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Central South Slavic languages and dialects (Central South Slavic diasystem) Serbian · Croatian · Bosnian Serbo-Croat · Bunjevac · Montenegrin · Šokac Shtokavian · Kajkavian · Chakavian · Torlak Romano-Serbian · Slavoserbian · Šatrovački · Našinski Burgenland Croatian · Molise Croatian · Užice speech Differences between Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian v • d • e

Burgenland Croatian language or dialect (gradišćanskohrvatski jezik) belongs to the South Slavic branch of the Slavic languages. It is a regional language variant of the Croatian language spoken in Austria, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia. Burgenland Croatian is recognized as a minority language in the Austrian province of Burgenland where it is spoken by 19,412 people according to official reports (2001). In Austria, Burgenland Croatian speakers also live in Vienna and Graz.

Smaller Croatian minorities in western Hungary, southwestern Slovakia and southern Czech Republic are often also called Burgenland Croats. They use the Burgenland Croatian written language and are historically and culturally closely connected to the Austrian Croats. The representatives of the Burgenland Croats estimate their total number in all three countries and emigration at around 70,000.

Contents 1 History 2 Written language 3 Spoken language 4 External links

Burgenland Croatian was the language of Croatian refugees who fled Croatia during the Turkish Wars and settled in the western part of what was then Hungary, the area where they still live. Burgenland Croats included speakers of all three dialects of the Croatian language (Shtokavian, Chakavian and Kajkavian), with the majority being the Chakavians who originally stem from the northern Adriatic coast.

Burgenland Croats didn't take part in the shaping of the present Croatian standard language in the 19th century. Instead, they constructed their own written standard based mainly on the local Chakavian speech and adopted Croatian alphabet, a modified Latin alphabet, as their script.

It is still a matter of debate whether Burgenland Croatian should be classified as a Slavic micro-language of its own. Burgenland Croatian dialects are mostly viewed as isolated dialects of the Croatian language.

Burgenland Croatian written language is based mainly on the local Chakavian speeches with some influences from the other Croatian dialects spoken in Burgenland. It uses the Latin alphabet with the same diacritical modifiers as the Croatian alphabet. In the course of language development it acquired some of its own specialised vocabulary, sometimes different from that used in the standard Croatian.

Croats living in the south of Burgenland speak mainly Shtokavian dialect, those in the central part Kajkavian dialect, and in the north (close to Vienna) Chakavian dialect.

• Burgenland Croatian Center in Vienna (English, Croatian and German)
• Scientific Institute of the Burgenland Croats (Croatian and German)
• Croatian Cultural and Documentation Center in Eisenstadt/Željezno (German)

Slavic languages and dialects
East Slavic	Belarusian | Old East Slavic† | Old Novgorod dialect† | Russian | Rusyn (Carpathians) | Ruthenian† | Ukrainian
West Slavic	Czech | Kashubian | Knaanic† | Lower Sorbian | Pannonian Rusyn | Polabian† | Polish | Pomeranian† | Slovak | Slovincian† | Upper Sorbian
South Slavic	Banat Bulgarian | Bulgarian | Church Slavic | Macedonian | Old Church Slavonic† | Serbo-Croatian (Bosnian, Bunjevac, Croatian, Montenegrin, Serbian, Šokac) | Slavic (Greece) | Slovenian
Other	Proto-Slavic† | Russenorsk† | Slavoserbian† | Slovio
	†Extinct