorry but how could he be Croat or Hungarian then? very much Serbian, to discredit him as a Serb I'd like to see hard factual evidence he wasn't rather than say he is every nationality in the world. That doesn't make sense, he's Serbian until they do a DNA test to prove otherwise which would find out he is Serbian anyways so there's no sense is arguing it. They just want Tesla, but they can't have him. (anon 22 July 2005)

THE TESLA LAST NAME ORIGINATED IN ROMANIA...THEY MOVED LATER TO SERBIA AND CROATIA.... NIKOLA TESLA HIMSELF WHO WAS BORN IN CROATIA CALLED HIMSELF CROAT AND WAS PROUD OF THIS, HE WOULD ALSO SAY HIS PARENST WERE SERBS .....SO NIKOLA IS CROAT FACT, HIS PARENTS SERBS FACT, BUT TESLA ORIGIN IS ROMANIAN.....FACT......THE ORIGIN HAS BEEN OVER LOOKED IN FAVOUR OF SERBS WHO ARE LOOKING FOR A NATIONAL HERO BUT EVEN THEY KNOW TESLA LAST NAME IS NOT SERBIAN...MAYBE ITS TESLANOVIC HAHAHAHA —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.111.75.195 (talk • contribs) 14 Sept 2005

(at risk of feeding troll with no lower case on keyboard): Or Teslescu? -- Jmabel | Talk 23:36, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

I also seem to remember during the balkan wars of the early 90s, a croatian army blew up a statue of Tesla. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Liet (talk • contribs) 29 Oct 2005

Number of Serbs in Italy

Recently anonymously changed from 10,000 to 25,000. I have no idea of the facts and no one gives a citation. Does anyone have citations for any of these population figures? -- Jmabel | Talk 06:58, Nov 27, 2004 (UTC)

Names

The following unformatted, uncapitalized mess was dumped into the article as a list of first names "containing 'Serb'". It is obviously nothing of the sort. It looks like a list of common first names from that part of the world, possibly in some sense typically Serbian (although most of these would be equally likely in Croatia, Bulgaria, or even Romania). Anyway, I'm pasting it here, instead of just deleting it, in case someone can make use of it somewhere. -- Jmabel | Talk 01:53, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)

ava avakum avda avdija avdon avram avro agata agija agica aglaja aglija ada adica adrian adriana adrijana aksa aksentije akso aleksa aleksandar aleksandra aleksej aleksija aleksije alimpije alisa alojzije alja aljosa amfilohije ana anabela ananija ananije anastazija anastazije anastas anastasija anastasije angel angela angelika angelina andra andrej andreja andrija andrijana andja andjel andjela andjelija andjelika andjelka andjelko aneta anika anikita anita anica anka ankica anta ante anto antonija antonije antonina anja apol apolon apolonija arandjel arsa arsen arsenije arso arhangel asja atanasija atanasije achim aca aco bagule baja bajo baldovin balsa bane banjo barbara bata batic batica bato batric baca backo baco beba beja beka bela beli bele belka beloje belota belos beloslav belja benja beran berana beranka berisav berisava berislav berislava berisavka berislavka berka berko bernada berce becko besa biljana biljka bisa bisenija bisera biserka bjanka blaga blaginja blagica blagisa blago blagoja blagoje blagomir blagomira blagomirka blagorodna blagota blagos blaz blaza blazen blazenka blazimir blazimirka blazo blazun blanka blansa blasko boba boban bobana bobo bogdan bogdana bogdanka boginja bogic bogoboj bogoje bogoljub bogomir bogosav bogosava bogoslava bodin boza bozana bozanka bozena bozenka bozidar bozidarka bozimir bozimirka bozina bozica bozo bozur bozurka boja bojan bojana bojka bojkica bojko boki bole boleslav boljesa bona bora bore borivoj borivoje borisav borisava borislav borislava borislavka boric borica borisa borjan borjana borjanka borko boro bosa bosanka bosiljka boska bota bosko bragita bradan brana brane branibor branimir branislav branislava branka branko brano bratimir bratislav bratislava bratislavka bratoljub braca braco brasa brena brigita brizita buba buda bude budimir budimira budimirka budimka budisav budislav buca buco vajo valentin valentina valerija valerijan valerije vanja varvara vasa vasilija vasilije vasilj vasiljka vasica vasko vaskresenija vaskresije vaskrsenija vaskrsenije vaskrsija vaskrsije vaso vasoje vatroslav vedran vedrana vedranka vejo veko vekoslav vekoslava vela veli velibor veliborka velizar velika velimir velinka velisav velislav velicko velisa velja veljko veljo venedikt vencislav vencislava vera veran verislav verislava verislavka veroljub veroslav veroslava vesa vesela veselin veselinka veselka veselko veska vesko vesna vesnica veso vivijan vivijana vid vida vidak vidan vidanka vidanko vidasin vide vidoje vidojka vidojko vidoljub vidomir vidosav vidosava vidoslav vidoslava vijekoslava vijoleta vijorka viktor viktorija vilotije vinka vinko violeta viorika vita vitko vito vitomir vitor vikentije vilim viliman vilma vicentije viseslav viseslava visko visnja vjekoslav vjekoslava vjera vjerica vlada vladan vladana vladanka vlade vladeta vladimir vladimirka vladisav vladisava vladislav vladislava vladica vladko vlado vlajinka vlajko vlasije vlasta vlastimir vlastinka vlasto vlatka vlatko vlaho vlahoje voin voislav voislava voja vojan vojimir vojin vojislav vojislava vojislavka vojica vojka vojkan vojkana vojko vojna vojnimir vojo volena vratimir vratko vratoje vrasko vuica vuja vujadin vujadinka vujan vujasin vujica vujka vujkica vujo vujos vuk vuka vukadin vukadinka vukajlo vukalica vukan vukas vukac vukasin vukdrag vukic vukica vukman vukmir vuko vukovoj vukodrag vukoica vukojica vukoje vukol vukola vukolaj vukoman vukomir vukomirka vukosav vukosava vukoslav vukota vuksan vuksana vuksa vule vucelja vuceta vucina vucic vucko gabrijela gavra gavrila gavrilka gavrilo gavro gaga gaj gaja gajo gara garava garo gasa gaso gaspar gvozden gvozdenija genadije georg georgije georgina gerasim german gile gina gliga gligor gligorije glisa gliso glorija gmitra goja gojak gojka gojko golub golubica gora goran gorana gordan gordana gordislav gore gorica gorjanka gospa gospava gospojina gospojinka gostimir gostimirka gostislav goca gosa goroljub gorcilo gorcin grada gradimila gradimir gradimirka gradisa grana granica grga grgo grgur grigorije grozda grozdan grozdana grozdanija grojana gruban grubana gruica gruja grujo