Editing Croats (section)

==Language==
{{further|Croatian language|Shtokavian dialect|Chakavian dialect|Kajkavian dialect}}
[[File:Croatian dialects in Cro and BiH 1.PNG|thumb|255px|upright=1.35|right|Location map of Croatian dialects.]]
[[File:Shtokavian dialects.svg|thumb|255px|Map of [[Shtokavian]] dialects]]
{{listen|filename=Baška_tablet.wav|title=Speech example|description=An example of Old Croatian used in Baška tablet.}}

Croats primarily speak [[Croatian language|Croatian]], a [[South Slavic languages|South Slavic]] lect of the Western South Slavic subgroup. Standard Croatian is considered a [[Variety (linguistics)#Standard varieties|normative variety]] of [[Serbo-Croatian language|Serbo-Croatian]],<ref>David Dalby, ''Linguasphere'' (1999/2000, Linguasphere Observatory), pg. 445, 53-AAA-g, "Srpski+Hrvatski, Serbo-Croatian".</ref><ref>Benjamin W. Fortson IV, ''Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction'', 2nd ed. (2010, Blackwell), pg. 431, "Because of their mutual intelligibility, Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian are usually thought of as constituting one language called Serbo-Croatian."</ref><ref>Václav Blažek, [http://www.phil.muni.cz/linguistica/art/blazek/bla-003.pdf "On the Internal Classification of Indo-European Languages: Survey"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120204101748/http://www.phil.muni.cz/linguistica/art/blazek/bla-003.pdf |date=4 February 2012 }}, phil.muni.cz; retrieved 20 October 2010, pp. 15–16.</ref> and is [[mutually intelligible]] with the other three national standards, [[Serbian language|Serbian]], [[Bosnian language|Bosnian]], and [[Montenegrin language|Montenegrin]] (see [[Comparison of standard Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian]]) which are all based on the [[Shtokavian dialect]].

Besides Shtokavian, Croats from the Adriatic coastline speak the [[Chakavian dialect]], while Croats from the continental northwestern part of Croatia speak the [[Kajkavian dialect]]. Vernacular texts in the Chakavian dialect first appeared in the 13th century, and Shtokavian texts appeared a century later. Standardization began in the period sometimes called "Baroque Slavism" in the first half of the 17th century,<ref>{{cite book|last=Krasić|first=Stjepan|title=Počelo je u Rimu: Katolička obnova i normiranje hrvatskoga jezika u XVII. stoljeću|year=2009|publisher=Matica Hrvatska |isbn=978-953-6316-76-2}}</ref> while some authors date it back to the end of the 15th century.<ref>{{cite book|last=Babić|first=Stjepan|title=Hrvatski jučer i danas|year=1995|isbn=978-953-160-052-1|page=250|publisher=Školske novine }}</ref> The modern Neo-Shtokavian standard that appeared in the mid 18th century was the first unified standard Croatian.<ref>''Journal of Croatian studies'' (1986) 27–30:45</ref> Croatian is written in [[Gaj's Latin alphabet]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.library.yale.edu/slavic/croatia/dictionary/|title=Croatia: Themes, Authors, Books &#124; Yale University Library Slavic and East European Collection|publisher=Library.yale.edu|date=16 November 2009|access-date=27 October 2010|archive-date=29 October 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131029203101/http://www.library.yale.edu/slavic/croatia/dictionary/|url-status=live}}</ref>

The beginning of written Croatian can be traced to the 9th century, when [[Old Church Slavonic]] was adopted as the language of the Divine [[liturgy]] of St. John Chrysostom and the Divine Liturgy of Saint Basil. This language was gradually adapted to non-liturgical purposes and became known as the Croatian version of Old Slavonic. The two variants of the language, liturgical and non-liturgical, continued to be a part of the [[Glagolitic]] service as late as the middle of the 19th century. The earliest known Croatian Church Slavonic Glagolitic are ''Vienna Folios'' from the late 11th/early 12th century.<ref name="encyclopedia">{{cite book|title=Encyclopedia of the languages of Europe|last=Price|first=Glanville|year=1998|publisher=Blackwell Publishers Ltd|location=Oxford, UK|isbn=978-0-631-19286-2|page=425}}</ref> Until the end of the 11th century Croatian medieval texts were written in three scripts: [[Latin script|Latin]], Glagolitic, and [[Croatian Cyrillic|Cyrillic]],<ref>{{cite journal|last=Kapetanović|first=Amir|title=HRVATSKA SREDNJOVJEKOVNA LATINICA|journal=Hrvatska Srednjovjekovna Latinica|year=2005|url=https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:-FfopGzc4sYJ:www.ihjj.hr/images/Izdanja/Rasprave/31_23_susret_Kapetanovic.pdf+amir+kapetanovic+hrvatska+srednjovjekovna+latinica&hl=hr&gl=hr&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESgQtRoCdABc_WUuJP8hR8BPDF7rKm5524iRm7SQ_9NveXR7vd5BLh0Rid3WZJPhnMsIF5E6_9CCZRBjLJTQLfeAdaIyHbrKDTblw4i1J_SKf4qOwi0f5mD4zr6mLIB_Nnhh_1WT&sig=AHIEtbQAFkElGfn2sHCefPWxrMFWYSUbDw|access-date=1 January 2013|archive-date=6 February 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200206110409/https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:-FfopGzc4sYJ:www.ihjj.hr/images/Izdanja/Rasprave/31_23_susret_Kapetanovic.pdf+amir+kapetanovic+hrvatska+srednjovjekovna+latinica&hl=hr&gl=hr&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESgQtRoCdABc_WUuJP8hR8BPDF7rKm5524iRm7SQ_9NveXR7vd5BLh0Rid3WZJPhnMsIF5E6_9CCZRBjLJTQLfeAdaIyHbrKDTblw4i1J_SKf4qOwi0f5mD4zr6mLIB_Nnhh_1WT&sig=AHIEtbQAFkElGfn2sHCefPWxrMFWYSUbDw|url-status=live}}</ref> and also in three languages: Croatian, [[Latin]], and Old Slavonic. The latter developed into what is referred to as the Croatian variant of [[Church Slavonic]] between the 12th and 16th centuries.

The most important early monument of Croatian literacy is the [[Baška tablet]] from the late 11th century.<ref>{{cite journal|url=http://hrcak.srce.hr/index.php?show=clanak&id_clanak_jezik=21348|author=Branko Fučić|title=Najstariji hrvatski glagoljski natpisi|journal=[[Slovo (Zagreb)|Slovo]]|publisher=[[Old Church Slavonic Institute]]|volume=21|date=September 1971|language=hr|access-date=1 January 2013|archive-date=3 July 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160703073152/http://hrcak.srce.hr/index.php?show=clanak&id_clanak_jezik=21348|url-status=live}}</ref> It is a large stone tablet found in the small [[Church of St. Lucy, Jurandvor]] on the Croatian island of [[Krk]] which contains text written mostly in Chakavian, today a dialect of Croatian, and in Shtokavian [[commons:Category:Angular Glagolitic letters|angular Glagolitic]] script. It mentions [[Zvonimir]], the king of Croatia at the time. However, the luxurious and ornate representative texts of Croatian Church Slavonic belong to the later era, when they coexisted with the Croatian vernacular literature. The most notable are the "[[Missal]] of Duke Novak" from the Lika region in northwestern Croatia (1368), "Evangel from Reims" (1395, named after the town of its final destination), [[Hrvoje's Missal]] from Bosnia and Split in Dalmatia (1404).<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.danstopicals.com/hvalovzbornik.htm|title=Hrvoje's Missal ~ 1403–1404|access-date=9 March 2012|archive-date=1 March 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210301202951/http://www.danstopicals.com/hvalovzbornik.htm|url-status=live}}</ref> and the first printed book in Croatian, the Glagolitic [[Missale Romanum Glagolitice]] (1483).<ref name="encyclopedia"/>

During the 13th century Croatian vernacular texts began to appear, the most important among them being the "Istrian Land Survey" of 1275 and the "[[Vinodol Codex]]" of 1288, both written in the Chakavian dialect.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ihjj.hr/oHrJeziku-vinodol-zakon.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070429165710/http://www.ihjj.hr/oHrJeziku-vinodol-zakon.html|archive-date=2007-04-29|title=VINODOLSKI ZAKON (1288)|access-date=9 March 2012}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ihjj.hr/oHrJeziku-Istarski-razvod.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070429165734/http://www.ihjj.hr/oHrJeziku-Istarski-razvod.html|archive-date=2007-04-29|title=Istarski Razvod|access-date=9 March 2012}}</ref> The [[Shtokavian dialect]] literature, based almost exclusively on Chakavian original texts of religious provenance ([[missal]]s, [[breviary|breviaries]], [[Breviary|prayer books]]) appeared almost a century later. The most important purely Shtokavian dialect vernacular text is the [[Vatican Croatian Prayer Book]] (ca. 1400).<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.zupa-svetoga-antuna-bj.hr/duhovna_misao.php?subaction=showfull&id=1151333873&archive=&start_from=&ucat=2&|title=Vatikanski hrvatski molitvenik|access-date=9 March 2012|archive-url=https://wayback.archive-it.org/all/20171011114124/http://zupa-svetoga-antuna-bj.hr/|archive-date=11 October 2017}}</ref>