Tonci PRUSAC

MELBOURNE - In what could only be described as scandalous circumstances, recently published dictionaries in the so-called ''Serbo-Croatian'' language have been catalogued in the Croatian section of a prominent western suburbs based community library.

Ljubomir Devic, a regular user of the City of Maribyrnong's Library Service, was outraged when he recently came across two Serbian-English dictionaries at the Footscray Library that were masquerading as Croatian language books.

So infuriated was Devic, he decided to write an official letter of complaint to the western Melbourne based shire's libray service. This week, he passed on this correspondence to the 'Croatian Herald' to publicise the continuing fight of the Croatian language to be appropriately recognised in mainstream Australian institutions

''It has come to my attention at the Footscray Library - in the Croatian section - that two books have been placed there by mistake,'' he commenced his letter.

''The dictionary of English-Croatian/Croatian-English is titles 'Recnik', which is not the correct spelling by the Croatian standard language. However, it is a correct spelling according to the Serbian standard language. The correct Croatian spelling should be 'Rjecnik','' he continued.

''The other book is also controversial and is entitled ''Standard English-Serbo Croatian/Serbo Croatian-English Dictionary', with an equally controversial sub-title, 'A Dictionary of Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian Standards', which was written by Morton Benson and published by Cambridge University Press in the United States, the 9th edition which was re-printed in 2006.

''The three languages as a group (together with Slovenian and Macedonian) used to be called the 'Yugoslav' language, even though a 'Yugoslav' language per se does not exist. It would be like calling a group of languages from Sout-East Asia a 'South-East Asian' language. 'Yugoslav' is a geographical term which means South Slav.

''Now that all ex-Yugoslav republics are independent nations and are recognised by the United Nations, their language, culture and religion is protected by Protocol of the Declaration of Human Rights''.

According to Devic, by mixing up the languages in the dictionaries mentioned, someone is either a practical joker or someone is trying to disturb the tranquil nature of Australia's multicultural community.

''In any case, such controversial books should not be on the shelves of the Maribyrnong City Library,'' Ljubomir Devic concluded in his letter.