One language, four names, and how many translators exactly?

No country is closer to joining the European Union than Montenegro. In April, the European Council established a working group to draw up its Accession Treaty, signalling confidence that benchmarks for joining the bloc will be reached. With its “28 by 28” slogan, the Western Balkans' frontrunner is working full steam ahead to become the 28th EU member state by 2028. If it works, Brussels might be faced with a linguistic dilemma. The Western Balkan language puzzle Since Montenegrin is the country's official language, Montenegro would very likely request that it become the EU's 25th official language. Yet it's very similar to another official EU language: Croatian. In fact, Montenegrin, Croatian, Bosnian, and Serbian are all standard language varieties of what was once known as Serbo-Croatian. Following the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, each successor state named its own variety, making language an important marker for newly independent national identities. These four languages are more or less understandable to each other. But while a Croat from Zagreb, a Serb from Belgrade, a Bosnian from Sarajevo, and a Montenegrin from Podgorica can sit down together for a coffee without thinking twice about it, the idea of sharing a common language remains politically contentious. In Croatia, efforts to distinguish from Serbo-Croatian included promoting specifically Croatian vocabulary in place of words perceived as “Serbianisms”. In Montenegro, too, language remains tricky – the 2023 census shows more citizens declaring Serbian, rather than Montenegrin, as their mother tongue, which schools referred to as “Mother Tongue and Literature” for years to avoid controversy. In Bosnia, the three official languages (Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian) require many state institutions to produce three more or less identical versions of legislation and official documents. Equality vs bureaucracy For the EU, whether Montenegrin is “different enough” from Croatian to warrant being an…