JEZIČNA SUDBINA HRVATA U ISTRI (JEDAN VIDIK ILI SKICA ZA STUDIJU)
THE FATE OF THE LANGUAGE OF CROAT IN ISTRIA

Summary/Abstract: ln the article the author develops the idea that the fate of the language of Croats in Istria is part oftheir general historic fate. Prior to the 1940s the Croats in Istria, not including the area of the Croatian medieval state which spread to Raša, were a people without a state or rulers of their own. They did not have their gentry, middle class nor cities. Thus the only protectors of Croatian language values, in the encirclement of stronger communities, were the Croatian priest and the Croatian commoner. In such circumstances a strong penetration of Roman idioms into the syntactic frame and lexis of Croatian language systems in Istria ensued. But in spite of this, the substance and structure of Croatian idioms had been preserved, as well as the awareness of the Croatian language, while the amount of Istrian idioms in the Croatian standard morphological and prosodic structures was confirmed. Popular experience found a strong literary expression in the works of Mate Balota, and the new language and literary orientation has led towards tending initial language values and modern Croatian Iiterariness.

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