Original scientific paper
THE FATE OF THE LANGUAGE OF CROAT IN ISTRIA
Stjepan Vukušić
; Faculty of Pedagogy, Pula
Abstract
ln the article the author develops the idea that the fate of the
language of Croats in Istria is part oftheir general historic fate. Prior
to the 1940s the Croats in Istria, not including the area of the
Croatian medieval state which spread to Raša, were a people
without a state or rulers of their own. They did not have their gentry,
middle class nor cities. Thus the only protectors of Croatian
language values, in the encirclement of stronger communities,
were the Croatian priest and the Croatian commoner. In such
circumstances a strong penetration of Roman idioms into the
syntactic frame and lexis of Croatian language systems in Istria
ensued. But in spite of this, the substance and structure of
Croatian idioms had been preserved, as well as the awareness of
the Croatian language, while the amount of Istrian idioms in the
Croatian standard morphological and prosodic structures was
confirmed. Popu lar experience found a strong literary expression
in the works of Mate Balota, and the new language and literary
orientation has led towards tending initial language values and
modern Croatian Iiterariness.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
33190
URI
Publication date:
1.7.1993.
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