Croatian linguistic purism
Encyclopedia
One of the features of standard Croatian language
and in common with several languages such as Czech
, Finnish
, Slovenian
, Tamil
or Turkish
is word coinage using roots or elements perceived as being characteristic or unique to the speech of the community.
The Croatian tradition of neologisms and linguistic purism
goes back to the earliest documents of literacy (11th to 12th century), but it was in the Renaissance Croatian literature that this characteristic has become dominant.
across the centuries shows tendency to cherish Slavic words and coinage, and to expel "foreign" borrowings. Renown Croatian philologist Zlatko Vince articulates this tendency as follows:
In a session regarding the issue of the usage for foreign words in Croatian language, as well on the problems of ongoing projects of coining Slavic replacements for established technical terms by combined efforts of linguists and specialists, the central body for the standardisation of Croatian language—the Council for Standard Croatian Language Norm
—presents the historical overview of the issue as follows:
Renaissance literature, 16th century poet Dinko Zlatarić
freely "translated" Greek and Latin names into Croatian — sometimes wrongly, due to superficial knowledge of etymology. For instance, in his translation of Torquato Tasso
's "Aminta", published in 1580, Zlatarić's purist tendencies led to mistakes: the hero's name Aminta becomes in Croatian Ljubmir (Lover) because Zlatarić wrongly assumed that the name "Aminta" stems from Latin amare ("to love"), while in fact it is from Ancient Greek (amýnō, "to defend").
This tradition of Croatian neologisms continued uninterruptedly in next centuries and is recorded in numerous Croatian dictionaries until the Illyrian movement
in the 19th century when it reached the peak in works of one of the most prominent Croatian philologists, Bogoslav Šulek
(born and raised in Slovakia
).
and its successor, the Zagreb
philological school, have been particularly successful in creating the corpus of Croatian terminology that covered virtually all areas of modern civilisation. In short — they extended and systematised the purist tendencies already present in the by then more than 300 years old Croatian vernacular literature
and lexicography.
This was especially visible in two fundamental works: Ivan Mažuranić
's and Josip Užarević's: "German-Croatian dictionary" from 1842 and Bogoslav Šulek
's "German-Croatian-Italian dictionary of scientific terminology", 1875. These works, particularly Šulek's, systematised (i.e. collected from older dictionaries), invented and coined Croatian terminology for the 19th century jurisprudence, military schools, exact and social sciences, as well as numerous other fields (technology and commodities of urban civilisation).
These accomplishments didn't come out of blue, but are a product of multicentenary tradition in Croatian language
— therefore it is no surprise that Croatian linguist Stjepan Babić
's monumental monograph "Tvorba riječi u hrvatskome književnom jeziku" (Word-formation in Croatian literary language), 1986, is considered still the best work on the topic in the entire Slavic philology
.
period, from 1918 to 1990, Croatian
and Serbian
were largely subject to unification as the Serbo-Croatian Language
. Parts of this policy were systematic attempts to eliminate traits of the Croatian literary language by which it distinguished itself from the Serbian literary language
The only brief exception was in the puppet "Independent State of Croatia
", 1941 to 1945, when totalitarian dictatorship of Ante Pavelić
pushed purist tendencies to extremes. No Croatian dictionaries or grammars were published during this period because of the opposition of the Croatian linguists. This era is best covered in Marko Samardžija's "Hrvatski jezik u Nezavisnoj Državi Hrvatskoj", (Croatian language in Independent State of Croatia), 1993.
To understand the processes during the Yugoslav period, one must take into account at least three factors:
In Communist Yugoslavia
, Serbian language
and terminology were prevailing in a few areas: the military, diplomacy, Federal Yugoslav institutions (various institutes and research centres), state media and jurisprudence at Yugoslav level. Also, the language in Bosnia and Herzegovina
was gradually Serbified
, chiefly in the official terminology educational system and the republic's administration. For Croatian tradition of neologisms, these were "no go" areas.
The methods used for this "unification" were manifold and chronologically multifarious; even in the eighties, a common "argument" was to claim that the opponents of the official Yugoslav language policy were sympathising with the Ustaša regime of World War 2, and that the incriminated words were thus "ustašoid" as well. Another method was to punish authors who fought against censorship. Linguists and philologists, the authors of dictionaries, grammars etc., were not allowed to write their works freely and according to the best of their professional knowledge and competence. Hence, for example, the whole edition of the Croatian Orthography ('Hrvatski pravopis') edited by Babić
-Finka-Moguš
(1971) was destroyed in a paper factory just because it had been titled "Croatian" Orthography instead of "Serbocroatian" or "Croatoserbian" Orthography No Croatian dictionaries (apart from the historical "Croatian or Serbian" dictionaries, conceived in the 19th century) appeared until 1985, when Communist centralism was well in the process of decay.
, the situation changed. Prior to 1991, the passive Croatian vocabulary contained many banished words equivalent to the actively used words of the politically approved vocabulary. For example, the officers of the JNA
could be publicly called only oficir, and not časnik. For the usage of word časnik ('officer'), coined by a father of Croatian scientific terminology Bogoslav Šulek
, the physician Ivan Šreter
was sentenced to 50 days in jail in 1987. Concordantly, the possibility of using the previously frequent word časnik was already reduced to the extent that before 1991 it could occur only in special contexts, e.g. in relation to historical events. Such suppressive relations changed significantly after the dissolution of the SFRJ and the founding of the sovereign Republic of Croatia. The regained freedom enabled public usage of previously forbidden words in the semantic sphere of administration, army etc. As a consequence, formerly suppressed words switched from the more or less passive vocabulary of the Croatian literary language to the active one without any special stylistic marking.
Croatian linguists fought this wave of "populist purism", led by various patriotic non-linguists. Ironically: the same people who were, for decades, stigmatised as ultra-Croatian "linguistic nationalists" (Stjepan Babić
, Dalibor Brozović
, Radoslav Katičić
, Miro Kačić
) have been accused as pro-Serbian "political linguists" simply because they opposed these "language purges" that wanted to kick out numerous words of Church Slavonic origin (which are common not only to Croatian and Serbian, but are also present in Polish, Russian, Czech and other Slavic languages).
After creating a flurry of sensationalist articles in the press, this phenomenon subsided. Since the late 90s, instead of forced purism, Croatian has been evolving naturally, developing its own words and forms, thereby increasing the distance separating it from other South Slav languages.
Numerous representative Croatian linguistic works were published since the end of Communism in 1990, among them three voluminous monolingual dictionaries of contemporary Croatian.
Croatian language
Croatian is the collective name for the standard language and dialects spoken by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina and other neighbouring countries...
and in common with several languages such as Czech
Czech language
Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
, Finnish
Finnish language
Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
, Slovenian
Slovenian language
Slovene or Slovenian is a South Slavic language spoken by approximately 2.5 million speakers worldwide, the majority of whom live in Slovenia. It is the first language of about 1.85 million people and is one of the 23 official and working languages of the European Union...
, Tamil
Tamil language
Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...
or Turkish
Turkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
is word coinage using roots or elements perceived as being characteristic or unique to the speech of the community.
The Croatian tradition of neologisms and linguistic purism
Linguistic purism
Linguistic purism or linguistic protectionism is the practice of defining one variety of a language as being purer than other varieties. The ideal of purity is often opposed in reference to a perceived decline from an "ideal past" or an unwanted similarity with other languages, but sometimes simply...
goes back to the earliest documents of literacy (11th to 12th century), but it was in the Renaissance Croatian literature that this characteristic has become dominant.
Historical overview
Croatian literatureCroatian literature
Croatian literature is a definition given to the compilation of novels, dramas, short stories, poems and other various work of written kind entirely attributed to the medieval and modern culture of the Croats and the Croatian language....
across the centuries shows tendency to cherish Slavic words and coinage, and to expel "foreign" borrowings. Renown Croatian philologist Zlatko Vince articulates this tendency as follows:
Croatian literature even in the old ages tends to stay away from barbarisms and foreign words, a certain conscious care in the works of literature is felt when it comes to language selection. In the course of centuries hence the tendency is formed for literary language to be as much as pure and selective as possible. One thing is the colloquial language, often ridden with foreign words, and entirely different thing is the language of literary works in which tendency for language purity arises. The way and the extent to which that need could be satisfied is different in various periods, but the tendency for as pure and selective language can be noted even in Old Dubrovnik writers, and in VitezovićPavao Ritter VitezovicPavao Ritter Vitezović was a noted Croatian writer, historian, linguist and publisher.-Early life:Pavao Ritter Vitezović was born in Senj to a family of a frontier soldier. His father was descended from a German immigrant from Alsace, and his mother was Croatian...
. All the way to pre-IllyrianIllyrian movementThe Illyrian movement , also Croatian national revival , was a cultural and political campaign with roots in the early modern period, and revived by a group of young Croatian intellectuals during the first half of 19th century, around the years of 1835–1849...
and Illyrian efforts and by the end of the XIX. century, when the osmotic influence of traditional Croatian literary heritage does not cease to stop...That care of language purity which characterizes Croatian literary expression even in the XIX. century, remains immanent in later periods...Literary language of the Croats is in fact organic continuation of older state of affairs in Croatian literature.
In a session regarding the issue of the usage for foreign words in Croatian language, as well on the problems of ongoing projects of coining Slavic replacements for established technical terms by combined efforts of linguists and specialists, the central body for the standardisation of Croatian language—the Council for Standard Croatian Language Norm
Council for Standard Croatian Language Norm
Council for Standard Croatian Language Norm is a linguistic council established for the purpose of providing orthographical and orthoepical norm for the Croatian standard language....
—presents the historical overview of the issue as follows:
The attitude towards foreign words in Croatian literary language is multi-dimensional in many respects. The origin of Croatian language culture, when writing in Slavic, is determined by the tradition of Church Slavonic literature. Originating from copies of Ancient Greek liturgical texts, it places a distinct emphasis to Slavic expressive devices, and only exceptionally non-Slavic words are being borrowed. That tendency has been continued in Croatian language culture to this day. The usage of Croatian words, if necessary even in a modified meaning, or Croatian coinages, if they're considered to be successful, represents higher merit then mere mechanical borrowing of foreign expressive devices. That way the Croatian word is more solemn and formal (glazba, mirovina, redarstvenik), and the loanword is more relaxing and less demanding (muzika, penzija, policajac). This dimension of purism is incorporated into the very foundations of Croatian language sensitivity.
The early period
In the DubrovnikDubrovnik
Dubrovnik is a Croatian city on the Adriatic Sea coast, positioned at the terminal end of the Isthmus of Dubrovnik. It is one of the most prominent tourist destinations on the Adriatic, a seaport and the centre of Dubrovnik-Neretva county. Its total population is 42,641...
Renaissance literature, 16th century poet Dinko Zlatarić
Dinko Zlataric
Dominko "Dinko" Zlatarić was a poet and translator from Republic of Ragusa, considered the best translator of the Renaissance.-Life:...
freely "translated" Greek and Latin names into Croatian — sometimes wrongly, due to superficial knowledge of etymology. For instance, in his translation of Torquato Tasso
Torquato Tasso
Torquato Tasso was an Italian poet of the 16th century, best known for his poem La Gerusalemme liberata , in which he depicts a highly imaginative version of the combats between Christians and Muslims at the end of the First Crusade, during the siege of Jerusalem...
's "Aminta", published in 1580, Zlatarić's purist tendencies led to mistakes: the hero's name Aminta becomes in Croatian Ljubmir (Lover) because Zlatarić wrongly assumed that the name "Aminta" stems from Latin amare ("to love"), while in fact it is from Ancient Greek (amýnō, "to defend").
This tradition of Croatian neologisms continued uninterruptedly in next centuries and is recorded in numerous Croatian dictionaries until the Illyrian movement
Illyrian movement
The Illyrian movement , also Croatian national revival , was a cultural and political campaign with roots in the early modern period, and revived by a group of young Croatian intellectuals during the first half of 19th century, around the years of 1835–1849...
in the 19th century when it reached the peak in works of one of the most prominent Croatian philologists, Bogoslav Šulek
Bogoslav Šulek
Bogoslav Šulek, born Bohuslav Šulek , was a Croatian philologist, historian and lexicographer. He founded much of the Croatian terminology in the areas of social and natural sciences, technology and civilization. He is considered one of the most influential Croatian philologists of all time.-Early...
(born and raised in Slovakia
Slovakia
The Slovak Republic is a landlocked state in Central Europe. It has a population of over five million and an area of about . Slovakia is bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south...
).
The Illyrian period and Šulek's activity
The Illyrian movementIllyrian movement
The Illyrian movement , also Croatian national revival , was a cultural and political campaign with roots in the early modern period, and revived by a group of young Croatian intellectuals during the first half of 19th century, around the years of 1835–1849...
and its successor, the Zagreb
Zagreb
Zagreb is the capital and the largest city of the Republic of Croatia. It is in the northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slopes of the Medvednica mountain. Zagreb lies at an elevation of approximately above sea level. According to the last official census, Zagreb's city...
philological school, have been particularly successful in creating the corpus of Croatian terminology that covered virtually all areas of modern civilisation. In short — they extended and systematised the purist tendencies already present in the by then more than 300 years old Croatian vernacular literature
Vernacular literature
Vernacular literature is literature written in the vernacular—the speech of the "common people".In the European tradition, this effectively means literature not written in Latin...
and lexicography.
This was especially visible in two fundamental works: Ivan Mažuranić
Ivan Mažuranic
Ivan Mažuranić was a Croatian poet, linguist and politician—probably the most important figure in Croatia's cultural life in the mid-19th century...
's and Josip Užarević's: "German-Croatian dictionary" from 1842 and Bogoslav Šulek
Bogoslav Šulek
Bogoslav Šulek, born Bohuslav Šulek , was a Croatian philologist, historian and lexicographer. He founded much of the Croatian terminology in the areas of social and natural sciences, technology and civilization. He is considered one of the most influential Croatian philologists of all time.-Early...
's "German-Croatian-Italian dictionary of scientific terminology", 1875. These works, particularly Šulek's, systematised (i.e. collected from older dictionaries), invented and coined Croatian terminology for the 19th century jurisprudence, military schools, exact and social sciences, as well as numerous other fields (technology and commodities of urban civilisation).
These accomplishments didn't come out of blue, but are a product of multicentenary tradition in Croatian language
Croatian language
Croatian is the collective name for the standard language and dialects spoken by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina and other neighbouring countries...
— therefore it is no surprise that Croatian linguist Stjepan Babić
Stjepan Babic
Stjepan Babić is a Croatian linguist and academic.-Biography:He was born in the small town of Oriovac in Brod-Posavina County, even though his biological parents are from Hrvatsko Zagorje. He attended primary school in Oriovac, and gymnasium in Slavonski Brod, Osijek and finally in Zagreb...
's monumental monograph "Tvorba riječi u hrvatskome književnom jeziku" (Word-formation in Croatian literary language), 1986, is considered still the best work on the topic in the entire Slavic philology
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
.
The Yugoslav period
During YugoslavYugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
period, from 1918 to 1990, Croatian
Croatian language
Croatian is the collective name for the standard language and dialects spoken by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina and other neighbouring countries...
and Serbian
Serbian language
Serbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....
were largely subject to unification as the Serbo-Croatian Language
Serbo-Croatian language
Serbo-Croatian or Serbo-Croat, less commonly Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian , is a South Slavic language with multiple standards and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro...
. Parts of this policy were systematic attempts to eliminate traits of the Croatian literary language by which it distinguished itself from the Serbian literary language
The only brief exception was in the puppet "Independent State of Croatia
Independent State of Croatia
The Independent State of Croatia was a World War II puppet state of Nazi Germany, established on a part of Axis-occupied Yugoslavia. The NDH was founded on 10 April 1941, after the invasion of Yugoslavia by the Axis powers. All of Bosnia and Herzegovina was annexed to NDH, together with some parts...
", 1941 to 1945, when totalitarian dictatorship of Ante Pavelić
Ante Pavelic
Ante Pavelić was a Croatian fascist leader, revolutionary, and politician. He ruled as Poglavnik or head, of the Independent State of Croatia , a World War II puppet state of Nazi Germany in Axis-occupied Yugoslavia...
pushed purist tendencies to extremes. No Croatian dictionaries or grammars were published during this period because of the opposition of the Croatian linguists. This era is best covered in Marko Samardžija's "Hrvatski jezik u Nezavisnoj Državi Hrvatskoj", (Croatian language in Independent State of Croatia), 1993.
To understand the processes during the Yugoslav period, one must take into account at least three factors:
- Serbian languageSerbian languageSerbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....
is "unfriendly" toward neologisms. One of basic tendencies of this language is to prefer loan-words over neologisms and calqueCalqueIn linguistics, a calque or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal, word-for-word or root-for-root translation.-Calque:...
s. Ironically, a non-negligible part of Slavic neologisms in this language was adopted from Croatian, for instance računovodstvo ("bank accountancy") or vodovod ("waterworks").
- Unification into one, Serbo-Croatian languageSerbo-Croatian languageSerbo-Croatian or Serbo-Croat, less commonly Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian , is a South Slavic language with multiple standards and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro...
was preferred by neogrammarianNeogrammarianThe Neogrammarians were a German school of linguists, originally at the University of Leipzig, in the late 19th century who proposed the Neogrammarian hypothesis of the regularity of sound change...
Croatian Vukovians (the most notable example was influential philologist and translator Tomislav MaretićTomislav MareticTomislav Maretić was a Croatian linguist and lexicographer.He attended primary school in Virovitica and the gymnasium in Varaždin, Požega and Zagreb...
). 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 1930s and since then Croatian linguists have been unanimous in re-affirmation of purist tradition.
- While during monarchist YugoslaviaKingdom of YugoslaviaThe Kingdom of Yugoslavia was a state stretching from the Western Balkans to Central Europe which existed during the often-tumultuous interwar era of 1918–1941...
"Serbo-Croatian" unification was motivated mainly by the Greater SerbiaGreater SerbiaThe term Greater Serbia or Great Serbia applies to the Serbian nationalist and irredentist ideology directed towards the creation of a Serbian land which would incorporate all regions of traditional significance to the Serbian nation...
policy, in the Communist period (1945 to 1990) it was the by-product of CommunistCommunismCommunism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
centralism and "internationalism". This period is described in the "Novi Sad agreementNovi Sad agreementThe Novi Sad Agreement was an attempt by twenty five Serbian, Croatian and Montenegrin writers, linguists and intellectuals to build unity across the ethnic and linguistic divisions within Yugoslavia, and created the Serbo-Croatian language....
" and "Declaration" section of Croatian languageCroatian languageCroatian is the collective name for the standard language and dialects spoken by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina and other neighbouring countries...
page. Whatever the intentions, the result was the same: the suppression of one of basic features of Croatian language.
In Communist Yugoslavia
Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was the Yugoslav state that existed from the abolition of the Yugoslav monarchy until it was dissolved in 1992 amid the Yugoslav Wars. It was a socialist state and a federation made up of six socialist republics: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia,...
, Serbian language
Serbian language
Serbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....
and terminology were prevailing in a few areas: the military, diplomacy, Federal Yugoslav institutions (various institutes and research centres), state media and jurisprudence at Yugoslav level. Also, the language in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bosnia and Herzegovina , sometimes called Bosnia-Herzegovina or simply Bosnia, is a country in Southern Europe, on the Balkan Peninsula. Bordered by Croatia to the north, west and south, Serbia to the east, and Montenegro to the southeast, Bosnia and Herzegovina is almost landlocked, except for the...
was gradually Serbified
Serbianisation
Serbianisation or Serbification or Serbisation is the spread of Serbian culture, people, or politics, either by integration or assimilation.-Serbianisation:...
, chiefly in the official terminology educational system and the republic's administration. For Croatian tradition of neologisms, these were "no go" areas.
The methods used for this "unification" were manifold and chronologically multifarious; even in the eighties, a common "argument" was to claim that the opponents of the official Yugoslav language policy were sympathising with the Ustaša regime of World War 2, and that the incriminated words were thus "ustašoid" as well. Another method was to punish authors who fought against censorship. Linguists and philologists, the authors of dictionaries, grammars etc., were not allowed to write their works freely and according to the best of their professional knowledge and competence. Hence, for example, the whole edition of the Croatian Orthography ('Hrvatski pravopis') edited by Babić
Stjepan Babic
Stjepan Babić is a Croatian linguist and academic.-Biography:He was born in the small town of Oriovac in Brod-Posavina County, even though his biological parents are from Hrvatsko Zagorje. He attended primary school in Oriovac, and gymnasium in Slavonski Brod, Osijek and finally in Zagreb...
-Finka-Moguš
Milan Moguš
-Biography:He is born in Senj, where he finished primary school and high school. In the academic year 1948/49 he attended in Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb and he graduated in 1953...
(1971) was destroyed in a paper factory just because it had been titled "Croatian" Orthography instead of "Serbocroatian" or "Croatoserbian" Orthography No Croatian dictionaries (apart from the historical "Croatian or Serbian" dictionaries, conceived in the 19th century) appeared until 1985, when Communist centralism was well in the process of decay.
After Communism
After the collapse of Communism and subsequent warsYugoslav wars
The Yugoslav Wars were a series of wars, fought throughout the former Yugoslavia between 1991 and 1995. The wars were complex: characterized by bitter ethnic conflicts among the peoples of the former Yugoslavia, mostly between Serbs on the one side and Croats and Bosniaks on the other; but also...
, the situation changed. Prior to 1991, the passive Croatian vocabulary contained many banished words equivalent to the actively used words of the politically approved vocabulary. For example, the officers of the JNA
Yugoslav People's Army
The Yugoslav People's Army , also referred to as the Yugoslav National Army , was the military of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.-Origins:The origins of the JNA can...
could be publicly called only oficir, and not časnik. For the usage of word časnik ('officer'), coined by a father of Croatian scientific terminology Bogoslav Šulek
Bogoslav Šulek
Bogoslav Šulek, born Bohuslav Šulek , was a Croatian philologist, historian and lexicographer. He founded much of the Croatian terminology in the areas of social and natural sciences, technology and civilization. He is considered one of the most influential Croatian philologists of all time.-Early...
, the physician Ivan Šreter
Dr. Ivan Šreter Award
The Dr. Ivan Šreter Award is an annual Croatian linguistics award for the best Croatian language word coined. It is named after Dr. Ivan Šreter. Šreter was sentenced to jail time in Communist Yugoslavia in 1987 for choosing to use the distinct Croatian umirovljeni časnik to refer to himself as a...
was sentenced to 50 days in jail in 1987. Concordantly, the possibility of using the previously frequent word časnik was already reduced to the extent that before 1991 it could occur only in special contexts, e.g. in relation to historical events. Such suppressive relations changed significantly after the dissolution of the SFRJ and the founding of the sovereign Republic of Croatia. The regained freedom enabled public usage of previously forbidden words in the semantic sphere of administration, army etc. As a consequence, formerly suppressed words switched from the more or less passive vocabulary of the Croatian literary language to the active one without any special stylistic marking.
Croatian linguists fought this wave of "populist purism", led by various patriotic non-linguists. Ironically: the same people who were, for decades, stigmatised as ultra-Croatian "linguistic nationalists" (Stjepan Babić
Stjepan Babic
Stjepan Babić is a Croatian linguist and academic.-Biography:He was born in the small town of Oriovac in Brod-Posavina County, even though his biological parents are from Hrvatsko Zagorje. He attended primary school in Oriovac, and gymnasium in Slavonski Brod, Osijek and finally in Zagreb...
, Dalibor Brozović
Dalibor Brozovic
Dalibor Brozović was a Croatian linguist, Slavist, dialectologist and politician. He studied the history of standard Slavic languages, especially Croatian. He was an active Esperantist since 1946, and wrote Esperanto poetry as well as translated works into the language. -Life and career:He was...
, Radoslav Katičić
Radoslav Katicic
Radoslav Katičić is a Croatian linguist, classical philologist, Indo-Europeanist, Slavist and Indologist, one of the most prominent Croatian scholars in the field of humanities.-Biography:...
, Miro Kačić
Miro Kacic
Miro Kačić was a Croatian linguist.After finishing primary school in Pučišća and gymnasium in Zagreb, he enrolled in Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Zagreb where he graduated in Romance studies . After 1977 he worked a lector of Croatian language in France where he received his Ph.D...
) have been accused as pro-Serbian "political linguists" simply because they opposed these "language purges" that wanted to kick out numerous words of Church Slavonic origin (which are common not only to Croatian and Serbian, but are also present in Polish, Russian, Czech and other Slavic languages).
After creating a flurry of sensationalist articles in the press, this phenomenon subsided. Since the late 90s, instead of forced purism, Croatian has been evolving naturally, developing its own words and forms, thereby increasing the distance separating it from other South Slav languages.
Numerous representative Croatian linguistic works were published since the end of Communism in 1990, among them three voluminous monolingual dictionaries of contemporary Croatian.