Linguistic politics in ex-Yugoslavia: the case of purism in Croatia
(2013) Transitions : ex-revue des pays de l’est — Vol. The Post-Yugoslav Space Politics and Economics, n° 52-2, p. 53-70 (2013)
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- Abstract
- Linguistic purification has existed in Croatia before its political independence in 1991, as will be discussed in §2. In the 19th century, purification was focused against non-Slavic languages such as German, Hungarian, Latin and Italian. After the Yugoslav wars it focused against “Serbianisms”. By this term, Croatian purists designate the words that entered the Croatian language during the years of common state history with the Serbian people. Serbianisms were the main occupation for some Croatian linguists from 1990 until 2000. They proposed (and sometimes even imposed) discarding these and replacing them with neologisms. This paper addresses the delicate question of what happens when words commonly used by a majority of the population suddenly become “foreign” words.
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Prsir, T. (2013). Linguistic politics in ex-Yugoslavia: the case of purism in Croatia. Transitions : ex-revue des pays de l’est, The Post-Yugoslav Space Politics and Economics(52-2), 53-70. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/65237 (Original work published 2013)