The official language of Croatia is spoken by a little more than six million people in the world. It belongs to the Slavic branch of the Indo-European family of Eurasian languages, and its alphabet is Latin. Croatian is studied by a special science called croatistics.
Some statistics and facts
- Croatian language includes its literary standard and several dialect groups. The most numerous is the Shtokavskaya. Up to 57% of Croatian speakers speak this dialect.
- The literary version of the official language of Croatia is also based on the Shtokav dialects.
- In some cities of the Istrian region bordering Italy, the official status is Italian and all important information is duplicated on it.
- Certain municipalities and even settlements of Croatia recognize the languages of national minorities as official - Czech, Serbian, Ruthenian and Hungarian.
- In total, 96% of the population speaks the state language in Croatia.
Croatistics knows everything
Anyway, about the Croatian language. Its history, according to scientists, goes back to the 9th century, when the locals who spoke Old Church Slavonic began to develop special dialects. Among them, the Chakavsky one stood out, the most ancient written monument of which is considered the Istrian divorce of 1275.
In the 19th century, the Croats attempted a linguistic unification with the Serbs, which resulted in the Shtokav dialect as the linguistic standard. The only difference was the writing. The Serbs used the Cyrillic alphabet, and the Croats chose the Latin alphabet for this purpose.
Education in modern Croatia is conducted in the official language, and as a foreign language, schoolchildren and students can choose one of the European ones. There are several schools in the province of Istria where subjects are taught in Italian. According to statistics, the most popular foreign language is English.
Tourist notes
In the resorts of Croatia, almost the entire population speaks English quite well. You can use it to order at a restaurant or listen to a tour at a local museum. Russian in Croatia is also very common. Part of the older generation remembers him from the time of the existence of socialist Yugoslavia, when Russian was studied by schoolchildren without fail. Other Croats studied in the USSR and remember well the basics of Russian vocabulary and grammar from those times.
