Serbs, Croats, and Bosnian Muslims spoke one shared language despite script differences.

Evidence

Croatians used a Latin-based script, while Serbs preferred a Cyrillic script (based on Greek characters), but despite dialectical differences, Serbs, Croats, and Bosnian Muslims spoke the same language. Many Serbs and Croats were devoted to the ideal of a multireligious and multiethnic Yugoslavia. Religious nationalists, however, desired religiously homogeneous national states, a greater Catholic Croatia and a greater Orthodox Christian Serbia. — Michael A. Sells, The Bridge Betrayed, 65

Categorization

• XREF: The script-based division within one language is a recurring Balkan pattern worth contrasting with the ‘ancient animosities’ framing the book dismantles.

Related

• The Bosnian conflict divided people on religious identity despite shared language and Slavic descent (similarity 0.87)
• Nationalist terminologies impose artificial distinctions on one shared language. (similarity 0.83)
• Bosnian Muslims suffered uniquely methodical persecution from both nationalist sides (similarity 0.82)
• Bosnian ethnic identities formed through shifting, multidirectional conversions (similarity 0.82)
• Bosnian culture is multilayered across multiple religions and ethnicities (similarity 0.81)
• Both Serb and Croat nationalists shared the view that Slavic Muslims converted from cowardice (similarity 0.81)
• Bosnian government’s religious diversity was erased by the phrase Muslim-dominated (similarity 0.80)
• Croat and Serb militias jointly dynamited mosques across eastern Bosnia (similarity 0.80)
• Bosnian identity is civic and multi-religious, not ethnoreligious (similarity 0.78)