Croatia, 1846

There probably wasn’t really any such thing as “Croatia” back then, but anyway, let us discuss what was happening in the territory we currently refer to as the nation of Croatia.

  • What was the official language (Slavic)?
  • What were the two other languages that were widely spoken everyone or nearly everyone along with the official one (both Slavic)?
  • What was the language most commonly spoken by educated people, especially in cities? For instance, if you went into a bookstore in Zagreb, the books would mostly be in this language (non-Slavic)?
  • What was the language of science and the ultra-elites? As an example of how this language was used, what was the official language for the Croatian Parliament? (non-Slavic)?
  • What was the official religion?

Five questions, five whole questions, now hard could it be?

Have fun kids!

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10 thoughts on “Croatia, 1846”

    1. Only a couple of hundred years before, there was a Croatian Kingdom.

      Anyway, I asked you what languages were being spoken in the area that now encompassed the nation called Croatia.

  1. You got two right.

    One of the three Slavic languages spoken by most everyone was Shtokavian, which would seen be known as Serbo-Croatian. Correct.

    And there were two more. One was actually the official language.

    German was one of the languages, but you had it in the wrong place. I will give it to you anyway. German was the language spoken by almost all educated people. And if you went into a bookstore in Zagreb, most books would be in German. Correct.

    And you still need to get the language that was used by science and officialdom and was also the official language of the Croatian Parliament

  2. I’m basing this on what I know about history and geography, no internet.
    I thought Croatia was part of Austria-Hungry in 1849.
    Croatian Parliament- Italian (or maybe French since that was the language of much of high society back then.)
    The other Slavic languages I have no idea Slovenian is the only one that makes sense based on geography. Maybe Czech?

    1. I will just give you the other two.

      Semi official language was Kaikavian. You probably never heard of it. Officially it is called a Serbo-Croatian dialect but no way is that true. It is a full-blown language of its own, as different as Slovenian. I saw on the Net the other day where a Serb watched a 9 minute video in a Kaikavian dialect and he understood less than 1%. If you have 0% intelligibility, how can that possibly be a dialect. No fucking way.

      The other language was called Chakavian. Once again, they lie and say it is a dialect of Serbo-Croatian, but that’s insane. This also is a full-blown language all of its own. Some Chakavian dialects are so different from Serbo-Croatian that only 4% of their lexicon is shared with Serbo-Croatian. So the other 96% will be totally unfamiliar to them. How can that possibly be a dialect if 96% of the words are different roots?

      Actually, the official language of Croatia in 1846, the language of science, politics and the state, was Latin! And the official language of the Croatian Parliament in 1846 was Latin. Isn’t that incredible?

      1. I would’ve never got those. The Latin thing is a bit nuts although it’s probably one more reason that 1848 happened.

  3. There wasn’t strictly Croatia, there was Kingdom of Croatia and Slavonia.
    Per the comment by Mr. Lindsay, “the other language was chakavian”, it’s a bit of simplification. There’s a whole group of dialects that are under “chakavian” umbrella, but actually have surprisingly little in common (kajkavian dialects have much more in common).

    Also, Dalmatia and Istria were not then parts of the Kingdom, and the official language there wasn’t Latin (what was it?).

    The whole idea of “languages” and “dialects” don’t apply to the South Slavic area. It’s better to say that there are official idioms and colloquial idoms and they diverge a lot at many places.

    The divergence is not surprising, people from Slovenian coast cannot understand people from northeastern Slovenia if they speak their local dialect. But that’s not often mentioned. There are many other small details that are usually missed in the “big picture of three dialects” that was introduced almost 2 centuries ago by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić and stuck without really good reasons.

    lp
    Daniel

  4. As for “What was the language of science and the ultra-elites?”, there wasn’t a lot of sciences and ultra-elites back then. There wasn’t a real university, a real academy of sciences (it was all created around 1870-1880 when the duo Strossmayer-Mažuranić was operating at full steam.) Nobility usually spoke some Croatian vernicular, Hungarian, German, maybe Latin. Even Petar Preradović, who wasn’t strictly from Croatia, wrote personal correspondence in German, and was more fluent in it than in Štokavian…

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