Ever heard how the Croatian language sounds? If you did, you either felt that it sounded similar to something you’ve heard or completely weird. Here’s a little lesson on the unique language of the friendly Croatian nation. Croatian is a Slavic language, a western subgroup of the Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family.
It is the official language in the Republic of Croatia and one of the official languages in Bosnia and Herzegovina. , It also holds the status of the national language of the Croatian ethnic and linguistic minority in Serbia, Montenegro, Slovenia, Hungary, Austria, Slovakia, Italy and other countries where members Croatian community live.
The dialects of the Chakavian and Kajkavian dialect are spoken only by Croats, while Bosniaks, Serbs, and Montenegrins are speaking Croatian with Stokavian dialect. All these dialects belong to the Central Slavic linguistic branch.
The oldest Croatian texts are written in a kind of mixture of the Croatian version of the Church Slavonic language and the archaic Chakavian and Glagolitic (a unique Croatian medieval alphabet which many young Croatian people use as tattoos!) letters.
From XII. Century Croats develop their own version of the Cyrillic alphabet, which is commonly referred to as bosančica.
The beginnings of the standardization of Croatian language date back to XVIII. century. At the time of the Croatian National Revival in the first half of the 19th century, the Stokavian dialect became the basis of the common Croatian language standard.During the Yugoslav period in the 20th century, there were strong efforts to unify the Croatian and Serbian language because they have similar base and sound identical to foreigners.The independence of the Republic of Croatia enabled the Croatian language to be independent and develop naturally, independent of political, social and other kinds of pressures. The Croatian language is embedded in the foundations of Croatian national and linguistic identity.
The dialects live to this day and can be heard regarding where you find yourself.
If you want to hear how Stokavian dialect sound, visit Zagreb and from there visit Zagorje, the homeland of Kajkavian accent.
While in Croatia, there is no doubt you’ll somehow end on the beautiful Adriatic coast where you can enjoy the sounds of original Chakavian dialect so why not book a tour now?
Now, dare to speak English 🙂
Try, Croatian people are crazy when a stranger use our language, or just (well, you know :-)…
Terms like; Dobar dam (Good day), Bok (Hi) or Hvala (like the koala, but with H) that means – Thank you 🙂