The forum Few More Words about Cyrillic, Folks was held at Trebinje National Library to discuss the status of the Cyrillic alphabet in Serbian culture, literature and people.

– Cyrillic is under threat today, and attempts are being made to discover the causes of such a state and emergence of problems, but also to find answers on how to protect and preserve Cyrillic in Serbian culture and literature – said Professor Zoran Avramović, PhD, from Belgrade.

– There are multiple causes, there is that stemming from the Yugoslav heritage, then our people mixing with other peoples and religions also producing pressure on Cyrillic. There is also the impact of ban, Cyrillic being banned in 1915, 1941, and more recently there was an attempt by the Venice Commission to request a single status for both Latin and Cyrillic in the Serbian Constitution, so there are various pressures – said Avramović.

He noted also the carelessness and neglect of the Serbian intelligentsia for allowing such a state of the Cyrillic script to occur.

Professor Marina Spasojević, PhD, said that the main solution for the status of Cyrillic was to change the legal framework, as there was a distinction between the official and public use of the language.

She said that the official use implied mandatory use of Cyrillic only in state administration, while in the media it was not mandatory at all; only institutions financed by state capital were under obligation, while all others were not.

– Amending the law to equate the official and public use should ensure, primarily, that Cyrillic is mandatory in public spaces – said Spasojević.

She noted that we should emulate other countries using the Cyrillic script, having the state language status, such as Russia, where the Russian state language is Cyrillic, and all foreign companies must transcribe their Latin names into Cyrillic.

The poets Radomir Uljarević from Podgorica and Miloš Janković from Belgrade also took part in the forum.

Source: RTRS – SRNA

Photo: SRNA