Textbooks for the Montenegrin, Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian languages (CSBH), which have been in use in Montenegrin primary schools since 2013, are full of archaic expressions, while linguists explain that these are words that have not been heard even in villages for decades.
These textbooks were approved by the National Council for Education and printed by the Institute for Textbooks and are compulsory language literature for students.
Thus, in the folk tale "Čardak neither in the sky nor on the earth", students of the fourth rared encounter the expressions "rekne", i.e. "reku" (third person singular and plural of the verb say in the present tense). There is also the verb form "ščedna" and "not ščedna". On the other hand, in the first sentence of the fairy tale, the noun daughter is used, although in popular speech, you can find "ščer" more often than the expressions "reku" or "rekne".
The Ministry recently dissociated itself from "Bukvar" published by "Naša škola pet plus", explaining this by the fact that the textbook was not given the green light by the National Council, and that it is not compulsory reading. Minister Damir Šehović announced that those who allowed "Bukvar" to reach school desks will be held accountable.
The question is how the education department will be determined according to textbooks that have been in use for years, and in which there are problematic expressions, such as the quoted fairy tale from the reading book for the fourth grade of elementary school.
The Ministry of Education explains that they are solely responsible for compliance with legal procedures. "When it comes to creating textbooks, the main say is the National Council, which approves programs for a specific subject. On the other hand, ZUNS prints textbooks", said the Ministry.
The Institute for Textbooks did not specifically answer the questions of "Vijesti" in which regions the verb form "reku" is used, why there are inconsistencies in the use of vernacular, and whether language textbooks will soon be revised.
"Given that the teaching programs were changed in 2013, based on our stock, we adapted a part of the textbook sets or published completely new ones at the beginning of last year. This year, we published 42 new or adapted titles in Montenegrin for primary schools language, the kits used to study English in the first three grades were changed, we also made part of the titles for the first and fifth grades in the Albanian language," answered ZUNS.
It is not only students and their parents who are in doubt when it comes to texts from reading books, and the use of certain expressions is also strange to linguists.
Rajko Glušić, professor of the Department of Montenegrin Language and Literature at the Faculty of Philosophy in Nikšić, is surprised by the Ministry of Education's exclusion of "Bukvar" "when it is known that it is written according to the rules prescribed by the Spelling and Grammar of the Montenegrin Language, which were declared official and mandatory in the education system by the decision of that department".
"All textbooks in official use for the Montenegrin language in primary and secondary schools, just like the incriminated 'Bukvar', are written according to the norm prescribed by the mentioned Spelling and Grammar. Bukvar is no different from other textbooks that are mandatory and approved by competent institutions for use in the Montenegrin education system, as confirmed by the same reviewers of Bukvar and other official textbooks. Therefore, the source of the problem is Spelling and Grammar, which prescribe a freakish norm, and not 'Bukvar', in which the freakish face of that norm was shown as in a mirror", she believes.
Glušica points out that there is no difference between standards and vernaculars, and that many linguistic features of vernaculars have unjustifiably entered the norm of the standard language:
"The boundary between the two linguistic idioms in the Montenegrin language is unclear, so users are never sure whether they are in the standard language or in one of the Montenegrin folk dialects".
He notes that the archaization of the Montenegrin language is a wrong approach, and that it arose from the desire to make as many differences as possible between Montenegrin and other languages that arose from the polycentric Serbo-Croatian.
Bring back the old and excellent textbooks
Glušica believes that the best solution to this unsustainable situation with Montenegrin language textbooks and a completely wrong approach to the language norm is to return the "old and excellent textbooks from the time when the teaching subject was the mother tongue".
"Of course, the pernicious nationalist language policy should be abandoned as a matter of urgency, one of the most benign results of which is precisely the 'Bukvar' that is being talked about so much these days," she said.
Glušica concludes that "we have seen the results of archaization in 'Bukvar' and textbooks, which represent a big problem for students".
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