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Bog dao, Bog uzeo,
sada znate kako je biti bombardovan . . .
i šta je to terorizam!
Žao mi je ljudi, koji su nevino izginuli,
a vi i dalje podržavajte
terorizam na balkanu
pa će ovoga biti još . . .
Osećate li bol u grudima?
Da, otprilike to je to . . .
ne radi nešto što nećeš
da tebi bude uradjeno . . .
(a friendly little 9-11 message from Serbia)
This Info from Steve Krause (Catalyst)
[ c a t a l y s t ] The Serbo-Croatian Noun System
The topic of this page is the Serbo-Croatian noun system, with particular attention paid to the various case endings.
Serbo-Croatian has three noun genders (masculine, neuter, and feminine), and 8 noun cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, locative, instrumental, and vocative). The locative takes the same endings as the dative in all genders and numbers. Depending on gender and number, many cases share endings. Notice, for example, that the masculine and neuter singular accusative is the same as the nominative.
Nominative:
The subject of a clause is in the nominative.
Accusative:
The direct object of a clause is put into the accusative. Also, the objects of certain prepositions take the accusative. Verbs of motion take the accusative.
Genitive:
The genitive expresses possession. This case is also used after certain prepositions.
Dative:
Indirect objects take the dative. The dative is also used in certain other expressions.
Locative:
The locative indicates location, and is used do describe position with such prepositions as na and u.
Instrumental:
The instrumental is used with such prepostions as s (with).
Vocative:
The vocative is used when addressing people directly.
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Let us begin with the nominative form of the Serbo-Croatian nouns. It is this form in which we find them in dictionaries, and this case also tells us the gender of a given noun.
Most masculine nouns end in a consonant. Examples include:
grad
city
Hrvat
Croat
spomenik
monument
Some masculine nouns (such as posao, 'work') end in 'o'. These nouns originally ended in 'l', but over time the 'l' turned into 'o', and in cases besides the nominative and accusatuve singular, the 'l' returns. Also, the 'a' is dropped. Thus, the locative of posao is poslu. In many masculine nouns, a final 'a' before an 'r' is dropped in other cases. We call this the 'movable a'. Take the word centar, 'center', for example. In the locative it becomes centru. Note that in the genitive plural the 'movable a' stays.
Masculine nouns also present irregularities/difficulties in other ways as well. For example, in the plural cases, single syllable masculine nouns add the suffix ov or ev. ov the usual ending, but ev is used with nouns ending in weak consonants such as 'c', 'j', 'lj', etc. So, for example, the genitive plural of grad is gradova, and the nominative plural of broj, 'number', is brojevi.
Neuter nouns end in either 'e' or 'o'. Examples include:
pivo
beer
selo
village
more
sea
Some neuter nouns, such as drvo, 'tree', change when taking case endings. For example, it adds et, so that the genitive singular is drveta and the locative singular is drvetu. Note, however, that since the accusative singular form of neuter nouns is the same as that of the nominative, no change is made.
Almost all feminine nouns end in 'a'. Examples include:
devojka
girl
zgrada
building
kava
coffee
There is a small set of feminine nouns that end in a consonant in the nominative singular. An example is stvar, 'thing', which takes no ending in the accusative, adds i as its ending for the singular gentive and dative (and locative), as well as for the plural nominative and accusative. In the instrumental singular such nouns end in i, and for the instrumental, dative, and locative plural they take ima instead of ama.
There are a few other spelling rules for Serbo-Croatian nouns. For example, if i is added as an ending after 'k', 'g', or 'h', these change to 'c', 'z', and 's' respectively. The the nominative plural of spomenik is spomenici, and the locative singular of biblioteka is biblioteci. This does not apply to proper names, however.
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Case Endings for Serbo-Croatian Nouns
Cases
Singular
Plural
Masculine
Neuter
Feminine
Masculine
Neuter
Feminine
Nominative
consonant
e/o
a
+ i
e/o > a
a > e
Accusative
consonant
e/o
a > u
+ e
e/o > a
a > e
Genitive
+ a
e/o > a
a > e
+ a
e/o > a
a
Dative
+ u
e/o > u
a > i
+ ima
e/o > ima
a > ama
Locative
+ u
e/o > u
a > i
+ ima
e/o > ima
a > ama
Instrumental
+ em/om
e/o > em/om
a > om
+ ima
e/o > ima
a > ama
Vocative
+ e/u
e/o
a > e/o
+ i
e/o > a
a > e
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This Blog and the entries in it are intended to both disseminate information on (particularly) the Croatian language and as a way for me (Tomislav) to organize my thoughts/notes on the subject. Therefore, much information is taken from other sources. Usually, I will provide a link to the source of the information, but at times I may forget or not be able to access these links. This site is not to be represented as an authority or a reliable source for information on any of the material contained here, nor are all of the postings representative of my beliefs. Please inform me of any concerns regarding accuracy of information or copyright violations.
Thanks
Tomislav
[ c a t a l y s t ] Serbo-Croatian
"... A language is just a dialect with an army ..."
- Unknown
This info taken from
Catalyst
This section is devoted to my study of the Serbo-Croatian language.
Serbo-Croatian, or Serbo-Croat, is a South Slavic language; this group of languages includes, for example, Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian, Macedonian and Bulgarian. Serbo-Croatian was the main language of the former Yugoslavia, and variants are now spoken in Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Montenegro, and Serbia. Serbo-Croat is divided into two main variants, known often merely as the eastern and western variants, the former spoken primarily in Serbia, the Western primarily in Croatia and much of Bosnia. The dialect spoken in Montenegro combines features from both main dialects. Alternate terms for these main variants are ekavski (for the eastern) and ijekavski (for the western).
Political events over the last decade have affected how we look at Serbo-Croat. In particular, the use of the term Serbo-Croat to encompass several dialects - and hence, to act as if we are dealing with several dialects of the same language rather than several different languages - has come under fire by many, mostly those with nationalistic interests. From a linguistic point of view, the two variants (in their standard forms) are mutually intelligible, which is one of the main criteria in determining whether one is dealing with dialects or separate languages. The fact that the western variant is written in a version of the Latin alphbet while the eastern uses a version of the Cyrillic alphabet is of little linguistic - but of occasional political - interest. However, speaking for the consideration of these variants as separate languages would be the fact that there are numerous lexical differences between the variants. For example, while the eastern variant uses names of months that have cognates in most west-european languages, the western variant uses neo-slavic terms created in the 19th century:
western
eastern
English
sijechanj
januar
January
veljacca
februar
February
ozhukak
mart
March
travanj
april
April
svibanj
maj
May
lipanj
jun
June
spranj
jul
July
kolovoz
avgust
August
rujan
septembar
September
listopad
oktobar
October
studeni
novembar
November
prosinac
decembar
December
Furthermore, there are syntactic differences as well. The eastern variant uses so-called "da clauses"), whereas the western form prefers infinitive consutructions. See the following example:
English
I like to drink beer.
western
Ja volim piti pivo.
eastern
Ja volim da pijem pivo.
However, (in common usage) American and British (as well as Canadian, for example) English are seen primarily as dialects of English, despite numerous orthographic and lexical differences; and similarly, "German" (Hochdeutsch) German, "Swiss" German, and "Austrian" German are usually treated as dialects of the same main language.
Hence, the author of this site has chosen to treat "Croatian" (hrvatski), "Bosnian" (bosanski), and "Serbian" (srpski) as "Serbo-Croat". Part of this choice is purely practical; the variants are so similar that it makes no sense to create a separate website to discuss each individually. Important differences can be discussed as asides and/or footnotes. Additionally, I do not wish to be forced to "pick a favorite" variant and hence name this page/site according to a single variant. Finally, the decision to name the language "Croatian", "Serbian", etc. is almost exclusively a matter of identity politics and a tool of nationalist interests - to the extent that I oppose such politics, and find them entirely destructive and the source of numerous evils, I refuse to acknowledge their claims on what has become known as "Serbo-Croat".
Below you will find links to several other pages I have written - or am in the process of writing - regarding my own study of Serbo-Croat. Particular emphasis will be given to grammar points, especially noun and adjective declention, and verb conjugation. As time permits, I plan to provide lists of conjugated verbs, after the model provided by numerous text books.
Finally, let me present a short note on orthography and the presentation of materials on this site. This site will be written primarily in English, with examples given in Serbo-Croat. To make this site accessible to the largest number of people, I have chosen to write such examples in the Latin alphabet; I do, however, use both eastern and westerna variants in such examples, and I do not always clarify which variant is being used. Sometimes it will be clear from the syntax and/or spelling conventions. The variant of the Latin alphabet used by Serbo-Croat (western variant) includes a number of letters not used in the standard Latin alphabet (as used by English, for example), including marks over c, s, and z, and through d. These all represent palatalized sounds; I may present a separate page on pronunciation (if time permits). I will at times use the Latin-2 character set (ISO 8859-2) to present these characters; at other times I will use "cc", "ch", "dj", "sh", and "zh" to represent the appropriate sounds.
graphic of Serbo-Croat specific characters:
characters used in these pages to represent the above:
cc,CC ch,Ch dj,Dj sh,Sh zh,Zh
In the long term, I hope to find a solution beneficial to users of most browsers.
If you have any comments or suggestions for this site, please contact the author.
The Serbo-Croatian Noun System
Aspect in Serbo-Croatian verbs
Serbo-Croatian Adjectives
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This site © copyright 2001, Steve Krause, all rights reserved.
THE HISTORY OF THE CROATIAN LANGUAGE
The Croatian language and its development during the past 1,000 years have provided both a sense of continuity and community to the Croatian nation.
From its inception in the 9th century Croatian literary tradition, the language has gone through various phases of standardization, and has even survived attempts to incorporate it into other languages prevalent in the region.
Within the group of Indo-European languages, Croatian language is classified under the Central South-Slavic branch of Slavic languages.
Naturally, the evolutionary phases of the Croatian language were similar to those of other Slavic languages. However, some phases of evolution have been more similar to those processes in Italy and Central Europe than to those in the Slavic world, and still other phases have been totally original, without a counterpart in either Slavic or European languages.
The standardization of the language, which was to become contemporary Croatian, began in the l7th century, building upon a base established in the Middle Ages. A large body of Croatian literature which existed in the l7th century also served as a pretext for the standardization.
In its early stages, the Croatian language developed an unique characteristic which, due to cultural exchanges with other European nations, later disappeared.
The characteristic was an old alphabet known as the glagolithic script. The glagolithic script was the dominant alphabet until the l4th century, to which many inscriptions written in stone and on parchment attest.
For example, a legal document, known as the "Istrian Demarcation; which regulated property relations in Istria was written in this script, as well as the "Vinodolski Code" (1275), which is the oldest Croatian legal statute.
The longest document written in the Glagolithic script is a stone table from the l2th century, the Baska Ploca.
This text is often cited as a symbol of the beginning of the Croatian literature, since it was written in vernacular Croatian, retaining only a few characteristics of Old Church Slavonic.
The Roman alphabet only began to gain dominance when Croatia was swept by the fervor of the Renaissance, and many Croatian scholars went to study and work in Italy.
Until the l4th century, Croatian was also written in a third script, a version of the Cyrillic script, known as Bosancica. Bosancica was composed of the Greek alphabet adapted to the phonetic structure of the Slavic languages, following the glagolithic script as its model.
"Povlja Parchment" (1259) from the island of Brac is one of the most notable examples. This western version of Cyrillic script, used only among the Croat population who inhabited parts of Dalmatia and Western part of today's Bosnia and Herzegovina, suffered the same fate as the glagolithic script - its use died out during the Renaissance.
Starting in the ninth century, Croats had another advantage in relation to other contemporary peoples - permission to conduct mass in their native tongue.
In 1880, Pope John VIII allowed Cyril and Methodius to preach mass in Slavonic, whereas only after the Second Vatican council were all nations allowed to conduct mass in their native language.
As already mentioned, Croatia took part in the great humanist enthusiasm of the Renaissance, and many works were translated from Latin into Croatian during this time.
A Dubrovnik poet, Dinko Zlataric translated classics such as Sophocles' tragedy "Electra", Ovid's "Pyramus and Thisbe" and Tasso's "Aminta". On the title page of these translated works, printed in Venice, the poet stated that they were "translated from several languages into Croatian" (iz vechie tugieh jezika u Hrvackij izloxene).
Simultaneously, a rich Renaissance literature, developed from the anonymous medieval literary and oral traditions, was flourishing in Croatia. The most famous literary figure of the time, Marko Marulic 11450-1524) from Split, wrote in the introduction of his famous poem ' Judith" that it "is composed in Croatian verse" (u versih hrvacki).
A younger contemporary was successful playwright and comediographer Marin Drzic (1508-67) from Dubrovnik, whose style resembled Moliere's, although he preceded Moliere by almost 50 years.
Croatian writer, Bartol Kasic, who studied in Rome, wrote and published the first book of Croatian grammar rules in Rome in 1604, one of the first steps in defining the standard Croatian language.
In 1740, Ivan Belostenec published the first Latin- Croatian/Croatian-Latin dictionary, which had an influence on many subsequent prolific Croatian writers including the contemporary 20th century writer Miroslav Krleza.
During this time, most Croatian literary masterpieces came from Croatia's Dalmatian region. However, in 1669, Jesuits founded Zagreb University, and Zagreb proceeded to become the center of Croatia's intellectual and literary life.
In addition to academic literary achievements, Croatian folk tradition had a significant impact on defining the Croatian standard language. This folk tradition, with its diverse regional modes of expression and preference for particular poetic forms, was kept alive during the 1000 years that Croatia was subjugated in various political arrangements. It was only during the last 50 years that Croatian cultural tradition was suppressed, and thus was not as well known among the younger generations.
In contemporary times, the Croatian language has been lumped with Serbian under the term "Serbo-Croatian" or "Croato-Serbian," connoting that Croatian and Serbian are actually one and the same language. What is the most confusing part in the development of this terminology, and gives some people the legacy to treat Croatian as a variant of Serbian, was the role of Serbian language reformer Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic at the beginning of the l9th century.
Scholars explain that Vuk Karadzic attempted to join the languages of Croatian and Serbian into one standardized language, building upon the similarities between the two languages, and erasing their differences.
They stress, however, that the Croatian scholars who embraced the idea of finalizing the standardization of the Croatian language, were not aware of Karadzic's more grandiose aims, which consequently initiated the blueprint for "Greater Serbia".
More recently, Croatian scholar Radoslav Katicic also pointed out that Croats were not aware that Karadzic was aiming at the creation of a new language based on Serbian. Despite Karadzic's latent political tendencies.
Katicic gives credit for contributing to the standardization of Croatian, but solely because his model corresponded with the mainstream, natural standardization already present among Croats.
On the other hand, for Serbian standardization, Karadzic created a new language which was not based on tradition and colloquial speech.
Initially, the language connoting the similarity between Croatian and Serbian was called "Croatian or Serbian".
However, upon the establishment of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, following World War I (later to become the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia), the terms were officially fused into "Serbo- Croatian", in a political effort to establish an official and standard language.
Gradually, it was believed that Croatian and Serbian, two very similar languages of the same genealogical descent, would merge into one.
However, this standardization, only in existence for the last 70 years, did not succeed in wiping out the deep-rooted differentiation of the stylistic sensibility and of loyalty to preferences for linguistic features which had become symbols of cultural identities.
Upon the establishment of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, four languages - Croatian, Macedonian, Serbian, and Slovenian - were named official languages, and thus all official documents were printed in all four.
However, this practice was gradually ignored, and official documents were increasingly printed in Serbian only.
Under political pressure, linguists representing all languages met in 1954 to pass a new law designating the "Serbo-Croatian" language as official.
While this decision had only political repercussions for Slovenes and Macedonians, the effects on Croats were both political and cultural, since Croatian was degraded to the status of local dialect.
Thus in 1967, eighteen Croatian scholarly institutions published the Declaration Concerning the Name and Position of Croatian Literary Langauge, which emphasized that although Croatian and Serbian have the same linguistic basis, they are two separate languages. The passing of this Declaraion was an early symptom of the dissatisfaction of Croats with the treatment of Croatian culture and the Croat nation in general in Yugoslavia.
This growing dissatisfaction, expressed in 1971 "Croatian Spring", culminated in the holding of free, multiparty elections in Croatia in May 1990.
HOME OF BEVANDA
My First Page on Nationalism and Language
Nationalism and Language
The relationship between language and nationalism, especially regarding its role in conflict, has been well studied and documented in global contexts during recent years. That said, the case of Yugoslavia must be considered an exceptional case study in the field of socio-linguistics.
Since the 1974 Constitution, all languages enjoyed equal status under the law, even as administrative “norms.” This included minority languages such as Hungarian or Romany, even though native speakers of these languages constituted a very small percentage of Yugoslav citizens. According to the letter of law, as many as 27 different “Yugoslav” idioms could have qualified as “official” administrative languages. Obviously, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to administer a modern state with so many “official” languages. In the case of Yugoslavia, this factor was supposedly alleviated by the existence of a lingua communis in the form of “Serbo-Croatian.” As the native language of over 70% of the population of Yugoslavia, “Serbo-Croatian” served as the administrative and social standard by which the various national and ethnic groups could communicate.
This info from Geohistory
Croatian is a south Slavic language, and is extremely similar to Serbian and Bosnian. Although all three tongues have the status of separate languages, these languages are usually grouped together as Serbo-Croatian. Croatian uses an adapted form of the Roman alphabet. Croatian is a more 'purely Slavic' language than either Serbian or Bosnian. In the nineteenth century, Croatian was a tool in the nationalists' efforts to stress their differences from other ethnic groups in Austria-Hungary. Consequently, most German, Hungarian, Italian, and other non-Slavic words were purged from standard Croatian. However, all these 'foreign' influences are still very prominent in the language of everyday conversation. After the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991, many words that were shared with Serbian have been replaced with old Croatian words, or by completely new words, occasionally with comic results.
HISTORY OF THE CROATIAN LANGUAGE
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When the Croats migrated in the 6th century from White Croatia (i.e. in the present-day region around Krakow in Poland), they brought with them, and subsequently developed , a palaeo-Croatian language, a branch of Palaeo-Slavonic. This language was divided into a number of dialects, among which the kaj dialect predominated in the North, the ca dialect in the South (Dalmatia) and part of Bosnia and the sto dialect in the South East. The dialect boundaries, however, cannot be clearly drawn. There were always areas overlapping and mixed dialects also existed.
At this early time in Croatian history, there was little linguistic differentiation in the Slavic world. The differences between the Croatian and the Czech dialects, for instance, were no greater than those that exist today between British and American English.
Although in the seventh century they were converted to Christianity by priests sent from Rome at the request of the Emperor Heraclius, in the ninth century, the Croats adopted as their liturgical language Old Church Slavonic, based on the Macedonian vernacular of Salonika, which they modified and adapted to their own use for secular puposes and which is today known as Croatian Slavonic or the Croatian version or "recension" of Old Church Slavonic. Two types of this language, liturgical used in religious services and secular used in non religious subjects, developed in the late Middle Ages. This religious and secular language, written in Glagolitic characters survived until the mid-19th century as the literary language of the Glagolitic clergy. This contrasted with the Roman clergy who used the Latin language in the Catholic liturgy. It was still used as a liturgical language in our own times and was replaced by contemporary literary Croatian after the second Vatican Council decision of 1965 that services could be held in the vernacular, and not, as previously, in Latin only. It is therefore this Croatian Slavonic which represents the first Croatian literary language. It became the vehicle of a substantial literature.
The first major text written in Croatian Slavonic is the Baska Tablet of 1100 recording the donation of a site by King Zvonimir to the Benedictine convent of the island Krk. This document, written in the Glagolitic script, was found in St. Lucy's church near Baska on the island of Krk. It stands as a cornerstone of Croatian literary development although fragments of earlier inscriptions written in the Glagolitic alphabet and dating from the eleventh century have been found on the islands of Krk and Cres (Valun Tablet) and in Istria (Plomin). Fragments of the oldest known Croatian Glagolitic manuscript - The Glagolita Clozianus (the beginning of the 11th century) - is a collection of sermons. The codex belonged to the dukes Frankopans from the island Krk.
Among the oldest documents in the Czech recension of the Old Church Slavonic written in Glagolitic are so called Kiev Folia named after the place where they are now kept (in the Academy of Science in Kiev). They consist of 17 parchment sheets possibly written in the 10th century in Moravia and contain part of a Greek missal translated into Old Church Slavonic. Parts of the same missal are also contained in the Vienna Folia which were written in Croatia about the end of the 11th century. In the opinion of experts, the Vienna folia are the oldest preserved Glagolitic documents with unmistakably Croatian features. There are two parchment sheets with the text in Old Church Slavonic. Under the text there are traces of an older text in Old Church Slavonic but unfortunately the older text of this Glagolitic palimpset cannot be read. The Vienna Folia are also the oldest testimony of the first contacts between Croatian Glagolitic and Czech mediaeval literature. These contacts developed particularly in the 14th century when Croatian Benedictines were invited by Charles IV of Bohemia to Emmaus Monastery in Prague (1347) to teach the Church Slavonic languages and Glagolitic script.
Compared to Old Church Slavonic, Croatian Slavonic is a Common Slavonic influenced by Croatian vernacular in the fields of phonetics, morphology and syntax, and, above all, vocabulary. This hybrid language which was semi-artificial in comparison with the language of the people, was used in notarial acts (in the Church), and in Glagolitic literature, which was, moreover, rich in an age when the number of literate Europeans was small. But every few texts written at that time had an exclusively aesthetic function. The great majority are of a religious character, liturgical or devotional.
After the schism between the Eastern (Orthodox) and Western (Roman) Christian churches in 1054 and the beginning of the Crusades, the Church Slavonic language fell out of use in all west Slavic countries. The only exception was the renaissance of Croatian Church Slavonic in the 13th century. In the late Middle Ages, within the framework of the Croatian State, an important technical literature appeared in judicial texts, charters and treaties, as well as a literature of translations of biblical stories, legends, apocrypha, hagiographies and Western mediaeval romances written in Croatian Slavonic. Among other works, the Chronicle of the Priest of Dioclea written about 1149, is outstanding.
It may be assumed that in parallel with this language there existed in the 14th and 15th centuries a popular literary language (vernacular) used in traditional oral folk poetry and in the poetry created by laymen for use in the afternoon office of the Church, the so-called "prose" for the divine worship. Unlettered people were not hindered in the creation of stories and fables, poetry, drama, or oratory. The first testimony of early Croatian dramtic performance, which is fully credited by scholars, tells of the reception of Pope Alexander III in Zadar in 1117, when the clergy and crowds of people gave recitations of chants in their native language (... cum immensis laudibus et canticis altisone resonantibus in eorum sclavica lingua...). But from the 12th century the national language, vernacular Croatian, was widely used for inscriptions, legal documents and digests of law, such as in 1189 Isprava Kulina Bana (the trade treaty between Dubrovnik and ban Kulin of Bosnia), 1275 Istarski Razvod (a record of a survey of the lands of Istria) and in 1288 Vinodolski Zakonik (the statue of Vinodol).
The poets who versified subjects for Church use seem to have been called zacinjavci "chanters". They, and others literary men, particularly translators, scribes, copyists and compilers, gradually introduced the vernacular into the literary field. They were the precursors of the rich poetic literature in the Croat language that appeared in the 15th and 16th centuries.
One of the oldest recorded Croatian poems is the 14th century Cantilena pro sabatho (1385) by an unknown author but transcribed by the Franciscan Paulus de Sclavonia (de Sebenico) who also recorded the Sibenik Prayer (Sibenska molitva), ca. 1347. Cantilena contans 132 evenly rhymed octosyllables and relates the events of Good Friday and Saturday. The poem is preserved in the 14th century Latin Codex kept in the Budapest library Szecheneyi.
With the appearance of the literary works destined for lay readers, resulting from the growing contact with Western literatures, the native vernacular gradually penetrated the literary language. The current daily language appeared more and more frequently in the translations of chivalresque romances like those of Troy (ca. 1300) and Alexander the Great, of spiritual lyrics such as the 15th century Torments of Jesus and , above all, in mediaeval mystery and miracle plays.
From the University of Toronto /groups/csa/croatia/
THE CROATIAN ACADEMY OF AMERICA
Inspired by the persistent desire of the Croatian Nation for its proper dignity before all men, realizing that no People can make a responsible contribution towards a peaceful and democratic world without being freely self-determined i.e. endowed with the right to choose its own sovereign state, recollecting that Croatian liberty has been frustrated for centuries because of tyranny from without and within, conscious that the denial of freedom at home often requires the conservation of the national genius abroad, mindful that the friendly guardianship of the just aspirations of men has always been the keynote of American hospitality, we herewith establish and constitute The Croatian Academy of America.
(Preamble to the Constitution of The Croatian Academy of America adopted April 19, 1953 in New York City).
The Croatian Academy of America, Inc.
New York
November 2001
Volume 41
of the
Journal of Croatian Studies
The Croatian Academy of America issued volume 41 of its annual interdisciplinary review, the Journal of Croatian Studies.
The 220-page thematic issue deals with the language identity of the Croats and includes several contributions from scholars in Croatia.
The opening piece by well-known linguistic and long-standing editor of Jezik, Stjepan Babić, concisely reviews the historical development of the Croatian and Serbian literary languages, showing why the two languages are close, but distinct.
The contributions by Benedikta Zelić-Bučan and Ivan Ostojić examine in detail the extent to which Croats of different socio-economic, cultural, educational and religious backgrounds designated their language by its national name from the 9th through to the 20th century. The authors cite examples from diverse texts and show that the terms Slavic (slovinski), Illyrian (ilirski), Dalmatian (dalmatinski), Bosnian (bosanski), Slavonian (slavonski) and language of Dubrovnik (dubrovački), were used as synonyms for the Croatian language.
Marko Babić of the Miroslav Krleža Lexicographic Institute discusses the changes to the name of the language spoken in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the first decade of Austro-Hungarian rule (1878-1888). Initially decreed Croatian (hrvatski), the authorities later changed it to the nondescript Land’s Language (zemaljski jezik/German Landessprache) and finally to Bosnian (bosanski).
The turbulent 20th century is covered by two pieces. Vinko Grubišić reviews the naming and renaming of the Croatian language, focusing on the political motivations and historical circumstances influencing these changes. Attention is also devoted to the successor states to former Yugoslavia. Stan Granic gathers together in English translation or English original fifteen pronouncements issued by individuals, cultural and educational organizations, and academic institutions both in Croatia and abroad, related to the Croatian language.
In the final piece, Vinko Grubišić briefly assesses some twenty Croatian language advisory books published primarily during the last two decades of the 20th century.
The issue also includes reports on the 46th Annual General Assembly, the reminiscences of the Academy’s longest serving President, Maria K. Tuškan, other activities and obituaries.
The Journal of Croatian Studies is the only English language scholarly periodical dedicated entirely to Croatian history and culture.
The Croatian Academy of America was established in 1953 and has published the Journal of Croatian Studies since 1960. Managing editors of the Journal are Karlo Mirth and Jerome Jareb.
Single issues of the Journal may be ordered at a price of US $20 for individuals and US $30 for institutions.
To order a copy of the Journal contact:
The Croatian Academy of America, Inc.
P.O. Box 1767, Grand Central Station
New York, NY 10163-1767
U.S.A.
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The following article
“Croatian Language from the Eleventh Century to the Computer Age”
is an introduction to volume 25-26 (1984-85) of the
Journal of Croatian Studies,
dedicated to Croatian language.
It was written by Karlo Mirth, Journal's Managing Editor.
FROM THE ELEVENTH CENTURY TO THE COMPUTER AGE
The words “Zvonimir Kral Hrvatski” (Zvonimir Croatian King) are part of a thirteen-line inscription in the then contemporary Croatian language chiseled on the white limestone tablet dated from about 1100 A.D. and known as Bascanska Ploca — the Tablet of Baska — after a locality on the island of Krk where it was located. The term hrvatski (Croatian), referring to both the people and its language has been used ever since.
The scriptory media in which Croatian was written changed. The Tablet of Baska was in Glagolitic script as there were numerous missals, breviaries, hagiographies, charters, diplomas, lyrics, secular novels and other texts. Other equally numerous inscriptions, were in Cyrillic; for example the XIIIth century register of lands belonging to the Benedictine Monastery of St. John at Povlje on the island of Brac and the oldest preserved manuscript of the Statute of Poljica (cca. 1440), It has been recorded that Nikola Jurisic, the supreme commander of the Military Frontier and the legendary defender of the Hungarian city of Köszeg against the Turks in 1532, used the Croatian language as a member of an Austrian diplomatic mission to Sultan Süleyman II, and also that he “wrote only in Croatian and then in the Cyrillic script.” Marko Marulic (1450-1524), a famous humanist from Split, whose books in Latin and their translations into Italian, French, Portuguese, German, and Czech were printed in about three dozen editions in a period of about 170 years after his death, wrote also in Croatian. In a 1501 introduction to his epic Judita (Judith), which was printed in Venice in 1521 he noted that it was “u versih hrvacki slozena” (written in Croatian verses). Judita was printed in Roman script which increasingly prevailed from that time and is used today.
Quantity and quality of books published in Croatian from XXIth to XIXth century is impressive. The minuscule republic of Dubrovnik and her outstanding writers, such as Marin Drzic (1508-1567), Ivan Gundulic (1589-1638), and Jurije Palmotic (1605-1657), to mention only a few, held a decisive role in the development of Croatian literary language. There were at the same time numerous translations of world classics into Croatian. Dinko Zlataric, a poet from Dubrovnik, translated Sophocles’ tragedy Electra, Ovid’s Pyramus and Thisbe, and Tasso’s Aminta. On the title-page of these translated works published in Venice in 1597 it was indicated that they were “iz vechie tugieh iezika a Harvackij izloxenie" (translated from several foreign languages into Croatian). Incidentally, Zlataric's first translation of Tasso’s pastoral drama Aminta was published in 1580, only seven years after its first presentation in Ferrara in Italy.
Croatian literature participated in all the major European artistic and intellectual movements from the Renaissance and the Reformation to the contemporary currents. No other South Slavic nation, except perhaps the Slovenes, was as deeply rooted in European trends. In this context, the Protestant Croatian-language books printed by a printing press at Urach near Tübingen in Germany are of special interest.
Various terms have been applied to Croatian language over the centuries. It was also known as Slavic, Illyrian and Dalmatian, The terms Slavic or Slavonic were broad terms that referred to the Slavic stature of the Croats. The Illyrian name derives from the Illyrians, the pre-Roman and Roman inhabitants of the western Balkans, this name being revived in the Renaissance as part of the general enthusiasm for the ancients. In similar vein, the term Dalmatian derived from the Roman province of Dalmatia, this term also being fostered by Venice. Some of the Croatian writers, for example Marko Marulic, called their mother tongue simply Croatian (hrvatski) when writing in the vernacular. The same authors tended to call their native tongue either Illyrian or Dalmatian when writing in Latin for foreign audiences. Others often used these terms as synonyms for Croatian. Hence Filip Grabovac’s book title Cvit razgovora naroda i jezika ilirickoga aliti arvackoga (Best Instruction of Illyrian or Croatian People and Language), published in 1747 at Venice. It is perhaps worth noting that Venice confiscated Grabovac’s book and threw the author in jail because he criticized the Venetian rule in Dalmatia, saying that the Croats were not much better off under Venice than their compatriots were under the Turks in Bosnia. And indeed, the banning of books and periodicals —very often on the question of language — has been in practice in Grabovac’s homeland from his days until now, including most recently, in 1971, the destruction of 40,000 copies of Hrvatski pravopis (Croatian Orthography).
One of the controversial aspects of the Croatian language question has been the relationship between Croatian and Serbian. In appellation, the Croatian language has been linked to Serbian only the second half of the XIXth century. Five Croatian writers, two Serbian philologists, and one Slovenian linguists in Vienna in 1850 and signed the so-called "Vienna Literary Convention." This was a manifesto calling for the creation of a common language for all Croats and all Serbs. The most outstanding Croatian linguists of the period, such as Ljudevit Gaj did not take part in the proceedings, while Ivan Mazuranic, the most prominent of the Croatian signatories, renounced the stipulations of that Convention in 1862. Nevertheless, the idea of linguistic rapprochement with the Serbs was promoted by some prominent Croats as a good foundation for a cultural and possibly political unification of the South Slavs. In this spirit, Josip Juraj Strossmayer, a prominent Croatian philanthropist and Catholic bishop of Djakovo, established the South Slav Academy of Sciences and Arts — Jugoslovenska Akademija Znanosti i Umjetnosti in 1866 at Zagreb. In 1880, the Academy began to publish Rjecnik hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika (A Dictionary of the Croatian or Serbian Language), which was completed in 1976.
The terminology for the incongruous linguistic dualism / unitarism became correspondingly complex. What started out as hrvatski ili srpski (Croatian or Serbian) subsequently became hrvatsko-srpski (Croato-Serbian ), srpsko-hrvatski (Serbo-Croatian), or srpskohrvatski (Serbocroatian). The last term was advanced by Serbian-dominated governments of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, established in 1918 (the country’s name was changed to Yugoslavia in 1929). Serbian linguistic practices were pushed throughout Yugoslavia by means of the military, civil administration, and educational policy. This was a part of coordinated efforts by the overall policy of Serbianization.
During World War II, which for both Croats and Serbs was simultaneously a cruel civil war, Croats called their language Croatian and Serbs referred to their language as Serbian; this regardless of which belligerent side or national, political and ideological barriers they found themselves. Significantly, in the midst of the war, the Anti-Fascist Council of National Liberation of Yugoslavia, at the Jajce session of November 29-30, 1943, recognized the equality of four official languages of Yugoslavia: Serbian, Croatian, Slovene, and Macedonian. These principles were implemented by the postwar Yugoslav government of Marshal Tito. Hence, the S1uzbeni List Federativne Narodne Republike Jugoslavije (Official Gazette of the Federative People’s Republic of Yugoslavia) indicated under the title that it was being published simultaneously in Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian and Macedonian. At the adoption of the Yugoslav constitution in 1946 the first part was read in Serbian, the second in Croatian, and the third and fourth in Slovenian and Macedonian respectively. The National Bank of Yugoslavia in a decree issued 1947 stipulated that the bills shall carry texts in four corners in four languages: Serbian, Croatian, Slovenian, and Macedonian. The clause regarding the falsification had to be printed on each bill in all four languages.
As years passed these principles were increasingly bypassed, and ignored. The same policies, methods, and channels that were used by the prewar Belgrade government, were revived, Serbian became once again the equivalent of the state language of the Federative Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia. In 1954 twenty-five Serbian, Croatian, and Montenegrin writers and linguists, meeting at Novi Sad, the capital of Vojvodina, passed a resolution calling for the publication of a common Serbocroatian/Croatoserbian orthography and a common Serbocroatian/Croatoserbian dictionary. The agreement was reached under political pressure. The pretext of developing a common language was viewed as an additional instrument of a calculated policy whereby the Serbian language was in practice being imposed on the non-Serbs.
In 1971, under very different political circumstances, the Croats renounced the Novi Sad Agreement entirely. Having concluded that the Croatian language was being degraded to the status of a local dialect, eighteen Croatian scholarly institutions published The Declaration Concerning the Name and Position of Croatian Literary Language in March 1967. Among the signatories were three institutes of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts. The Declaration acknowledged that the Croatian and Serbian languages have the same linguistic basis, but pointed out that the Croatian literary language is not identical to the Serbian literary language. After 1971, when many of the gains made by the Croat reformers during the period from 1966 to 1971 were seriously compromised, there has been relatively little tinkering with the language issue. In a sense, it is no longer intellectually and politically respectable to challenge the legitimacy of the Croatian language.
The linguistic medium that the Croats brought with them to the Adriatic shores at the dawn of barbarian Europe has undergone many changes over the centuries. Certainly the complexity of Croatian dialectal situation — the three principal dialects of stokavian, cakavian, and kajkavian, each with a developed literary tradition — has slowed down the emergence of a single Croatian linguistic standard. Nevertheless, even in terms of the growth of the present-day literary standard the stokavian solution predated the Illyrianist movement of the 1830s and completed the trend started by the poets of Dubrovnik, through Andria Kacic Miocic and Bosnian Franciscans, to Ante Kuzmanic and Ljudevit Gaj. In a real way, the line of continuity from the Tablet of Baska to the computer age has never been broken.
K.M.