The Language of the Burgenland Croats

Burgenland Croatian is an Indo-European language of the family of Slavic languages. It is a regional variant of Croatian and therefore belongs to the South Slavic language group. Today, approximately 50,000 to 70,000 people in Burgenland and bordering areas (western Hungary, Slovakia, and Vienna) use Burgenland Croatian as colloquial language. Furthermore, there are still a few families in eastern Lower Austria and Southern Moravia in which the language is still used.
After the settlement in the 16th century, the Burgenland Croats experienced an independent historical development. For this reason, Burgenland Croatian developed its own regional written language apart from the standard version of the language used in Croatia. Nonetheless, communication between the two presents few difficulties. When one knows Burgenland Croatian, all of the other South Slavic languages (Serbian, Slovenian, Macedonian, and Bulgarian) are easily accessible, as are Czech and Slovak as well.

Burgenland Croatian is based primarily on so-called Cakavian dialect, one of the main dialects of Croatian. In addition, in Burgenland Croatian there are also elements of the other two main dialects, Kajkavian and Shtokavian.

Burgenland Croatian is characterized by many archaic expressions and language forms. Over the centuries, many loanwords and syntactic elements were taken from Hungarian, German and Slovak.

The dominance of local dialects in everyday speech is typical of Burgenland Croatian. The standardized written form of Burgenland Croatian is used primarily in the media and official texts, and less so in the spoken language.

Burgenland Croatian is accepted as an official language of the Republic of Austria in six districts of Burgenland (30 communities) and before the higher-ranking authorities in Vienna and Graz. Instruction is offered at the primarily schools of the bilingual communities of Burgenland and western Hungary, at bilingual lower secondary schools and polytechnic education programs, and at some middle schools; it is also taught at the University of Vienna and the Pedagogical Academy of Eisenstadt.

Burgenland Croatian is one of the officially used languages in the liturgy of the Catholic Church in the Diocese of Eisenstadt.

The written tradition of Burgenland Croatian dates back to the beginning of the 17th century. Modern Burgenland Croatian was codified in the German/Burgenland-Croatian Dictionary of 1982. The language course "Gradišcanskohrvatski glasi" offers a point of entry into study of the language. This course consists of three volumes and two CDs of a listen-and-learn approach, by way of examples, and also provides an overview of the literature and music of the Burgenland Croats.