Fonološki prikaz hrvatskih nagovora pape Benedikta XVI.
Phonological Overview of Croatian Addresses by Pope Benedict XVI

Summary/Abstract: Although many people manage to hide their origin when writing – using strictly standard language – that is almost impossible in phonology. Very important conclusions about a human being can be often made on the basis of pronunciation. Those conclusions refer to the age, mother tongue, attitude towards the language he uses – either mother or foreign – places he has visited as well as languages he speaks. Phonology is often unexplored treasury and it leaves visible traces for decades even after disappearance of an area material heritage. After the Pope from Poland, who always held all his addresses and sermons in Croatian when visiting Croatian areas, we did not expect his successor, German – although only in a couple of addresses – such a nice pronunciation of our Croatian language, which should be very hard and strange to him. That brings us to presumption that he was in contact with Croats and that he visited Croatian areas. That and the fact that he has a positive attitude to Croatian language can be seen in his biography. Analysis of his addresses in Croatian, pronunciation of some Italian phonemes and comparison with German pronunciation, brought us to the conclusion that pluricentricity of German language and its pronunciation are a good role model to Croatian language speakers who struggle with classical, acceptable and accepted pronunciation and that besides having a gift for languages, sound knowledge of Italian is a great help in mastering Croatian pronunciation for speakers of other Roman languages and especially English, German and other Germanic languages.

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