International Mother Language Day

Day 4,112, 11:26 • Published in Croatia Croatia • by Sexy Macan


Hello everybody,

On February 21st (I'm a day late, I know, mea culpa) UN has celebrated Iinternational Day of the Native Language and so from Brazil came initiative that all ecountries write an article about their own Native language. In this article we will give you a short intro into Croatian language.

Croatian language is the only official language of Croatia and also one of the 3 official languages in Bosnia and Herzegovina (other 2 being Serbian and Bosnian) with all three of them being very similar (around 90% the same) but it is also spoken everywhere where is a large Croatian community (for example Vojvodina and Srijem in Serbia, Burgenland in Austria, Bay of Kotor in Montenegro, Molise in Italy and other places. It belongs to the group of South Slavic languages of IndoEuropean group of languages.

Although the true origins of croatian language are not definitively known with several different theories, we can pretty safely assume that it originates from ancient Slavic language and shares the same roots with modern Serbian, Slovenian, Montenegrian and Bosnian (the last two getting their standard and distincting themselves from croatian and serbian fairly recently, in last 15-ish years). It is hard to track the origins throughout the Dark Ages cause of huuuge lack of written sources since more than 90% of population was illiterate.

The first time croatian language is mentioned was in 1275 in document "Istarski razvod"



Although croatian was mentioned and used, it has only become official language in Croatia in mid 19th century succeeding Latin making Croatia last country in the world to still use Latin as official language. Before 19th century, croatian was not standardized and Croats were also under heavy pressure from the Court in Budapest and Wien to make Hungarian and German as official languages of Croatia.

During 19th century, a struggle of Croats in Habsburg Empire (and later Austro-Hungarian) for admitance, preservation and usage of croatian language was the main goal of croatian intelectual elites which also resulted in making croatian language as official one in 1847 which lasted untill the end of World War 1. During first and second Yugoslavia, since croatian and serbian were so similar, it was proclaimed that the official languange of Yugoslavia will be named Serbo-Croatian or Croato-Serbian (it was called diferently depending on a region). After 1991 and Croatia proclaiming independence, croatian was yet again installed as the official language of Croatia.

Croatian language uses Latin letters but it is less known that in early middle ages (9th century) croatian was written on a specific letters called "glagoljica" which are now a popular motive in art in Croatia (and local rednecks tattoos).



Croatian language has 3 major dialects called "štokavština", "kajkavština" and "čakavština" named by words "što", "kaj" and "ča" which all mean "what" on english. Modern croatian is based on "štokavština" while other 2 are still pretty used and continue to develop together with the official language. The differences between them are based on influence of other languages they had thus also being kinda specific for regions in Croatia. Kajkavština has influences from German and little less from Hungarian (depends on a region) and is also most similar to Slovenian of three being spoken mostly in northern parts of Croatia, čakavština has mostly Italian influences and Italian word in crooked way are very often in it, it is mostly spoken on seacoast and islands while Štokavština has influences from German and Turkish and is most similar to Serbian. It is spoken in region of Dubrovnik and also in the rest of continental Croatia, having most speakers. Other than that, every one of those dialects has 10+ sub-dialects which differ more or less. It is not uncommon that people from 2 neighboroughing islands do not understand each other. Probably the most traditional and oldest version of croatian is spoken in village of Bednja. It is estimated that that dialect has evolved the least ever since 12th century (which also means that other Croats do not understand 2 guys from Bednja talking to each other 😃 )


Croatian language still continues to evolve and change and if you ever meet someone from Croatia, they will first tell you that the language is very hard to learn.

And then they will start teaching you curse words 😉





Other countries articles:

Canada: http://erepublik.com/en/article/2691213
Albania: http://erepublik.com/en/article/2691250
Spain: http://erepublik.com/es/article/2691273
Brazil: http://erepublik.com/en/article/2691275
Portugal: http://erepublik.com/en/article/2691284
Czech Republic: http://erepublik.com/en/article/2691283
Republic of China (Taiwan): http://erepublik.com/en/article/2691306
Chile: erepublik.com/es/article/2691330
Netherlands: erepublik.com/en/article/2691361
USA: erepublik.com/en/article/2691370
Greece: erepublik.com/gr/article/2691452