Language/Croatian/Vocabulary/Etymology-and-Word-Formation

Croatian → Vocabulary → Etymology and Word Formation

Welcome to the lesson on Croatian Vocabulary, specifically on Etymology and Word Formation. In this lesson, we will dive deeper into the origins and derivations of Croatian words, including borrowings and neologisms.

After mastering this lesson, these related pages might interest you: Geography & Business and Professional Vocabulary.

Croatian Language Influences

Croatian is a South Slavic language that has been influenced by other languages throughout history, primarily Latin, German, and Turkish. Due to Croatia's location between Central Europe and the Mediterranean, Croatian has also been influenced by Italian, Greek, and Hungarian.

These external influences are reflected in the Croatian vocabulary.

Borrowed Words

Like many languages, Croatian has borrowed words from other languages. Some of the most common sources of borrowed words are:

• Latinate borrowings from Latin, which was the language of politics, culture, and science in Europe until the 18th century.
• Germanic borrowings from German, which was the dominant language of Central Europe during the Austrian Empire.
• Turkish borrowings from Ottoman Empire, which ruled Croatia for a significant period.

Here are some examples of borrowed words in Croatian:

Croatian	Pronunciation	English
biznis	[ˈbiːznis]	business	galaksija	[ɡǎlaːksija]	galaxy	šljivovica	[ʃʎǐːʋoʋit͡sa]	plum brandy	šah	[ʃâːx]	chess	džep	[dʒêːp]	pocket

Neologisms

A neologism is a newly created word or phrase in a language that has not yet been widely established in common usage. Croatian has developed many neologisms, especially in the fields of technology, science, and culture.

Some of the most recent neologisms in Croatian are:

• tiktokarati - (verb), to waste time on social media, named after TikTok
• covidioci - (noun), people who deny the existence of the COVID-19
• fake news - (noun), fake news

Because Croatian has a large number of familiar words and affixes, it is relatively easy to create new words by combining them.

Linguistic Changes

Croatian has undergone many linguistic changes throughout history. The Croatian language used today evolved from the Štokavian dialect, which was spoken in the western Balkans in the 14th century, and was recognized as the standard Croatian language in the 19th century. The standardization process led to many linguistic changes in Croatian, including spelling changes and a reduction in the number of grammatical cases.

Word Formation in Croatian

In modern Croatian, new words are often formed through the use of affixes, such as prefixes or suffixes, or by compounding existing words.

Prefixes

In Croatian, prefixes are often used to create new words from existing ones. For example, by adding the prefix "ne-" to the verb "razumjeti" (to understand), Croatian language users will get "nerazumjeti" (to misunderstand). Similarly, adding the prefix "pre-" to "topiti" (to melt) provides the verb "pretopiti" (to melt completely).

Other common prefixes used in Croatian include:

• na- (on): nadzemni (surface)
• iz- (from, out of): izgledati (to look like)
• u- (in): uzglavlje (headboard)
• sa- (with): sabrati (to add)

Suffixes

Suffixes are added to the end of words in Croatian to create new words or to modify the meaning of existing ones. The most common suffixes used in Croatian for word formation are:

• -ar: knjižničar (librarian)
• -an: Zadranin (a person from the Croatian city of Zadar)
• -ica: pjesnikinja (female poet)
• -ov: sinov (son's)
• -ica: vojnica (female soldier)

Other suffixes in Croatian include "-stvo" (meaning "-ship") and "-čina" (meaning "-ness"), which can be added to adjectives and noun stems respectively.

Compounding

Compounding is the process of joining two or more words together to form a new word, and it is a common word formation method in Croatian. Compound words in Croatian can be made by compounding nouns as well as noun and adjective, or verb and noun.

Here are some examples of compound words in Croatian:

• željeznička postaja (railway station)
• ljepilo za papir (glue for paper)
• svjetlozeleni (light green)

Conclusion

Understanding the etymology of Croatian words can be beneficial to Learners in that it helps in expanding their understanding of the language. It is also important to note that the creation of words can be traced back to the history of people, culture and society hence there is so much to learn in any language associated with it.

In the next lesson, we will explore Phrasal Verbs and Collocations in Croatian.

Sources

• Croatian linguistic purism - Wikipedia
• The Origin and Nature of Lexical Purism in the Croatian Variant of ...

• Croatian Grammar

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