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Languages in Montenegro

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Language has been a raging issue for many years in Montenegro. Until recently the controversy has yet to be resolved as to the name of the official national language. Montenegrin is an official native language specified in the Constitution of October 22, 2007 but anti-Montenegrin advocates say Serbian is the official language under the Constitution or ustav.

This has divided the Montenegrins into two factions: one favoring Serbian, and the other choosing Montenegrin on the claim that they campaigned hard for Montenegro independence since 1990 and finally for Montenegrin as a national language.

A proposal to name the national language as Montenegrin-Serbian has not resolved the controversy but has divided the Montenegrins further.

The majority of mainstream politicians and other advocates advance the opinion that the language issue is self-determination and carries the people’s right to name the language they want and say that it is “not an attempt to form a new language when there is none” to create.

The Montenegrin PEN Center says: “Montenegrin language does not mean a systematically separate language but just one of four names Montenegrin, Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian.”

There are also instances in Montenegro that tend to show that Montenegrin may finally prevail as the country’s official language. It has been the language of instruction in many elementary and secondary schools for many years. In 2008, the Minister of Education declared that by 2009, all school textbooks, dictionaries and grammar books would be printed in the Montenegrin language as part, he said, of an educational reform in the country.

If Montenegrin finally surfaces as the official national language, the Serbian language and the Albanian, Bosnian and Croatian languages will remain to be officially used in the country, and English to be widely spoken especially in Podgorica and major tourist areas.