Learning to speak Croatian

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About the Croatian Language

Croatian ) is a South Slavic language which is used primarily in Croatia, by Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina, by Croatian minorities in some neighbouring countries, in the Italian region of Molise, and parts of the Croatian diaspora. Standard Croatian is dialectally based on the Western Štokavian dialect with the Ijekavian reflex of the Common Slavic yat vowel. The Croatian linguistic area encompasses two other major dialects, Čakavian and Kajkavian, which contribute lexically to the standard language. It is written with the Croatian alphabet, based on the Latin alphabet. Along with Serbian and Bosnian, Croatian belongs to the Central South Slavic diasystem

The modern Croatian standard language is a continuous outgrowth of more than nine hundred years of literature written in a mixture of Croatian Church Slavonic and the vernacular language. Croatian Church Slavonic was abandoned by the mid-15th century, and Croatian as embodied in a purely vernacular literature has existed for more than five centuries.The beginning of the Croatian written language can be traced to the 9th century, when Old Church Slavonic was adopted as the language of the liturgy. This language was gradually adapted to non-liturgical purposes and became known as the Croatian version of Old Slavonic. The two variants of the language, liturgical and non-liturgical, continued to be a part of the Glagolitic service as late as the mid-9th century.

Until the end of the 11th century, Croatian medieval texts were written in three scripts: Latin, Glagolitic, and Croatian Cyrillic (arvatica, poljičica, bosančica), and also in three languages: Croatian, Latin and Old Slavic. The latter developed into what is referred to as the Croatian variant of Church Slavonic between the 12th and 16th centuries. The most important early monument of Croatian literacy is the Baška tablet from the late 11th century. It is a large stone tablet found in the small church of St. Lucy on the Croatian island of Krk, containing text written mostly in Čakavian, today a dialect of Croatian, and in Croatian angular Glagolitic script. It is also important in the history of the nation as it mentions Zvonimir, the king of Croatia at the time. However, the luxurious and ornate representative texts of Croatian Church Slavonic belong to the later era, when they coexisted with the Croatian vernacular literature. The most notable are the "Missal of Duke Novak" from the Lika region in northwestern Croatia (1368), "Evangel from Reims" (1395, named after the town of its final destination), Hrvoje's Missal from Bosnia and Split in Dalmatia (1404) and the first printed book in Croatian language, the Glagolitic Missale Romanum Glagolitice (1483).

The Štokavian dialect literature, based almost exclusively on Čakavian original texts of religious provenance (missals, breviaries, prayer books) appeared almost a century later. The most important purely Štokavian vernacular text is Vatican Croatian Prayer Book Both the language used in legal texts and that used in Glagolitic literature gradually came under the influence of the vernacular, which considerably affected its phonological, morphological and lexical systems. From the 14th and the 15th centuries, both secular and religious songs at church festivals were composed in the vernacular. Writers of early Croatian religious poetry (začinjavci), translators and editors gradually introduced the vernacular into their works. These začinjavci were the forerunners of the rich literary production of the 15th and 16th centuries. The language of religious poems, translations, miracle and morality plays contributed to the popular character of medieval Croatian literature.

The first purely vernacular texts in hrvatski (Croatian) are distinctly different from Church Slavonic dated back to the 13th century. In the 14th and 15th centuries the modern Croatian language emerged. (It appears in texts as Vatican Croatian Prayer Book from 1400.) The morphology, phonology and syntax) only slightly differ from contemporary Croatian (standard language).

The standardization of Croatian language can be traced back to the first Croatian dictionary (Faust Vrančić: Dictionarium quinque nobilissimarum Europae linguarum—Latinae, Italicae, Germanicae, Dalmatiae et Ungaricae, Venice 1595) and first Croatian grammar (Bartul Kašić: Institutionum linguae illyricae libri duo, Rome 1604). The language of Jesuit Kašić's translation of the Bible (Old and New Testament, 1622–1636; unpublished until 2000) in the Croatian Štokavian-Ijekavian dialect (the ornate style of the Dubrovnik Renaissance literature) is as close to the contemporary standard Croatian language (problems of orthography apart) as are French of Montaigne's "Essays" or King James Bible English to their respective successors—modern standard languages.

This period, sometimes called "Baroque Slavism" was crucial in formation of literary idiom that was to become Croatian standard language—the 17th century witnessed flowering in three fields that shaped modern Croatian:

* One was the linguistic works of Jesuit philologists Kašić and Mikalja;
* the other energetic literary activity of Bosnian Franciscan Matija Divković, whose Counter-Reformation writings (popular tales from the Bible, sermons and polemics) were widespread among Croats both in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia;
* and, last but not least, in aesthetically refined poetry of Ivan Gundulić from Dubrovnik.

In late medieval times up to 17th century, the major part of semi-autonomous Croatia was ruled by two domestic dynasties of princes (bani), the Zrinski and the Francopan, who were linked by inter-marriage. Toward 17th cent. both of them attempted to unify Croatia also on the cultural and lingual level, and with great foresight they selected as their official language the transitional Ikavish-Kaykavian dialect, this being an acceptable mean intermediate between all the principal Croatian dialects (Chakavian, Kaykavian and Ikavish-Shchakavian); it is used till now in northern Istra, and in the valleys of the Kupa, Mrežnica and Sutla rivers, and sporadically elsewhere in central Croatia also.

This standardised form then became the cultivated elite language of administration and intellectuals from the Istra peninsula along the Croatian coast, across central Croatia up into the northern valleys of the Drava and the Mura. The cultural apogee of this unified standard in 17th cent. is represented by the editions of "Adrianskog mora sirena" (Syren of Adriatic Sea) and "Putni tovaruš" (Travelling escort), these being on the highest cultural plane in contemporary Europe. However, this first linguistic renaissance in Croatia was halted by the political execution of both dynasties by the Holy Roman Emperor in Vienna in 1671. Then, the Croatian elite in 18th cent. gradually abandoned this combined Croatian standard, and after an Austrian initiative (Wien 1850), replaced them with the uniform Neo-Shtokavian.

But, due to the unique Croat linguistic situation, formal shaping of Croatian standard language was a process that took almost four centuries to complete: Croatian is a three dialects tongue (a somewhat simplistic way to distinguish between dialects is to refer to the pronoun what, which is ča, kaj, što in, respectively, čakavian, kajkavian and štokavian dialects) and three scripts language (Glagolitic, Croatian/Western/Bosnian Cyrillic and Latin script, with Latin script as the ultimate winner). The final obstacle to the unified Croatian literary language (based on celebrated vernacular Croatian Troubadour, Renaissance and Baroque – acronym TRB) literature (ca. 1490 to ca. 1670) from Dalmatia, Dubrovnik and Boka Kotorska was surmounted by Croatian national awakener Ljudevit Gaj's standardization of Latin scriptory norm in 1830–1850s.

Gaj and his Illyrian movement (centred in kajkavian-speaking Croatia's capital Zagreb) were, however, important more politically than linguistically. They "chose" štokavian dialect because they didn't have any other realistic option—štokavian, or, more precisely, neoštokavian (a version of štokavian which emerged in the 15th/16th century) was the major Croatian literary tongue from 1700s on. The 19th century linguists and lexicographers' main concern was to achieve a more consistent and unified scriptory norm and orthography; an effort followed by peculiar Croatian linguistic characteristics which may be humorously described as "passion for neologisms" or vigorous word coinage, originating from the purist nature of Croatian literary language. One of the peculiarities of the "developmental trajectory" of the Croatian language is that there is no single towering figure among the Croatian linguists/philologists, because the vernacular osmotically percolated into the "high culture" via literary works so there was no need for revolutionary linguistic upheavals—only reforms sufficed.

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