Our Lady - New messages
Croatian Script
Parent Category: Croats (in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia) Category: LanguageCroatian Script
In the history of Croatian people three scripts were in use:
1. Croatian Glagolitic Script,
2. Croatian Cyrillic Script (bosancica),
3. Latin Script.
Today the Croats are using exclusively the Latin Script.
1700 to 1900 Expansion of the Štokavian vernacular influence Illyrian movement, final scriptory reform and language unification
Parent Category: Croats (in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia) Category: Language1700 to 1900 Expansion of the Štokavian vernacular influence Illyrian movement, final scriptory reform and language unification
Through the major part of the 18th century two seemingly contradictory processes had been under way: envigoration of literary activity in two Croatian dialects, Kajkavian (in the north-western part of Croatia) and Štokavian (in the rest of Croatia and in Bosnia); also, penetration of Štokavian influence on Kajkavian writers and local idiom. However, political and demographic factors again played the pivotal role: since the major parts of contemporary Croatia (Slavonia and Dalmatia) were liberated from Ottomans at the end of 17th century, these areas, where Štokavian dialect predominated, became centres of vigorous literary activity, mainly in the spirit of dominant Enlightenment and nascent Sentimentalism. Two enormously popular authors, a military officer from Slavonia.
1900 to the present Language and politics Birth and death of Yugoslav supra-national program
Parent Category: Croats (in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia) Category: Language1900 to the present Language and politics Birth and death of Yugoslav supra-national program
* But, due to the fact that these two languages have had a radically different past of almost four hundred years and only a few decades of moderately peaceful convergence- it was inevitable that they should eventually diverge. The Croatian good will quickly evaporated in Serbian-dominated Yugoslavia (1918-1941), when political pressures were applied to forge them into one, Serbian-based language- all in the spirit of supra-national Yugoslav ideology which had had roots in the 19th century idealization of South Slavic «unity», but has mutated into a variant of Greater Serbian expansionist program. This kind of «language planning», ie. forced Serbianization of language in Croatia and Bosnia, was especially ruthless in 1920s and 1930s, when Serbian language characteristics (lexical, syntactical, orthographical and morphological) had been officially prescribed for Croatian textbooks and general communication. Also, this artificial "unification" into one, Serbo-Croatian language was preferred by neo-grammarian Croatian linguists (the most notable example was influential philologist and translator Tomislav Maretić). The recipe was simple: if a term is described by two words in Croatian (a neologism and Greek/Latin Europeanism) and one word in Serbian (Europeanism)- the "choice" was to suppress Croatian neologism and "promote" Europeanism. For instance, "geography" is "geografija" in Serbian, and "zemljopis" and "geografija" in Croatian. The policy was to try to establish "geografija" as the norm and to eliminate "zemljopis". However, this school was virtually extinct by late 1920s and since then leading Croatian linguists (Petar Skok, Stjepan Ivšić and Petar Guberina) have been unanimous in re-affirmation of Croatian purist tradition. The situation somewhat eased in the eve of World War 2, but with the capitulation of Yugoslavia and creation of Nazi-Fascist puppet «Independent State of Croatia» (1941-1945) came another, this time hardly predictable and extremely grotesque attack on standard Croatian: totalitarian dictatorship of Ante Pavelić pushed natural Croatian purist tendencies to ludicrous extremes and tried to reimpose older morphonological orthography preceding Broz's prescriptions from 1892. But, Croatian linguists and writers were strongly opposed to this travesty of “language planning”- in the same way they rejected pro-Serbian forced unification in monarchist Yugoslavia (1918-1941). Not surprisingly, no Croatian dictionaries or Croatian grammars had been published during this period.
Croatian Glagolitic sources related to B&H
Parent Category: Croats (in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia) Category: LanguageCroatian Glagolitic sources related to Bosnia and Herzegovina
There is no doubt that the oldest phase of the Bosnian and Herzegovinean literature was Glagolitic. Numerous Cyrillic manuscripts were translated from older Glagolitic books. This can be seen for instance in the Mostar Evangelistary from the 14th century, written by Mihajlo Grk, held in the Archive of the Serbian Academy in Belgrade. The last three glagolites in Bosnia died in 1834.
Croatian Glagolitic sources related to Bosnia and Herzegovina:
