| Also Known As: Croatian Language,Hrvatski,Croatian
Description:
The Croatian language (hrvatski jezik) is a South Slavic language which is used primarily in Croatia, by Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina, by Croatian minorities in some neighbouring countries, in the Italian region of Molise, and parts of the Croatian diaspora.
Standard Croatian is dialectally based on the Western Štokavian dialect with the Ijekavian reflex of the Common Slavic yat vowel. The 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 the Latin alphabet. Along with Serbian and Bosnian, Croatian belongs to the Central South Slavic diasystem (also referred to as "Serbo-Croatian").
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.
The beginning of the Croatian written language can be traced to the 9th century, when Old..... full article at Wikipedia |
