From Serbian to AlbanianWhile Kosovo was under Serbian rule, the Serbian government tried to suppress Albanian as much as possible. Roly Sussex, a Professor of Applied Language studies at Queensland University in Australia, provides an elegant description of Serbia's oppressive language policy in an interview with ABC News Australia in 1999 (the year of the Kosovo War):
The Albanian-language university in Pristina is closed in 1991. Albanian-language schools are closed. Students have to study in Serbian. Government funding is withdrawn from Albanian-language schools. Public life is in Serbian; street signs have been renamed in Serbian, in the Cyrillic script. The media are predominantly in Serbian. There is increasing violence between rebellious Kosovo Albanians, especially the Kosovo Liberation Army, and the Serbian authorities. Some Kosovo Albanians have been systematically engaging in civil disobedience. Anti-Serb graffiti in Albanian have been appearing every night." Sussex demonstrates the linguistic ramifications of ethnic cleansing. Albanian was still the majority language under Serbian rule, yet the government attempted to eliminate it from all forms of public life.
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The photo above, taken in 2016, demonstrates how Albanian speaking Kosovars have retaliated against the Serbian and Bosnian languages since the fall of Yugoslavia and Serbian rule (Jones, 2016).
UNMIKThe United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) began during the Kosovo War and continues today. Kosovo's Law on the Use of Language determined that, while the UNMIK is present in Kosovo, English will be an official language. The UNMIK also ensures that Kosovo's laws comply with anti-discrimination laws. One ramification of these laws are that minority languages must be represented. This point is important because with the history of Serbs oppressing the Albanian language, there is a fear that Albanians will attempt to suppress the Serbian language in retribution (Demaj and Vandenbrouke, 2016, p. 34).
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