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410 CHAPTER 24 178 Defining Croatia Linguistically, Croatian identity is a very complex issue. It encompasses all three major dialects (čakavian, kajkavian and štokavian), as well as the regionally-marked speech of several quite discrete areas. Medieval Croatia itself ceased to exist as an independent state in 1102, and the separate regions were affiliated variously with Hungary and Venice and eventually (though at different times) became part of Austro-Hungary. The area of Istria, located on the Istrian peninsula in the far northwest, has close ties with Italy and Slovenia, while the north central plains of Slavonia share much of the history (and culture ) of neighboring Hungary. Although the far northern area of the coast is referred to as the Kvarner gulf, the majority of the coastline is known as Dalmatia. The hinterlands of Dalmatia were poor and backward, but both the coastal area and the islands off the coast have a rich cultural history and strong historical and cultural ties with Venice and Italy. Much of coastal Dalmatia ’s sense of history is connected with the literary and cultural glory of Renaissance times. Within Dalmatia, the coastal cities of Rijeka, Zadar, and Split each have their own separate histories (and complex ties with Italy and Venice), and several of the islands off the coast (such as Hvar, Vis and Korčula) have historically functioned almost as civilizations of their own. The town of Dubrovnik was a separate republic, known under the name of Ragusa, and was a major factor in international trade and diplomacy for centuries. Even Croatia proper was divided into two separate regions. One, Military Croatia, comprised the region of the Austrian military border zone known in Croatian as the Krajina; for several hundred years this region (itself part of a larger unit called in German the Militärgrenze) served the critical purpose of keeping the Ottoman Turks at bay. The other, called Civil Croatia, comprised the area around the capital city of Zagreb. Even today, the official Croatian coat of arms contains symbolic representations of the five different regional components (Istria, Slavonia, Dalmatia, Dubrovnik, and Croatia proper). Forging all this into a single language that adequately represents its speakers as a community has been no small task. Croats have always had a strong sense of culture, however: it is partly for this reason that the idea of language has been such a central part of their sense of identity. 179 Language standardization in the pre-Yugoslav Croatian lands Although many consider that language standardization in Croatia began only with the Illyrian movement of the 1830s and 1840s, serious contributions were made considerably before that time. The first printed grammar of Croatian, entitled Institutionae linguae illyricae, was published in 1604 by Bartol Kašić. According to this grammar, the prestige speech of the time was primarily čakavian but contained štokavian elements as well. This descriptive statement established a precedent that many Croats feel is more representative of their linguistic heritage than the uni-dialectal štokavian base which was adopted in the 19th century. The 1836 Illyrian proposal itself was a compromise, in that the choice of štokavian ijekavian was made with a view to eventual South Slavic unity, but the goal of spelling “for the eye rather than the ear” was made in awareness of the literary traditions of past centuries (review [170b]). Another element of the Il- CHAPTER 24 411 lyrian proposal was the retention of archaic case forms. The merger of the dative, locative, and instrumental plural cases into a single form, characteristic of Vuk’s native dialect, was not known in any of the major Croatian-based dialects, and the Illyrians refused to accept these plural case forms. They insisted on the inherited forms (for instance, Dpl. knjigam, Lpl. knjigah, and Ipl. knjigama for the feminine noun knjiga), and became known as the ahavians or ahavci (those who insist on the ending -ah). Indeed, the Illyrians were caught in the middle. Supporters of Vuk Karadžić’s proposals (known as Vukovians, or vukovci) praised them for agreeing to adopt the štokavian ijekavian dialect , but criticized them for wishing to retain archaic case forms and for preferring morphophonemic over phonological spelling (review [164g]). Other Croats, while supporting the Illyrians’ insistence on more “traditional” spelling, criticized them for abandoning the ikavian elements of their cultural heritage (referring, of course, to the many literary works produced in ikavian over the centuries, not only in Dalmatia but also in Slavonia). But the Illyrians could point to one major...

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