Original scientific paper
Loanwords in Šimunović’s Short Stories and Their Application in Teaching the Croatian Language
Petra Božanić
orcid.org/0000-0002-7132-5940
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to determine the presence of loanwords in selected short stories by Dinko Šimunović and to explore the possibilities of their methodological application in teaching the Croatian language. The research is grounded in the curricular guidelines for the eighth grade of primary school, when teaching units on the origin of words are introduced. Special attention is given to presenting loanwords as a means of establishing a correlational link between the linguistic and literary components of teaching. In this way, a more comprehensive understanding of the literary text, linguistic diversity, and the cultural-historical context of the lexicon is encouraged, which also implies a regional dimension, particularly that of the Dalmatian hinterland and the Štokavian dialect. In the first part of the research, loanwords were identified and classified in a corpus of fourteen of Šimunović’s short stories, and their frequency was analyzed both individually and collectively. In the second part, the findings were applied in an educational context during the interpretation of a required reading text and its integration with the teaching unit on linguistic borrowing, in order to exemplify the interrelation of the two domains of the Croatian language curriculum: Literature and Creative Expression and Croatian Language and Communication. The contribution of this paper lies in its dual methodological approach, linguistic and didactic, which combines the analysis of loanwords in a literary text by examining Šimunović’s literary language with their didactic application. In this way, it enriches the range of teaching strategies aimed at fostering language awareness, understanding the cultural-historical layers of the lexicon, and preserving regional linguistic features.
Keywords
Dinko Šimunović; linguistic borrowing; language; literature; school reading
Hrčak ID:
344689
URI
Publication date:
18.2.2026.
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