engleski

Croatian language in the process of globalization

The aim of this paper will be to show the influence of globalisation and europeanisation on the development of the Croatian language over the past 20 years. Globalisation has brought about the unification of languages and cultures and because of that fact, these processes impact big languages differently from smaller. According to some estimates, in just 100 years approximately 90% of the world’s languages will die out due to globalisation. Because of that, many nations have developed different strategies to protect and preserve their national languages. Croatian belongs to a group of small languages (approximately 4.500.000 speakers in Croatia) and it has been affected in a similar manner to that of other languages of comparable size. By this, we see that English is especially influential, dissemination of a lexical system, development of terminology, especially in regards to legal, political and technical terminology, as well as the development of „bad“ language in media and on Internet etc. But Croatian case also has its specifics. Croatia gained its independence from the former Yugoslavia 20 years ago and Croatian as a separate language became an overriding political issue and vital for Croatia’s sense of national identity. Croatian is very similar to both Serbian and Bosnian and because they were previously presented as one language, the so-called Serbo-Croatian language in both the former Yugoslavia and abroad, Croatian has started to develop its own strategies to highlight its difference from both Serbian and Bosnian and has fought to be denoted as its own separate language.

Croatian language, globalisation, English, language identity

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