Professional paper

Croatian Language and Culture from Macedonian Perspective

Tomislav Ćužić

Abstract

Languages, particularly less frequently spoken ones and those that could be described
as ˝new˝, are confirmed, together with the culture that they promulgate, through the context
of otherness, i.e. the prism through which their identities are recognised (and acknowledged)
from the outside. Both Croatian and Macedonian can be described as ˝small˝, i.e. less
widespread languages and, although Croatian may still be occasionally regarded as a ˝new˝
language in a certain sense, they are both characterised by a pre-standard and standard historicity.
The aim of this paper is to present the results of a poll conducted among speakers of Macedonian, i.e. Macedonian students of the ˝Blaže Koneski˝ Faculty who had, at the
time of the conduction of the poll, started attending lessons in the elective course Croatian
Language 1. The poll encompassed two aspects: the first pertained to issues relating to the
Croatian language, the second – in light of the importance of the component of culture both
for the acquisition and the selection of a particular language – included questions on Croatian
culture. More specifically, the study focused on the students’ motivations for selecting this
course, their self-evaluation of their proficiency in Croatian and their basic knowledge or
views related to Croatia and the Croatian language, while also gathering students’ associations
on Croatia and distinguished Croats and students’ habits relating to the consumption
of Croatian media. Finally, their ability of distinguishing between Croatian and Serbian
(the latter of which is geographically more proximate to the students) was tested on the
example of several sentences. The conclusion was that Macedonian students, owing to their
occasional consumption of Croatian media, are largely informed on basic facts pertaining
to Croatia, and that their views of Croatia are largely positive, though stereotypical. The
students’ knowledge of Croatian is quite good and, although they all agree on Croatian being
a distinct language from Serbian, they are unaware of some of the differences between the
two, which comes as no surprise. Such positive views most likely had contributed to the
students opting for Croatian as their foreign language of choice.

Keywords

Hrčak ID:

208536

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/208536

Publication date:

1.4.2018.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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