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Forged in Blood: Croatian

© Robert Henderson

As I often mention, language labels cannot be defended on scientific grounds. That the issue is fundamentally political is the first principle that linguistics students must internalise if they wish to gain a true understanding of human language. The recent appearance of Croatian on the world stage serves as an excellent example of this principle in action.

Hrvatska (Croatia) is one of the new republics emerging in the former Yugoslav Federation. Like most Yugoslav peoples, Croats define themselves chiefly in historical terms: what faith most practice, which alphabet most prefer, who past enemies have been. By most other measures (language, cuisine, physical appearance) they are nearly identical to their neighbours. However, like the Scottish and Irish, each is convinced that their uniqueness is self-evident and irreducible. And like Scots and Irishmen, they must contend with foreigners who don't see any difference between them, and don't understand why they get so angry when that's pointed out. (None of this is intended to trivialise Balkan nationalism; I'm Scottish myself.)

There is in fact a historical precedent for Croatian claims to a distinct language. In the past, Croatian was a widely-recognised and respected language among Slavic societies, influencing in particular the Czech culture, another westward-oriented Slavic society. Living as they do on the front line between the Roman and Orthodox churches, Croats and their language cast a long shadow in religious commentary and scholarship. However, the currents of human interaction eventually caused all of the Slavic languages in the general vicinity, Orthodox as well as Roman, to blend together into one substantially uniform language.

Between 1918, when Yugoslavia became a nation, until very recently, the language of both the Croats and their neighbours and sworn enemies, the Serbs, was called Serbo-Croatian. (Other Yugoslav peoples, such as the Bosnians and Montenegrins, also speak Serbo-Croatian, and some observers call it "Yugoslavian." However, this term is not accurate.) While some scholars insist that Serbo-Croatian is still the correct term, the bellicose nationalism that characterises many newly-independent Yugoslav peoples has led Hrvatska to declare "Croatian" its official language. Authorities are working to make this new language distinct after the fact, and today, failing to incorporate the latest patriotic innovations, even in casual speech, can get a Croat killed.

Unfortunately for Croatian nationalists (not to mention their victims), any documentable differences between Croatian and Serbian traditions are rarely more than skin deep. Most salient is Croatian's traditional Roman alphabet, though some Croatian communities have historically preferred Glagolitic characters or Cyrillic. Similarly, Serbians traditionally prefer Cyrillic characters, but up till lately, the standard Cyrillic spelling corresponded letter-for-letter with the Roman, and vice versa. This is no longer the case now, as Croats have changed their spelling system expressly to make it differ from Serbian. In any case, I suspect that writing Croatian in Cyrillic characters has become another crime for which Croats may be summarily executed by overzealous neighbours.

The copyright of the article Forged in Blood: Croatian in World Languages is owned by Robert Henderson. Permission to republish Forged in Blood: Croatian in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.