Language Rights and the Treatment of Croatian on the International Level

Abstract

The idealized Romantic concepts of the nation and the role of national languages are closely tied to the idea of national rights (Pupavac 2012: 62). If we return to the quotation from Fichte mentioned in Chapter 2 (from his Addresses to the German Nation, delivered in Berlin in 1807–1808 while it was occupied by Napoleon’s troops), he explicitly connects language and national identity with political rights in the next clause: ‘it is true beyond doubt that, wherever a separate language is found, there a separate nation exists, which has the right to take independent charge of its affairs and to govern itself (Fichte 1922: 215; emphasis added). The understanding of language as fundamental to cultural and national identity necessarily implies the right of a language community to use its language freely, and to define the language on its own terms. Croatian linguists have frequently made such claims in their arguments defending the idea of a separate Croatian linguistic identity. For example, the Matica hrvatska issued a ‘Memorandum on the Croatian language’ which demanded that all international political, scholarly, and cultural institutions respect ‘the inalienable right of the Croatian people and the Croatian state to their own language and its proper name, that is: to the independent Croatian language’ (Matica hrvatska 1996: 166; see also Matica hrvatska 1991 [1967]: 7; HAZU 1996: 164, 2005: 42, 46, 2007b).