Original scientific paper
CURRENT VACILLATION OF THE CROATIAN LANGUAGE NORM IN THE SLAVIC AND EUROPEAN LIGHT
Dalibor Brozović
; Leksikografski zavod "M.Krleža", Zagreb
Abstract
The language norm comprises all fields of standard language, so that one can talk about the orthographic, orthoepic, sound, morphologic, formation as well as syntactic norm, and in a somewhat different manner about the lexical norm on one hand and the graphic one on the other (with the stylistic tolerance ± in case of the lexical norm). In contemporary Croatian language studies there is rather a great variety of attitudes considering the language norm, in fact, all of its sections. The pressure of the unexpert public opinion onto the expert circles is too strong, and the experts themselves are by no means undivided. All sorts of different tendencies are in action. There are those wishing to revive the type of language norm that developed in the 19th century Croatian, in other words to restore the language conceptions according to which the standardization in German, Czech, Hungarian, and some time later in Slovene and Slovak languages took place. The others are prepared to accept the results of language violation going throughout the 20th century, especially during the seven decades of the former Yugoslavia as a fait accompli. Besides, there are both moderate and radical tendencies in each of the directions. Although normative vacillation refers understandably to all the segments of the Croatian language at the general public level, the conflicting standpoints are to be found mostly on the lexical and prthographic issues; there are even certain suggestions for graphic “Europeanization”, which would mean giving up Check and Polish diacritical signs in the Croatian Latin script and introducing various digraphs. The whole situation is additionally aggravated by strong emotional reactions of those who enter the discussion.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
214720
URI
Publication date:
10.10.1998.
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