Sprachinseln (kroatisch)

Abstract

The Croatian linguistic islands (enclaves) can be subdivided into three groups: “Eastern islands in Serbia and Romania”, “Northern islands in Hungary, Slovakia and Austria”, and “Molise Slavic in Italy”. The term Croatian refers to an emigration from the territories that nowadays are inhabited by a population defining themselves as Croatians (in and outside Croatia), but it is often not used by the speakers of the linguistic enclaves as their ethnonym. All diasporical varieties have been influenced by their neighbouring contact languages, in many cases strongly changing the original “Croatian” vocabulary and structure of the minority languages. Nevertheless, it is still possible to classify them by means of the traditional South Slavic criteria like the development of Proto-Slavic *čьтo ‘what’ (Štocavian, Kajkavian, Čakavian), of the Proto-Slavic vowel *ě (Ekavian, Yekavian, and Ikavian), and of word-final *-l (to -l, -o or -a).