After the first Symposium on the Bosnian Language, held in 1998 in Bihać, and the Second Symposium, held in Sarajevo in 2015, the Third Symposium on the Bosnian Language was planned for 2020 in Mostar. However, due to the coronavirus pandemic, the holding of the Third Symposium was repeatedly postponed so that the Organizing Committee of the Symposium would eventually decide to implement the program online through the ZOOM online platform.

The Third Symposium on the Bosnian Language was held on May 20 and 21, 2021. The organizer of the Symposium was the Language Institute of the University of Sarajevo, and the partners were the University “Džemal Bijedić” in Mostar, the Museum of Herzegovina Mostar, the Pedagogical Institute of the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton and the National Library of Mostar. The sponsors of the Third Symposium were the Ministry of Education and Science of the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton, the Municipality of Centar Sarajevo, the Municipality of Novi Grad Sarajevo, the Municipality of Ilidža and the Islamic Community in Bosnia and Herzegovina. These sponsors will also support the printing of proceedings of the Symposium.

Before the official program, the first day of the Symposium was opened with welcoming speeches by Alen Kalajdžija, PhD, director of the Language Institute, Melika Husić-Mehmedović, PhD, Minister of Science, Education and Youth of Sarajevo Canton, Rašid Hadžović, PhD, Minister of Higher Education and Science of the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton, Dženana Husremović, PhD, Vice-Rector for Teaching at the University of Sarajevo, and Edina Špago-Ćumurija, PhD, Vice-Rector for Teaching at the University “Džemal Bijedić” in Mostar. After the welcoming speeches, in their plenary presentations, the participants and guests of the symposium were addressed by academician Dževad Jahić and Sanjin Kodrić, PhD.

More than 50 lecturers from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia, Kosovo, Northern Macedonia, the United States and Serbia took part in the official symposium program. The presentations were realized in four sessions – the first day two parallel sessions and the second day also two parallel sessions. After the presented papers, the attendees could ask questions to the lecturers or comment on the submitted lectures. The program brought together papers from several different areas of Bosnian language study – standard language, language history, dialectology, onomastics, linguistics, lexicology, sociolinguistics, ethnolinguistics, terminology, methodology, language policy, language in the media and comparative and contrastive studies of Bosnian and other languages. The Symposium were closed with preliminary conclusions.

The Institute of Language of the University of Sarajevo would like to thank all participants and guests of the Symposium, the Organizing and Honorary Organizing Committee for their support and useful suggestions, and partners and sponsors for their support in organizing and implementing the program of the Symposium.

Welcome addresses can be viewed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4c9lQbpViI&feature=youtu.be, and session A at: https://youtu.be/G-aUyRABmyo. Other sessions will also be available on YouTube.