ON THE WAY OF WRITING DERIVATIVES FROM FOREIGN PROPER NAMES IN CROATIAN

Abstract

codification, foreign proper names should be written in compliance with etymological principle (Bush), while phonetic principle should be followed in writing their derivatives (buševski, bušizam, bušizirati). It has already been observed that relative adjectives are often written etymologically (bushevski) and sometimes this has even been considered as the correct usage. However, on the basis of a representative corpus of texts, this article shows that in contemporary Croatian the etymologically written adjectives are much more frequent than those written phonetically and that even nouns and verbs derived from foreign proper names are written in accordance with etymological principle (bushizam, bushizirati). In the article it is pointed out that traditional argumentation of applying phonetic principle in these examples has many weak points and that, in its current formulation, it is even irrelevant for orthography. A proposal is made that all classes of derivatives from foreign proper names should be written etymologically. This proposal is formulated and argued in terms of orthography as a linguistic discipline and theory of standard language.