Professional paper
https://doi.org/10.63714/issn.3029-4339.2025.25.1.69
The Croatian language between two language norms – or which is the Croatian standard language?
Luka Ratković
; Ministry of regional development and EU funds, Republic of Croatia
Abstract
The Croatian Language Act finally put a crown on development of the Croatian language in
whole in terms of protecting the language from arbitrary foreign influences. However, the road
of standardization itself and the development of the literary language were thorny, especially
in the 19th century. In the last decade of the 19th century, The Croatian language went through
large transformation. The illyrian norm, or rather the norm of the Zagreb philological school,
was replaced by the norm that developed followers of Vuk Stefanović Karadžić for the purpose
of linguistic and national rapprochement of Serbs and Croats. Since then, the Croatian
language has been struggling with the persistent imposition of serbisms. The question is how
successfully this has been done and whether the norm of the Zagreb Philological School was
still better, and should not have been abandoned despite the pressures of serbian and
yugoslavian unitarism?
Keywords
Illyrians; Vukovians; tridialectality; language; spelling; non-syncretized cases
Hrčak ID:
344230
URI
Publication date:
30.11.2025.
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