Serbian language being Albanised in Kosovo

KOSOVSKA MITROVICA - Many Kosovo institutions do not follow the law on language usage in full and the Kosovo government should try to change that, because the Albanisation of the Serbian language area there has gained momentum, Serbian language experts in Kosovo have said.

Language commissioner from the Kosovo prime minister's office Slavisa Mladenovic thinks the law on language usage is not followed in its entirety and that the Kosovo government has to do more about the issue.
"The law on language usage in Kosovo is not being followed in full. There are many failings in the law's implementation in many institutions. Examples of violations of the law are obvious throughout Kosovo," he told Tanjug.

The EU is clear in its demands for respect of the language law, he underscored.

Writer and journalist Zivojin Rakocevic believes the Serbian language is in a very bad state in Kosovo and that everything is moving towards an Albanisation of the Serbian language area.
"The Serbian language in Kosovo is in a disastrous state, especially in formal usage. The Kosovo institutions use an Albanised Serbian language, the way it is spoken by ethnic Albanians. You encounter language discrimination everywhere south of the Ibar river; it is enough to look at the signs by the road," he told Tanjug.

"The Kosovo Customs have never sent a document in Serbian, and there was no translation into Serbian at the constitutive session of the Kosovo parliament a week ago," he pointed out.

The OSCE Mission to Kosovo and the office of the language commissioner organised a language expo on September 26 to mark European Language Day.

The official languages in Kosovo are the Albanian, Serbian and English.

The...