LEKSIK HRVATSKE USMENE KNJIŽEVNOSTI
LEXIS OF CROATIAN ORAL LITERATURE

Summary/Abstract: The records of ora/literature of the Croats of Bosnia and Herzegovina bear witness to the centuries-o/d beauty of folk utterance. The lexis is rich, and is character/sed by numerous archaisms and loanwords. The loanwords may be classified into nine groups according to the languages they were borrowed from: Hellenisms, Latinisms, Heb rais ms, Hungarianisms, Turkisms, Arabisms, ltalianisms, Gallicisms, Germanisms. There are most Turkisms, due to the long Turkish rule from 1463 to 1878. ln the 20rh century Turkisms were gradually disappearing while Germanisms were gaining more ground. Jn the southern parts of Herzegovina (Stolac, Ravno, Neum) and in southwestern Bosnia (Livno) we find ltalianisms and Gallicisms. Other loan words occur equally in the whole of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Although there are of late a lot of Anglicisms in the colloquial style of the Croatian Language these loanwords do not appear in the Croatian ora/literature.

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