Croatian Linguistic Purism - Historical Overview

Historical Overview

Croatian literature across the centuries shows tendency to cherish Slavic words and coinage, and to expel "foreign" borrowings. Renown Croatian philologist Zlatko Vince articulates this tendency as follows:

Croatian literature even in the old ages tends to stay away from barbarisms and foreign words, a certain conscious care in the works of literature is felt when it comes to language selection. In the course of centuries hence the tendency is formed for literary language to be as much as pure and selective as possible. One thing is the colloquial language, often ridden with foreign words, and entirely different thing is the language of literary works in which tendency for language purity arises. The way and the extent to which that need could be satisfied is different in various periods, but the tendency for as pure and selective language can be noted even in Old Dubrovnik writers, and in Vitezović. All the way to pre-Illyrian and Illyrian efforts and by the end of the XIX. century, when the osmotic influence of traditional Croatian literary heritage does not cease to stop...That care of language purity which characterizes Croatian literary expression even in the XIX. century, remains immanent in later periods...Literary language of the Croats is in fact organic continuation of older state of affairs in Croatian literature.

In a session regarding the issue of the usage for foreign words in Croatian language, as well on the problems of ongoing projects of coining Slavic replacements for established technical terms by combined efforts of linguists and specialists, the central body for the standardisation of Croatian language—the Council for Standard Croatian Language Norm—presents the historical overview of the issue as follows:

The attitude towards foreign words in Croatian literary language is multi-dimensional in many respects. The origin of Croatian language culture, when writing in Slavic, is determined by the tradition of Church Slavonic literature. Originating from copies of Ancient Greek liturgical texts, it places a distinct emphasis to Slavic expressive devices, and only exceptionally non-Slavic words are being borrowed. That tendency has been continued in Croatian language culture to this day. The usage of Croatian words, if necessary even in a modified meaning, or Croatian coinages, if they're considered to be successful, represents higher merit then mere mechanical borrowing of foreign expressive devices. That way the Croatian word is more solemn and formal (glazba, mirovina, redarstvenik), and the loanword is more relaxing and less demanding (muzika, penzija, policajac). This dimension of purism is incorporated into the very foundations of Croatian language sensitivity.