There is a constant pressure from non-southslavic to generalize the language differences and say they are the same, but when the pressure and generalization (lack of knowledge) is an only argument, then it is really pathetic ('scuse my french :)) The name "serbocroatian" or vice versa was purely for exclusively political (impossible) idea for psychological reason of unifying minds and cutting the multicultural differences in coummunist regime. That's about politics, and now - from my knowledge as a speaker of all :) Accents in cro/bos/serb are different. Pronounciation is lighter towards croatian, little harder in bosnian to serbian. Maybe not so important regarding other diff, but those exist and are are heard in almost every word. Croatian uses infinitive verbs, bosnian and serbian doesn't. Words from turkish and russian are mostly found in serbian, less in bosnian and the least in croatian. I can say they make up 5-10 % of total words. Croatian and bosnian (and montenegrin) uses "ijekavica" vs. serbian "ekavica" as a base for words that are same in every language, the only difference in the usage of "ije" or "e": bijelo vs belo (white), rijeka vs reka (river), pjesnik vs pesnik (poet) Trying to be objective as I can, and knowing that I also generalize, to my opinion those 4 differences make about 99 % of differences and knowing that can be of great help to learner of any C/B/S language. Macedonian and slovenian are largely diferent from CBS.

Nije pametno kazati to, zbog situacije izmedju zemlje balkanske. A i korekcija: "ja mislim da srpski, hrvatski, bosanski, i makedonski su isti." English: It isn't wise to say that, because of the situation between the Balkan countries. And also a correction: "ja mislim da srpski, hrvatski, bosanski, i makedonski su isti."

A controversial issue! Macedonian definitely is a separate language. But "crnogorski" would be a different matter. As a student of Croatian, I have lessons with people learning Serbian, Montenegrin and Bosnian, and the class runs pretty smoothly. The Latin/Cyrillic alphabet aside, they're not much more dissimilar than British and American English. However, this is sometimes a political (rather than linguistic) issue...