“In addition to the fact that students will be able to study the Bosnian language, it will also be accredited with 3 ETCS points, which is no small feat, because some subjects have 1 or 2.”
Starting next semester, students at the University of Vienna will be able to choose Bosnian as a study or elective subject. Azra Hodžić-Kadić, a professor at the Language Center, a department at the University of Vienna, is largely responsible for this. As Prof. Hodžić-Kadić tells Raport, students in all three cycles will be able to study our language.
Through the Institute of Foreign Languages, I initiated the introduction of the Bosnian language into the Language Center, as the interest of students began to grow, which was an additional wind at my back. In addition, this can also benefit our children who were born in Austria and do not speak our language well. Until now, Croatian and Serbian languages were available at the Language Center, but Bosnian was not offered, although the students wanted to learn it,” says Prof. Hodžić-Kadić.
She teaches the Croatian language and is a proofreader, and she also taught the Serbian language at the Security Academy and the Military Academy. So far, as Prof. Hodžić-Kadić, there was a possibility for students to study Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian as part of Slavic studies.
Although she has been teaching Croatian and Serbian at various higher education institutions for about 10 years, our interlocutor says that she has not had the opportunity to teach the Bosnian language until now.
He adds that there were also aggravating circumstances, primarily related to the lack of textbooks. Namely, there are no textbooks for the Bosnian language, or even if there are, they do not correspond to European references. On the other hand, textbooks produced in BiH are not designed according to levels.
“That’s why two years ago I decided to start the ‘Discover Bosnian’ project, which will produce five textbooks for levels from A1 to C1 and two grammar manuals. All these textbooks are multilingual and contain instructions in German and English,” says prof. Hodžić-Kadić.
