Croatian Hrvatski
Pronunciation:	['xr̩ʋaːtskiː]
Spoken in:	Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Vojvodina (Serbia), Montenegro and others
Region:	Central Europe, Southern Europe
Total speakers:	6,214,643 (1995)
Language family:	Indo-European  Slavic   South Slavic    Western South Slavic     Croatian
Official status
Official language in:	Bosnia and Herzegovina Burgenland (Austria) Caraşova in Caraş-Severin County (Romania)  Croatia Molise (Italy) Vojvodina (Serbia)
Regulated by:	Institute of Croatian Language and Linguistics (Council for Standard Croatian Language Norm)
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	hr
ISO 639-2:	scr (B)	hrv (T)
ISO 639-3:	hrv
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Croatian language (hrvatski jezik) is a South Slavic language which is used primarily by the inhabitants of Croatia and Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina and parts of the Croatian diaspora. It is one of the standard versions of the Central-South Slavic diasystem. This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... In linguistics, in the field of structural dialectology, a diasystem is a single genetic language which has two or more standard forms. ...

Croatian is based on the Ijekavian pronunciation of Štokavian dialect (with some influence from Čakavian and Kajkavian) and written with the Croatian alphabet. Shtokavian or Å tokavian is the primary dialect of the Central South Slavic languages system: Serbo-Croatian, Serbian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Bosnian languages. ... Chakavian (ÄŒakavian, čakavski) dialect is a dialect of the Croatian language. ... Location map of Kajkavian Kajkavian (kajkavski) dialect (proper name: kajkavica) is one of the three main dialects of the Croatian. ... The Croatian alphabet is a modified and extended version of the Latin alphabet which is used in Croatian language. ...

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-1400s, and Croatian as embodied in a purely vernacular literature Croatian literature has existed for more than five centuries. A standard language (also standard dialect or standardized dialect) is a particular variety of a language that has been given either legal or quasi-legal status. ... Church Slavonic may refer to: Old Church Slavonic language Church Slavonic language This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... Look up Vernacular in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Vernacular literature is literature written in the vernacular - the speech of the common people. ...

History

Early development

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. As a means of recording the passage of time the 9th century was the century that lasted from 801 to 900. ... Old Church Slavonic (also called Old Slavic[1]) is the first literary Slavic language, developed from the Slavic dialect of Thessalonica (modern Thessaloniki) by the 9th century Byzantine Greek missionaries, Saints Cyril and Methodius. ... A liturgy is the customary public worship of a religious group, according to their particular traditions. ... Tablet inscribed with the Glagolitic alphabet The Glagolitic alphabet or Glagolitsa is the oldest known Slavonic alphabet. ...

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. For other uses, see Latins and Latin (disambiguation). ... Tablet inscribed with the Glagolitic alphabet The Glagolitic alphabet or Glagolitsa is the oldest known Slavonic alphabet. ... The Cyrillic alphabet (or azbuka, from the old name of the first two letters) is an alphabet used for several East and South Slavic languages; (Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Rusyn, Serbian, and Ukrainian) and many other languages of the former Soviet Union, Asia and Eastern Europe. ... Bosancica is a script, that was used in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia (Dalmatia and Dubrovnik). ... For other uses, see Latins and Latin (disambiguation). ... Church Slavonic may refer to: Old Church Slavonic language Church Slavonic language This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...

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 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), "Missal of Duke Hrvoje" from Bosnia and Split in Dalmatia (1404) and the first printed book in Croatian language (1483). Baška tablet (Bašćanska ploča) is one of the first monuments of Croatian language. ... Location of Krk in Croatia Krk (Italian Veglia, Latin Curicta) is a Croatian island in the northern Adriatic Sea, located near Rijeka in the Bay of Kvarner and part of the Primorje-Gorski Kotar county. ... Tablet inscribed with the Glagolitic alphabet The Glagolitic alphabet or Glagolitsa is the oldest known Slavonic alphabet. ... Dmitar Zvonimir was a native ruler of the Croatia, reigned as a king from 1075 until his death in 1089. ...

Also, during the 13th century Croatian vernacular texts began to appear, the most important among them being "Istrian land survey", 1275 and "The Vinodol Codex", 1288., both in the Čakavian dialect.

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 (ca. 1400). Shtokavian or Å tokavian is the primary dialect of the Central South Slavic languages system: Serbo-Croatian, Serbian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Bosnian languages. ... The Missal, by John William Waterhouse Missal, in the Catholic Church, is a liturgical book containing all instructions and texts necessary for the celebration of Masses throughout the year. ... Breviary of Cologne, 12th or 13th century (Helsinki University Library) A breviary (from Latin brevis, short or concise) is a liturgical book containing the public or canonical prayers, hymns, the Psalms, readings, and notations for everyday use, especially for priests, in the Divine Office (i. ... A Modern Prayer Book The Book of Common Prayer is the prayer book of the Church of England and also the name for similar books used in other churches in the Anglican Communion. ... Vatican Croatian Prayer Book is the oldest Croatian vernacular prayer book and the finest example of early štokavian vernacular literary idiom. ...

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. Phonology (Greek phonē = voice/sound and logos = word/speech), is a subfield of linguistics which studies the sound system of a specific language (or languages). ... For other uses, see Morphology. ... Not to be mistaken with lexicography. ...

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. Religious is a term with both a technical definition and folk use. ... This article is about the art form. ... Mystery plays or miracle plays are one of the earliest formally developed plays in medieval Europe. ... Morality plays are a type of theatrical allegory in which the protagonist is met by personifications of various moral attributes who try to prompt him to choose a godly life over one of evil. ...

Istrian land survey, 1275 Download high resolution version (472x709, 129 KB)Istrian land survey File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...

The Vinodol Codex, 1288 Vinodol codex The picture is from Croatian wiki article on Cro. ...

Glagolitic Missal of Duke Novak, 1368 Novak missal File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...

Vatican Croatian Prayer Book Image File history File links Vatican_Croatian_Prayer_Book. ... Vatican Croatian Prayer Book is the oldest Croatian vernacular prayer book and the finest example of early štokavian vernacular literary idiom. ...

Modern language and standardisation

Although the first purely vernacular texts in a Croatian distinctly different from Church Slavonic date back to the 13th century, it was in the 14th and 15th centuries that the modern Croatian language emerged (recorded in texts as Vatican Croatian prayer book from 1400.) in the form (morphology, phonology and syntax) that only slightly differs from contemporary Croatian standard language. Church Slavonic may refer to: Old Church Slavonic language Church Slavonic language This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... For other uses, see Morphology. ... Phonology (Greek phonÄ“ = voice/sound and logos = word/speech), is a subfield of linguistics which studies the sound system of a specific language (or languages). ... For other uses, see Syntax (disambiguation). ... A standard language (also standard dialect or standardized dialect) is a particular variety of a language that has been given either legal or quasi-legal status. ...

Bartul Kašić's manuscript Bible translation

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). Kasics manuscript Bible translation The copyright status of this work is difficult or impossible to determine. ... Kasics manuscript Bible translation The copyright status of this work is difficult or impossible to determine. ... This is a list of Croatian dictionaries published before the 20th century. ... Faust Vrančić (1551, Å ibenik - January 17, 1617, Venice), also known as Faust Verantius, was a humanist, philosopher, historian, lexicographer, and inventor. ... This article needs cleanup. ... Bartol KaÅ¡ić Bartol KaÅ¡ić (also Bartul KaÅ¡ić, Bartholomaeus Cassius, Bartolomeo Cassio, sometimes signing as Bogdančić and/or Pažanin; (August 15, 1575 - December 28, 1650) was a Croatian linguist. ...

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. Seal of the Society of Jesus. ... For other uses, see Bible (disambiguation). ... Look up Dubrovnik in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... The orthography of a language specifies the correct way of using a specific writing system to write the language. ... Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (French pronounced ) (February 28, 1533–September 13, 1592) was one of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance. ... The King James or Authorized Version of the Bible is an English translation of the Christian Bible first published in 1611. ...

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: For other uses, see Baroque (disambiguation). ... A standard language (also standard dialect or standardized dialect) is a particular variety of a language that has been given either legal or quasi-legal status. ...

• 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.

This "triple achievement" of Baroque Slavism in first half of the 17th century laid the firm foundation upon which later Illyrian movement completed the work of language standardisation. For the journal, see Linguistics (journal). ... Bartol KaÅ¡ić Bartol KaÅ¡ić (also Bartul KaÅ¡ić, Bartholomaeus Cassius, Bartolomeo Cassio, sometimes signing as Bogdančić and/or Pažanin; (August 15, 1575 - December 28, 1650) was a Croatian linguist. ... Mikaljas dictionary Jakov Mikalja[1] (Italian: Giacomo Micaglia, Latin: Jacobi Micalia) (Peschici, March 31, 1601 - Loreto, December 1, 1654) was a Croatian Italian linguist and lexicographer, born in the Kingdom of Naples. ... The Order of Friars Minor and other Franciscan movements are disciples of Saint Francis of Assisi. ... Divkovićs Besjede, Venice, 1616 Matija Divković ( 1563 - August 21, 1631) was a Croatian writer, the founder of the Croatian literature in Bosnia. ... The Counter-Reformation or the Catholic Reformation was a strong reaffirmation of the doctrine and structure of the Catholic Church, climaxing at the Council of Trent, partly in reaction to the growth of Protestantism. ... For other uses, see Bible (disambiguation). ... Languages Croatian Religions Predominantly Roman Catholic Related ethnic groups Slavs South Slavs Croats (Croatian: Hrvati) are a South Slavic people mostly living in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and nearby countries. ... Ivan Gundulić (Italian: Giovanni Gondola) (January 9, 1589 - December 8, 1638) is the most celebrated Croatian Baroque poet from Dubrovnik. ... For other uses, see Baroque (disambiguation). ... Vlaho Bukovac: Hrvatski narodni preporod, Zastor u HNK Zagreb Illyrian movement (Croatian/Serbian: Ilirski pokret), also Croatian national revival (Hrvatski narodni preporod), was a nationalistic campaign initiated by a group of young Croatian intellectuals during the first half of 19th century, around the years of 1835-1849 (there is some...

See also: Croatian-language grammar books and Croatian dictionaries

This article lists books relevant to the study of Croatian grammar. ... This is a list of Croatian dictionaries published before the 20th century. ...

First standard attempt

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 Frangipani, 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-Šćakavian); 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. Events May 9 - Thomas Blood, disguised as a clergyman, attempts to steal the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London. ...

Illyrian period

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. Chakavian (Čakavian, čakavski) dialect is one of the three dialects of Croatian language. ... Kajkavian (kajkavski) dialect is one of the three dialects of Croatian language. ... Shtokavian (Štokavian, štokavski) is the primary dialect of the Central South Slavic languages system, Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian. ... The Glagolitic alphabet or Glagolitsa is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. ... The Cyrillic alphabet (pronounced also called azbuka, from the old name of the first two letters) is actually a family of alphabets, subsets of which are used by certain Slavic languages — Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Rusyn, Serbian, and Ukrainian—as well as many other languages of the former Soviet Union... Abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz redirects here. ... A literary language is a register of a language that is used in writing, and which often differs in lexicon and syntax from the language used in speech. ... Dalmatia, highlighted, on a map of Croatia. ... Historic mpap of the Bay, 16th century Boka Kotorska (Bay of Kotor, Bocche di Cattaro) in western Montenegro is a winding bay on the Adriatic sea. ... Ljudevit Gaj Ljudevit Gaj (August 8, 1809, Krapina – April 20, 1872) was a Croatian linguist, politician, journalist and writer. ...

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. Vlaho Bukovac: Hrvatski narodni preporod, Zastor u HNK Zagreb Illyrian movement (Croatian/Serbian: Ilirski pokret), also Croatian national revival (Hrvatski narodni preporod), was a nationalistic campaign initiated by a group of young Croatian intellectuals during the first half of 19th century, around the years of 1835-1849 (there is some... Location of Zagreb within Croatia Coordinates: , Country RC diocese 1094 Free royal city 1242 Unified 1850 Government  - Mayor Milan Bandić Area [1]  - Total 641. ... A neologism is a word, term, or phrase which has been recently created (or coined), often to apply to new concepts, to synthesize pre-existing concepts, or to make older terminology sound more contemporary. ... Words and phrases are often created, or coined, by combining existing words, or by giving words new and unique suffixes and/or prefixes. ... One of the features of Croatian language, common to many Central-European languages (Czech, German, Polish) is word coinage. ...

See also: Croatian linguistic purism

One of the features of Croatian language, common to many Central-European languages (Czech, German, Polish) is word coinage. ...

Serbian connection

The 19th century language development overlapped with the upheavals that befell Serbian language. It was Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, an energetic and resourceful Serbian language and culture reformer, whose scriptory and orthographic stylisation of Serbian linguistic folk idiom made a radical break with the past; until his activity in the first half of the 19th century, Serbs had been using the Serbian variant of Church Slavonic and a hybrid Russian-Slavonic language. His "Serbian Dictionary", published in Vienna 1818 (along with the appended grammar), was the single most significant work of Serbian literary culture that shaped the profile of Serbian language (and, the first Serbian dictionary and grammar thus far). Serbian (; ) is one of the standard versions of the Shtokavian dialect, used primarily in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia, and by Serbs in the Serbian diaspora. ... Vuk Stefanović Karadžić (Вук Стефановић Караџић) (November 7, 1787 - February 7, 1864) was a Serb linguist and major reformer of the Serbian language. ... Year 1818 (MDCCCXVIII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian Calendar (or a common year starting on Tuesday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar). ...

Following the incentive of Austrian bureaucracy which preferred some kind of unified Croatian and Serbian languages for practical administrative reasons, in 1850, Slovene philologist Franc Miklošič initiated a meeting of two Serbian philologists and writers, Vuk Karadžić and Đuro Daničić together with five Croatian "men of letters": Ivan Mažuranić, Dimitrija Demetar, Stjepan Pejaković, Ivan Kukuljević and Vinko Pacel. The Vienna Agreement on the basic features of a unified "Croatian or Serbian" or "Serbo-Croatian" language was signed by all eight participants (including Miklošič). The Politics series Politics Portal This box:      This article is about the sociological concept. ... Franc MikloÅ¡ič Franc MikloÅ¡ič (de: Franz von Miklosich), (November 29, 1813 – March 7, 1891) was a Slovenian philologist, born at Ljutomer (German Luttenberg), Styria, Slovenia, then a part of Austria. ... Vuk Stefanović Karadžić (Вук Стефановић Караџић) (November 7, 1787 - February 7, 1864) was a Serb linguist and major reformer of the Serbian language. ... Đuro Daničić (born April 4, 1825 in Novi Sad, died November 17, 1882 in Zagreb), was Serbian philologist, translator, linguistic historian and lexicographer. ... Ivan Mažuranić. ... Ivan Kukuljević (1816-1889) was a Croatian historian, politician, and patriot. ... For other uses, see Vienna (disambiguation). ...

Karadžić's influence on Croatian standard idiom was only one of the reforms for Croats, mostly in some aspects of grammar and orthography; many other changes he made to Serbian were already present in Croatian. Both languages shared the common basis of South Slavic neoštokavian dialect, but the Vienna agreement didn't have any effect in reality until a more unified standard appeared at the end of 19th century when Croatian sympathisers of Vuk Karadžić, known as the Croatian Vukovites, wrote the first modern (from the vantage point of dominating neogrammarian linguistic school) grammars, orthographies and dictionaries of the language which they called "Croatian or Serbian" (Serbs preferred Serbo-Croatian). Monumental grammar authored by pre-eminent fin de siècle Croatian linguist Tomislav Maretić (Grammar and stylistics of Croatian or Serbian language) and dictionary by Broz and Iveković (Croatian dictionary) temporarily fixed the elastic (grammatically, syntactically, lexically) standard of this hybrid language. The Neogrammarians (also Young Grammarians, German Junggrammatiker) were a German school of linguists, originally at the University of Leipzig, in the late 19th century who proposed the Neogrammarian hypothesis of the regularity of sound change. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Fin de siècle is French for end of the century. The term turn-of-the-century is sometimes used as a synonym, but is more neutral (lacking some or most of the connotations described below), and can include the first years of a new century. ...

Relation to Bosnian, Montenegrin, and Serbian

The establishment of the Yugoslav state was an important event in the history of Croatian. Yugoslavia (Jugoslavija in the Latin alphabet, Југославија in Cyrillic; English: South Slavia, or literary The Land of South Slavs) describes three political entities that existed one at a time on the Balkan Peninsula in Europe, during most of the 20th century. ...

The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (1918-1929) lasted till January 1929, after that the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1929-1941) was pronounced, which tried to use a joint language in the spirit of supra-national Yugoslav ideology. This meant that Croatian and Serbian were no longer developed individually side by side, but were attempted to be forged into one language under political pressure. As Serbs were by far the largest single ethnic group in the kingdom, this forging was resultant in a Serbian-based language, which meant a certain Serbianization of the language. Motto: One nation, one king, one country Anthem: Medley of Bože pravde, Lijepa naÅ¡a domovino, and Naprej zastava slave Capital Belgrade Language(s) Serbo-Croato-Slovenian (see: Serbo-Croat and Slovenian) [1] Government Value specified for government_type does not comply King  - 1918-1921 Peter I  - 1921-1934 Alexander...

In the 1920s and 1930s, the lexical, syntactical, orthographical and morphological characteristics of Serbian were officially prescribed for Croatian textbooks and general communication. In linguistics, prescription is the laying down or prescribing of normative rules for the use of a language. ...

This process of "unification" into one Serbo-Croatian language was preferred by neo-grammarian Croatian linguists, the most notable example being the influential philologist and translator Tomislav Maretić. However, this school was virtually extinct by the late 1920s and since then leading Croatian linguists (such as Petar Skok, Stjepan Ivšić and Petar Guberina) were unanimous in the re-affirmation of the Croatian purist tradition. Serbo-Croatian or Croato-Serbian (sometimes just Croatian or Serbian) (srpskohrvatski, cрпскохрватски, hrvatskosrpski, hrvatski ili srpski or srpski ili hrvatski), earlier also Serbo-Croat, is a South Slavic language. ... One of the features of Croatian language, common to many Central-European languages (Czech, German, Polish) is word coinage. ...

The situation somewhat eased in the run-up to World War II (cf. the establishment of Banovina of Croatia within Yugoslavia in 1939), but with the capitulation of Yugoslavia and the creation of the Nazi puppet regime (the "Independent State of Croatia", 1941-1945) came another, this time hardly predictable and grotesque attack on standard Croatian: the totalitarian dictatorship of Ante Pavelić pushed natural Croatian purist tendencies to ludicrous extremes and tried to reimpose older morphonological orthography preceding Ivan Broz's orthographical prescriptions from 1892. An official order signed by Pavelić and co-signed by Mile Budak and Milovan Žanić in August 1941 deprecated all imported words and forbade the use of any foreign words that could be replaced with Croatian neologisms. Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tōjō Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000... The Banovina of Croatia (1939-1941). ... Capital Zagreb Language(s) Croatian Religion Roman Catholicism Political structure Puppet-state King  - 1941-1943 Tomislav II Poglavnik  - 1941-1945 Ante Pavelić Legislature None Historical era World War II  - Established April 10, 1941  - Disestablished May 8, 1945 Population  - 1941 est. ... A totalitarian dictatorship is a form of totalitarian government which is also a dictatorship or autocracy. ... The title given to this article lacks diacritics because of certain technical limitations. ... Mile Budak (1889 - 1945) is Croatian writer and politician, best known as one of the chief ideologists of Ustasha movement. ...

However, Croatian linguists and writers were strongly opposed to this travesty of "language planning" in the same way that they rejected pro-Serbian forced unification in monarchist Yugoslavia. Not surprisingly, no Croatian dictionaries or Croatian grammars were published in this period.

In the Communist period (1945 to 1990), it was the by-product of Communist centralism and "internationalism". Whatever the intentions, the result was the same: the suppression of the basic features that differentiate Croatian from Serbian, both in terms of orthography and vocabulary. No Croatian dictionaries (apart from historical "Croatian or Serbian", conceived in the 19th century) appeared until 1985, when centralism was well in the process of decay. This article is about communism as a form of society and as a political movement. ... Centralization is the process by which the activities of an organization, particularly those regarding decision-making, become concentrated within a particular location and/or group. ...

In Communist Yugoslavia, Serbian language and terminology were "official" in a few areas: the military, diplomacy, Federal Yugoslav institutions (various institutes and research centres), state media, and jurisprudence at the federal level. As well, language in Bosnia and Herzegovina was gradually Serbianized in all levels of the educational system and the republic's administration. Virtually the only institution of any importance where the Croatian language was dominant had been the Lexicographic Institute in Zagreb, headed by Croatian writer Miroslav Krleža. This unitary linguistic policy was encouraged by the state. This article is about negotiations. ... An institute is a permanent organizational body created for a certain purpose. ... This article is about the concept. ... For the jurisprudence of courts, see Case law. ... Miroslav Krleža. ... Forms of government Part of the Politics series Politics Portal This box:      This article is about a form of government in which the state operates under the control of a Communist Party. ...

Notwithstanding the declaration of intent of AVNOJ (The Antifascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia) in 1944, which proclaimed the equality of all languages of Yugoslavia (Slovene, Croatian, Serbian and Macedonian) — everything had, in practice, been geared towards the supremacy of the Serbian language. This was done under the pretext of "mutual enrichment" and "togetherness", hoping that the transient phase of relatively peaceful life among peoples in Yugoslavia would eventually give way to one of fusion into the supra-national Yugoslav nation and, arguably, provide a firmer basis for Serbianization. However, this "supra-national engineering" was arguably doomed from the outset. The nations that formed the Yugoslav state were formed long before its incipience and all unification pressures only poisoned and exacerbaced inter-ethnic/national relations, causing the state to become merely ephemeral. AVNOJ (AntifaÅ¡ističko V(ij)eće Narodnog OsloboÄ‘enja Jugoslavije), standing for Anti-Fascist Council of National Liberation of Yugoslavia, was the political umbrella organization for the peoples liberation committees that was established on November 26, 1942 to administer terrorities under their control. ... Yugoslavs (Bosnian: Jugosloveni; Macedonian, Serbian Cyrillic: Југословени; Latinic: Jugosloveni; Croatian: Jugoslaveni, Slovenian: Jugoslovani) is an ethnic designation used by some people in former Yugoslavia, which continues to be used in some of its successor countries. ...

The single most important effort by ruling Yugoslav Communist elites to erase the "differences" between Croatian and Serbian — and in practice impose Serbian Ekavian language, written in Latin script, as the "official" language of Yugoslavia — was the so-called "Novi Sad Agreement". Twenty five Serbian, Croatian, and Montenegrin philologists came together in 1954 to sign the Agreement (named after the site of the signing, Novi Sad). A common Serbo-Croatian or "Croato-Serbian" orthography was compiled in an atmosphere of state repression and fear. There were 18 Serbs and 7 Croats in Novi Sad. The "Agreement" was seen by the Croats as a defeat for the Croatian cultural heritage. According to the eminent Croatian linguist Ljudevit Jonke, it was imposed on the Croats. The conclusions were formulated according to goals which had been set in advance, and discussion had no role whatsoever. In the more than a decade that followed, the principles of the Novi Sad Agreement were put into practice. For other uses, see Novi Sad (disambiguation). ...

A collective Croatian reaction against such de facto Serbian imposition erupted on March 15, 1967. On that day, nineteen Croatian scholarly institutions and cultural organizations dealing with language and literature (Croatian Universities and Academies), including foremost Croatian writers and linguists (Miroslav Krleža, Radoslav Katičić, Dalibor Brozović and Tomislav Ladan among them) issued the "Declaration Concerning the Name and the Status of the Croatian Literary Language". In the Declaration, they asked for amendment to the Constitution expressing two claims: is the 74th day of the year (75th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1967 (MCMLXVII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar) of the 1967 Gregorian calendar. ... Miroslav Krleža. ... Radoslav Katičić (born in Zagreb in 1930) is a Croatian linguist, historian and culturologist. ... Dalibor Brozović (July 28, 1927) is a Croatian linguist. ... Tomislav Ladan (born 1932, Ivanjica, Serbia) is a Croatian essayist, critic, novelist, and polymath. ...

• the equality not of three but of four literary languages, Slovene, Croatian, Serbian, and Macedonian, and consequently, the publication of all federal laws and other federal acts in four instead of three languages.

• the use of the Croatian standard language in schools and all mass communication media pertaining to the Republic of Croatia. The Declaration accused the federal authorities in Belgrade of imposing Serbian as the official state language and downgrading Croatian to the level of a local dialect.

Notwithstanding the fact that "Declaration" was vociferously condemned by Yugoslav Communist authorities as an outburst of "Croatian nationalism", Serbo-Croatian forced unification was essentially halted and an uneasy status quo remained until the end of Communism.

In the decade between the death of Marshall Tito (1980) and the final collapse of communism and the Yugoslavian state (1990/1991), major works that manifested the irrepressibility of Croatian linguistic culture had appeared. The studies of Brozović, Katičić and Babić that had been circulating among specialists or printed in the obscure philological publications in the 60s and 70s (frequently condemned and suppressed by the authorities) have finally, in the climate of dissolving authoritarianism, been published. This was a formal "divorce" of Croatian from Serbian (and, strictly linguistically speaking, the death of Serbo-Croatian). These works, based on modern fields and theories (structuralist linguistics and phonology, comparative-historical linguistics and lexicology, transformational grammar and areal linguistics) revised or discarded older "language histories", and restored the continuity of the Croatian language by definitely reintegrating and asserting specific Croatian characteristics (phonetic, morphological, syntactic, lexical, etc.) that had been constantly suppressed in both Yugoslavian states and finally gave modern linguistic description and prescription to the Croatian language. Among many monographs and serious studies, one could point to works issued by the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, particularly Katičić's Syntax and Babić's Word-formation. Josip Broz Tito (May 7, 1892 - May 4, 1980) was the ruler of Yugoslavia between the end of World War II and his death in 1980. ... In linguistics, prescription is the laying down or prescribing of normative rules for the use of a language. ...

After the collapse of Communism and the birth of Croatian independence (1991), the situation with regard to the Croatian language has become stabilized. No longer under negative political pressures and de-Croatization impositions, Croatian linguists expanded the work on various ambitious programs and intensified their studies on current dominant areas of linguistics: mathematical and corpus linguistics, textology, psycholinguistics, language acquisition and historical lexicography. From 1991 on, numerous representative Croatian linguistic works were published, among them four voluminous monolingual dictionaries of contemporary Croatian, various specialized dictionaries and normative manuals (the most representative being the issue of the Institute for Croatian Language and Linguistics). For a curious bystander, probably the most noticeable language feature in Croatian society was the re-Croatization of Croatian in all areas, from phonetics to semantics and (most evidently) in everyday vocabulary.

Political ambitions played a key role in the creation of the Serbo-Croatian language. Likewise, politics again were a crucial agent in dissolving the unified language. With the collapse of Yugoslavia, the Serbo-Croatian language officially followed suit. Serbo-Croatian or Croato-Serbian (sometimes just Croatian or Serbian) (srpskohrvatski, cрпскохрватски, hrvatskosrpski, hrvatski ili srpski or srpski ili hrvatski), earlier also Serbo-Croat, is a South Slavic language. ...

Sounds

Vowels

The Standard Croatian vowel system is simple, with five vowels (all monophthongs). Although meaningful, the difference between long and short vowels is not represented in Croatian orthography. The five vowel qualities are as follows. (A schwa /ə/ also occurs marginally, but has no phonemic weight.) Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... A monophthong (in Greek μονόφθογγος = single note) is a pure vowel sound, one whose articulation at both beginning and end is relatively fixed, and which does not glide up or down towards a new position of articulation; compare diphthong. ... The IPA symbol for the Schwa In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa can mean: An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in any language, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel. ...

There is an ongoing debate among linguists whether the long jat reflex ije presents a separate phoneme^[1] and whether a spelling reform is called for. While it is pronounced as a diphthong /ie/ with the vast majority of Croatian speakers, spelling ije has been mostly accepted after Vienna agreement in 1850, and canonized in the official Croatian Orthography of Ivan Broz (1892), under the influence of the native eastern Herzegovina dialect of Vuk Karadžić (the reformer of Serbian language), where it is bisyllabic. Yat or Jat (, ) is the name of the thirty-second letter of the old Cyrillic alphabet, or of the sound it represents. ... In human language, a phoneme is the theoretical representation of a sound. ... In phonetics, a diphthong (also gliding vowel) (Greek δίφθογγος, diphthongos, literally with two sounds, or with two tones) is a monosyllabic vowel combination involving a quick but smooth movement from one vowel to another, often interpreted by listeners as a single vowel sound or phoneme. ... This article is about the geographic area of Herzegovina. ... Vuk Stefanović Karadžić (Вук Стефановић Караџић) (November 7, 1787 - February 7, 1864) was a Serb linguist and major reformer of the Serbian language. ...

Vowel chart for Croatian

When greater precision is desired, /e/ and /o/ can be transcribed as [ɛ̝] and [ɔ̝] respectively. Image File history File links Croatian_vowel_chart. ... Image File history File links Croatian_vowel_chart. ... Vowels Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel. ... A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. ... A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. ... A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. ... A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. ... An open vowel is a vowel sound of a type used in most spoken languages. ...

The syllabic trill can also be either long or short, and can carry the rising or falling pitch accent (see next paragraph).

Syllables before the pitch accent always have short vowels. Those after the pitch accent may have either long or short vowels.

Pitch accent

Croatian has a two-way pitch accent. When a syllable is stressed, it may have either a rising or a falling tone. Although the distinction is meaningful, it is not represented in Croatian orthography. In the descriptive literature, five diacritics are used that are specific to Croatian. They are: Pitch accent is a kind of accent system employed in many languages around the world. ... Some web browsers may not be able to view this correctly; you may see transcriptions in parentheses after the character, like this: () instead of on top of the character as intended. ...

Lexical words (such as nouns) of one syllable always have falling tone. Words with two or more syllables may also have a falling tone, but (with the exception of foreign borrowings and interjections) only on the first syllable. Words of more than one syllable may instead have a rising tone, on any syllable but the last. Articles with similar titles include the NATO phonetic alphabet, which has also informally been called the “International Phonetic Alphabet”. For information on how to read IPA transcriptions of English words, see IPA chart for English. ... In linguistics, a lexical word belongs to one of the open parts of speech, such as nouns, verbs, and adjectives. ... An interjection is a part of speech that usually has no grammatical connection with the rest of the sentence and simply expresses emotion on the part of the speaker, although most interjections have clear definitions. ...

Enclitics (little grammatical words which latch on to a preceding lexical word) never have tone. Proclitics (clitics which latch on to a following word), on the other hand, may "steal" a falling tone (but not a rising tone or the vowel length) from the following word. The stolen accent may end up being either falling or rising on the proclitic: In linguistics, a clitic is a morpheme that functions syntactically like a word, but does not appear as an independent phonological word; instead it is always attached to a following or preceding word. ... In linguistics, a grammatical word belongs to one of the closed parts of speech such as pronouns, numerals, and prepositions, which do not readily admit new members. ... In linguistics, a clitic is a morpheme that functions syntactically like a word, but does not appear as an independent phonological word; instead it is always attached to a following or preceding word. ...

oko /ôko/ (eye) - u oko /û oko/ (in(to) the eye);

grad /ɡrâːd/ (town) - u grad /û ɡraːd/ (in(to) the town);

šuma /ʃûma/ (forest) - but u šumi /ǔ ʃumi/ (in the forest).

Proclitic system rules are rather omitted in western and northern parts of Croatia, particularly around Zagreb and other centres, and practically no one who claims to speak "Standard Croatian" pronounces the proclitics as they should be (and mostly are) pronounced in Shtokavian areas. They simply act as enclitics. Thus, u oko [u ȍko], u šumi [u ʃȕmi], etc. will always be heard. Location of Zagreb within Croatia Coordinates: , Country RC diocese 1094 Free royal city 1242 Unified 1850 Government  - Mayor Milan Bandić Area [1]  - Total 641. ... Shtokavian (Štokavian, štokavski) is the primary dialect of the Central South Slavic languages system, Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian. ...

Consonants

The consonant system is more complicated, and its characteristic features are series of affricate and palatal consonants. As in English, voicedness is phonemic, but aspiration is not. In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by a closure or stricture of the vocal tract sufficient to cause audible turbulence. ... An affricate is a consonant that begins like a stop (most often an alveovelar, such as [t] or [d]) and that doesnt have a release of its own,