27 srp old island Chakavian
Old island Chakavian
Chakavian is one of the three linguistic idioms of the Croatian language. All three are described in a post of ours. ‘Old island Chakavian’ refers to the (group of) dialects once spoken on the Croatian islands. Its remnants still exist, including on the island of Brač where Drago is from, mainly in local turns of phrase and local island nomenclature. The standard schoolings and professional curriculums of Austro-Hungary, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Tito’s Yugoslavia and now the Republic of Croatia’s have eroded the local and regional variants of Croatian over time. As has the uptake of Italian words on the coast and German words inland, particularly for the technological items and concepts of the 19th and 20th centuries. This century the uptake of foreign words across all three of the idioms is mainly from English. That being said, the idioms are recognizable as separate and continue to pull apart from each other. Arguably, it takes the official and sustained efforts of institutions such as The Institute of Croatian Language and Linguistics and The Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts to prevent them prizing apart all together. More information on the Croatian Language and its idioms can be found here.
