Language in legal texts (critique of the language norms in laws and bills, 1910)

Petar Kočić

A speech in the Parliament of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Austro-Hungarian Empire

Exalted Sabor!*

With regards to the discussion of these legal basics I will make a few remarks about the official language and language in general and its development since the beginning of the occupation to this day. Just as the occupation brought much evil to us and has done us a lot of injustices in all directions of of our national life, it has just as corrosively impacted the development of our God-given pretty and nicely-sounding language.

This impact is so damaging and obvious that we have to fear that our beautiful language, the prettiest among Slavic languages, that our language will be completely corrupted, that it will fade away, that it will lose its crystal-clear nature and pretty tonality which is almost unparalleled.

We, as good and old Bosnians, must hurt us, as our language was extraordinarily beautiful and tonal even in the oldest times, much more beautiful and closer to the people from languages in eastern Serbian lands, which developed under the influence of Byzantine culture and Greek syntax. Old monuments tell us that and the following inspiring inscription from a tombstone: “А сије биљег почтена и гласита војводе Радивоја Опрашића. Докле бих, почтено и гласито пребих и легох у туђој земљи, а биљег ми стоји на баштини” [“Here shines the mark of the honest and famous voivode Radivoj Oprašić. While I lasted, I honestly and notably lived and died in foreign land and my mark stands on my own”].

This beauty of the language was preserved through long centuries and in more recent times, when our new literature was being created, Croatian and Serbian, when our literary language was being created, our dialect from Bosnia and Herzegovina was taken as the common literary language of the two brotherly tribes of our one people, the common literary language of the Croatian and Serbian tribes. The founder of modern literature, the ingenious Vuk Stefanović Karadžić wrote this:

“Serbian is spoken most purely and most correctly in Herzegovina and Bosnia” and today, 32 years after the Austrian administration of Bosnia and Herzegovina, with pain and bitterness I paraphrase this precise statement by Vuk: “Serbian is written most impurely and last correctly in Bosnia and Herzegovina”. So whose fault is this? Who else could be at fault than our government, than its clerks, small and great, high and low, its official newspapers, laws and proclamations, its schools and its textbooks, its various offices and courts. (Approval in the hall). All of these are at fault and all of these are conspiring against the purity and beauty of our language and much has been done to that end! If everything else can be disputed for the Austro-Hungarian administration in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in this matter, in the spoiling and mutilation of our language, it can not be found at fault at all, unless a man would want to bring sin on his soul.

It has managed it quite well and I hope, exalted Sabor, that the European public opinion will accept that opinion, even without banqueting it. We have gotten in the newspapers, the laws and proclamations and in the courts some kind of a language which stands in a very loose, often no connection to the living vernacular. It is a disgusting freak, heavy and forced, often completely incomprehensible, without suppleness, elasticity and tonality, those important characteristics of our beautiful language. This is a language like ours, but not ours, the words are our, but the language is not. From that language the spirit of our language does not shine through, this is not the language we listed and learned from our mothers’ lips, which is more beautiful than a song, the language of Vuk and Daničić and our modern writers. This disgusting freak of a national language was created by foreigners and our people, Serbs and Croats from Croatia. The former, the foreigners, learned it only lexically and the latter, Serbs and Croats, came with a pretty badly put together language, which again developed in Croatia under the influence of German office language or the border military command. Both started corrupting our language like brothers and in accord, as our younger writer Dr Ćorović, they went from one office to another, introducing new things and the Sarajevo official newspaper spread and increased their popularity. Foreigners often did not even understand the true meaning of certain words, like for instance judges, who as the keepers of public good and morals would need to understand unto smallest details the living vernacular. Because of this lack of familiarity, exalted Sabor, we have often arrived to comedic and tragic scenes a in the courts. Let me tell you of just one. In a county cour the presiding judge asked the defendant, who killed a man, why he did it. The defendant shrugs and keeps quiet. The presiding judge asks him again why he killed and the defendant answers: “Šejtan** himself forced me to”. Hearing that, the state prosecutor jumped and said: “In the light of, let’s say, paragraph 301 I also extend the charges to Šejtan and propose punitive exile”. (Laughter). The attending looked at each other and an old Muslim said: “Your Empire is good at ordering and administering, but that you even have a paragraph for šejtan, that will never sit right in my head”.

I too had to answer for a word and that was the word “sudanija”. I can, if you will, bring my own judgement and you can decide. The state prosecutor charged me that with the second case of that word, which is “sudanije”, I intended to make fun of the court and to say that there is no court, that “suda nije”.*** (Laughter). Our language can be reprimanded that it is not developed, that with it one can not express everything that is needed, that laws and proclamations can not be logically and precisely expressed in it or the expert legal writings. This opinion is out of its depth! This is best shown by the new laws of the Kingdom of Serbia and many expert writings and legal publications of certain expert writers. One should only look at the words of Slobodan Jovanović, the professor of Belgrade University and you will see what difficult things can be expressed with our Serbian or Croatian language, with full clarity and logic. Only one thing should be kept in mind and that is the significant characteristic of our language that it is not a noun-based language like German, but a verb-based one.

Exalted Sabor, all peoples value the beauty and purity of language. And we should value and preserve this precious national treasure in its full beauty and purity. For 32 years already, continuously and incessantly there is a war against our language from one side and the time has come now to shout decisively to that side: “Everything has been taken away from us, on all the fronts of national life we have been exploited, but we will not give you our language! That is our hope and our comfort, as the great Russian author Turgenev says: “In the days when doubt, when dark and unpleasant thoughts rack me due to the fate of my homeland, you are the only thing that keeps me from flagging, oh great, mighty, shining and free Russian language! If you were gone, I would have to despair watching what is happening in my homeland”.

II

Proposal of people’s representative Petar Kočić and comrades about language in legal texts

Since we have seen that the language and style in the submitted legal proposals is impure and non-vernacular, we propose that a committee of three representatives be chosen, which will review all the legal proposals and will correct errors in language and style.

Petar Kočič and comrades

III

Exalted Sabor!

As a member of the committee for the style and language in legal proposals, I have reviewed the legal proposal for the selection of horses. Even though both the economy committee and the plenum of the Sabor a lot of attention has been given to style and language in this legal proposal, there is something in it which has not been corrected and which could not be corrected and that is the basic tone and language stylisation which is completely foreign to our language. It seems that this law was either translated or that it was put together from differing originals by people who do not know well enough the spirit of our language. We have all been carving and polishing it, but the language at its base has remained such that it does not bear the spirit of our speech. We had very little time for this work, which prevented us from embarking on a radical clean-up. And even if we had had enough of it, we should not do it, as the proposal has come to a third reading and I therefore think it is not opportune to embark on a broader dismemberment and stylisation of individual sentences. In this way it could happen that a sentence would acquire a different meaning from the intent of the lawmakers.

In the style and language little has been corrected; for example, in the the proposals, even this about horses, there is an often use of the verbs “should”, “ought to”, “must” and “is allowed” in the infinitive. This is not in the spirit of the language. We would simply use either the present or future tense. For example: instead of “it should be determined” we say “it is determined” or “it will be determined”. From a legal side that is much better and more precisely said. These “should”, “must”, “is prohibited” is not ours, it sounds disagreeable in a law. In today’s state and society it is difficult enough to live as it is and if in every law we find “must”, “is allowed to”, “is prohibited” this makes one feel uncomfortable, because on every step, besides those threats we meet gendarmes, we see the open dungeon etc. and to enter this hardness and bitterness into the laws is not good, especially when they do not fit the spirit of our language.

In the language itself many words could be replaced with other, better suited vernacular words, for example; the word “područje”**** can be replaced with the word “oblast”, but we have left the word there. Even though područje is a clumsy construction, we left it in as it has gotten into and grew roots and is often present in the text itself. Based on everything said above, we were very modest in this improvement; § 1. we did not change at all.

* Tran. note: Sabor is the name for the Parliament

** Tran. note: šejtan is the local spelling of Shaitan, which are evil spirits in Islam, who incite humans to sin by “whispering to their hearts”

*** Tran. note: a play on words, “suda nije” literally means that there is no court or no justice

**** Tran. note: a geographic area

Translated by Books of Jeremiah