Croatian language

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Croatian
hrvatski jezik 
Pronunciation: [xř̩ʋaːtskiː]
Spoken in: Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia (Vojvodina), 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:  Croatia
 Bosnia and Herzegovina
 Montenegro
Burgenland (Austria)
Caraşova in Caraş-Severin County (Romania)
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: hrv
ISO 639-3: hrv
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.
South Slavic
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and dialects
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Western Štokavian
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Glagolitic · Early Cyrillic
¹ Includes Banat Bulgarian alphabet.

Croatian language (Croatian: hrvatski jezik) is a South Slavic language which is used primarily in Croatia, by Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in neighbouring countries where Croats are autochthonous communities, and parts of the Croatian diaspora. It is sometimes classified as belonging to the Central South Slavic diasystem (also referred to as "Serbo-Croatian").

Standard Croatian is dialectally based on the Western Štokavian dialect with Ijekavian reflex of Common Slavic yat vowel. Croatian linguistic area encompasses two other major dialects, Čakavian and Kajkavian, which contribute lexically to the standard language. It is written with the Croatian alphabet, based on Latin alphabet.

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-15th century, and Croatian as embodied in a purely vernacular literature (Croatian literature) has existed for more than five centuries.

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.

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.

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 angular 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, the Glagolitic Missale Romanum Glagolitice (1483).

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).

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.

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.