Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.22210/jezik.2024.71.07
The De‐Croatianized Internet
Tihomir Živić
orcid.org/0000-0002-6688-6882
; Fakultet agrobiotehničkih znanosti
Abstract
The paper inventories and describes redundant borrowings from the English language,
that is, such loanwords in the texts written in the functional journalistic style, observing
with disapproval an increasingly noticeable de‐Croatianization of a part of the Internet as
a component of the Croatian public space. Despite this, however, the original studied texts
from the selected Croatian media websites, especially those owned by the newspapers, were
used exclusively as a material for exemplifying such unnecessary borrowings, not for the
purpose of describing the features of functional journalistic style, since it is believed, with
detachment in relation to the presentation of a way of writing for the newspapers, that Anglicisms
in the press have been significantly co‐shaping our language education for a long
time, precisely because of the readership rating, mass expansion, and those papers’ enormous
influence. Simultaneously, in this paper, the occurrences of this mixed Croato‐English
language and its media Newspeak are satirically called “Cronglish”. In order to detect the
percentage of redundant Cronglish entries in the examined texts written by the ten Croatian
media that have their Web portals headquartered in Zagreb and a nationwide reach, the
texts were subjected to a one‐month observation (from December 1 to 31, 2023), notation,
and processing of tokens using the Sketch Engine computer software. It is concluded that
Cronglish represents a danger for the entirety of the Croatian language, with a possibility
to lead to its incomplete connection, especially with regard to the older generations, who
are less familiar with the English language, and this analysis also opposes to the notion
that certain concepts are allegedly inappropriately expressible in Croatian, emphasizing a
rich lexicographic thesaurus of the Croatian language and its ability to create neologisms.
Therefore, the preservation of education in Croatian as a mother tongue is essential in order
to maintain cultural diversity, promote educational and cognitive development, improve
social cohesion, and protect past knowledge and heritage, and this is a responsibility we
bear not only toward ourselves and our ancestors but also toward future generations and global community; namely, by respecting and preserving our linguistic heritage, we pay
homage to a rich fabric of human culture and guarantee that many of its subtleties are not
lost due to the unifying forces of globalization.
Keywords
globalization, Anglicisms; functional journalistic style; media; Web portals; Cronglish; de‐Croatianization
Hrčak ID:
320994
URI
Publication date:
1.4.2024.
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