Geography News Network

Since Croatia joined the European Union in July 2013, Croatian is now the 24th official language of the Union. But not everybody agrees on what constitutes the Croatian language and whether such a separate language exists at all. What makes a form of speech a distinct language or a mere dialect? Serbian nationalists insist that everybody shares the same language, “Serbian”. But many Croats persist in making their national language, still based on the Shtokavian dialect, as distinct from Serbian as possible. As so often occurs, politics intrudes on language, and in so doing changes the map of linguistic patterns in unexpected ways.To read this article please visit Maps101 or click here!