Croatian language

The Croatian language is a language of the western group of South Slavic languages which is used primarily by the Croats. It is one of the standard versions of the Central-South Slavic diasystem.

A brief notice on Serbo-Croatian

One still finds many references to Serbo-Croatian, and proponents of Serbo-Croatian who deny the existence of Croatian language (as well as Serbian and Bosnian languages) as a separate standard language. The usual argumentation generally goes along the following lines:

Related Topics:
Serbo-Croatian - Standard language

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• Croatian, Serbian and Bosnian are almost completely mutually intelligible
• Typologically and structurally, these languages have virtually the same grammar, i.e. morphology and syntax
• The Serbo-Croatian language was "created" in the mid 19th century, and all subsequent attempts to dissolve its basic unity have not (yet) succeeded
• The affirmation of distinct Croatian, Serbian and Bosnian languages is purely politically motivated
• According to phonology, morphology and syntax, these languages are essentially one language because they are based on the same, ?tokavian dialect.

However, these arguments all have flaws:

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• mutual intelligibility is not the decisive criterion for anything. For instance, although Urdu and Hindi are mutually intelligible to a degree probably higher than Croatian and Bosnian, they are recognized as separate standard languages. On the other hand, the unity of Chinese culture has imposed the notion of one Chinese language, although numerous "dialects" are almost mutually unintelligible. Also, some linguists operate with the notion of "Chinese languages" – but this is not the generally accepted position. To give a simple and clear example: if there is no "Hindi-Urdu", then there is no reason to have "Serbo-Croatian".
• As far as structural similarity or even identity of basic grammar is concerned, one might add that, apart from the aforementioned Urdu and Hindi cases, the Malay and Indonesian are the same with regard to basic grammar, yet they are dutifully listed as different languages in languages classification manuals. Moreover, the basic grammar (morphology and syntax) is just one part of a theoretical description of a language: other fields — phonetics, phonology, word formation, semantics, pragmatics, stylistics, lexicology — give different theoretical linguistic description and prescription for Croatian, Bosnian and Serbian languages (just like they do for Hindi and Urdu).
• Since the Croatian language as recorded in Dr?i?'s and Gunduli?'s works (1500s and 1600s) is virtually the same as the contemporary standard Croatian (understandable archaisms apart) — it is evident that the 19th century formal standardization was just the final touch in the process that, as far as Croatian language is concerned, had lasted more than three centuries. The radical break with the past, so characteristic for modern Serbian language (whose medieval texts were church documents written in a dead Church Slavonic and whose vernacular was likely not as similar to Croatian as it is today), is a trait completely at variance with Croatian language history. In short: formal standardization processes for Croatian and Serbian had coincided chronologically (and, one could add – ideologically), but they haven't produced a unified standard language. Gunduli? did not write in "Serbo-Croatian" (which is a rather obvious contention), nor did August ?enoa. Marko Maruli? and Marin Dr?i? wrote in a sophisticated idiom of the Croatian language, some 300/350 years before the "Serbo-Croatian" ideology appeared on the scene.
• Politics is always the central factor in determining what is a language and what a dialect. The purely linguistic criterion (or criteria) that would decide on the status of a language simply doesn't exist. Various modern linguistic atlases give extremely varying number of languages of the world: the number generally fluctuates between 4,000 and 8,000, but some books reduce it to ca. 3,000, while others expand the figure to ca. 17,000. It is evident that such a wide variance is the best sign that no reliable linguistic criteria exist to give a unanimous answer to the question "what is a language?". Serbo-Croatian is a political construct — as is Croatian or, for that matter, any language in the world. A similar analogy could be drawn between the Croatian kajkavian dialect and Slovene language — had politics drawn those two sets of dialects closer together, they might have been considered a single language, too.

The topic of language with the writers from Dalmatia and Dubrovnik prior to the 19th century is somewhat blurred by the fact they by and large placed more emphasis on whether they were Slavic rather than Italic, given that Dalmatian city-states were then inhabited by those two main groups. There was less notable distinction being made between Croats and Serbs, and this, among other things, has been used as an argument to state that these people's literature is not solely Croatian heritage, thus undermining the argument that modern-day Croatian is based on old Croatian.

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However, the major part of intellectuals and writers from Dalmatia who used the ?tokavian dialect and were of Catholic faith had explicitly expressed Croatian national affiliation, as far as mid 1500s and 1600s, some three hundred years before the Serbo-Croatian ideology had appeared. Their loyalty was first and foremost to the Catholic Christendom, but when they professed ethnic identity, they called it "Slovin" and "Illyrian" (a sort of forerunner of Catholic baroque pan-Slavism) and Croat — these 30-odd writers in the span of ca. 350 years themselves never mentioned Serb ethnic affiliation any time. A Croatian follower of Vuk Karad?i?, Ivan Broz, noted that the Serbian affiliation was as foreign as Macedonian and Greek appellation at this time. Vatroslav Jagi? pointed out in 1864:

Related Topics:
Pan-Slavism - Croat - Vatroslav Jagi? - 1864

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: "As I have mentioned in the preface, history knows only two national names in these parts – the Croatian and Serbian. As far as Dubrovnik is concerned, the Serbian name was never in use; on the contrary, the Croatian name was frequently used and gladly referred to"

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: "At the end of the 15th century , sermons and poems were exquisitely crafted in the Croatian language by those men whose names are widely renowned by deep learning and piety."

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(From The History of the Croatian language, Zagreb, 1864.)

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