Croatian language
standardized variety of Serbo-Croatian language, used by Croats / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Croatian language is spoken mainly throughout the countries of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina and in the surrounding countries of Europe. Croatian grammar is the grammar of the Croatian language. The Croatian language consists of three vernaculars (Kaikavian, Chakavian and Shtokavian).[2]
Croatian | |
---|---|
hrvatski | |
Pronunciation | [xř̩ʋaːtskiː] |
Native to | Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia (Vojvodina), Montenegro, Romania (Caraș-Severin County), Slovenia, and diaspora |
Region | Balkans |
Ethnicity | Croats |
Native speakers | 5.6 million (2006) |
Indo-European
| |
Latin (Gaj's alphabet) Cyrillic Croatian Braille | |
Official status | |
Official language in | Croatia Bosnia and Herzegovina Serbia (Vojvodina) European Union |
Recognised minority language in | Montenegro Austria (in Burgenland) Hungary (in Baranya County) Italy (in Molise) Romania (in Carașova, Lupac) |
Regulated by | Institute of Croatian Language and Linguistics |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-1 | hr |
ISO 639-2 | hrv |
ISO 639-3 | hrv |
Linguasphere | part of 53-AAA-g |
Traditional extent of Serbo-Croatian dialects in Croatia and in Bosnia and Herzegovina | |
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Croatian grammar books show that the codification of the language started at the beginning of the 17th century (the first grammar was written by Bartol Kašić in Latin in 1604). This means that the rules for the language were written down. From 1604 to 1836 there were 17 grammars. Most of them described the Štokavian dialect, but some were about Kajkavian. In the 19th century, more grammars based on Štokavian were written. They were "Nova ricsoslovnica illiricka", written by Šime Starčević (1812), and "Grammatik der illyrischen Sprache", written by Ignjat Alojzije Brlić (1833),.[3] Even before the 19th century, the three dialects of the Croatian language were almost equally used. However, the way each dialect was written down varied throughout Croatia. Near the Adriatic coast, it was more similar to Italian, and near the Hungarian border, it was more similar to Hungarian.[3][4] All grammars of the above period (1604-1836) used three accents: acute, grave and circumflex, Starčević's grammar is an exception as it uses a system of four accents.[3] In 19th century, Ljudevit Gaj proposed new letters from Czech (č,ž,š,ľ,ň,ď and ǧ). The letters that were accepted were č, ž and š, and from Polish, ć. For other phonemes (sounds), the digraphs that were accepted were ie, lj, nj and dž. Later dj or gj was changed to đ (according to proposal by Đuro Daničić).[4]