Croatian language as we know it today belongs to the group of South-Slavic languages, along with Slovene, Bosnian, Serbian, Montenegrin, Macedonian and Bulgarian, but throughout the history the language has not always been called Croatian. Instead it was called by various names souch as Illyrian, Slovin, Dalmatian and others.

Interesting fact, for example, is that Croatian was the only European language that was written in three different scripts: angular Glagolitic, Western Cyrillic and Latin. With time the Latin script prevailed, but even in the 19th century we can still find some documents written in Glagolitic script.

Croatian literature - as well as its entire linguistic and cultural tradition - is very rich in content, and the course of its formation and development is complex and involved. As Branko Vodnik, the Croatian writter and historian,100 years ago already correctly noticed it is old and great and rich, like that of no other nation so small in Europe. It was formed in specific circumstances and in an environment where the East and West were fighting for primacy, exposed to the powerful influences of both Byzantium and the Western European Enlightment in the Middle Ages, and in the Modern Age caught between the Renaissance in the south and the Protestant Reformation in the north. Despite all this, it formed its own specific literature, preserving all its own characteristics, giving in this way its own and unique imprint to the history of European civilization.

 

 

 

 

Reference to Krasić Stjepan. The international scope of the national language. Matica hrvatska. Dubrovnik. 2011