The Position and Development of the Croatian Language from 1918 to 1945

摘要

This paper provides an overview of the position and development of the Croatian language from 1918 to 1945, including government involvement in language, norming work by Croatian linguists, and its stylistically stratified usage. After the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the Croatian language found itself in a new situation, exposed to unitarist tendencies within a South Slavic state. During the Second World War and the fascist Independent State of Croatia, the linguistic freedoms of the population were threatened, and both public and private language use found itself under state scrutiny. Despite this, a number of philological works and handbooks describing the Croatian language were published from 1918 to 1945, and the usage of the Croatian language reached expressive peaks in all functional styles during this period.