What language is spoken in Croatia?

The major cities in northern Croatia are located in what was historically a Kajkavian-speaking area, mainly Zagreb, Koprivnica, Krapina, Križevci, Varaždin, Čakovec. The typical archaic Kajkavian is today spoken mainly in Hrvatsko Zagorje hills and Međimurje plain, and in adjacent areas of northwestern Croatia where immigrants and the Štokavian standard had much less influence. The most peculiar Kajkavian dialect "(Baegnunski)" is spoken in Bednja in northernmost Croatia. Many of northern Croatian urban areas today are partly Štokavianized due to the influence of the standard language and immigration of Štokavian speakers.

Kajkavian

Kajkavian ("Kajkavian" noun: "kajkavščina"; "Shtokavian" adjective: "kajkavski", noun: "kajkavica" or "kajkavština" ) is a South Slavic regiolect or language spoken primarily by Croats in much of Central Croatia, Gorski Kotar and northern Istria.

There are differing opinions over whether Kajkavian is best considered a dialect of Serbo-Croatian or a fully-fledged language of its own, as it is only partially mutually intelligible with other dialects and bears more similarities to Slovene (especially the Prekmurje dialect) than to the prestige Shtokavian dialect (which forms the basis of the national normative registers of Serbo-Croatian) in terms of phonology and vocabulary. Notable Croatian linguists consider Kajkavian to be a language in its own right, with its own established dialects and documented literature. Croatian linguist Stjepan Ivšić has used Kajkavian vocabulary and accentuation, which significantly differs from that of Shtokavian, as evidence. Furthermore, there is no clear demarcation between Slovene dialects and Kajkavian. Thus, it has low mutual intelligibility with Shtokavian, on which Croatia's standard language is based. Linguist Josip Silić, one of the main initiators behind the standardisation of the Croatian language, also regards Kajkavian as a distinct language by dint of its having significantly different morphology, syntax and phonology from the official Shtokavian-based standard. As of 2015, historic Literary Kajkavian has a separate language ISO 639-3 code – "kjv". Active attempts are being made by some organizations to widen its recognition and status, which has thus far included introduction of elective school subjects in Kajkavian in some parts of Croatia.

The term Kajkavian stems from the interrogative pronoun "kaj" ("what"). The other main dialects of Serbo-Croatian also derive their name from their reflex of the interrogative pronoun. However, the pronouns are only general pointers and do not serve as actual identifiers of the respective dialects. Certain Kajkavian dialects use the interrogative pronoun "ča", the one that is usually used in Chakavian. The pronouns these dialects are named after are merely the most common one in that dialect.

Outside Croatia's northernmost regions, Kajkavian is also spoken in Austrian Burgenland and a number of enclaves in Hungary along the Austrian and Croatian border and in Romania. Although speakers of Kajkavian are primarily Croats, and Kajkavian is generally considered a dialect of Serbo-Croatian, its closest relative is the Slovene language, followed by Chakavian and then Shtokavian. Kajkavian is part of a dialect continuum with Slovene and Chakavian.

Historically, the classification of Kajkavian has been a subject of much debate regarding both the question of whether it ought to be considered a dialect or a language, as well as the question of what its relation is to neighboring vernaculars.

Autonyms used throughout history by various Kajkavian writers have been manifold, ranging from "Slavic" ("slavonski", "slovenski", "slovinski") to "Croatian" ("horvatski") or "Illyrian" ("illirski"). The naming went through several phases, with the Slavic-based name initially being dominant. Over time, the name "Croatian" started gaining ground mainly during the 17th century, and by the beginning of the 18th century, it had supplanted the older name "Slavic". The name also followed the same evolution in neighboring Slovene Prekmurje, although there the name "Slovene-Croatian" ("slovensko-horvatski") existed as well. The actual term Kajkavian ("kajkavski") is today accepted by its speakers in Croatia.

The problem with classifying Kajkavian within South Slavic stems in part from its structural differences from neighboring Shtokavian speeches as well as its historical closeness to Slovene speeches. Some Slavists maintain that when the separation of Western South Slavic speeches happened, they separated into four divergent groups — Shtokavian, Chakavian, Kajkavian and Slovene. As a result of this, throughout history Kajkavian has often been categorized differently than today. It was considered by many to be either a separate node altogether or a node categorized together with Slovene (then under a different name, "Kranjski"). Furthermore, no isoglosses exist that would separate all Slovene speeches from all Serbo-Croatian speeches. Nor do innovations exist common to Kajkavian, Chakavian, and Shtokavian that would separate them from Slovene.

The Kajkavian speech area borders in the northwest on the Slovene language and in the northeast on the Hungarian language. In the east and southeast it is bordered by Shtokavian dialects roughly along a line that used to serve as the border between Civil Croatia and the Habsburg Military Frontier. Finally, in the southwest it borders Chakavian along the Kupa and Dobra rivers. It is thought that historically these borders extended further to the south and east. For example, the eastern border is thought to have extended at least well into modern-day Slavonia to the area around the town of Pakrac. Some historical toponyms suggest a slightly larger extent.

The Croatian capital, Zagreb, has historically been a Kajkavian-speaking area, and Kajkavian is still in use by its older and (to a lesser extent) by its younger population. Modern Zagreb speech has come under considerable influence from Shtokavian. The vast intermingling of Kajkavian and standard Shtokavian in Zagreb and its surroundings has led to problems in defining the underlying structure of those speech-groups. As a result, many of the urban speeches (but not rural ones) have been labelled either "Kajkavian koine" or "Kajkavian–Shtokavian" rather than Kajkavian or Shtokavian. Additionally, the forms of speech in use exhibit significant sociolinguistic variation. Research suggests that younger Zagreb-born speakers of the Kajkavian koine tend to consciously use more Kajkavian features when speaking to older people, showing that such features are still in their linguistic inventory even if not used at all times. However, the Kajkavian koine is distinct from Kajkavian as spoken in non-urban areas, and the mixing of Shtokavian and Kajkavian outside of urban settings is much rarer and less developed. The Kajkavian koine has also been named "Zagreb Shtokavian" by some.

As a result of the previously mentioned mixing of dialects, various Kajkavian features and characteristics have found their way into the standard Shtokavian ("standard Croatian") spoken in those areas. For example, some of the prominent features are the fixed stress-based accentual system without distinctive lengths, the merger of /č/ and /ć/ and of /dž/ and /đ/, vocabulary differences as well as a different place of stress in words. The Zagreb variety of Shtokavian is considered by some to enjoy parallel prestige with the prescribed Shtokavian variety. Because of that, speakers whose native speech is closer to the standard variety often end up adopting the Zagreb speech for various reasons.

Kajkavian is closely related to Slovene - and to Prekmurje Slovene in particular. Higher amounts of correspondences between the two exist in inflection and vocabulary. The speakers of the Prekmurje dialect are Slovenes and Hungarian Slovenes who belonged to the Archdiocese of Zagreb during the Habsburg era (until 1918). They used Kajkavian as their liturgical language, and by the 18th century, Kajkavian had become the standard language of Prekmurje. Moreover, literary Kajkavian was also used in neighboring Slovene Styria during the 17th and 18th centuries, and in parts of it, education was conducted in Kajkavian.

As a result of various factors, Kajkavian has numerous differences compared to Shtokavian:In addition to the above list of characteristics that set Kajkavian apart from Shtokavian, research suggests possible a closer relation with Kajkavian and the Slovak language, especially with the Central Slovak dialects upon which standard Slovak is based. As modern-day Hungary used to be populated by Slavic-speaking peoples prior to the arrival of Hungarians, there have been hypotheses on possible common innovations of future West and South Slavic speakers of that area. Kajkavian is the most prominent of the South Slavic speeches in sharing the most features that could potentially be common Pannonian innovations.

Some Kajkavian words bear a closer resemblance to other Slavic languages such as Russian than they do to Shtokavian or Chakavian. For instance "gda" seems to be at first glance unrelated to "kada", however when compared to Russian "когда", Slovene "kdaj", or Prekmurje Slovene "gda", "kda", the relationship becomes apparent. Kajkavian "kak" ("how") and "tak" ("so") are exactly like their Russian cognates and Prekmurje Slovene compared to Shtokavian, Chakavian, and standard Slovene "kako" and "tako". (This vowel loss occurred in most other Slavic languages; Shtokavian is a notable exception, whereas the same feature in Macedonian is probably not due to Serbo-Croatian influence because the word is preserved in the same form in Bulgarian, to which Macedonian is much more closely related than to Serbo-Croatian.)
Linguistic investigation begun during the 19th century, although the research itself often ended in non-linguistic or outdated conclusions. Since that was the age of national revivals across Europe as well as the South Slavic lands, the research was steered by national narratives. Within that framework, Slovene philologists such as Franc Miklošič and Jernej Kopitar attempted to reinforce the idea of Slovene and Kajkavian unity and asserted that Kajkavian speakers are Slovenes. On the other hand, Josef Dobrovský also claimed linguistic and national unity between the two groups but under the Croatian ethnonym.

The first modern dialectal investigations of Kajkavian started at the end of the 19th century. The Ukrainian philologist A. M. Lukjanenko wrote the first comprehensive monograph on Kajkavian (titled "Kajkavskoe narečie" meaning "The Kajkavian dialect") in Russian in 1905. Kajkavian dialects have been classified along various criteria: for instance Serbian philologist Aleksandar Belić divided (1927) the Kajkavian dialect according to the reflexes of Proto-Slavic phonemes /tj/ and /dj/ into three subdialects: eastern, northwestern and southwestern.

However, later investigations did not corroborate Belić's division. Contemporary Kajkavian dialectology begins with Croatian philologist Stjepan Ivšić's work "Jezik Hrvata kajkavaca" ("The Language of Kajkavian Croats", 1936), which highlighted accentual characteristics. Due to the great diversity within Kajkavian primarily in phonetics, phonology, and morphology, the Kajkavian dialect atlas features a large number of subdialects: from four identified by Ivšić to six proposed by Croatian linguist Brozović (formerly the accepted division) all the way up to fifteen according to a monograph by Croatian linguist Mijo Lončarić (1995).

Kajkavian is mainly spoken in northern and northwestern Croatia. The mixed half-Kajkavian towns along the eastern and southern edge of the Kajkavian-speaking area are Pitomača, Čazma, Kutina, Popovača, Sunja, Petrinja, Martinska Ves, Ozalj, Ogulin, Fužine, and Čabar, including newer Štokavian enclaves of Bjelovar, Sisak, Glina, Dubrava, Zagreb and Novi Zagreb. The southernmost Kajkavian villages are Krapje at Jasenovac; and Pavušek, Dvorišče and Hrvatsko selo in Zrinska Gora (R. Fureš & A. Jembrih: "Kajkavski u povijesnom i sadašnjem obzorju" p. 548, Zabok 2006).

The major cities in northern Croatia are located in what was historically a Kajkavian-speaking area, mainly Zagreb, Koprivnica, Krapina, Križevci, Varaždin, Čakovec. The typical archaic Kajkavian is today spoken mainly in Hrvatsko Zagorje hills and Međimurje plain, and in adjacent areas of northwestern Croatia where immigrants and the Štokavian standard had much less influence. The most peculiar Kajkavian dialect "(Baegnunski)" is spoken in Bednja in northernmost Croatia. Many of northern Croatian urban areas today are partly Štokavianized due to the influence of the standard language and immigration of Štokavian speakers.

Other southeastern people who immigrate to Zagreb from Štokavian territories often pick up rare elements of Kajkavian in order to assimilate, notably the pronoun "kaj" instead of "što" and the extended use of future anterior ("futur drugi"), but they never adapt well because of alien eastern accents and ignoring Kajkavian-Čakavian archaisms and syntax.

Vowels:
consonants:

Writings that are judged by some as being distinctly Kajkavian can be dated to around the 12th century. The first comprehensive works in Kajkavian started to appear during the 16th century at a time when Central Croatia gained prominence due to the geopolitical environment since it was free from Ottoman occupation. The most notable work of that era was Ivanuš Pergošić's "Decretum", released in 1574. "Decretum" was a translation of István Werbőczy's "Tripartitum".

At the same time, many Protestant writers of the Slovene lands also released their works in Kajkavian in order to reach a wider audience, while also using some Kajkavian features in their native writings. During that time, the autonym used by the writers was usually "slovinski" (Slavic), "horvatski" (Croatian) or "ilirski" (Illyrian).

After that, numerous works appeared in the Kajkavian literary language: chronicles by Vramec, liturgical works by Ratkaj, Habdelić, Mulih; poetry by Ana Katarina Zrinska and Fran Krsto Frankopan, and a dramatic opus by Tituš Brezovački. Kajkavian-based are important lexicographic works like Jambrešić's "Dictionar", 1670, and the monumental (2,000 pages and 50,000 words) Latin-Kajkavian-Latin dictionary "Gazophylacium" (including also some Chakavian and Shtokavian words marked as such) by Ivan Belostenec (posthumously, 1740). Miroslav Krleža's poetic work "Balade Petrice Kerempuha" drew heavily on Belostenec's dictionary. Kajkavian grammars include Kornig's, 1795, Matijević's, 1810 and Đurkovečki's, 1837.

During that time, the Kajkavian literary language was the dominant written form in its spoken area along with Latin and German. Until Ljudevit Gaj's attempts to modernize the spelling, Kajkavian was written using Hungarian spelling conventions. Kajkavian began to lose its status during the Croatian National Revival in mid-19th Century when the leaders of the Illyrian movement opted to use the Shtokavian dialect as the basis for the future South Slavic standard language, the reason being that it had the highest number of speakers. Initially, the choice of Shtokavian was accepted even among Slovene intellectuals, but later it fell out of favor. The Zagreb linguistic school was opposed to the course that the standardization process took. Namely, it had almost completely ignored Kajkavian (and Chakavian) dialects which was contrary to the original vision of Zagreb school. With the notable exception of vocabulary influence of Kajkavian on the standard Croatian register (but not the Serbian one), there was very little to no input from other non-Shtokavian dialects. Instead, the opposite was done, with some modern-day linguists calling the process of 19th-century standardization an event of "neo-Shtokavian purism" and a "purge of non-Shtokavian elements".

Early 20th century witnessed a drastic increase in released Kajkavian literature, although by then it had become part of what was considered Croatian dialectal poetry with no pretense of serving as a standard written form. The most notable writers of this period were among others, Antun Gustav Matoš, Miroslav Krleža, Ivan Goran Kovačić, Dragutin Domjanić and Nikola Pavić.

Kajkavian lexical treasure is being published by the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts in "Rječnik hrvatskoga kajkavskoga književnoga jezika"/"Dictionary of the Croatian Kajkavian Literary Language", 8 volumes (1999).

Later, Dario Vid Balog, actor, linguist and writer translated the New Testament in Kajkavian.

In 2018 is published the Kajkavian translation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's "The Little Prince" (Le Petit Prince) by Kajkavsko spravišče aka "Mali kralevič."
Below are examples of the Lord's Prayer in the Croatian variant of Shtokavian, literary Kajkavian and a Međimurje variant of the Kajkavian dialect.

What follows is a comparison of some words in Kajkavian, Shtokavian Serbo-Croatian and Slovene along with their English translations. Kajkavian is lexically much closer to Slovene than to the Shtokavian dialect, which is considered by some another argument that Kajkavian can not be a dialect of Serbo-Croatian. The Kajkavian words are given in their most common orthographic form. Shtokavian words are given in their standard Croatian form. In cases where the place of accent or stress differs, the syllable with the stress or accent is indicated in bold. Words that are the same in all three are not listed. Loanwords are also not listed.

During Yugoslavia in the 20th century, Kajkavian was mostly restricted to private communication, poetry and folklore. With the recent regional democratizing and cultural revival beginning in the 1990s, Kajkavian partly regained its former half-public position chiefly in Zagorje and Varaždin Counties and local towns, where there is now some public media e.g.:

As of 2009, the Italian language is officially used in twenty cities and municipalities and ten other settlements in Croatia, according to the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. It is an officially recognized minority language in Istria County, where it is spoken by 6.83% of the population on the aggregate and closer to 50% of the population in certain subdivisions.

Italian language in Croatia

The Italian language is an official minority language in Croatia, with many schools and public announcements published in both languages. Croatia's proximity and cultural connections to Italy have led to a relatively large presence of Italians in Croatia. Italians were recognized as a state minority in the Croatian Constitution in two sections: Istrian Italians and Dalmatian Italians. Although only 0.43% of the total population is legally Italian, many more are ethnically Italian and a large percentage of Croatians speak Italian, in addition to Croatian.

The 2011 Census in Croatia reported 17,807 ethnic Italians in the country (some 0.42% of the total population). Ethnologue reported 70,000 persons whose first language is Italian or Venetian in 1998 (referring to Eugen Marinov's 1998 data). This population was composed of 30,000 ethnic Italians and 40,000 ethnic Croats and persons declared regionally ("as Istrians"). Native Italian speakers are largely concentrated along the western coast of peninsula Istria. Because of Croatian trade and tourist relations with Italy, many Croats have some knowledge of the language (mostly in the service and tourist industries).

In Istrian contexts the word "Italian" can just as easily refer to autochthonous speakers of the Venetian language, who were present in the region before the inception of the Venetian Republic and of the Istriot language, the oldest spoken language in Istria, dating back to the Romans and now spoken in the south west of Istria in Rovigno, Valle, Dignano, Gallesano, Fasana, Valbandon, Sissano and the surroundings of Pola.

The term may sometimes refer to a descendant of colonized persons during the Benito Mussolini period (during that period immigration in Istria, Zadar/Zara and northern Adriatic islands, given to Italy after World War I, was promoted, 44,000 according to Žerjavić,). It can also refer to Istrian Slavs who adopted Italian culture as they moved from rural to urban areas, or from the farms into the bourgeoisie.

In the past the language had a much larger population than it does now: the Italian (Venetian speaking) population constituted (according to the Italian linguist Bartoli) nearly one third of Dalmatians in the second half of the 18th century. According to the Austrian census it had decreased from 22% in 1816 to 12.5% in 1853, down to a mere 2.9% in 1910.

After World War I Italy obtained Zara and some northern Dalmatian islands (Cherso and Lussino). During World War II the Kingdom of Italy annexed most of Dalmatia to the newly created "Governatorato di Dalmazia". In 1942, 4020 Italians lived in these newly annexed areas: 2220 in Spalato (Split), 300 in Sebenico (Sibenik), 500 in Cattaro (Kotor) and 1000 in Veglia (Krk).

Furthermore, after World War I and the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, 10,000 Italians in the Governatorato took Yugoslav citizenship so they could remain and be accepted by the new Yugoslavian state.

In 1939 Italy conducted a covert census of the non-Italian population (Croats and Slovenes) in Istria, Kvarner, Zadar, Trieste and Gorizia. After the census, Italian authorities publicly stated that the Italian speaking population in those areas had increased. However, data proved that the share of Croatian speakers did not diminish in that period.

For various reasons—mainly related to nationalism and armed conflict—the numbers of Italian speakers in Croatia declined during the 20th century, especially after the Second World War in a period known as the Istrian exodus, when about 90% Italian-speaking Istrians and Dalmatians left Yugoslav dominated areas in the eastern Adriatic. The 2001 census in Croatia reported 19,636 ethnic Italians in the country.

In Istria County, local government services are provided in Croatian and Italian, including the tri-lingual (Croatian, Italian and English) official government website. There are some Italian-language schools in the region of Istria: primary schools in Buje/Buie, Umag/Umago, Novigrad/Cittanova d'Istria, Poreč/Parenzo, and secondary schools in Pula/Pola and Rovinj/Rovigno.

The city of Rijeka/Fiume in the Kvarner/Carnaro region has Italian kindergartens and elementary schools, and there is an Italian Secondary School in Rijeka. The daily newspaper "La Voce del Popolo", the main newspaper for Italian Croatians, is published in Rijeka/Fiume.

In various municipalities, census data shows that significant numbers of Italians still live in Istria, such as 51% of the population of Grožnjan/Grisignana, 37% at Brtonigla/Verteneglio, and nearly 30% in Buje/Buie. In the village there, it is an important section of the "Comunità degli Italiani" in Croatia.

The Istro-Romanian language is one of the smallest minority languages spoken in Croatia with fewer than 500 speakers concentrated mainly in the north-eastern part of the Istrian Peninsula. While the language is not officially recognized in the Constitution of Croatia under that name (the Constitution does reference Romanians and Vlachs), it is specifically recognized as such in the Statute of the Istrian Region and in the Statute of the Municipality of Kršan. In 2016, with funding from the Romanian government, the school in the village of Šušnjevica was fully renovated and is expected to start offering education in Istro-Romanian.

Minority languages of Croatia

The Constitution of Croatia in its preamble defines Croatia as a nation state of ethnic Croats, a country of traditionally present communities that the constitution recognizes as national minorities and a country of all its citizens. National minorities explicitly enumerated and recognized in the Constitution are Serbs, Czechs, Slovaks, Italians, Hungarians, Jews, Germans, Austrians, Ukrainians, Rusyns, Bosniaks, Slovenes, Montenegrins, Macedonians, Russians, Bulgarians, Poles, Romani, Romanians, Turks, Vlachs and Albanians. Article 12 of the constitution states that the official language in Croatia is the Croatian language, but also states that in some local governments another language and Cyrillic or some other script can be introduced in official use.

The official use of minority languages is defined by relevant national legislation and which Croatia signed. The most important national laws are Constitutional Act on the Rights of National Minorities, Law on Use of Languages and Scripts of National Minorities and The Law on Education in language and script of national minorities. Relevant international agreements are European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages and Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. Certain rights were achieved through bilateral agreements and international agreements such as Treaty of Osimo and Erdut Agreement.

The required 33.3% of the minority population in certain local government units for obligatory introduction of official use of minority languages is considered high, taking into account that "The Advisory Committee on the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities" of the Council of Europe considers a threshold from 10% to 20% reasonable. Croatia does not always show favorable views on issues of minority rights but Croatian European Union accession process positively influenced public usage of minority languages.

Education in Serbian language is primarily offered in the area of former Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Syrmia based on Erdut Agreement. With those school since 2005 there is also Kantakuzina Katarina Branković Serbian Orthodox Secondary School in Zagreb.

Serb National Council publish weekly magazine Novosti since December 1999. There are also monthly magazines Identitet, published by Serb Democratic Forum, Izvor, published by Joint Council of Municipalities, youth magazine Bijela Pčela and culture magazine Prosvjeta, both published by Prosvjeta and Forum buplished by Serb National Council from Vukovar. There are also three local radio stations in Serbian language in eastern Slavonia such as Radio Borovo. Since 1996 Central library of Prosvjeta works as the official Central Library of Serbs in Croatia as well. Prosvjeta's library was established on 4 January 1948 and at that time it had 40,000 volumes mostly in national literature including most of the books from XVIII and XIX century. In 1953 authorities made a decision to close the library and to deposit its books in Museum of Serbs of Croatia, National and University Library in Zagreb and Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts. Library was reestablished in January 1995 and until 2016 it included more than 25,000 volumes in its collection.

Department of South Slavic languages at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Zagreb has a The Chair of Serbian and Montenegrin literature. Among the others, lecturers of Serbian literature at the university over the time were Antun Barac, Đuro Šurmin and Armin Pavić.

In the first years after introduction of new Constitutional Act on the Rights of National Minorities some local governments resisted implementation of its legal obligations. In 2005 Ombudsman report, municipalities of Vojnić, Krnjak, Gvozd, Donji Kukuruzari, Dvor and Korenica were mentioned as those that do not allow the official use of the Serbian language, although the national minority in these places meets the threshold provided for in the Constitutional Act. The report pointed out that Serbian minority in Vukovar can not use Serbian language although minority constituted less than one percent less population than it was prescribed by law. After 2011 Croatian census Serbs of Vukovar meet the required proportion of population for co-official introduction of Serbian language but it led to Anti-Cyrillic protests in Croatia. In April 2015 United Nations Human Rights Committee urged Croatia to ensure the right of minorities to use their language and alphabet. Committee report stated that particularly concerns the use of Serbian Cyrillic in the town of Vukovar and municipalities concerned. The Constitutional Court of Croatia upheld the legislation on the use of minority languages. It relied on a newly developed concept of national identity.

Italian minority has realized much greater rights on bilingualism than other minority communities in Croatia. La Voce del Popolo is an Italian language daily newspaper published by EDIT (EDizioni ITaliane) in the city of Rijeka. Central Library of Italians in Croatia operates as a section of Public library in Pula.

In 2004 Hungarian minority asked for introduction of Hungarian language in town of Beli Manastir as an official language, referring to the rights acquired prior to 1991. Hungarian minority at that time constituted 8,5% of town population. Central Library of Hungarians in Croatia operates as a section of Public library in Beli Manastir.

6,287 declared Czechs live in Bjelovar-Bilogora County. 70% of them stated that their native language is Czech. Ambassador of Czech Republic in Croatia stated that intention to limit usage of Serbian Cyrillic would negatively affect Czechs and other minorities in Croatia. Central Library of Czechs in Croatia operates as a section of Public library in Daruvar. In an interview in 2011 Zdenka Čuhnil, MP for the Czech and Slovak minorities, stated that Czech minority, based on its acquired rights, have the legal right to use its language in 9 local units (municipalities or towns) while in practice usage of that right is enabled only in one unit and partially in one more. She also stated that in the case of Slovak minority out of 6 units (5 based on acquired rights and one on the basis of proportionality) is free to use its rights only in one.

In 2011 there was 11 elementary schools in which students from Slovak minority were able to learn Slovak language. Those schools were located in Ilok, Osijek, Soljani, Josipovac Punitovački, Markovac Našički, Jelisavac, Miljevci, Zdenci, Lipovljani and Međurići. Gymnasium in Požega was the first high school in Croatia to introduce Slovak language education into its elective curriculum. "Union of Slovaks" in cooperation with the "Slovak Cultural Center" in Našice publish magazine Prameň in Slovak language. On the 200th anniversary of birth of Štefan Moyses in 1997 Croatian branch of Matica slovenská set a bilingual memorial plate at the building of the Gornji Grad Gymnasium in Zagreb. In 2003 second bilingual plate commemorating the work of Martin Kukučín was set up in Lipik. Matica slovenská in Zagreb published more than 10 books in Slovak language over the years. In 1998 Central Library of Slovaks in Croatia was established as a section of Public library in Našice and as of 2016 its users had access to more than 4,000 volumes.

Central Library of Rusyns and Ukrainians in Croatia operates as a section of Public libraries in Zagreb. Library was established on 9 December 1995 and today part of its collection is accessible in public libraries in Vinkovci, Lipovljani, Slavonski Brod, Vukovar and Petrovci.

Central Library of Austrians and Germans in Croatia operates as a section of Public library in Osijek.

Organisation "Zagreb Yiddish Circle" is club that organizes courses in Yiddish language, lectures on Jewish history, linguistics and culture, movie nights, and hosts a Yiddish book club.

Ukrainian language classes are four schools in Lipovljani, Petrovci, Kaniža and Šumeće, attended by about 50 students. Central Library of Rusyns and Ukrainians in Croatia operates as a section of Public libraries in Zagreb. Library was established on 9 December 1995 and today part of its collection is accessible in public libraries in Vinkovci, Lipovljani, Slavonski Brod, Vukovar and Petrovci.

Croatian Parliament formally recognised "Romani Language Day" on May 25, 2012. Veljko Kajtazi, Romani community MP, stated that he will advocate to have the Roma language included on the list of minority languages in Croatia during his term in office.

The Istro-Romanian language is one of the smallest minority languages spoken in Croatia with fewer than 500 speakers concentrated mainly in the north-eastern part of the Istrian Peninsula. While the language is not officially recognized in the Constitution of Croatia under that name (the Constitution does reference Romanians and Vlachs), it is specifically recognized as such in the Statute of the Istrian Region and in the Statute of the Municipality of Kršan. In 2016, with funding from the Romanian government, the school in the village of Šušnjevica was fully renovated and is expected to start offering education in Istro-Romanian.

There are three other central libraries in Croatia. Bosniak's community central library is located in the town of Sisak, Albanian one in Zagreb and Slovenian in Karlovac.

During Napoleon I's invasion of Croatia in the early 19th century, a large portion was of the country was converted into the Illyrian Provinces ("Provinces illyriennes)" and incorporated as a French province in 1809. French rule established the official language of the autonomous province to be French followed by Croatian, Italian, German, and Slovene. According to a study commissioned by France's Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs, 10% of Croatian speak French.

European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages became a legally binding for Croatia in 1997.

Croatian is the official language of Croatia, and became the 24th official language of the European Union upon its accession in 2013. Minority languages are in official use in local government units where more than a third of population consists of national minorities or where local legislation defines so. Those languages are Czech, Hungarian, Italian, Ruthenian, Serbian, and Slovak.
According to the 2011 Census, 95.6% of citizens of Croatia declared Croatian as their native language, 1.2% declared Serbian as their native language, while no other language is represented in Croatia by more than 0.5% of native speakers among population of Croatia. Croatian is a member of the South Slavic languages of Slavic languages group, and is written using the Latin alphabet. There are three major dialects spoken on the territory of Croatia, with standard Croatian based on the Shtokavian dialect. The Chakavian and Kajkavian dialects are distinguished by their lexicon, phonology, and syntax.
Croatian replaced Latin as the official language of the Croatian government in the 19th century. In Yugoslavia, from 1972 to 1989, the language was constitutionally designated as "Croatian literary language". It was the result of the resistance to "Serbo-Croatian" in the form of a Declaration on the Status and Name of the Croatian Literary Language and Croatian Spring. Croatians are protective of their Croatian language from foreign influences and are known for Croatian linguistic purism, as the language was under constant change and threats imposed by previous rulers (i.e. Austrian German, Hungarian, Italian, and Turkish words were changed and altered to Slavic looking or sounding ones).

Croatia

Croatia (, ;, ), officially the Republic of Croatia (, ) is a country at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, on the Adriatic Sea. It borders Slovenia to the northwest, Hungary to the northeast, Serbia to the east, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro to the southeast, sharing a maritime border with Italy. Its capital, Zagreb, forms one of the country's primary subdivisions, along with twenty counties. Croatia has an area of and a population of 4.28 million, most of whom are Roman Catholics.

Inhabited since the Paleolithic Age, the Croats arrived in the area in the 6th century and organised the territory into two duchies by the 9th century. Croatia was first internationally recognized as an independent state on 7 June 879 during the reign of duke Branimir. Tomislav became the first king by 925, elevating Croatia to the status of a kingdom, which retained its sovereignty for nearly two centuries, reaching its peak during the rule of kings Petar Krešimir IV and Dmitar Zvonimir. Croatia entered a personal union with Hungary in 1102. In 1527, faced with Ottoman conquest, the Croatian Parliament elected Ferdinand I of Austria to the Croatian throne. In October 1918, in the final days of World War I, the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, independent from Austria-Hungary, was proclaimed in Zagreb, and in December 1918 it was merged into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.

Following the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, most of the Croatian territory was incorporated into the Nazi-backed client-state which led to the development of a resistance movement and the creation of the Federal State of Croatia which after the war become a founding member and a federal constituent of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. On 25 June 1991, Croatia declared independence, which came wholly into effect on 8 October of the same year. The Croatian War of Independence was fought successfully for four years following the declaration.

The sovereign state of Croatia is a republic governed under a parliamentary system and a developed country with a very high standard of living. It is a member of the European Union (EU), the United Nations (UN), the Council of Europe, NATO, the World Trade Organization (WTO), and a founding member of the Union for the Mediterranean. As an active participant in the UN peacekeeping forces, Croatia has contributed troops to the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan and took a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council for the 2008–2009 term. Since 2000, the Croatian government has constantly invested in infrastructure, especially transport routes and facilities along the Pan-European corridors.

Croatia's economy is dominated by service and industrial sectors and agriculture. Tourism is a significant source of revenue, with Croatia ranked among top 20 most popular tourist destinations in the world. The state controls a part of the economy, with substantial government expenditure. The European Union is Croatia's most important trading partner. Croatia provides a social security, universal health care system, and a tuition-free primary and secondary education, while supporting culture through numerous public institutions and corporate investments in media and publishing.

The name of Croatia derives from Medieval Latin "Croātia". Itself a derivation of North-West Slavic "*Xrovat-", by liquid metathesis from Common Slavic period "*"Xorvat"", from proposed Proto-Slavic "*Xъrvátъ" which possibly comes from Old Persian "*xaraxwat-". The word is attested by the Old Iranian toponym "Harahvait-" which is the native name of Arachosia.

The origin of the name is uncertain, but is thought to be a Gothic or Indo-Aryan term assigned to a Slavic tribe. The oldest preserved record of the Croatian ethnonym "*xъrvatъ" is of variable stem, attested in the Baška tablet in style "zvъnъmirъ kralъ xrъvatъskъ" ("Zvonimir, Croatian king").

The first attestation of the Latin term is attributed to a charter of Duke Trpimir from the year 852. The original is lost, and just a 1568 copy is preserved, leading to doubts over the authenticity of the claim. The oldest preserved stone inscription is the 9th-century Branimir Inscription found near Benkovac, where Duke Branimir is styled "Dux Cruatorvm". The inscription is not believed to be dated accurately, but is likely to be from during the period of 879–892, during Branimir's rule.

The area known as Croatia today was inhabited throughout the prehistoric period. Fossils of Neanderthals dating to the middle Palaeolithic period have been unearthed in northern Croatia, with the most famous and the best presented site in Krapina. Remnants of several Neolithic and Chalcolithic cultures were found in all regions of the country. The largest proportion of the sites is in the river valleys of northern Croatia, and the most significant cultures whose presence was discovered include Baden, Starčevo, and Vučedol cultures. The Iron Age left traces of the early Illyrian Hallstatt culture and the Celtic La Tène culture.

Much later, the region was settled by Illyrians and Liburnians, while the first Greek colonies were established on the islands of Hvar, Korčula, and Vis. In 9 AD the territory of today's Croatia became part of the Roman Empire. Emperor Diocletian had a large palace built in Split to which he retired after his abdication in AD 305.

During the 5th century, the last de jure Western emperor last Western Roman Emperor Julius Nepos ruled his small realm from the palace after fleeing Italy to go into exile in 475. The period ends with Avar and Croat invasions in the first half of the 7th century and destruction of almost all Roman towns. Roman survivors retreated to more favourable sites on the coast, islands and mountains. The city of Dubrovnik was founded by such survivors from Epidaurum.

The ethnogenesis of Croats is uncertain and there are several competing theories, Slavic and Iranian being the most frequently put forward. The most widely accepted of these, the Slavic theory, proposes migration of White Croats from the territory of White Croatia during the Migration Period. Conversely, the Iranian theory proposes Iranian origin, based on Tanais Tablets containing Greek inscription of given names "Χορούαθος", "Χοροάθος", and "Χορόαθος" (Khoroúathos, Khoroáthos, and Khoróathos) and their interpretation as anthroponyms of Croatian people.

According to the work "De Administrando Imperio" written by the 10th-century Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII, the Croats had arrived in what is today Croatia in the early 7th century. However, that claim is disputed and competing hypotheses date the event between the 6th and the 9th centuries. Eventually two dukedoms were formed—Duchy of Pannonia and Duchy of Croatia, ruled by Ljudevit and Borna, as attested by chronicles of Einhard starting in 818. The record represents the first document of Croatian realms, vassal states of Francia at the time.

The Frankish overlordship ended during the reign of Mislav two decades later. According to the Constantine VII Christianization of Croats began in the 7th century, but the claim is disputed and generally Christianization is associated with the 9th century. The first native Croatian ruler recognised by the Pope was Duke Branimir, who received papal recognition from Pope John VIII on 7 June 879.
Tomislav was the first ruler of Croatia who was styled a king in a letter from the Pope John X, dating kingdom of Croatia to year 925. Tomislav defeated Hungarian and Bulgarian invasions, spreading the influence of Croatian kings. The medieval Croatian kingdom reached its peak in the 11th century during the reigns of Petar Krešimir IV (1058–1074) and Dmitar Zvonimir (1075–1089). When Stjepan II died in 1091 ending the Trpimirović dynasty, Ladislaus I of Hungary claimed the Croatian crown in name of his sister Helena, wife of King Dmitar Zvonimir. Opposition to the claim led to a war and personal union of Croatia and Hungary in 1102, ruled by Coloman.
For the next four centuries, the Kingdom of Croatia was ruled by the Sabor (parliament) and a Ban (viceroy) appointed by the king. The period saw increasing threat of Ottoman conquest and struggle against the Republic of Venice for control of coastal areas.
The Venetians gained control over most of Dalmatia by 1428, with exception of the city-state of Dubrovnik which became independent. Ottoman conquests led to the 1493 Battle of Krbava field and 1526 Battle of Mohács, both ending in decisive Ottoman victories. King Louis II died at Mohács, and in 1527, the Croatian Parliament met in Cetin and chose Ferdinand I of the House of Habsburg as new ruler of Croatia, under the condition that he provide protection to Croatia against the Ottoman Empire while respecting its political rights. This period saw the rise of influential nobility such as the Frankopan and Zrinski families to prominence and ultimately numerous Bans from the two families.

Following the decisive Ottoman victories, Croatia was split into civilian and military territories, with the partition formed in 1538. The military territories would become known as the Croatian Military Frontier and were under direct Imperial control. Ottoman advances in the Croatian territory continued until the 1593 Battle of Sisak, the first decisive Ottoman defeat, and stabilisation of borders.
During the Great Turkish War (1683–1698), Slavonia was regained but western Bosnia, which had been part of Croatia before the Ottoman conquest, remained outside Croatian control. The present-day border between the two countries is a remnant of this outcome. Dalmatia, the southern part of the border, was similarly defined by the Fifth and the Seventh Ottoman–Venetian Wars.

The Ottoman wars instigated great demographic changes. Croats migrated towards Austria and the present-day Burgenland Croats are direct descendants of these settlers. To replace the fleeing population, the Habsburgs encouraged the Christian populations of Bosnia to provide military service in the Croatian Military Frontier. Most of the transferred population were Orthodox Vlachs and the peak of transferring was during the 16th century.

The Croatian Parliament supported King Charles III's Pragmatic Sanction and signed their own Pragmatic Sanction in 1712. Subsequently, the emperor pledged to respect all privileges and political rights of Kingdom of Croatia and Queen Maria Theresa made significant contributions to Croatian matters.

Between 1797 and 1809 the First French Empire gradually occupied the entire eastern Adriatic coastline and a substantial part of its hinterland, ending the Venetian and the Ragusan republics, establishing the Illyrian Provinces. In response the Royal Navy started the blockade of the Adriatic Sea leading to the Battle of Vis in 1811. The Illyrian Provinces were captured by the Austrians in 1813, and absorbed by the Austrian Empire following the Congress of Vienna in 1815. This led to formation of the Kingdom of Dalmatia and restoration of the Croatian Littoral to the Kingdom of Croatia, now both under the same crown.
The 1830s and 1840s saw romantic nationalism inspire the Croatian National Revival, a political and cultural campaign advocating the unity of all South Slavs in the empire. Its primary focus was the establishment of a standard language as a counterweight to Hungarian, along with the promotion of Croatian literature and culture. During the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 Croatia sided with the Austrians, Ban Josip Jelačić helping defeat the Hungarian forces in 1849, and ushering a period of Germanization policy.
By the 1860s, failure of the policy became apparent, leading to the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 and creation of a personal union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary. The treaty left the issue of Croatia's status to Hungary, and the status was resolved by the Croatian–Hungarian Settlement of 1868 when kingdoms of Croatia and Slavonia were united. The Kingdom of Dalmatia remained under de facto Austrian control, while Rijeka retained the status of Corpus separatum introduced in 1779.

After Austria-Hungary occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina following the 1878 Treaty of Berlin, the Croatian Military Frontier was abolished and the territory returned to Croatia in 1881, pursuant to provisions of the Croatian-Hungarian settlement. Renewed efforts to reform Austria-Hungary, entailing federalisation with Croatia as a federal unit, were stopped by advent of World War I.

On 29 October 1918 the Croatian Parliament ("Sabor") declared independence and decided to join the newly formed State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, which in turn entered into union with the Kingdom of Serbia on 4 December 1918 to form the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. The Croatian Parliament never ratified a decision to unite with Serbia and Montenegro. The 1921 constitution defining the country as a unitary state and abolition of Croatian Parliament and historical administrative divisions effectively ended Croatian autonomy. The new constitution was opposed by the most widely supported national political party—the Croatian Peasant Party (HSS) led by Stjepan Radić.

The political situation deteriorated further as Radić was assassinated in the National Assembly in 1928, leading to the dictatorship of King Alexander in January 1929. The dictatorship formally ended in 1931 when the king imposed a more unitarian constitution, and changed the name of the country to Yugoslavia. The HSS, now led by Vladko Maček, continued to advocate federalisation of Yugoslavia, resulting in the Cvetković–Maček Agreement of August 1939 and the autonomous Banovina of Croatia. The Yugoslav government retained control of defence, internal security, foreign affairs, trade, and transport while other matters were left to the Croatian Sabor and a crown-appointed Ban.

In April 1941, Yugoslavia was occupied by Germany and Italy. Following the invasion the territory, parts of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the region of Syrmia were incorporated into the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), a Nazi-backed puppet state. Parts of Dalmatia were annexed by Italy, and the northern Croatian regions of Baranja and Međimurje were annexed by Hungary. The NDH regime was led by Ante Pavelić and ultranationalist Ustaše.
A resistance movement soon emerged. On 22 June 1941, the 1st Sisak Partisan Detachment was formed near Sisak, as the first military unit formed by a resistance movement in occupied Europe. This sparked the beginning of the Yugoslav Partisan movement, a communist multi-ethnic anti-fascist resistance group led by Josip Broz Tito. The movement grew rapidly and at the Tehran Conference in December 1943 the Partisans gained recognition from the Allies.

With Allied support in logistics, equipment, training and air power, and with the assistance of Soviet troops taking part in the 1944 Belgrade Offensive, the Partisans gained control of Yugoslavia and the border regions of Italy and Austria by May 1945, during which thousands of members of the Ustaše, as well as Croat refugees, were killed by the Yugoslav Partisans.
The political aspirations of the Partisan movement were reflected in the State Anti-fascist Council for the National Liberation of Croatia, which developed in 1943 as the bearer of Croatian statehood and later transformed into the Parliament of Croatia in 1945, and AVNOJ—its counterpart at the Yugoslav level.

NDH was trying to fit into the Nazi ideology and tried to establish such an internal structure that would be consistent with that of the Third Reich and fascist Italy. As modelled on the Third Reich, the authorities of NDH have adopted similar racial interpretations. For this reason, they have already introduced a series of racist laws against Jews, Roma and some other groups in 1941. All those who opposed the Ustaše regime were also victims of the regime. Shortly after, the deportations and the executions of Jews and Roma began, which were imprisoned in concentration camps. Considering the total number of detainees and the number of victims, the largest concentration camps were Jasenovac and Stara Gradiška. Jasenovac was at the same time a death camp and a labour camp where detainees, among other things, went to work on agricultural land. It is estimated that between 70,000 and 100,000 detainees were killed there. Vladimir Žerjavić has come to the estimated 83,000 people killed in Jasenovac. The number of Croats killed in the NDH is estimated to be approximately 200,000, either by Ustaše, as members of the armed resistance, or as Axis collaborators. Several thousand of these were killed by the Chetniks. Most Croatian historians place the number of Croats killed by the Chetniks on the territory of modern-day Croatia at between 3,000 and 3,500. Croatian estimates for the number of Croats killed by Chetniks in the whole of Yugoslavia range from 18,000 to 32,000 combatants and civilians.
After World War II, Croatia became a single-party socialist federal unit of the SFR Yugoslavia, ruled by the Communists, but enjoying a degree of autonomy within the federation. In 1967, Croatian authors and linguists published a Declaration on the Status and Name of the Croatian Standard Language demanding greater autonomy for Croatian language. The declaration contributed to a national movement seeking greater civil rights and decentralization of the Yugoslav economy, culminating in the Croatian Spring of 1971, suppressed by Yugoslav leadership. Still, the 1974 Yugoslav Constitution gave increased autonomy to federal units, basically fulfilling a goal of the Croatian Spring, and providing a legal basis for independence of the federative constituents.

Following the death of Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito in 1980, the political situation in Yugoslavia deteriorated, with national tension fanned by the 1986 SANU Memorandum and the 1989 coups in Vojvodina, Kosovo and Montenegro. In January 1990, the Communist Party fragmented along national lines, with the Croatian faction demanding a looser federation. In the same year, the first multi-party elections were held in Croatia, with Franjo Tuđman's win raising nationalist tensions further. Some of Serbs in Croatia left Sabor and declared the autonomy of areas that would soon become the unrecognised Republic of Serbian Krajina, intent on achieving independence from Croatia.

As tensions rose, Croatia declared independence on 25 June 1991. However, the full implementation of declaration only came into effect on 8 October 1991. In the meantime, tensions escalated into overt war when the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) and various Serb paramilitary groups attacked Croatia. By the end of 1991, a high-intensity conflict fought along a wide front reduced Croatia to control of only about two-thirds of its territory. The various Serb paramilitary groups then began pursuing a campaign of killing, terror and expulsion against the Croats in the rebel territories, killing thousands of Croat civilians and forcing at least 170,000 from their homes.

On 15 January 1992, Croatia gained diplomatic recognition by the European Economic Community members, and subsequently the United Nations. The war effectively ended in August 1995 with a decisive victory by Croatia. This was accompanied by the uncompelled fleeing of about 200,000 Serbs from the rebel territories, whose lands were subsequently settled by Croat refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina. The remaining occupied areas were restored to Croatia pursuant to the Erdut Agreement of November 1995, with the process concluded in January 1998.
Following the end of the war, Croatia faced the challenges of post-war reconstruction, the return of refugees, advancing democratic principles, protection of human rights and general social and economic development. The post-2000 period is characterized by democratization, economic growth and structural and social reforms, as well as problems such as unemployment, corruption and the inefficiency of the public administration.

Croatia joined the Partnership for Peace on 25 May 2000
and become a member of the World Trade Organization on 30 November 2000.
On 29 October 2001, Croatia signed a Stabilization and Association Agreement with the European Union,
submitted a formal application for the EU membership in 2003, was given the status of candidate country in 2004, and began accession negotiations in 2005. In November 2000 and March 2001, the Parliament amended the Constitution changing its bicameral structure back into historic unicameral and reducing the presidential powers.

Although Croatia experienced a significant boom in the economy in the early 2000s, the increase of the government debt and the absence of concrete reforms led to a financial crisis in 2008 which forced the government to cut public spending thus provoking a public outcry. On 1 April 2009, Croatia joined NATO. A wave of anti-government protests organized via Facebook took place in early 2011 as general dissatisfaction with political and economic state grew.

The majority of Croatian voters voted in favour of country's EU membership at the 2012 referendum. Croatia completed EU accession negotiations in 2011 and joined the European Union on 1 July 2013. Croatia was affected by the European migrant crisis in 2015 when Hungary's closure of its borders with Serbia forced over 700,000 migrants to use Croatia as a transit country on their way to Western Europe.

Croatia is located in Central and Southeast Europe, on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. It borders Hungary to the northeast, Serbia to the east, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro to the southeast, and Slovenia to the northwest. It lies mostly between latitudes 42° and 47° N and longitudes 13° and 20° E. Part of the territory in the extreme south surrounding Dubrovnik is a practical exclave connected to the rest of the mainland by territorial waters, but separated on land by a short coastline strip belonging to Bosnia and Herzegovina around Neum.

The territory covers, consisting of of land and of water. It is the 127th largest country in the world. Elevation ranges from the mountains of the Dinaric Alps with the highest point of the Dinara peak at near the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina in the south to the shore of the Adriatic Sea which makes up its entire southwest border. Insular Croatia consists of over a thousand islands and islets varying in size, 48 of which are permanently inhabited. The largest islands are Cres and Krk, each of them having an area of around.

The hilly northern parts of Hrvatsko Zagorje and the flat plains of Slavonia in the east which is part of the Pannonian Basin are traversed by major rivers such as Danube, Drava, Kupa, and Sava. The Danube, Europe's second longest river, runs through the city of Vukovar in the extreme east and forms part of the border with Vojvodina. The central and southern regions near the Adriatic coastline and islands consist of low mountains and forested highlands. Natural resources found in the country in quantities significant enough for production include oil, coal, bauxite, low-grade iron ore, calcium, gypsum, natural asphalt, silica, mica, clays, salt, and hydropower. Karst topography makes up about half of Croatia and is especially prominent in the Dinaric Alps. There are a number of deep caves in Croatia, 49 of which are deeper than, 14 of them deeper than and three deeper than. Croatia's most famous lakes are the Plitvice lakes, a system of 16 lakes with waterfalls connecting them over dolomite and limestone cascades. The lakes are renowned for their distinctive colours, ranging from turquoise to mint green, grey or blue.

Croatia can be subdivided between a number of ecoregions because of its climate and geomorphology. The country is consequently one of the richest in Europe in terms of biodiversity. There are four types of biogeographical regions in Croatia—Mediterranean along the coast and in its immediate hinterland, Alpine in most of Lika and Gorski Kotar, Pannonian along Drava and Danube, and continental in the remaining areas. One of the most significant are karst habitats which include submerged karst, such as Zrmanja and Krka canyons and tufa barriers, as well as underground habitats.
The karst geology harbours approximately 7,000 caves and pits, some of which are the habitat of the only known aquatic cave vertebrate—the olm. Forests are also significantly present in the country, as they cover representing 44% of Croatian land surface. Other habitat types include wetlands, grasslands, bogs, fens, scrub habitats, coastal and marine habitats.
In terms of phytogeography, Croatia is a part of the Boreal Kingdom and is a part of Illyrian and Central European provinces of the Circumboreal Region and the Adriatic province of the Mediterranean Region. The World Wide Fund for Nature divides Croatia between three ecoregions—Pannonian mixed forests, Dinaric Mountains mixed forests and Illyrian deciduous forests.

There are 37,000 known species in Croatia, but their actual number is estimated to be between 50,000 and 100,000. The claim is supported by nearly 400 new taxa of invertebrates discovered in Croatia in the first half of the 2000s alone. There are more than a thousand endemic species, especially in Velebit and Biokovo mountains, Adriatic islands and karst rivers. Legislation protects 1,131 species.
The most serious threat to species is loss and degradation of habitats. A further problem is presented by invasive alien species, especially "Caulerpa taxifolia" algae.

The invasive algae are regularly monitored and removed to protect the benthic habitat. Indigenous sorts of cultivated plants and breeds of domesticated animals are also numerous. Those include five breeds of horses, five breeds of cattle, eight breeds of sheep, two breeds of pigs, and a poultry breed. Even the indigenous breeds include nine endangered or critically endangered ones. There are 444 protected areas of Croatia, encompassing 9% of the country. Those include eight national parks, two strict reserves, and ten nature parks. The most famous protected area and the oldest national park in Croatia is the Plitvice Lakes National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Velebit Nature Park is a part of the UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Programme. The strict and special reserves, as well as the national and nature parks, are managed and protected by the central government, while other protected areas are managed by counties. In 2005, the National Ecological Network was set up, as the first step in the preparation of the EU accession and joining of the Natura 2000 network.

Most of Croatia has a moderately warm and rainy continental climate as defined by the Köppen climate classification. Mean monthly temperature ranges between in January and in July. The coldest parts of the country are Lika and Gorski Kotar where snowy forested climate is found at elevations above. The warmest areas of Croatia are at the Adriatic coast and especially in its immediate hinterland characterised by the Mediterranean climate, as the temperature highs are moderated by the sea. Consequently, temperature peaks are more pronounced in the continental areas. The lowest temperature of was recorded on 3 February 1919 in Čakovec, and the highest temperature of was recorded on 4 August 1981 in Ploče.

Mean annual precipitation ranges between and depending on geographic region and prevailing climate type. The least precipitation is recorded in the outer islands (Biševo, Lastovo, Svetac, Vis) and in the eastern parts of Slavonia. However, in the latter case, it occurs mostly during the growing season. The maximum precipitation levels are observed on the Dinara mountain range and in Gorski kotar.

Prevailing winds in the interior are light to moderate northeast or southwest, and in the coastal area, prevailing winds are determined by local area features. Higher wind velocities are more often recorded in cooler months along the coast, generally as the cool northeasterly bura or less frequently as the warm southerly jugo. The sunniest parts of the country are the outer islands, Hvar and Korčula, where more than 2700 hours of sunshine are recorded per year, followed by the middle and southern Adriatic Sea area in general, and northern Adriatic coast, all with more than 2000 hours of sunshine per year.

The Republic of Croatia is a unitary state using a parliamentary system of governance. With the collapse of the ruling communist party in SFR Yugoslavia, Croatia organized its first multi-party elections and adopted its present constitution in 1990. It declared independence on 8 October 1991 which led to the break-up of Yugoslavia and countries international recognition by the United Nations in 1992. Under its 1990 Constitution, Croatia operated a semi-presidential system until 2000 when it switched to a parliamentary system. Government powers in Croatia are divided into legislative, executive and judiciary powers.
The President of the Republic () is the head of state, directly elected to a five-year term and is limited by the Constitution to a maximum of two terms. In addition to being the commander in chief of the armed forces, the president has the procedural duty of appointing the prime minister with the consent of the parliament, and has some influence on foreign policy. The most recent presidential elections were held on 11 January 2015, when Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović won. She took the oath of office on 15 February 2015.
The Government is headed by the Prime Minister, who has four deputy prime ministers and 16 ministers in charge of particular sectors of activity. As the executive branch, it is responsible for proposing legislation and a budget, executing the laws, and guiding the foreign and internal policies of the republic. The Government is seated at Banski dvori in Zagreb. Since 19 October 2016, Croatian Prime Minister has been Andrej Plenković.

A unicameral parliament ("") holds legislative power. A second chamber, the "House of Counties", set up in 1993 pursuant to the 1990 Constitution, was abolished in 2001. The number of Sabor members can vary from 100 to 160; they are all elected by popular vote to serve four-year terms. The sessions of the Sabor take place from 15 January to 15 July, and from 15 September to 15 December. The two largest political parties in Croatia are the Croatian Democratic Union and the Social Democratic Party of Croatia.

Croatia has a civil law legal system in which law arises primarily from written statutes, with judges serving merely as implementers and not creators of law. Its development was largely influenced by German and Austrian legal systems. Croatian law is divided into two principal areas—private and public law. By the time EU accession negotiations were completed on 30 June 2010, Croatian legislation was fully harmonised with the Community acquis. The main law in the county is the Constitution adopted on December 22, 1990.

The main national courts are the Constitutional Court, which oversees violations of the Constitution, and the Supreme Court, which is the highest court of appeal. In addition, there are also County, Municipal, Misdemeanor, Commercial, and Administrative courts. Cases falling within judicial jurisdiction are in the first instance decided by a single professional judge, while appeals are deliberated in mixed tribunals of professional judges. Lay magistrates also participate in trials. State's Attorney Office is the judicial body constituted of public prosecutors that is empowered to instigate prosecution of perpetrators of offences.

Law enforcement agencies are organised under the authority of the Ministry of the Interior which consist primarily of the national police force. Croatia's security service is the Security and Intelligence Agency (SOA).

Croatia was first subdivided into counties in the Middle Ages. The divisions changed over time to reflect losses of territory to Ottoman conquest and subsequent liberation of the same territory, changes of political status of Dalmatia, Dubrovnik, and Istria. The traditional division of the country into counties was abolished in the 1920s when the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and the subsequent Kingdom of Yugoslavia introduced oblasts and banovinas respectively.
Communist-ruled Croatia, as a constituent part of post-World War II Yugoslavia, abolished earlier divisions and introduced municipalities, subdividing Croatia into approximately one hundred municipalities. Counties were reintroduced in 1992 legislation, significantly altered in terms of territory relative to the pre-1920s subdivisions. In 1918, the Transleithanian part of Croatia was divided into eight counties with their seats in Bjelovar, Gospić, Ogulin, Osijek, Požega, Varaždin, Vukovar, and Zagreb, and the 1992 legislation established 14 counties in the same territory.

Since the counties were re-established in 1992, Croatia is divided into 20 counties and the capital city of Zagreb, the latter having the authority and legal status of a county and a city at the same time. Borders of the counties changed in some instances since, with the latest revision taking place in 2006. The counties subdivide into 127 cities and 429 municipalities. Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) division of Croatia is performed in several tiers. NUTS 1 level places the entire country in a single unit, while there are three NUTS 2 regions. Those are Northwest Croatia, Central and Eastern (Pannonian) Croatia, and Adriatic Croatia. The latter encompasses all the counties along the Adriatic coast. Northwest Croatia includes Koprivnica-Križevci, Krapina-Zagorje, Međimurje, Varaždin, the city of Zagreb, and Zagreb counties and the Central and Eastern (Pannonian) Croatia includes the remaining areas—Bjelovar-Bilogora, Brod-Posavina, Karlovac, Osijek-Baranja, Požega-Slavonia, Sisak-Moslavina, Virovitica-Podravina, and Vukovar-Syrmia counties. Individual counties and the city of Zagreb also represent NUTS 3 level subdivision units in Croatia. The NUTS Local administrative unit divisions are two-tiered. LAU 1 divisions match the counties and the city of Zagreb in effect making those the same as NUTS 3 units, while LAU 2 subdivisions correspond to the cities and municipalities of Croatia.

Croatia has established diplomatic relations with 181 countries., Croatia maintains a network of 54 embassies, 28 consulates and eight permanent diplomatic missions abroad. Furthermore, there are 52 foreign embassies and 69 consulates in the Republic of Croatia in addition to offices of international organisations such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, International Organization for Migration, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), World Bank, World Health Organization (WHO), International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), United Nations Development Programme, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and UNICEF. In 2009, the Croatian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and European Integration employed 1,381 personnel and expended 648.2 million kuna (€86.4 million). Stated aims of Croatian foreign policy include enhancing relations with neighbouring countries, developing international co-operation and promotion of the Croatian economy and Croatia itself.

Since 2003, Croatian foreign policy has focused on achieving the strategic goal of becoming a member state of the European Union (EU). In December 2011, Croatia completed the EU accession negotiations and signed an EU accession treaty on 9 December 2011. Croatia joined the European Union on 1 July 2013 marking the end of a process started in 2001 by signing of the Stabilisation and Association Agreement and Croatian application for the EU membership in 2003. A recurring obstacle to the negotiations was Croatia's ICTY co-operation record and Slovenian blocking of the negotiations because of Croatia–Slovenia border disputes. The latter should be resolved through an Arbitration Agreement of 4 November 2009, approved by national parliaments and a referendum in Slovenia., but due to the events during arbitration Croatia does not accept results. As of 2019, Croatia has unsolved border issues with all neighbouring former Yugoslav countries (Slovenia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro).

Another strategic Croatian foreign policy goal for the 2000s was NATO membership. Croatia was included in the Partnership for Peace in 2000, invited to NATO membership in 2008 and formally joined the alliance on 1 April 2009. Croatia became a member of the United Nations Security Council for the 2008–2009 term, assuming presidency in December 2008. The country is preparing to join the Schengen Area.

The Croatian Armed Forces (CAF) consist of the Air Force, Army, and Navy branches in addition to the Education and Training Command and Support Command. The CAF is headed by the General Staff, which reports to the Defence Minister, who in turn reports to the President of Croatia. According to the constitution, the President is commander-in-chief of the armed forces and in case of immediate threat during wartime he issues orders directly to the General Staff.

Following the 1991–95 war defence spending and CAF size have been in constant decline. military spending was an estimated 2.39% of the country's GDP, which placed Croatia 64th in a ranking of all countries. Since 2005 the budget was kept below 2% of GDP, down from the record high of 11.1% in 1994. Traditionally relying on a large number of conscripts, CAF also went through a period of reforms focused on downsizing, restructuring and professionalisation in the years prior to Croatia's accession to NATO in April 2009. According to a presidential decree issued in 2006 the CAF is set to employ 18,100 active duty military personnel, 3,000 civilians and 2,000 voluntary conscripts between the ages of 18 and 30 in peacetime.
Compulsory conscription was abolished in January 2008. Until 2008 military service was compulsory for men at age 18 and conscripts served six-month tours of duty, reduced in 2001 from the earlier scheme of nine-month conscription tours. Conscientious objectors could instead opt for an eight-month civilian service.

Croatia also has a significant military industry sector which exported around US$120 million worth of military equipment and armament in 2010. Croatian-made weapons and vehicles used by CAF include the standard sidearm HS2000 manufactured by HS Produkt and the M-84D battle tank designed by the Đuro Đaković factory. Uniforms and helmets worn by CAF soldiers are also locally produced and successfully marketed to other countries.

Croatia is classified as a high-income economy by the United Nations. International Monetary Fund data projects that Croatian nominal GDP stands at $53.5 billion, or $12,863 per capita for year 2017, while purchasing power parity GDP stands at $100 billion, or $24,095 per capita. According to Eurostat data, Croatian PPS GDP per capita stood at 61% of the EU average in 2012.

Real GDP growth in 2007 was 6.0 per cent. The average net salary of a Croatian worker in January 2017 was 5,895 HRK per month, and the average gross salary was 7,911 HRK per month., registered unemployment rate in Croatia was 15.3%.

In 2010, economic output was dominated by the service sector which accounted for 66% of GDP, followed by the industrial sector with 27.2% and agriculture accounting for 6.8% of GDP. According to 2004 data, 2.7% of the workforce were employed in agriculture, 32.8% by industry and 64.5% in services. The industrial sector is dominated by shipbuilding, food processing, pharmaceuticals, information technology, biochemical and timber industry. In 2010, Croatian exports were valued at 64.9 billion kuna (€8.65 billion) with 110.3 billion kuna (€14.7 billion) worth of imports. The largest trading partner is the rest of the European Union. More than half of Croatia's trade is with other European Union member states.

Privatization and the drive toward a market economy had barely begun under the new Croatian Government when war broke out in 1991. As a result of the war, the economic infrastructure sustained massive damage, particularly the revenue-rich tourism industry. From 1989 to 1993, the GDP fell 40.5%. The Croatian state still controls a significant part of the economy, with government expenditures accounting for as much as 40% of GDP. A backlogged judiciary system, combined with inefficient public administration, especially on issues of land ownership and corruption, are particular concerns. In the 2015 Corruption Perceptions Index, published by Transparency International, the country is ranked joint 50th with a score of 51, where zero denotes "highly corrupt" and 100 "very clean". In June 2013, the national debt stood at 59.5% of the nation's GDP.

Tourism dominates the Croatian service sector and accounts for up to 20% of Croatian GDP. Annual tourist industry income for 2017 was estimated at €9.5 billion. Its positive effects are felt throughout the economy of Croatia in terms of increased business volume observed in retail business, processing industry orders and summer seasonal employment. The industry is considered an export business, because it significantly reduces the country's external trade imbalance. Since the end of the Croatian War of Independence, the tourist industry has grown rapidly, recording a fourfold rise in tourist numbers, with more than 11 million tourists each year. The most numerous are tourists from Germany, Slovenia, Austria, Italy, and Poland as well as Croatia itself. Length of a tourist stay in Croatia averaged 4.9 days in 2011.

The bulk of the tourist industry is concentrated along the Adriatic Sea coast. Opatija was the first holiday resort. It first became popular in the middle of the 19th century. By the 1890s, it had become one of the most significant European health resorts. Later a number of resorts sprang up along the coast and islands, offering services catering to both mass tourism and various niche markets. The most significant are nautical tourism, as there are numerous marinas with more than 16 thousand berths, cultural tourism relying on appeal of medieval coastal cities and numerous cultural events taking place during the summer. Inland areas offer agrotourism, mountain resorts, and spas. Zagreb is also a significant tourist destination, rivalling major coastal cities and resorts.

Croatia has unpolluted marine areas reflected through numerous nature reserves and 116 Blue Flag beaches. Croatia is ranked as the 18th most popular tourist destination in the world. About 15% of these visitors, or over one million per year, are involved with naturism, an industry for which Croatia is world-famous. It was also the first European country to develop commercial naturist resorts.

The highlight of Croatia's recent infrastructure developments is its rapidly developed motorway network, largely built in the late 1990s and especially in the 2000s (decade). By September 2011, Croatia had completed more than of motorways, connecting Zagreb to most other regions and following various European routes and four Pan-European corridors. The busiest motorways are the A1, connecting Zagreb to Split and the A3, passing east–west through northwest Croatia and Slavonia.

A widespread network of state roads in Croatia acts as motorway feeder roads while connecting all major settlements in the country. The high quality and safety levels of the Croatian motorway network were tested and confirmed by several EuroTAP and EuroTest programs.

Croatia has an extensive rail network spanning, including of electrified railways and of double track railways. The most significant railways in Croatia are found within the Pan-European transport corridors Vb and X connecting Rijeka to Budapest and Ljubljana to Belgrade, both via Zagreb. All rail services are operated by Croatian Railways.
There are international airports in Dubrovnik, Osijek, Pula, Rijeka, Split, Zadar, and Zagreb. The largest and busiest is Franjo Tuđman Airport., Croatia complies with International Civil Aviation Organization aviation safety standards and the Federal Aviation Administration upgraded it to Category 1 rating.

The busiest cargo seaport in Croatia is the Port of Rijeka and the busiest passenger ports are Split and Zadar. In addition to those, a large number of minor ports serve an extensive system of ferries connecting numerous islands and coastal cities in addition to ferry lines to several cities in Italy. The largest river port is Vukovar, located on the Danube, representing the nation's outlet to the Pan-European transport corridor VII.

There are of crude oil pipelines in Croatia, connecting the Port of Rijeka oil terminal with refineries in Rijeka and Sisak, as well as several transhipment terminals. The system has a capacity of 20 million tonnes per year. The natural gas transportation system comprises of trunk and regional natural gas pipelines, and more than 300 associated structures, connecting production rigs, the Okoli natural gas storage facility, 27 end-users and 37 distribution systems.

Croatian production of energy sources covers 85% of nationwide natural gas demand and 19% of oil demand. In 2008, 47.6% of Croatia's primary energy production structure comprised use of natural gas (47.7%), crude oil (18.0%), fuel wood (8.4%), hydro power (25.4%) and other renewable energy sources (0.5%). In 2009, net total electrical power production in Croatia reached 12,725 GWh and Croatia imported 28.5% of its electric power energy needs. The bulk of Croatian imports are supplied by the Krško Nuclear Power Plant, 50% owned by Hrvatska elektroprivreda, providing 15% of Croatia's electricity.

With its estimated population of 4.19 million in 2016, Croatia ranks 125th by population in the world. Its population density stands at 75.9 inhabitants per square kilometre. The overall life expectancy in Croatia at birth was 78.20 years in 2016.

The total fertility rate of 1.43 children per mother, is one of the lowest in the world. Since 1991, Croatia's death rate has continuously exceeded its birth rate. Since the late 1990s, there has been a positive net migration into Croatia, reaching a level of more than 7,000 net immigrants in 2006.

The Croatian Bureau of Statistics forecast that the population may shrink to 3.1 million by 2051, depending on actual birth rate and the level of net migration. The population of Croatia rose steadily from 2.1 million in 1857 until 1991, when it peaked at 4.7 million, with exception of censuses taken in 1921 and 1948, i.e. following two world wars. The natural growth rate of the population is currently negative with the demographic transition completed in the 1970s. In recent years, the Croatian government has been pressured each year to add 40% to work permit quotas for foreign workers. In accordance with its immigration policy, Croatia is trying to entice emigrants to return.

The population decrease was also a result of the Croatian War of Independence. During the war, large sections of the population were displaced and emigration increased. In 1991, in predominantly occupied areas, more than 400,000 Croats were either removed from their homes by the Croatian Serb forces or fled the violence. During the final days of the war in 1995, more than 100,000 Serbs voluntarily fled the country before the arrival of Croatian forces during Operation Storm to avoid being brought to justice for their unjustifiable acts committed during the Croatian War for Independence. After the war, the number of displaced persons fell to about 250,000. The Croatian government has taken care of displaced persons by the social security system, and since December 1991 through the Office of Displaced Persons and Refugees.

Most of the territories which were abandoned during the Croatian War of Independence were settled by Croat refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina, mostly from north-western Bosnia, while some of the displaced people returned to their homes.

According to the 2013 United Nations report, 17.6% of Croatia's population were foreign-born immigrants. Croatia is inhabited mostly by Croats (90.4%) and is ethnically the most homogeneous of the six countries of former Yugoslavia. Minority groups include Serbs (4.4%), Bosniaks, Italians, Albanians, Roma, Hungarians, Slovenes, Czechs, Montenegrins, Macedonians, Yugoslavs, and others (1.98%).

Croatia has no official religion. Freedom of religion is a right defined by the Constitution which also defines all religious communities as equal before the law and separated from the state.

According to the 2011 census, 91.36% of Croatians identify as Christian; of these, Roman Catholics make up the largest group, accounting for 86.28% of the population, after which follows Eastern Orthodoxy (4.44%), Protestantism (0.34%) and other Christian (0.30%). The largest religion after Christianity is Islam (1.47%). 4.57% of the population describe themselves as non-religious.

In the Eurostat Eurobarometer Poll of 2005, 67% of the population of Croatia responded that "they believe there is a God". In a 2009 Gallup poll, 70% answered yes to the question "Is religion an important part of your daily life?". However, only 24% of the population attends religious services regularly.

A 2011 survey revealed that 78% of Croatians claim knowledge of at least one foreign language. According to a survey ordered by the European Commission in 2005, 49% of Croatians speak English as the second language, 34% speak German, 14% speak Italian, and 10% speak French. Russian is spoken by 4% each, and 2% of Croatians speak Spanish. However, there are large municipalities that have minority languages that include substantial populations that speak these languages. An odd-majority of Slovenes (59%) have a certain level of knowledge of Croatian. The country is a part of various language-based international associations most notably the European Union Language Association.

Literacy in Croatia stands at 99.2 per cent. A worldwide study about the quality of living in different countries published by "Newsweek" in August 2010 ranked the Croatian education system at 22nd, to share the position with Austria. Primary education in Croatia starts at the age of six or seven and consists of eight grades. In 2007 a law was passed to increase free, noncompulsory education until 18 years of age. Compulsory education consists of eight grades of elementary school.

Secondary education is provided by gymnasiums and vocational schools., there are 2,049 elementary schools and 701 schools providing various forms of secondary education. Primary and secondary education are also available in languages of recognized minorities in Croatia, where classes are held in Italian, Czech, German, Hungarian, and Serbian languages.
There are 137 elementary and secondary level music and art schools, as well as 120 schools for disabled children and youth and 74 schools for adults. Nationwide leaving exams () were introduced for secondary education students in the school year 2009–2010. It comprises three compulsory subjects (Croatian language, mathematics, and a foreign language) and optional subjects and is a prerequisite for university education.

Croatia has 8 public universities, the University of Dubrovnik, University of Osijek, University of Pula, University of Rijeka, University of Split, University of Zadar and University of Zagreb, and 2 private universities, Catholic University of Croatia and Dubrovnik International University. The University of Zadar, the first university in Croatia, was founded in 1396 and remained active until 1807, when other institutions of higher education took over until the foundation of the renewed University of Zadar in 2002. The University of Zagreb, founded in 1669, is the oldest continuously operating university in Southeast Europe. There are also 15 polytechnics, of which 2 are private, and 30 higher education institutions, of which 27 are private. In total, there are 55 institutions of higher education in Croatia, attended by more than 157 thousand students.

There are 205 companies, government or education system institutions and non-profit organisations in Croatia pursuing scientific research and development of technology. Combined, they spent more than 3 billion kuna (€400 million) and employed 10,191 full-time research staff in 2008. Among the scientific institutes operating in Croatia, the largest is the Ruđer Bošković Institute in Zagreb. The Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Zagreb is a learned society promoting language, culture, arts and science from its inception in 1866.

Croatia has been the home of many, like Fausto Veranzio, Giovanni Luppis, Slavoljub Eduard Penkala, Franjo Hanaman and Nikola Tesla, as well as scientists, such as Franciscus Patricius, Nikola Nalješković, Nikola Vitov Gučetić, Josip Franjo Domin, Marino Ghetaldi, Roger Joseph Boscovich, Andrija Mohorovičić, Ivan Supek, Ivan Đikić, Miroslav Radman and Marin Soljačić. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to 2 Croatian laureates, Lavoslav Ružička (1939) and Vladimir Prelog (1975).

Croatia has a universal health care system, whose roots can be traced back to the Hungarian-Croatian Parliament Act of 1891, providing a form of mandatory insurance of all factory workers and craftsmen. The population is covered by a basic health insurance plan provided by statute and optional insurance. In 2017, annual healthcare related expenditures reached 22.0 billion kuna (€3.0 billion). Healthcare expenditures comprise only 0.6% of private health insurance and public spending. In 2017, Croatia spent around 6.6% of its GDP on healthcare.
In 2015, Croatia ranked 36th in the world in life expectancy with 74.7 years for men and 81.2 years for women, and it had a low infant mortality rate of 3 per 1,000 live births.

There are hundreds of healthcare institutions in Croatia, including 79 hospitals and clinics with 23,967 beds. The hospitals and clinics care for more than 700 thousand patients per year and employ 5,205 medical doctors, including 3,929 specialists. There are 6,379 private practice offices, and a total of 41,271 health workers in the country. There are 63 emergency medical service units, responding to more than a million calls. The principal cause of death in 2008 was cardiovascular disease at 43.5% for men and 57.2% for women, followed by tumours, at 29.4% for men and 21.4% for women. In 2009 only 13 Croatians had been infected with HIV/AIDS and 6 had died from the disease. In 2008 it was estimated by the WHO that 27.4% of Croatians over the age of 15 are smokers. According to 2003 WHO data, 22% of the Croatian adult population is obese.

Because of its geographical position, Croatia represents a blend of four different cultural spheres. It has been a crossroads of influences from western culture and the east—ever since the schism between the Western Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire—and also from Mitteleuropa and Mediterranean culture. The Illyrian movement was the most significant period of national cultural history, as the 19th century proved crucial to the emancipation of the Croatian language and saw unprecedented developments in all fields of art and culture, giving rise to a number of historical figures.

The Ministry of Culture is tasked with preserving the nation's cultural and natural heritage and overseeing its development. Further activities supporting the development of culture are undertaken at the local government level. The UNESCO's World Heritage List includes ten sites in Croatia. The country is also rich with intangible culture and holds fifteen of UNESCO's World's intangible culture masterpieces, ranking fourth in the world. A global cultural contribution from Croatia is the necktie, derived from the cravat originally worn by the 17th-century Croatian mercenaries in France.
Croatia has 95 professional theatres, 30 professional children's theatres and 52 amateur theatres visited by more than 1.54 million viewers per year. The professional theatres employ 1,195 artists. There are 46 professional orchestras, ensembles, and choirs in the country, attracting an annual attendance of 317 thousand. There are 166 cinemas with attendance exceeding 4.814 million.
Croatia has 222 museums, visited by more than 2.7 million people in 2016. Furthermore, there are 1,768 libraries in the country, containing 26.8 million volumes, and 19 state archives.

In 2010, 7,348 books and brochures were published, along with 2,676 magazines and 267 newspapers. There are also 135 radio stations and 25 TV stations operating in the country. In the past five years, film production in Croatia produced up to five feature films and 10 to 51 short films, with an additional 76 to 112 TV films., there are 784 amateur cultural and artistic associations and more than 10 thousand cultural, educational and artistic events held annually. The book publishing market is dominated by several major publishers and the industry's centrepiece event—Interliber exhibition held annually at Zagreb Fair.

Croatia is categorised as having established a very high level of human development in the Human Development Index, with a high degree of equality in HDI achievements between women and men. It promotes disability rights. Recognition of same-sex unions in Croatia has gradually improved over the past decade, culminating in registered civil unions in July 2014, granting same-sex couples equal inheritance rights, tax deductions and limited adoption rights. However, in December 2013 Croatians voted in a constitutional referendum and approved changes to constitution to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

Architecture in Croatia reflects influences of bordering nations. Austrian and Hungarian influence is visible in public spaces and buildings in the north and in the central regions, architecture found along coasts of Dalmatia and Istria exhibits Venetian influence. Large squares named after culture heroes, well-groomed parks, and pedestrian-only zones, are features of these orderly towns and cities, especially where large scale Baroque urban planning took place, for instance in Osijek (Tvrđa), Varaždin and Karlovac. Subsequent influence of the Art Nouveau was reflected in contemporary architecture. Along the coast, the architecture is Mediterranean with a strong Venetian and Renaissance influence in major urban areas exemplified in works of Giorgio da Sebenico and Niccolò Fiorentino such as the Cathedral of St. James in Šibenik.
The oldest preserved examples of Croatian architecture are the 9th-century churches, with the largest and the most representative among them being Church of St. Donatus in Zadar.

Besides the architecture encompassing the oldest artworks in Croatia, there is a long history of artists in Croatia reaching the Middle Ages. In that period the stone portal of the Trogir Cathedral was made by Radovan, representing the most important monument of Romanesque sculpture from Medieval Croatia. The Renaissance had the greatest impact on the Adriatic Sea coast since the remainder of Croatia was embroiled in the Hundred Years' Croatian–Ottoman War. With the waning of the Ottoman Empire, art flourished during the Baroque and Rococo. The 19th and the 20th centuries brought about affirmation of numerous Croatian artisans, helped by several patrons of the arts such as bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer. Croatian artists of the period achieving worldwide renown were Vlaho Bukovac and Ivan Meštrović.

The Baška tablet, a stone inscribed with the glagolitic alphabet found on the Krk island and dated to 1100, is considered to be the oldest surviving prose in Croatian. The beginning of more vigorous development of Croatian literature is marked by the Renaissance and Marko Marulić. Besides Marulić, Renaissance playwright Marin Držić, Baroque poet Ivan Gundulić, Croatian national revival poet Ivan Mažuranić, novelist, playwright and poet August Šenoa, children's writer Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić, writer and journalist Marija Jurić Zagorka, poet and writer Antun Gustav Matoš, poet Antun Branko Šimić, expressionist and realist writer Miroslav Krleža, poet Tin Ujević and novelist and short story writer Ivo Andrić are often cited as the greatest figures in Croatian literature.

The freedom of the press and the freedom of speech are guaranteed by the constitution of Croatia. Croatia ranked 62nd in the 2010 Press Freedom Index report compiled by Reporters Without Borders. The state-owned news agency HINA runs a wire service in Croatian and English on politics, economics, society and culture.
Despite the provisions fixed in the constitution, freedoms of press and speech in Croatia have been classified as partly free since 2000 by Freedom House, the independent nongovernmental organisation that monitors press freedom worldwide.
Namely the country has been ranked 85th (of 196 countries), and the 2011 Freedom House report noted improvement of applicable legislation reflecting Croatia's accession to the EU, yet pointed out instances of politicians' attempts to hinder investigative journalism and influence news reports contents, difficulties regarding public access to information, and that most of print media market is controlled by German-owned Hanza Media and Austrian-owned Styria Media Group. Amnesty International reports that in 2009 in Croatia there was an increase in the number of physical attacks and murders of journalists. The incidents were mainly perpetrated against journalists investigating war crimes and organised crime.

, there are fourteen nationwide free-to-air DVB-T television channels, with Croatian Radiotelevision (HRT) operating four, Nova TV and RTL Televizija operating two of the channels each, and the remaining three operated by the Croatian Olympic Committee, Kapital Net d.o.o. and Author d.o.o. companies. In addition there are 21 regional or local DVB-T television channels. The HRT is also broadcasting a satellite TV channel. In 2016, there were 135 radio stations and 25 TV stations in Croatia. Cable television and IPTV networks are gaining ground in the country, as the cable TV networks already serve 450 thousand people, 10% of the total population of the country.

There are 314 newspapers and 2,678 magazines published in Croatia. The print media market is dominated by Europapress Holding and Styria Media Group who publish their flagship dailies "Jutarnji list", "Večernji list" and "24sata". Other influential newspapers are "Novi list" and "Slobodna Dalmacija". In 2013, "24sata" was the most widely circulated daily newspaper, followed by "Večernji list" and "Jutarnji list".

Croatia's film industry is small and heavily subsidised by the government, mainly through grants approved by the Ministry of Culture with films often being co-produced by HRT. Pula Film Festival, the national film awards event held annually in Pula, is the most prestigious film event featuring national and international productions. The greatest accomplishment by Croatian filmmakers was achieved by Dušan Vukotić when he won the 1961 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film for "Ersatz" ().

Croatian traditional cuisine varies from one region to another. Dalmatia and Istria draw upon culinary influences of Italian and other Mediterranean cuisines which prominently feature various seafood, cooked vegetables and pasta, as well as condiments such as olive oil and garlic. The continental cuisine is heavily influenced by Austrian, Hungarian, and Turkish culinary styles. In that area, meats, freshwater fish and vegetable dishes are predominant.
There are two distinct wine-producing regions in Croatia. The continental region in the northeast of the country, especially Slavonia, is capable of producing premium wines, particularly whites. Along the north coast, Istrian and Krk wines are similar to those produced in neighbouring Italy, while further south in Dalmatia, Mediterranean-style red wines are the norm. Annual production of wine exceeds 140 million litres. Croatia was almost exclusively a wine-consuming country up until the late 18th century when a more massive production and consumption of beer started; the annual consumption of beer in 2008 was 83.3 litres per capita which placed Croatia in 15th place among the world's countries.

There are more than 400,000 active sportspeople in Croatia. Out of that number, 277,000 are members of sports associations and nearly 4,000 are members of chess and contract bridge associations. Association football is the most popular sport. The Croatian Football Federation (), with more than 118,000 registered players, is the largest sporting association in the country. The Prva HNL football league attracts the highest average attendance of any professional sports league in the country. In season 2010–11, it attracted 458,746 spectators.

Croatian athletes competing at international events since Croatian independence in 1991 won 44 Olympic medals, including fifteen gold medals—at the
1996 and 2004 Summer Olympics in handball, 2000 Summer Olympics in weightlifting, 2002 and 2006 Winter Olympics in alpine skiing, 2012 Summer Olympics in discus throw, trap shooting, and water polo, and in 2016 Summer Olympics in shooting, rowing, discus throw, sailing and javelin throw. In addition, Croatian athletes won 16 gold medals at world championships, including four in athletics at the World Championships in Athletics held in 2007, 2009, 2013 and 2017, one in handball at the 2003 World Men's Handball Championship, two in water polo at the 2007 World Aquatics Championships and 2017 World Aquatics Championships, one in rowing at the 2010 World Rowing Championships, six in alpine skiing at the FIS Alpine World Ski Championships held in 2003 and 2005 and two at the World Taekwondo Championships in 2011 and 2007. Croatian athletes also won Davis cup in 2005 and 2018. Croatia national football team came in third in 1998 and second in 2018 FIFA World Cup.
Croatia hosted several major sport competitions, including the 2009 World Men's Handball Championship, the 2007 World Table Tennis Championships, the 2000 World Rowing Championships, the 1987 Summer Universiade, the 1979 Mediterranean Games and several European Championships. The governing sports authority in the country is the Croatian Olympic Committee (), founded on 10 September 1991 and recognised by the International Olympic Committee since 17 January 1992, in time to permit the Croatian athletes to appear at the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France representing the newly independent nation for the first time at the Olympic Games.

A 2011 survey revealed that 78% of Croatians claim knowledge of at least one foreign language. According to a survey ordered by the European Commission in 2005, 49% of Croatians speak English as the second language, 34% speak German, 14% speak Italian, and 10% speak French. Russian is spoken by 4% each, and 2% of Croatians speak Spanish. However, there are large municipalities that have minority languages that include substantial populations that speak these languages. An odd-majority of Slovenes (59%) have a certain level of knowledge of Croatian. The country is a part of various language-based international associations most notably the European Union Language Association.

Croatia

Croatia (, ;, ), officially the Republic of Croatia (, ) is a country at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, on the Adriatic Sea. It borders Slovenia to the northwest, Hungary to the northeast, Serbia to the east, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro to the southeast, sharing a maritime border with Italy. Its capital, Zagreb, forms one of the country's primary subdivisions, along with twenty counties. Croatia has an area of and a population of 4.28 million, most of whom are Roman Catholics.

Inhabited since the Paleolithic Age, the Croats arrived in the area in the 6th century and organised the territory into two duchies by the 9th century. Croatia was first internationally recognized as an independent state on 7 June 879 during the reign of duke Branimir. Tomislav became the first king by 925, elevating Croatia to the status of a kingdom, which retained its sovereignty for nearly two centuries, reaching its peak during the rule of kings Petar Krešimir IV and Dmitar Zvonimir. Croatia entered a personal union with Hungary in 1102. In 1527, faced with Ottoman conquest, the Croatian Parliament elected Ferdinand I of Austria to the Croatian throne. In October 1918, in the final days of World War I, the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, independent from Austria-Hungary, was proclaimed in Zagreb, and in December 1918 it was merged into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.

Following the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, most of the Croatian territory was incorporated into the Nazi-backed client-state which led to the development of a resistance movement and the creation of the Federal State of Croatia which after the war become a founding member and a federal constituent of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. On 25 June 1991, Croatia declared independence, which came wholly into effect on 8 October of the same year. The Croatian War of Independence was fought successfully for four years following the declaration.

The sovereign state of Croatia is a republic governed under a parliamentary system and a developed country with a very high standard of living. It is a member of the European Union (EU), the United Nations (UN), the Council of Europe, NATO, the World Trade Organization (WTO), and a founding member of the Union for the Mediterranean. As an active participant in the UN peacekeeping forces, Croatia has contributed troops to the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan and took a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council for the 2008–2009 term. Since 2000, the Croatian government has constantly invested in infrastructure, especially transport routes and facilities along the Pan-European corridors.

Croatia's economy is dominated by service and industrial sectors and agriculture. Tourism is a significant source of revenue, with Croatia ranked among top 20 most popular tourist destinations in the world. The state controls a part of the economy, with substantial government expenditure. The European Union is Croatia's most important trading partner. Croatia provides a social security, universal health care system, and a tuition-free primary and secondary education, while supporting culture through numerous public institutions and corporate investments in media and publishing.

The name of Croatia derives from Medieval Latin "Croātia". Itself a derivation of North-West Slavic "*Xrovat-", by liquid metathesis from Common Slavic period "*"Xorvat"", from proposed Proto-Slavic "*Xъrvátъ" which possibly comes from Old Persian "*xaraxwat-". The word is attested by the Old Iranian toponym "Harahvait-" which is the native name of Arachosia.

The origin of the name is uncertain, but is thought to be a Gothic or Indo-Aryan term assigned to a Slavic tribe. The oldest preserved record of the Croatian ethnonym "*xъrvatъ" is of variable stem, attested in the Baška tablet in style "zvъnъmirъ kralъ xrъvatъskъ" ("Zvonimir, Croatian king").

The first attestation of the Latin term is attributed to a charter of Duke Trpimir from the year 852. The original is lost, and just a 1568 copy is preserved, leading to doubts over the authenticity of the claim. The oldest preserved stone inscription is the 9th-century Branimir Inscription found near Benkovac, where Duke Branimir is styled "Dux Cruatorvm". The inscription is not believed to be dated accurately, but is likely to be from during the period of 879–892, during Branimir's rule.

The area known as Croatia today was inhabited throughout the prehistoric period. Fossils of Neanderthals dating to the middle Palaeolithic period have been unearthed in northern Croatia, with the most famous and the best presented site in Krapina. Remnants of several Neolithic and Chalcolithic cultures were found in all regions of the country. The largest proportion of the sites is in the river valleys of northern Croatia, and the most significant cultures whose presence was discovered include Baden, Starčevo, and Vučedol cultures. The Iron Age left traces of the early Illyrian Hallstatt culture and the Celtic La Tène culture.

Much later, the region was settled by Illyrians and Liburnians, while the first Greek colonies were established on the islands of Hvar, Korčula, and Vis. In 9 AD the territory of today's Croatia became part of the Roman Empire. Emperor Diocletian had a large palace built in Split to which he retired after his abdication in AD 305.

During the 5th century, the last de jure Western emperor last Western Roman Emperor Julius Nepos ruled his small realm from the palace after fleeing Italy to go into exile in 475. The period ends with Avar and Croat invasions in the first half of the 7th century and destruction of almost all Roman towns. Roman survivors retreated to more favourable sites on the coast, islands and mountains. The city of Dubrovnik was founded by such survivors from Epidaurum.

The ethnogenesis of Croats is uncertain and there are several competing theories, Slavic and Iranian being the most frequently put forward. The most widely accepted of these, the Slavic theory, proposes migration of White Croats from the territory of White Croatia during the Migration Period. Conversely, the Iranian theory proposes Iranian origin, based on Tanais Tablets containing Greek inscription of given names "Χορούαθος", "Χοροάθος", and "Χορόαθος" (Khoroúathos, Khoroáthos, and Khoróathos) and their interpretation as anthroponyms of Croatian people.

According to the work "De Administrando Imperio" written by the 10th-century Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII, the Croats had arrived in what is today Croatia in the early 7th century. However, that claim is disputed and competing hypotheses date the event between the 6th and the 9th centuries. Eventually two dukedoms were formed—Duchy of Pannonia and Duchy of Croatia, ruled by Ljudevit and Borna, as attested by chronicles of Einhard starting in 818. The record represents the first document of Croatian realms, vassal states of Francia at the time.

Following the decisive Ottoman victories, Croatia was split into civilian and military territories, with the partition formed in 1538. The military territories would become known as the Croatian Military Frontier and were under direct Imperial control. Ottoman advances in the Croatian territory continued until the 1593 Battle of Sisak, the first decisive Ottoman defeat, and stabilisation of borders.
During the Great Turkish War (1683–1698), Slavonia was regained but western Bosnia, which had been part of Croatia before the Ottoman conquest, remained outside Croatian control. The present-day border between the two countries is a remnant of this outcome. Dalmatia, the southern part of the border, was similarly defined by the Fifth and the Seventh Ottoman–Venetian Wars.

The Ottoman wars instigated great demographic changes. Croats migrated towards Austria and the present-day Burgenland Croats are direct descendants of these settlers. To replace the fleeing population, the Habsburgs encouraged the Christian populations of Bosnia to provide military service in the Croatian Military Frontier. Most of the transferred population were Orthodox Vlachs and the peak of transferring was during the 16th century.

The Croatian Parliament supported King Charles III's Pragmatic Sanction and signed their own Pragmatic Sanction in 1712. Subsequently, the emperor pledged to respect all privileges and political rights of Kingdom of Croatia and Queen Maria Theresa made significant contributions to Croatian matters.

After Austria-Hungary occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina following the 1878 Treaty of Berlin, the Croatian Military Frontier was abolished and the territory returned to Croatia in 1881, pursuant to provisions of the Croatian-Hungarian settlement. Renewed efforts to reform Austria-Hungary, entailing federalisation with Croatia as a federal unit, were stopped by advent of World War I.

On 29 October 1918 the Croatian Parliament ("Sabor") declared independence and decided to join the newly formed State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, which in turn entered into union with the Kingdom of Serbia on 4 December 1918 to form the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. The Croatian Parliament never ratified a decision to unite with Serbia and Montenegro. The 1921 constitution defining the country as a unitary state and abolition of Croatian Parliament and historical administrative divisions effectively ended Croatian autonomy. The new constitution was opposed by the most widely supported national political party—the Croatian Peasant Party (HSS) led by Stjepan Radić.

The political situation deteriorated further as Radić was assassinated in the National Assembly in 1928, leading to the dictatorship of King Alexander in January 1929. The dictatorship formally ended in 1931 when the king imposed a more unitarian constitution, and changed the name of the country to Yugoslavia. The HSS, now led by Vladko Maček, continued to advocate federalisation of Yugoslavia, resulting in the Cvetković–Maček Agreement of August 1939 and the autonomous Banovina of Croatia. The Yugoslav government retained control of defence, internal security, foreign affairs, trade, and transport while other matters were left to the Croatian Sabor and a crown-appointed Ban.

In April 1941, Yugoslavia was occupied by Germany and Italy. Following the invasion the territory, parts of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the region of Syrmia were incorporated into the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), a Nazi-backed puppet state. Parts of Dalmatia were annexed by Italy, and the northern Croatian regions of Baranja and Međimurje were annexed by Hungary. The NDH regime was led by Ante Pavelić and ultranationalist Ustaše.
A resistance movement soon emerged. On 22 June 1941, the 1st Sisak Partisan Detachment was formed near Sisak, as the first military unit formed by a resistance movement in occupied Europe. This sparked the beginning of the Yugoslav Partisan movement, a communist multi-ethnic anti-fascist resistance group led by Josip Broz Tito. The movement grew rapidly and at the Tehran Conference in December 1943 the Partisans gained recognition from the Allies.

With Allied support in logistics, equipment, training and air power, and with the assistance of Soviet troops taking part in the 1944 Belgrade Offensive, the Partisans gained control of Yugoslavia and the border regions of Italy and Austria by May 1945, during which thousands of members of the Ustaše, as well as Croat refugees, were killed by the Yugoslav Partisans.
The political aspirations of the Partisan movement were reflected in the State Anti-fascist Council for the National Liberation of Croatia, which developed in 1943 as the bearer of Croatian statehood and later transformed into the Parliament of Croatia in 1945, and AVNOJ—its counterpart at the Yugoslav level.

Following the death of Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito in 1980, the political situation in Yugoslavia deteriorated, with national tension fanned by the 1986 SANU Memorandum and the 1989 coups in Vojvodina, Kosovo and Montenegro. In January 1990, the Communist Party fragmented along national lines, with the Croatian faction demanding a looser federation. In the same year, the first multi-party elections were held in Croatia, with Franjo Tuđman's win raising nationalist tensions further. Some of Serbs in Croatia left Sabor and declared the autonomy of areas that would soon become the unrecognised Republic of Serbian Krajina, intent on achieving independence from Croatia.

As tensions rose, Croatia declared independence on 25 June 1991. However, the full implementation of declaration only came into effect on 8 October 1991. In the meantime, tensions escalated into overt war when the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) and various Serb paramilitary groups attacked Croatia. By the end of 1991, a high-intensity conflict fought along a wide front reduced Croatia to control of only about two-thirds of its territory. The various Serb paramilitary groups then began pursuing a campaign of killing, terror and expulsion against the Croats in the rebel territories, killing thousands of Croat civilians and forcing at least 170,000 from their homes.

On 15 January 1992, Croatia gained diplomatic recognition by the European Economic Community members, and subsequently the United Nations. The war effectively ended in August 1995 with a decisive victory by Croatia. This was accompanied by the uncompelled fleeing of about 200,000 Serbs from the rebel territories, whose lands were subsequently settled by Croat refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina. The remaining occupied areas were restored to Croatia pursuant to the Erdut Agreement of November 1995, with the process concluded in January 1998.
Following the end of the war, Croatia faced the challenges of post-war reconstruction, the return of refugees, advancing democratic principles, protection of human rights and general social and economic development. The post-2000 period is characterized by democratization, economic growth and structural and social reforms, as well as problems such as unemployment, corruption and the inefficiency of the public administration.

Croatia joined the Partnership for Peace on 25 May 2000
and become a member of the World Trade Organization on 30 November 2000.
On 29 October 2001, Croatia signed a Stabilization and Association Agreement with the European Union,
submitted a formal application for the EU membership in 2003, was given the status of candidate country in 2004, and began accession negotiations in 2005. In November 2000 and March 2001, the Parliament amended the Constitution changing its bicameral structure back into historic unicameral and reducing the presidential powers.

Although Croatia experienced a significant boom in the economy in the early 2000s, the increase of the government debt and the absence of concrete reforms led to a financial crisis in 2008 which forced the government to cut public spending thus provoking a public outcry. On 1 April 2009, Croatia joined NATO. A wave of anti-government protests organized via Facebook took place in early 2011 as general dissatisfaction with political and economic state grew.

The majority of Croatian voters voted in favour of country's EU membership at the 2012 referendum. Croatia completed EU accession negotiations in 2011 and joined the European Union on 1 July 2013. Croatia was affected by the European migrant crisis in 2015 when Hungary's closure of its borders with Serbia forced over 700,000 migrants to use Croatia as a transit country on their way to Western Europe.

Croatia is located in Central and Southeast Europe, on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. It borders Hungary to the northeast, Serbia to the east, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro to the southeast, and Slovenia to the northwest. It lies mostly between latitudes 42° and 47° N and longitudes 13° and 20° E. Part of the territory in the extreme south surrounding Dubrovnik is a practical exclave connected to the rest of the mainland by territorial waters, but separated on land by a short coastline strip belonging to Bosnia and Herzegovina around Neum.

The territory covers, consisting of of land and of water. It is the 127th largest country in the world. Elevation ranges from the mountains of the Dinaric Alps with the highest point of the Dinara peak at near the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina in the south to the shore of the Adriatic Sea which makes up its entire southwest border. Insular Croatia consists of over a thousand islands and islets varying in size, 48 of which are permanently inhabited. The largest islands are Cres and Krk, each of them having an area of around.

There are 37,000 known species in Croatia, but their actual number is estimated to be between 50,000 and 100,000. The claim is supported by nearly 400 new taxa of invertebrates discovered in Croatia in the first half of the 2000s alone. There are more than a thousand endemic species, especially in Velebit and Biokovo mountains, Adriatic islands and karst rivers. Legislation protects 1,131 species.
The most serious threat to species is loss and degradation of habitats. A further problem is presented by invasive alien species, especially "Caulerpa taxifolia" algae.

Most of Croatia has a moderately warm and rainy continental climate as defined by the Köppen climate classification. Mean monthly temperature ranges between in January and in July. The coldest parts of the country are Lika and Gorski Kotar where snowy forested climate is found at elevations above. The warmest areas of Croatia are at the Adriatic coast and especially in its immediate hinterland characterised by the Mediterranean climate, as the temperature highs are moderated by the sea. Consequently, temperature peaks are more pronounced in the continental areas. The lowest temperature of was recorded on 3 February 1919 in Čakovec, and the highest temperature of was recorded on 4 August 1981 in Ploče.

Mean annual precipitation ranges between and depending on geographic region and prevailing climate type. The least precipitation is recorded in the outer islands (Biševo, Lastovo, Svetac, Vis) and in the eastern parts of Slavonia. However, in the latter case, it occurs mostly during the growing season. The maximum precipitation levels are observed on the Dinara mountain range and in Gorski kotar.

Prevailing winds in the interior are light to moderate northeast or southwest, and in the coastal area, prevailing winds are determined by local area features. Higher wind velocities are more often recorded in cooler months along the coast, generally as the cool northeasterly bura or less frequently as the warm southerly jugo. The sunniest parts of the country are the outer islands, Hvar and Korčula, where more than 2700 hours of sunshine are recorded per year, followed by the middle and southern Adriatic Sea area in general, and northern Adriatic coast, all with more than 2000 hours of sunshine per year.

A unicameral parliament ("") holds legislative power. A second chamber, the "House of Counties", set up in 1993 pursuant to the 1990 Constitution, was abolished in 2001. The number of Sabor members can vary from 100 to 160; they are all elected by popular vote to serve four-year terms. The sessions of the Sabor take place from 15 January to 15 July, and from 15 September to 15 December. The two largest political parties in Croatia are the Croatian Democratic Union and the Social Democratic Party of Croatia.

Croatia has a civil law legal system in which law arises primarily from written statutes, with judges serving merely as implementers and not creators of law. Its development was largely influenced by German and Austrian legal systems. Croatian law is divided into two principal areas—private and public law. By the time EU accession negotiations were completed on 30 June 2010, Croatian legislation was fully harmonised with the Community acquis. The main law in the county is the Constitution adopted on December 22, 1990.

The main national courts are the Constitutional Court, which oversees violations of the Constitution, and the Supreme Court, which is the highest court of appeal. In addition, there are also County, Municipal, Misdemeanor, Commercial, and Administrative courts. Cases falling within judicial jurisdiction are in the first instance decided by a single professional judge, while appeals are deliberated in mixed tribunals of professional judges. Lay magistrates also participate in trials. State's Attorney Office is the judicial body constituted of public prosecutors that is empowered to instigate prosecution of perpetrators of offences.

Law enforcement agencies are organised under the authority of the Ministry of the Interior which consist primarily of the national police force. Croatia's security service is the Security and Intelligence Agency (SOA).

Croatia was first subdivided into counties in the Middle Ages. The divisions changed over time to reflect losses of territory to Ottoman conquest and subsequent liberation of the same territory, changes of political status of Dalmatia, Dubrovnik, and Istria. The traditional division of the country into counties was abolished in the 1920s when the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and the subsequent Kingdom of Yugoslavia introduced oblasts and banovinas respectively.
Communist-ruled Croatia, as a constituent part of post-World War II Yugoslavia, abolished earlier divisions and introduced municipalities, subdividing Croatia into approximately one hundred municipalities. Counties were reintroduced in 1992 legislation, significantly altered in terms of territory relative to the pre-1920s subdivisions. In 1918, the Transleithanian part of Croatia was divided into eight counties with their seats in Bjelovar, Gospić, Ogulin, Osijek, Požega, Varaždin, Vukovar, and Zagreb, and the 1992 legislation established 14 counties in the same territory.

Croatia has established diplomatic relations with 181 countries., Croatia maintains a network of 54 embassies, 28 consulates and eight permanent diplomatic missions abroad. Furthermore, there are 52 foreign embassies and 69 consulates in the Republic of Croatia in addition to offices of international organisations such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, International Organization for Migration, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), World Bank, World Health Organization (WHO), International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), United Nations Development Programme, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and UNICEF. In 2009, the Croatian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and European Integration employed 1,381 personnel and expended 648.2 million kuna (€86.4 million). Stated aims of Croatian foreign policy include enhancing relations with neighbouring countries, developing international co-operation and promotion of the Croatian economy and Croatia itself.

Since 2003, Croatian foreign policy has focused on achieving the strategic goal of becoming a member state of the European Union (EU). In December 2011, Croatia completed the EU accession negotiations and signed an EU accession treaty on 9 December 2011. Croatia joined the European Union on 1 July 2013 marking the end of a process started in 2001 by signing of the Stabilisation and Association Agreement and Croatian application for the EU membership in 2003. A recurring obstacle to the negotiations was Croatia's ICTY co-operation record and Slovenian blocking of the negotiations because of Croatia–Slovenia border disputes. The latter should be resolved through an Arbitration Agreement of 4 November 2009, approved by national parliaments and a referendum in Slovenia., but due to the events during arbitration Croatia does not accept results. As of 2019, Croatia has unsolved border issues with all neighbouring former Yugoslav countries (Slovenia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro).

Another strategic Croatian foreign policy goal for the 2000s was NATO membership. Croatia was included in the Partnership for Peace in 2000, invited to NATO membership in 2008 and formally joined the alliance on 1 April 2009. Croatia became a member of the United Nations Security Council for the 2008–2009 term, assuming presidency in December 2008. The country is preparing to join the Schengen Area.

The Croatian Armed Forces (CAF) consist of the Air Force, Army, and Navy branches in addition to the Education and Training Command and Support Command. The CAF is headed by the General Staff, which reports to the Defence Minister, who in turn reports to the President of Croatia. According to the constitution, the President is commander-in-chief of the armed forces and in case of immediate threat during wartime he issues orders directly to the General Staff.

Following the 1991–95 war defence spending and CAF size have been in constant decline. military spending was an estimated 2.39% of the country's GDP, which placed Croatia 64th in a ranking of all countries. Since 2005 the budget was kept below 2% of GDP, down from the record high of 11.1% in 1994. Traditionally relying on a large number of conscripts, CAF also went through a period of reforms focused on downsizing, restructuring and professionalisation in the years prior to Croatia's accession to NATO in April 2009. According to a presidential decree issued in 2006 the CAF is set to employ 18,100 active duty military personnel, 3,000 civilians and 2,000 voluntary conscripts between the ages of 18 and 30 in peacetime.
Compulsory conscription was abolished in January 2008. Until 2008 military service was compulsory for men at age 18 and conscripts served six-month tours of duty, reduced in 2001 from the earlier scheme of nine-month conscription tours. Conscientious objectors could instead opt for an eight-month civilian service.

Croatia also has a significant military industry sector which exported around US$120 million worth of military equipment and armament in 2010. Croatian-made weapons and vehicles used by CAF include the standard sidearm HS2000 manufactured by HS Produkt and the M-84D battle tank designed by the Đuro Đaković factory. Uniforms and helmets worn by CAF soldiers are also locally produced and successfully marketed to other countries.

Croatia is classified as a high-income economy by the United Nations. International Monetary Fund data projects that Croatian nominal GDP stands at $53.5 billion, or $12,863 per capita for year 2017, while purchasing power parity GDP stands at $100 billion, or $24,095 per capita. According to Eurostat data, Croatian PPS GDP per capita stood at 61% of the EU average in 2012.

Real GDP growth in 2007 was 6.0 per cent. The average net salary of a Croatian worker in January 2017 was 5,895 HRK per month, and the average gross salary was 7,911 HRK per month., registered unemployment rate in Croatia was 15.3%.

In 2010, economic output was dominated by the service sector which accounted for 66% of GDP, followed by the industrial sector with 27.2% and agriculture accounting for 6.8% of GDP. According to 2004 data, 2.7% of the workforce were employed in agriculture, 32.8% by industry and 64.5% in services. The industrial sector is dominated by shipbuilding, food processing, pharmaceuticals, information technology, biochemical and timber industry. In 2010, Croatian exports were valued at 64.9 billion kuna (€8.65 billion) with 110.3 billion kuna (€14.7 billion) worth of imports. The largest trading partner is the rest of the European Union. More than half of Croatia's trade is with other European Union member states.

Privatization and the drive toward a market economy had barely begun under the new Croatian Government when war broke out in 1991. As a result of the war, the economic infrastructure sustained massive damage, particularly the revenue-rich tourism industry. From 1989 to 1993, the GDP fell 40.5%. The Croatian state still controls a significant part of the economy, with government expenditures accounting for as much as 40% of GDP. A backlogged judiciary system, combined with inefficient public administration, especially on issues of land ownership and corruption, are particular concerns. In the 2015 Corruption Perceptions Index, published by Transparency International, the country is ranked joint 50th with a score of 51, where zero denotes "highly corrupt" and 100 "very clean". In June 2013, the national debt stood at 59.5% of the nation's GDP.

Tourism dominates the Croatian service sector and accounts for up to 20% of Croatian GDP. Annual tourist industry income for 2017 was estimated at €9.5 billion. Its positive effects are felt throughout the economy of Croatia in terms of increased business volume observed in retail business, processing industry orders and summer seasonal employment. The industry is considered an export business, because it significantly reduces the country's external trade imbalance. Since the end of the Croatian War of Independence, the tourist industry has grown rapidly, recording a fourfold rise in tourist numbers, with more than 11 million tourists each year. The most numerous are tourists from Germany, Slovenia, Austria, Italy, and Poland as well as Croatia itself. Length of a tourist stay in Croatia averaged 4.9 days in 2011.

The bulk of the tourist industry is concentrated along the Adriatic Sea coast. Opatija was the first holiday resort. It first became popular in the middle of the 19th century. By the 1890s, it had become one of the most significant European health resorts. Later a number of resorts sprang up along the coast and islands, offering services catering to both mass tourism and various niche markets. The most significant are nautical tourism, as there are numerous marinas with more than 16 thousand berths, cultural tourism relying on appeal of medieval coastal cities and numerous cultural events taking place during the summer. Inland areas offer agrotourism, mountain resorts, and spas. Zagreb is also a significant tourist destination, rivalling major coastal cities and resorts.

Croatia has unpolluted marine areas reflected through numerous nature reserves and 116 Blue Flag beaches. Croatia is ranked as the 18th most popular tourist destination in the world. About 15% of these visitors, or over one million per year, are involved with naturism, an industry for which Croatia is world-famous. It was also the first European country to develop commercial naturist resorts.

The highlight of Croatia's recent infrastructure developments is its rapidly developed motorway network, largely built in the late 1990s and especially in the 2000s (decade). By September 2011, Croatia had completed more than of motorways, connecting Zagreb to most other regions and following various European routes and four Pan-European corridors. The busiest motorways are the A1, connecting Zagreb to Split and the A3, passing east–west through northwest Croatia and Slavonia.

A widespread network of state roads in Croatia acts as motorway feeder roads while connecting all major settlements in the country. The high quality and safety levels of the Croatian motorway network were tested and confirmed by several EuroTAP and EuroTest programs.

Croatia has an extensive rail network spanning, including of electrified railways and of double track railways. The most significant railways in Croatia are found within the Pan-European transport corridors Vb and X connecting Rijeka to Budapest and Ljubljana to Belgrade, both via Zagreb. All rail services are operated by Croatian Railways.
There are international airports in Dubrovnik, Osijek, Pula, Rijeka, Split, Zadar, and Zagreb. The largest and busiest is Franjo Tuđman Airport., Croatia complies with International Civil Aviation Organization aviation safety standards and the Federal Aviation Administration upgraded it to Category 1 rating.

The busiest cargo seaport in Croatia is the Port of Rijeka and the busiest passenger ports are Split and Zadar. In addition to those, a large number of minor ports serve an extensive system of ferries connecting numerous islands and coastal cities in addition to ferry lines to several cities in Italy. The largest river port is Vukovar, located on the Danube, representing the nation's outlet to the Pan-European transport corridor VII.

There are of crude oil pipelines in Croatia, connecting the Port of Rijeka oil terminal with refineries in Rijeka and Sisak, as well as several transhipment terminals. The system has a capacity of 20 million tonnes per year. The natural gas transportation system comprises of trunk and regional natural gas pipelines, and more than 300 associated structures, connecting production rigs, the Okoli natural gas storage facility, 27 end-users and 37 distribution systems.

Croatian production of energy sources covers 85% of nationwide natural gas demand and 19% of oil demand. In 2008, 47.6% of Croatia's primary energy production structure comprised use of natural gas (47.7%), crude oil (18.0%), fuel wood (8.4%), hydro power (25.4%) and other renewable energy sources (0.5%). In 2009, net total electrical power production in Croatia reached 12,725 GWh and Croatia imported 28.5% of its electric power energy needs. The bulk of Croatian imports are supplied by the Krško Nuclear Power Plant, 50% owned by Hrvatska elektroprivreda, providing 15% of Croatia's electricity.

With its estimated population of 4.19 million in 2016, Croatia ranks 125th by population in the world. Its population density stands at 75.9 inhabitants per square kilometre. The overall life expectancy in Croatia at birth was 78.20 years in 2016.

The total fertility rate of 1.43 children per mother, is one of the lowest in the world. Since 1991, Croatia's death rate has continuously exceeded its birth rate. Since the late 1990s, there has been a positive net migration into Croatia, reaching a level of more than 7,000 net immigrants in 2006.

The Croatian Bureau of Statistics forecast that the population may shrink to 3.1 million by 2051, depending on actual birth rate and the level of net migration. The population of Croatia rose steadily from 2.1 million in 1857 until 1991, when it peaked at 4.7 million, with exception of censuses taken in 1921 and 1948, i.e. following two world wars. The natural growth rate of the population is currently negative with the demographic transition completed in the 1970s. In recent years, the Croatian government has been pressured each year to add 40% to work permit quotas for foreign workers. In accordance with its immigration policy, Croatia is trying to entice emigrants to return.

The population decrease was also a result of the Croatian War of Independence. During the war, large sections of the population were displaced and emigration increased. In 1991, in predominantly occupied areas, more than 400,000 Croats were either removed from their homes by the Croatian Serb forces or fled the violence. During the final days of the war in 1995, more than 100,000 Serbs voluntarily fled the country before the arrival of Croatian forces during Operation Storm to avoid being brought to justice for their unjustifiable acts committed during the Croatian War for Independence. After the war, the number of displaced persons fell to about 250,000. The Croatian government has taken care of displaced persons by the social security system, and since December 1991 through the Office of Displaced Persons and Refugees.

Most of the territories which were abandoned during the Croatian War of Independence were settled by Croat refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina, mostly from north-western Bosnia, while some of the displaced people returned to their homes.

According to the 2013 United Nations report, 17.6% of Croatia's population were foreign-born immigrants. Croatia is inhabited mostly by Croats (90.4%) and is ethnically the most homogeneous of the six countries of former Yugoslavia. Minority groups include Serbs (4.4%), Bosniaks, Italians, Albanians, Roma, Hungarians, Slovenes, Czechs, Montenegrins, Macedonians, Yugoslavs, and others (1.98%).

Croatia has no official religion. Freedom of religion is a right defined by the Constitution which also defines all religious communities as equal before the law and separated from the state.

According to the 2011 census, 91.36% of Croatians identify as Christian; of these, Roman Catholics make up the largest group, accounting for 86.28% of the population, after which follows Eastern Orthodoxy (4.44%), Protestantism (0.34%) and other Christian (0.30%). The largest religion after Christianity is Islam (1.47%). 4.57% of the population describe themselves as non-religious.

In the Eurostat Eurobarometer Poll of 2005, 67% of the population of Croatia responded that "they believe there is a God". In a 2009 Gallup poll, 70% answered yes to the question "Is religion an important part of your daily life?". However, only 24% of the population attends religious services regularly.

A 2011 survey revealed that 78% of Croatians claim knowledge of at least one foreign language. According to a survey ordered by the European Commission in 2005, 49% of Croatians speak English as the second language, 34% speak German, 14% speak Italian, and 10% speak French. Russian is spoken by 4% each, and 2% of Croatians speak Spanish. However, there are large municipalities that have minority languages that include substantial populations that speak these languages. An odd-majority of Slovenes (59%) have a certain level of knowledge of Croatian. The country is a part of various language-based international associations most notably the European Union Language Association.

Literacy in Croatia stands at 99.2 per cent. A worldwide study about the quality of living in different countries published by "Newsweek" in August 2010 ranked the Croatian education system at 22nd, to share the position with Austria. Primary education in Croatia starts at the age of six or seven and consists of eight grades. In 2007 a law was passed to increase free, noncompulsory education until 18 years of age. Compulsory education consists of eight grades of elementary school.

Secondary education is provided by gymnasiums and vocational schools., there are 2,049 elementary schools and 701 schools providing various forms of secondary education. Primary and secondary education are also available in languages of recognized minorities in Croatia, where classes are held in Italian, Czech, German, Hungarian, and Serbian languages.
There are 137 elementary and secondary level music and art schools, as well as 120 schools for disabled children and youth and 74 schools for adults. Nationwide leaving exams () were introduced for secondary education students in the school year 2009–2010. It comprises three compulsory subjects (Croatian language, mathematics, and a foreign language) and optional subjects and is a prerequisite for university education.

Croatia has 8 public universities, the University of Dubrovnik, University of Osijek, University of Pula, University of Rijeka, University of Split, University of Zadar and University of Zagreb, and 2 private universities, Catholic University of Croatia and Dubrovnik International University. The University of Zadar, the first university in Croatia, was founded in 1396 and remained active until 1807, when other institutions of higher education took over until the foundation of the renewed University of Zadar in 2002. The University of Zagreb, founded in 1669, is the oldest continuously operating university in Southeast Europe. There are also 15 polytechnics, of which 2 are private, and 30 higher education institutions, of which 27 are private. In total, there are 55 institutions of higher education in Croatia, attended by more than 157 thousand students.

There are 205 companies, government or education system institutions and non-profit organisations in Croatia pursuing scientific research and development of technology. Combined, they spent more than 3 billion kuna (€400 million) and employed 10,191 full-time research staff in 2008. Among the scientific institutes operating in Croatia, the largest is the Ruđer Bošković Institute in Zagreb. The Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Zagreb is a learned society promoting language, culture, arts and science from its inception in 1866.

Croatia has been the home of many, like Fausto Veranzio, Giovanni Luppis, Slavoljub Eduard Penkala, Franjo Hanaman and Nikola Tesla, as well as scientists, such as Franciscus Patricius, Nikola Nalješković, Nikola Vitov Gučetić, Josip Franjo Domin, Marino Ghetaldi, Roger Joseph Boscovich, Andrija Mohorovičić, Ivan Supek, Ivan Đikić, Miroslav Radman and Marin Soljačić. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to 2 Croatian laureates, Lavoslav Ružička (1939) and Vladimir Prelog (1975).

Croatia has a universal health care system, whose roots can be traced back to the Hungarian-Croatian Parliament Act of 1891, providing a form of mandatory insurance of all factory workers and craftsmen. The population is covered by a basic health insurance plan provided by statute and optional insurance. In 2017, annual healthcare related expenditures reached 22.0 billion kuna (€3.0 billion). Healthcare expenditures comprise only 0.6% of private health insurance and public spending. In 2017, Croatia spent around 6.6% of its GDP on healthcare.
In 2015, Croatia ranked 36th in the world in life expectancy with 74.7 years for men and 81.2 years for women, and it had a low infant mortality rate of 3 per 1,000 live births.

There are hundreds of healthcare institutions in Croatia, including 79 hospitals and clinics with 23,967 beds. The hospitals and clinics care for more than 700 thousand patients per year and employ 5,205 medical doctors, including 3,929 specialists. There are 6,379 private practice offices, and a total of 41,271 health workers in the country. There are 63 emergency medical service units, responding to more than a million calls. The principal cause of death in 2008 was cardiovascular disease at 43.5% for men and 57.2% for women, followed by tumours, at 29.4% for men and 21.4% for women. In 2009 only 13 Croatians had been infected with HIV/AIDS and 6 had died from the disease. In 2008 it was estimated by the WHO that 27.4% of Croatians over the age of 15 are smokers. According to 2003 WHO data, 22% of the Croatian adult population is obese.

Because of its geographical position, Croatia represents a blend of four different cultural spheres. It has been a crossroads of influences from western culture and the east—ever since the schism between the Western Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire—and also from Mitteleuropa and Mediterranean culture. The Illyrian movement was the most significant period of national cultural history, as the 19th century proved crucial to the emancipation of the Croatian language and saw unprecedented developments in all fields of art and culture, giving rise to a number of historical figures.

In 2010, 7,348 books and brochures were published, along with 2,676 magazines and 267 newspapers. There are also 135 radio stations and 25 TV stations operating in the country. In the past five years, film production in Croatia produced up to five feature films and 10 to 51 short films, with an additional 76 to 112 TV films., there are 784 amateur cultural and artistic associations and more than 10 thousand cultural, educational and artistic events held annually. The book publishing market is dominated by several major publishers and the industry's centrepiece event—Interliber exhibition held annually at Zagreb Fair.

Croatia is categorised as having established a very high level of human development in the Human Development Index, with a high degree of equality in HDI achievements between women and men. It promotes disability rights. Recognition of same-sex unions in Croatia has gradually improved over the past decade, culminating in registered civil unions in July 2014, granting same-sex couples equal inheritance rights, tax deductions and limited adoption rights. However, in December 2013 Croatians voted in a constitutional referendum and approved changes to constitution to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

Architecture in Croatia reflects influences of bordering nations. Austrian and Hungarian influence is visible in public spaces and buildings in the north and in the central regions, architecture found along coasts of Dalmatia and Istria exhibits Venetian influence. Large squares named after culture heroes, well-groomed parks, and pedestrian-only zones, are features of these orderly towns and cities, especially where large scale Baroque urban planning took place, for instance in Osijek (Tvrđa), Varaždin and Karlovac. Subsequent influence of the Art Nouveau was reflected in contemporary architecture. Along the coast, the architecture is Mediterranean with a strong Venetian and Renaissance influence in major urban areas exemplified in works of Giorgio da Sebenico and Niccolò Fiorentino such as the Cathedral of St. James in Šibenik.
The oldest preserved examples of Croatian architecture are the 9th-century churches, with the largest and the most representative among them being Church of St. Donatus in Zadar.

Besides the architecture encompassing the oldest artworks in Croatia, there is a long history of artists in Croatia reaching the Middle Ages. In that period the stone portal of the Trogir Cathedral was made by Radovan, representing the most important monument of Romanesque sculpture from Medieval Croatia. The Renaissance had the greatest impact on the Adriatic Sea coast since the remainder of Croatia was embroiled in the Hundred Years' Croatian–Ottoman War. With the waning of the Ottoman Empire, art flourished during the Baroque and Rococo. The 19th and the 20th centuries brought about affirmation of numerous Croatian artisans, helped by several patrons of the arts such as bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer. Croatian artists of the period achieving worldwide renown were Vlaho Bukovac and Ivan Meštrović.

The Baška tablet, a stone inscribed with the glagolitic alphabet found on the Krk island and dated to 1100, is considered to be the oldest surviving prose in Croatian. The beginning of more vigorous development of Croatian literature is marked by the Renaissance and Marko Marulić. Besides Marulić, Renaissance playwright Marin Držić, Baroque poet Ivan Gundulić, Croatian national revival poet Ivan Mažuranić, novelist, playwright and poet August Šenoa, children's writer Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić, writer and journalist Marija Jurić Zagorka, poet and writer Antun Gustav Matoš, poet Antun Branko Šimić, expressionist and realist writer Miroslav Krleža, poet Tin Ujević and novelist and short story writer Ivo Andrić are often cited as the greatest figures in Croatian literature.

, there are fourteen nationwide free-to-air DVB-T television channels, with Croatian Radiotelevision (HRT) operating four, Nova TV and RTL Televizija operating two of the channels each, and the remaining three operated by the Croatian Olympic Committee, Kapital Net d.o.o. and Author d.o.o. companies. In addition there are 21 regional or local DVB-T television channels. The HRT is also broadcasting a satellite TV channel. In 2016, there were 135 radio stations and 25 TV stations in Croatia. Cable television and IPTV networks are gaining ground in the country, as the cable TV networks already serve 450 thousand people, 10% of the total population of the country.

There are 314 newspapers and 2,678 magazines published in Croatia. The print media market is dominated by Europapress Holding and Styria Media Group who publish their flagship dailies "Jutarnji list", "Večernji list" and "24sata". Other influential newspapers are "Novi list" and "Slobodna Dalmacija". In 2013, "24sata" was the most widely circulated daily newspaper, followed by "Večernji list" and "Jutarnji list".

Croatia's film industry is small and heavily subsidised by the government, mainly through grants approved by the Ministry of Culture with films often being co-produced by HRT. Pula Film Festival, the national film awards event held annually in Pula, is the most prestigious film event featuring national and international productions. The greatest accomplishment by Croatian filmmakers was achieved by Dušan Vukotić when he won the 1961 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film for "Ersatz" ().

There are more than 400,000 active sportspeople in Croatia. Out of that number, 277,000 are members of sports associations and nearly 4,000 are members of chess and contract bridge associations. Association football is the most popular sport. The Croatian Football Federation (), with more than 118,000 registered players, is the largest sporting association in the country. The Prva HNL football league attracts the highest average attendance of any professional sports league in the country. In season 2010–11, it attracted 458,746 spectators.

Chakavian or Čakavian,, (, proper name: "čakavica" or "čakavština", own name: "čokovski, čakavski, čekavski") is a dialect of the Serbo-Croatian language spoken by a minority of Croats. It has a low mutual intelligibility with Shtokavian. There is much internal diversity, to the point where intelligibility between the northern and southern varieties of Chakavian is low. All three main Serbo-Croatian dialects are named after their most common word for "what?", which in Čakavian is "ča" or "ca". Chakavian is spoken mainly in the northeastern Adriatic: in Istria, Kvarner Gulf, in most Adriatic islands, and in the interior valley of Gacka, more sporadically in the Dalmatian littoral and central Croatia.

Chakavian

Chakavian was the basis for the first literary standard of the Croats. Today, it is spoken almost entirely within Croatia's borders, apart from the Burgenland Croatian in Austria and Hungary and a few villages in Slovenia.

Chakavian is the oldest written Serbo-Croatian dialect that had made a visible appearance in legal documents—as early as 1275 (Istrian land survey) and 1288 (Vinodol codex), the predominantly vernacular Chakavian is recorded, mixed with elements of Church Slavic. Many of these and other early Chakavian texts up to 17th century are mostly written in Glagolitic alphabet.

Initially, the Chakavian dialect covered a much wider area than today, about two thirds of medieval Croatia: the major part of central and southern Croatia southwards of Kupa and westwards of Una river, as well as western and southwestern Bosnia and Herzegovina. During and after the Ottoman invasion and subsequent warfare (15th–19th centuries), the Chakavian area became significantly reduced. On the Croatian mainland it has recently been almost completely replaced by Shtokavian. It is therefore now spoken in a much smaller coastal area than indicated above.

As expected, in over nine centuries Chakavian has undergone many phonetic, morphological and syntactical changes chiefly in the turbulent mainlands, but less in isolated islands. Yet, contemporary dialectologists are particularly interested in it since it has retained the old accentuation system characterized by a Proto-Slavic new rising accent ("neoacute") and the old position of stress, and also numerous Proto-Slavic and some Proto-Indo-European archaisms in its vocabulary.

Another feature of Chakavian is the influence of Romance languages in its lexicon (especially Dalmatian and Venetian).

Chakavian in its actual use is the least spoken Serbo-Croatian dialect, being spoken only by 12% Croats. It is now mostly reduced in southwestern Croatia along the eastern Adriatic: Adriatic islands, and sporadically in the mainland coast, with rare inland enclaves up to central Croatia, and minor enclaves in Austria and Montenegro. All areas of old contacts with Romance languages.

The basic phonology of Chakavian, with representation in Gaj's Latin alphabet and IPA, is as follows:

The Chakavian dialect is divided along several criteria. According to the reflex of the Common Slavic phoneme yat */ě/, there are four accents:Obsolete literature commonly refers to Ikavian–Ekavian dialects as "mixed", which is a misleading term because the yat reflexes were governed by Jakubinskij's law.

According to their tonal (accentual) features, Chakavian dialects are divided into the following groups:Using a combination of accentual and phonological criteria, Croatian dialectologist Dalibor Brozović divided Chakavian into six (sub)dialects:

There is no unanimous opinion on the set of traits a dialect has to possess to be classified as Chakavian (rather than its admixture with Shtokavian or Kajkavian); the following traits were mostly proposed:

Besides the usual Chakavian (with typical pronoun "ča"), in some Adriatic islands and in eastern Istra another special variant is also spoken which lacks most palatals, with other parallel deviations called ""tsakavism"" (cakavizam):

The largest area of tsakavism is in eastern Istra at Labin, Rabac and a dozen nearby villages; minor mainland enclaves are the towns Bakar and Trogir. Tsakavism is also frequent in Adriatic islands: part of Lošinj and nearby islets, Ist, Baška in Krk, Pag town, the western parts of Brač (Milna), Hvar town, and subentire Vis with adjacent islets.

The first two features are similar to mazurzenie in Polish, where it is present in many dialects, and tsokanye, occurring in the Old Novgorod dialect of Old East Slavic.

Since Chakavian was the first Serbo-Croatian dialect to emerge from the Church Slavic matrix, both literacy and literature in this dialect abound with numerous texts - from legal and liturgical to literary: lyric and epic poetry, drama, novel in verses, as well as philological works that contain Chakavian vocabulary. Chakavian was the main public and official language in medieval Croatia from 13th to 16th century.

Monuments of literacy began to appear in the 11th and 12th centuries, and artistic literature in the 15th. While there were two zones of Čakavian, northern and southern (both mainly along the Adriatic coast and islands, with centres like Senj, Zadar, Split, Hvar, Korčula), there is enough unity in the idiom to allow us to speak of one Chakavian literary language with minor regional variants. This language by far surpassed the position of a simple vernacular dialect and strongly influenced other Serbo-Croatian literary dialects, particularly Shtokavian: the first Shtokavian texts such as the Vatican Croatian Prayer Book, dated to 1400, exhibit numerous literary Chakavianisms. The early Shtokavian literary and philological output, mainly from Dubrovnik (1500–1600) up to Džore Držić, was essentially a mixed Shtokavian–Chakavian idiom, mostly similar to the Jekavian Chakavian of Lastovo and Janjina.
Chakavian literature uses many words of Latin, Dalmatian, and Italian origin due to the numerous contacts with these languages.

The most famous early Chakavian author is Marko Marulić in 15th/16th century. Also, the first Croatian dictionary, authored by Faust Vrančić, is mostly Chakavian in its form. The tradition of the Chakavian literary language had declined in the 18th century, but it has helped shape the standard Croatian language in many ways (chiefly in morphology and phonetics), and Chakavian dialectal poetry is still a vital part of Croatian literature.

The most prominent representatives of Chakavian poetry in the 20th century are Vladimir Nazor and Drago Gervais. At the end of the 1980s in Istria there began a special subgenre of pop-rock music "Ča-val" "(Cha wave)"; artists that were part of this scene used the Chakavian dialect in their lyrics, and often fused rock music with traditional Istra-Kvarner music.

Due to its archaic nature, early medieval development, and impressive corpus of vernacular literacy, the typical Chakavian dialect has attracted numerous dialectologists who have meticulously documented its nuances, so that Chakavian was among the best described Slavic dialects, but its atypical tsakavism was partly neglected and less studied. The representative modern work in the field is "Čakavisch-deutsches Lexikon", vol. 1.-3, Koeln-Vienna, 1979–1983, by Croatian linguists Hraste and Šimunović and German Olesch.

The Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts is currently engaged in editing a multivolume dictionary of the Chakavian literary language, based on the wealth of literature written in Chakavian. More than forty dictionaries of local Chakavian varieties have been published, the largest among them including more than 20,000 words are from locations such as Split town, Gacka valley, Brač and Vis islands, Baška in Krk, and Beli in Cres.

Other recent titles include Janne Kalsbeek's work on "The Cakavian Dialect of Orbanici near Zminj in Istria", as well as Keith Langston's "Cakavian Prosody: The Accentual Patterns of the Cakavian Dialects of Croatian".

Chakavian

Chakavian or Čakavian,, (, proper name: "čakavica" or "čakavština", own name: "čokovski, čakavski, čekavski") is a dialect of the Serbo-Croatian language spoken by a minority of Croats. It has a low mutual intelligibility with Shtokavian. There is much internal diversity, to the point where intelligibility between the northern and southern varieties of Chakavian is low. All three main Serbo-Croatian dialects are named after their most common word for "what?", which in Čakavian is "ča" or "ca". Chakavian is spoken mainly in the northeastern Adriatic: in Istria, Kvarner Gulf, in most Adriatic islands, and in the interior valley of Gacka, more sporadically in the Dalmatian littoral and central Croatia.

Chakavian was the basis for the first literary standard of the Croats. Today, it is spoken almost entirely within Croatia's borders, apart from the Burgenland Croatian in Austria and Hungary and a few villages in Slovenia.

Chakavian is the oldest written Serbo-Croatian dialect that had made a visible appearance in legal documents—as early as 1275 (Istrian land survey) and 1288 (Vinodol codex), the predominantly vernacular Chakavian is recorded, mixed with elements of Church Slavic. Many of these and other early Chakavian texts up to 17th century are mostly written in Glagolitic alphabet.

Initially, the Chakavian dialect covered a much wider area than today, about two thirds of medieval Croatia: the major part of central and southern Croatia southwards of Kupa and westwards of Una river, as well as western and southwestern Bosnia and Herzegovina. During and after the Ottoman invasion and subsequent warfare (15th–19th centuries), the Chakavian area became significantly reduced. On the Croatian mainland it has recently been almost completely replaced by Shtokavian. It is therefore now spoken in a much smaller coastal area than indicated above.

As expected, in over nine centuries Chakavian has undergone many phonetic, morphological and syntactical changes chiefly in the turbulent mainlands, but less in isolated islands. Yet, contemporary dialectologists are particularly interested in it since it has retained the old accentuation system characterized by a Proto-Slavic new rising accent ("neoacute") and the old position of stress, and also numerous Proto-Slavic and some Proto-Indo-European archaisms in its vocabulary.

Another feature of Chakavian is the influence of Romance languages in its lexicon (especially Dalmatian and Venetian).

Chakavian in its actual use is the least spoken Serbo-Croatian dialect, being spoken only by 12% Croats. It is now mostly reduced in southwestern Croatia along the eastern Adriatic: Adriatic islands, and sporadically in the mainland coast, with rare inland enclaves up to central Croatia, and minor enclaves in Austria and Montenegro. All areas of old contacts with Romance languages.

The basic phonology of Chakavian, with representation in Gaj's Latin alphabet and IPA, is as follows:

The Chakavian dialect is divided along several criteria. According to the reflex of the Common Slavic phoneme yat */ě/, there are four accents:Obsolete literature commonly refers to Ikavian–Ekavian dialects as "mixed", which is a misleading term because the yat reflexes were governed by Jakubinskij's law.

According to their tonal (accentual) features, Chakavian dialects are divided into the following groups:Using a combination of accentual and phonological criteria, Croatian dialectologist Dalibor Brozović divided Chakavian into six (sub)dialects:

There is no unanimous opinion on the set of traits a dialect has to possess to be classified as Chakavian (rather than its admixture with Shtokavian or Kajkavian); the following traits were mostly proposed:

Besides the usual Chakavian (with typical pronoun "ča"), in some Adriatic islands and in eastern Istra another special variant is also spoken which lacks most palatals, with other parallel deviations called ""tsakavism"" (cakavizam):

The largest area of tsakavism is in eastern Istra at Labin, Rabac and a dozen nearby villages; minor mainland enclaves are the towns Bakar and Trogir. Tsakavism is also frequent in Adriatic islands: part of Lošinj and nearby islets, Ist, Baška in Krk, Pag town, the western parts of Brač (Milna), Hvar town, and subentire Vis with adjacent islets.

The first two features are similar to mazurzenie in Polish, where it is present in many dialects, and tsokanye, occurring in the Old Novgorod dialect of Old East Slavic.

Since Chakavian was the first Serbo-Croatian dialect to emerge from the Church Slavic matrix, both literacy and literature in this dialect abound with numerous texts - from legal and liturgical to literary: lyric and epic poetry, drama, novel in verses, as well as philological works that contain Chakavian vocabulary. Chakavian was the main public and official language in medieval Croatia from 13th to 16th century.

Monuments of literacy began to appear in the 11th and 12th centuries, and artistic literature in the 15th. While there were two zones of Čakavian, northern and southern (both mainly along the Adriatic coast and islands, with centres like Senj, Zadar, Split, Hvar, Korčula), there is enough unity in the idiom to allow us to speak of one Chakavian literary language with minor regional variants. This language by far surpassed the position of a simple vernacular dialect and strongly influenced other Serbo-Croatian literary dialects, particularly Shtokavian: the first Shtokavian texts such as the Vatican Croatian Prayer Book, dated to 1400, exhibit numerous literary Chakavianisms. The early Shtokavian literary and philological output, mainly from Dubrovnik (1500–1600) up to Džore Držić, was essentially a mixed Shtokavian–Chakavian idiom, mostly similar to the Jekavian Chakavian of Lastovo and Janjina.
Chakavian literature uses many words of Latin, Dalmatian, and Italian origin due to the numerous contacts with these languages.

The most famous early Chakavian author is Marko Marulić in 15th/16th century. Also, the first Croatian dictionary, authored by Faust Vrančić, is mostly Chakavian in its form. The tradition of the Chakavian literary language had declined in the 18th century, but it has helped shape the standard Croatian language in many ways (chiefly in morphology and phonetics), and Chakavian dialectal poetry is still a vital part of Croatian literature.

The most prominent representatives of Chakavian poetry in the 20th century are Vladimir Nazor and Drago Gervais. At the end of the 1980s in Istria there began a special subgenre of pop-rock music "Ča-val" "(Cha wave)"; artists that were part of this scene used the Chakavian dialect in their lyrics, and often fused rock music with traditional Istra-Kvarner music.

Due to its archaic nature, early medieval development, and impressive corpus of vernacular literacy, the typical Chakavian dialect has attracted numerous dialectologists who have meticulously documented its nuances, so that Chakavian was among the best described Slavic dialects, but its atypical tsakavism was partly neglected and less studied. The representative modern work in the field is "Čakavisch-deutsches Lexikon", vol. 1.-3, Koeln-Vienna, 1979–1983, by Croatian linguists Hraste and Šimunović and German Olesch.

The Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts is currently engaged in editing a multivolume dictionary of the Chakavian literary language, based on the wealth of literature written in Chakavian. More than forty dictionaries of local Chakavian varieties have been published, the largest among them including more than 20,000 words are from locations such as Split town, Gacka valley, Brač and Vis islands, Baška in Krk, and Beli in Cres.

Other recent titles include Janne Kalsbeek's work on "The Cakavian Dialect of Orbanici near Zminj in Istria", as well as Keith Langston's "Cakavian Prosody: The Accentual Patterns of the Cakavian Dialects of Croatian".

Croatian replaced Latin as the official language of the Croatian government in 1847. The Croatian lect is generally viewed as one of the three standard varieties of the Shtokavian dialect of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language. Croatian is written using the Latin alphabet and there are three major dialects spoken on the territory of Croatia, with the Shtokavian idiom used as the literary standard. The Chakavian and Kajkavian dialects are distinguished by their lexicon, phonology, and syntax.

Demographics of Croatia

The demographic characteristics of the population of Croatia are known through censuses, normally conducted in ten-year intervals and analysed by various statistical bureaus since the 1850s. The Croatian Bureau of Statistics has performed this task since the 1990s. The latest census in Croatia was performed in April 2011. The permanent population of Croatia at the 2011 census had reached 4.29 million. The population density is 75.8 inhabitants per square kilometre, and the overall life expectancy in Croatia at birth was 78 years in 2012. The population rose steadily (with the exception of censuses taken following the two world wars) from 2.1 million in 1857 until 1991, when it peaked at 4.7 million. Since 1991, Croatia's death rate has continuously exceeded its birth rate; the natural growth rate of the population is negative. Croatia is in the fourth or fifth stage of the demographic transition. In terms of age structure, the population is dominated by the 15‑ to 64‑year‑old segment. The median age of the population is 41.4, and the gender ratio of the total population is 0.93 males per 1 female. The country is projected to lose 350,000 citizens by 2045.

Croatia is inhabited mostly by Croats (90.4%), while minorities include Serbs (4.36%), and 21 other ethnicities (less than 1% each). The demographic history of Croatia is marked by significant migrations, including the arrival of the Croats in the area growth of Hungarian and German speaking population since the union of Croatia and Hungary, and joining of the Habsburg Empire, migrations set off by Ottoman conquests and growth of Italian speaking population in Istria and in Dalmatia during Venetian rule there. After the collapse of Austria-Hungary, the Hungarian population declined, while the German-speaking population was forced or compelled to leave after World War II and similar fate was suffered by the Italian population. Late 19th century and the 20th century were marked by large scale economic migrations abroad. The 1940s and the 1950s in Yugoslavia were marked by internal migrations in Yugoslavia, as well as by urbanisation. The most recent significant migrations came as a result of the Croatian War of Independence when hundreds of thousands were displaced.

The Croatian language is the official language, but minority languages are officially used in some local government units. Croatian is declared as the native language by 95.60% of the population. A 2009 survey revealed that 78% of Croatians claim knowledge of at least one foreign language—most often English. The main religions of Croatia are Roman Catholic (86.28%), Eastern Orthodoxy (4.44%) and Islam (1.47%). Literacy in Croatia stands at 98.1%. The proportion of the population aged 15 and over attaining academic degrees grew rapidly since 2001, doubling and reaching 16.7% by 2008. An estimated 4.5% of the GDP is spent for education. Primary and secondary education are available in Croatian and in languages of recognised minorities. Croatia has a universal health care system and in 2010, the nation spent 6.9% of its GDP on healthcare. Net monthly income in September 2011 averaged 5,397 kuna ( 729 euro). The most significant sources of employment in 2008 were manufacturing industry, wholesale and retail trade and construction. In October 2011, unemployment rate was 17.4%. Croatia's median equivalent household income tops average Purchasing Power Standard of the ten countries which joined the EU in 2004, while trailing the EU average. 2011 census recorded a total of 1.5 million private households, which predominantly owned their own housing. Average urbanisation rate in Croatia stands at 56%, with augmentation of urban population and reduction of rural population.

With a population of 4,154,213 in 2016 Croatia ranks 126th in the world by population. Its population density is 75.8 inhabitants per square kilometre. The overall life expectancy in Croatia at birth is 78 years. The total fertility rate of 1.50 children per mother is one of the lowest in the world. Since 1991, Croatia's death rate has nearly continuously exceeded its birth rate. The Croatian Bureau of Statistics forecast that the population may even shrink to 3.1 million by 2051, depending on the actual birth rate and the level of net migration. The population of Croatia rose steadily from 2.1 million in 1857 until 1991, when it peaked at 4.7 million, with the exception of censuses taken in 1921 and 1948, i.e. following two world wars. The natural growth rate of the population is negative. Croatia started advancing from the first stage of the demographic transition in the late 18th and early 19th centuries (depending on where in Croatia is being discussed). Croatia is in the fourth or fifth stage of the demographic transition.

One explanation for the recent population decrease is the Croatian War of Independence. During the war, large sections of the population were displaced and emigration increased. In 1991, in predominantly Serb areas, more than 400,000 Croats and other non-Serbs were either removed from their homes by the Croatian Serb forces or fled the violence. In 1995, during the final days of the war, more than 120,000 and perhaps as many as 200,000 Serbs fled the country before the arrival of Croatian forces during Operation Storm. Within a decade following the end of the war, only 117,000 Serb refugees returned out of the 300,000 displaced during the entire war. According to 2001 Croatian census there were 201,631 Serbs in Croatia, compared to the census from 1991 when the number was 581,663. Most of Croatia's remaining Serbs never lived in areas occupied in the Croatian War of Independence. Serbs have been only partially re-settled in the regions they previously inhabited, while some of the settlements previously inhabited by Serbs were settled by Croat refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina, mostly from Republika Srpska.

In 2014, there were 39,566 live births in Croatia, comprising 20,374 male and 19,192 female children. Virtually all of those were performed in medical facilities; only 19 births occurred elsewhere. Out of the total number, 32,677 children were born in wedlock or within 300 days after the end of the marriage, and the average age of mothers at the birth of their first child was 28.4 years. General fertility rate, i.e. number of births per 1,000 women aged 15–49 is 42.9, with the age specific rate peaking at 101.0 per million for women aged 25–29. In 2009, 52,414 persons died in Croatia, 48.5% of whom died in medical facilities and 90.0% of whom were receiving medical treatment at the time. Cardiovascular disease and cancer were the primary causes of death in the country, with 26,235 and 13,280 deaths respectively. In the same year, there were 2,986 violent deaths, including 2,121 due to accidents. The latter figure includes 616 deaths in traffic accidents. In 2014, the birth rate was 9.3 per mille, exceeded by the mortality rate of 12.0 per mille. The infant mortality rate was 5.0 per mille in 2014. In terms of age structure, the population of Croatia is dominated by the 15–64 year older segment (68.1%), while the size of the population younger than 15 and older than 64 is relatively small (15.1% and 16.9% respectively). The median age of the population is 41.4. The sex ratio of the population is 1.06 males per 1 female at birth and up to 14 years of age, and 0.99 males per 1 female between the ages of 15 and 64. But at ages over 64 the ratio is 0.64 males per 1 female. The ratio for the total population is 0.93 males per 1 female.

In contrast to the shrinking native population, since the late 1990s there has been a positive net migration into Croatia, reaching a level of more than 7,000 net immigrants in 2006. In recent years, the Croatian government has been pressured each year to add 40% to work permit quotas for foreign workers. In accordance with its immigration policy, Croatia is also trying to entice emigrants to return.

There were 8,468 immigrants to Croatia in 2009, more than half of them (57.5%) coming from Bosnia and Herzegovina, a sharp decline from the previous year's 14,541. In the same year, there were 9,940 emigrants from the country, 44.8% of them leaving to Serbia. The number of emigrants represents a substantial increase compared to the figure of 7,488 recorded in 2008. In 2009, the net migration to and from abroad peaked in the Sisak-Moslavina County (-1,093 persons) and the city of Zagreb (+830 persons).

In 2009, a total of 22,382 marriages were performed in Croatia as well as 5,076 divorces. The 2001 census recorded 1.47 million households in the country.

The first modern population census in the country was conducted in 1857, and 15 more have been performed since then. Since 1961 the censuses are conducted in regular ten-year intervals, with the latest one in 2011. The first institution set up in the country specifically for the purposes of maintaining population statistics was the State Statistical Office, founded in 1875. Since its founding, the office changed its name and structure several times and was alternately subordinated to other institutions and independent, until the most recent changes in 1992, when the institution became the Croatian Bureau of Statistics. The 2011 census was performed on 1–28 April 2011, recording situation as of 31 March 2011. The first census results, containing the number of the population by settlement, were published on 29 June 2011, and the final comprehensive set of data was published in December 2012. The 2011 census and processing of the data gathered by the census was expected to cost 171.9 million kuna (23.3 million euro). The 2011 census was performed using new methodology: the permanent population was determined as the enumerated population who lived in the census area for at least 12 months prior to the census, or plans to live in the same area for at least 12 months after the census. This method was also retroactively applied to the 2001 census data.Croatia is inhabited mostly by Croats (90.42%), while minority groups include Serbs (4.36%), Bosniaks, Hungarians, Italians, Albanians, Slovenes, Germans, Czechs, Romani people and others (5.22%). The Constitution of the Republic of Croatia specifies 22 minorities explicitly. Those are Serbs, Czechs, Slovaks, Italians, Hungarians, Jews, Germans, Austrians, Ukrainians, Ruthenians, Macedonians, Bosniaks, Slovenes, Montenegrins, Russians, Bulgarians, Poles, Romani, Rumanians, Turks, Vlachs and Albanians.

The demographic history of Croatia is characterised by significant migrations, starting with the arrival of the Croats in the area. According to the work "De Administrando Imperio" written by the 10th-century Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII, the Croats arrived in the area of modern-day Croatia in the early 7th century. However, that claim is disputed, and competing hypotheses date the event between the 6th and the 9th centuries. Following the establishment of a personal union of Croatia and Hungary in 1102, and the joining of the Habsburg Empire in 1527, the Hungarian and German speaking population of Croatia began gradually increasing in number. The processes of Magyarization and Germanization varied in intensity but persisted to the 20th century. The Ottoman conquests initiated a westward migration of parts of the Croatian population; the Burgenland Croats are direct descendants of some of those settlers. To replace the fleeing Croats the Habsburgs called on the Orthodox populations of Bosnia and Serbia to provide military service in the Croatian Military Frontier. Serb migration into this region peaked during the Great Serb Migrations of 1690 and 1737–39. Similarly, Venetian Republic rule in Istria and in Dalmatia, following the Fifth and the Seventh Ottoman–Venetian Wars ushered gradual growth of Italian speaking population in those areas. Following the collapse of Austria-Hungary in 1918, the Hungarian population declined, especially in the areas north of the Drava river, where they represented the majority before World War I.

The period between 1890 and World War I was marked by large economic emigration from Croatia to the United States, and particularly to the areas of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Cleveland, Ohio, and Chicago, Illinois. Besides the United States, the main destination of the migrants was South America, especially Argentina, Chile, Bolivia and Peru. It is estimated that 500,000 people left Croatia during this period. After World War I, the main focus of emigration shifted to Canada, where about 15,000 people settled before the onset of World War II. During World War II and in the period immediately following the war, there were further significant demographic changes as the German-speaking population, the Volksdeutsche, were either forced or otherwise compelled to leave—reducing their number from the prewar German population of Yugoslavia of 500,000, living in parts of present-day Croatia and Serbia, to the figure of 62,000 recorded in the 1953 census. A similar fate was suffered by the Italian population in Yugoslavia populating parts of present-day Croatia and Slovenia, as 350,000 left for Italy. The 1940s and the 1950s in Yugoslavia were marked by colonisation of settlements where the displaced Germans used to live by people from the mountainous parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro, and migrations to larger cities spurred on by the development of industry. In the 1960s and 1970s, another wave of economic migrants left Croatia. They largely moved to Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Western Europe. During this period, 65,000 people left for Canada, and by the mid-1970s there were 150,000 Croats who moved to Australia. Particularly large European emigrant communities of Croats exist in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, which largely stem from the 1960s and 1970s migrations.

The most recent significant migrations came as a result of the 1991–1995 Croatian War of Independence. In 1991, more than 400,000 Croats and other non-Serbs were displaced by the Croatian Serb forces or fled the violence in areas with significant Serb populations. During the final days of the war, in 1995, between 120,000 and 200,000 Serbs fled the country following the Operation Storm. Ten years after the war, only a small portion of Serb refugees returned out of the 400,000 displaced during the entire war. Most of the Serbs in Croatia who remained never lived in areas occupied during the Croatian War of Independence. Serbs have been only partially re-settled in the regions they previously inhabited; some of these areas were later settled by Croat refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In addition to demographic losses through significant migrations, the population of Croatia suffered significant losses due to wars and epidemics. In the 20th century alone, there were several such events. The first was World War I, when the loss of the population of Croatia amounted to an estimated 190,000 persons, or about 5.5% of the total population recorded by the 1910 census. The 1918 flu pandemic started to take its toll in Croatia in July 1918, with peaks of the disease occurring in October and November. Available data is scarce, but it is estimated that the pandemic caused at least 15,000–20,000 deaths. During World War II, nearly 195,000 people died in the territory of present-day Croatia. The surrender of the armed forces of the Independent State of Croatia and of the civilians accompanying the troops of the British Army at the end of World War II was followed by repatriation and subsequent events that became known as the Bleiburg tragedy. A substantial number of people were executed, but the exact number is disputed. The claims range from 12,000–15,000 to as many as 80,000 killed in May 1945. Finally, approximately 20,000 were killed or went missing during the 1991–1995 Croatian War of Independence. The figure pertains only to those persons who would have been recorded by the 1991 census as living in Croatia.

The Croatian language is the official language of Croatia, and one of 24 official languages of the European Union since 2013. Minority languages are in official use in local government units where more than a third of the population consists of national minorities or where local legislation mandates their use. These languages are Czech, Hungarian, Italian, Ruthenian, Serbian and Slovak. According to the 2011 Census, 95.60% of citizens of Croatia declared Croatian as their native language, 1.23% declared Serbian as their native language, while no other language is represented in Croatia by more than 0.5% of native speakers among the population of Croatia.

From 1961 to 1991, the official language was formally designated as Serbo-Croatian or Croato-Serbian. Even during socialist rule, Croats often referred to their language as Croato-Serbian (instead of Serbo-Croatian) or as Croatian. Croatian and Serbian variants of the language were not officially recognised as separate at the time, but referred to as the west and east version, and had different alphabets: the Latin alphabet and Serbian Cyrillic. Croatians are protective of their language from foreign influences, as the language was under constant change and threats imposed by previous rulers (i.e. Austrian German, Hungarian, Italian and Turkish words were changed and altered to "Slavic" looking/sounding ones).

A 2009 survey revealed that 78% of Croatians claim knowledge of at least one foreign language. According to a survey ordered by the European commission in 2005, 49% of Croatians speak English as their second language, 34% speak German, and 14% speak Italian. French and Russian are spoken by 4% each, and 2% of Croatians speak Spanish. A substantial proportion of Slovenes (59%) have a certain level of knowledge of the Croatian language.

The main religions of Croatia are Roman Catholicism 86.28%, Eastern Orthodoxy 4.44%, Protestantism 0.34%, other Christianity 0.30%, and Islam 1.47%. In the Eurostat Eurobarometer Poll of 2005, 67% of the population of Croatia responded that "they believe there is a God" and 7% said they do not believe "there is any sort of spirit, God, or life force", while 25% expressed a belief in "some sort of spirit or life force". In a 2009 Gallup poll, 70% answered affirmatively when asked "Is religion an important part of your daily life?" Significantly, a 2008 Gallup survey of the Balkans indicated church and religious organisations as the most trusted institutions in the country. The survey revealed that 62% of the respondents assigned "a lot" or "some" trust to those institutions, ranking them ahead of all types of governmental, international or non-governmental institutions.

Public schools allow religious education, in cooperation with religious communities that have agreements with the government, but attendance is not mandatory. The classes are organized widely in public elementary and secondary schools. In 2009, 92% of elementary school pupils and 87% of secondary school students attended the religious education classes. Public holidays in Croatia also include the religious festivals of Epiphany, Easter Monday, Corpus Christi Day, Assumption Day, All Saints' Day, Christmas, and St. Stephen's or Boxing Day. The religious festival public holidays are based on the Catholic liturgical year, but citizens of the Republic of Croatia who celebrate different religious holidays have the right not to work on those dates. This includes Christians who celebrate Christmas on 7 January per the Julian calendar, Muslims on the days of Ramadan Bayram and Kurban Bayram, and Jews on the days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Marriages performed by the religious communities having agreements with the state are officially recognized, eliminating the need to register the marriages in a registrar office.

The legal position of religious communities is defined by special legislation, specifically regarding government funding, tax benefits, and religious education in schools. Other matters are left to each religious community to negotiate separately with the government. Registration of the communities is not mandatory, but registered communities become legal persons and enjoy tax and other benefits. The law stipulates that to be eligible for registration, a religious group must have at least 500 believers and be registered as a civil association for 5 years. Religious groups based abroad must submit written permission for registration from their country of origin.

Literacy in Croatia is 98.1 percent. The 2001 census reported that 15.7% of the population over the age of 14 has an incomplete elementary education, and 21.9% has only an elementary school education. 42.8% of the population over the age of 14 has a vocational education and 4.9% completed gymnasium. 4.2% of the same population received an undergraduate degree, while 7.5% received an academic degree, and 0.5% received a postgraduate or a doctoral degree. Croatia recorded a substantial growth of the population attaining academic degrees and by 2008, this population segment was estimated to encompass 16.7% of the total population of Croatians 15 and over. A worldwide study about the quality of living in different countries published by "Newsweek" in August 2010 ranked the Croatian education system at 22nd, a position shared with Austria. In 2004, it was estimated that 4.5% of the GDP is spent for education, while schooling expectancy was estimated to 14 years on average. Primary education in Croatia starts at the age of six or seven and consists of eight grades. In 2007 a law was passed to increase free, noncompulsory education until 18 years of age. Compulsory education consists of eight grades of elementary school. Secondary education is provided by gymnasiums and vocational schools. As of 2010, there are 2,131 elementary schools and 713 schools providing various forms of secondary education. Primary and secondary education are also available in languages of recognised minorities in Croatia, where classes are held in Czech, Hungarian, Italian, Serbian and German languages.
There are 84 elementary level and 47 secondary level music and art schools, as well as 92 schools for disabled children and youth and 74 schools for adults. Nationwide leaving exams () were introduced for secondary education students in the 2009–2010 school year. It comprises three compulsory subjects (Croatian language, mathematics, and a foreign language) and optional subjects and is a prerequisite for a university education.

Croatia has eight public universities, the University of Zagreb, University of Split, University of Rijeka, University of Osijek, University of Zadar, University of Dubrovnik, University of Pula and Dubrovnik International University.
The University of Zadar, the first university in Croatia, was founded in 1396 and remained active until 1807, when other institutions of higher education took over. It was reopened in 2002. The University of Zagreb, founded in 1669, is the oldest continuously operating university in Southeast Europe. There are also 11 polytechnics and 23 higher education institutions, of which 19 are private. In total, there are 132 institutions of higher education in Croatia, attended by more than 145 thousand students.

There are 205 companies, government or education system institutions and non-profit organizations in Croatia pursuing scientific research and the development of technology. Combined, they spent more than 3 billion kuna (400 million euro) and employed 10,191 full-time research staff in 2008. Among the scientific institutes operating in Croatia, the largest is the Ruđer Bošković Institute in Zagreb. The Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Zagreb is a learned society promoting language, culture, arts and science since its inception in 1866. Scientists from Croatia include inventors and Nobel Prize winners.

Croatia has a universal health care system, the roots of which can be traced back to the Hungarian-Croatian Parliament Act of 1891, providing a form of mandatory insurance for all factory workers and craftsmen. The population is covered by a basic health insurance plan provided by statute and optional insurance. In 2014, the annual compulsory healthcare related expenditures reached 21.8 billion kuna (2.9 billion euro). Healthcare expenditures comprise only 0.6% of private health insurance and public spending. In 2010, Croatia spent 6.9% of its GDP on healthcare, representing a decline from approximately 8% estimated in 2008, when 84% of healthcare spending came from public sources. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Croatia ranks around the 50th in the world in terms of life expectancy.

There are hundreds of healthcare institutions in Croatia, including 79 hospitals and clinics with 23,967 beds. The hospitals and clinics care for more than 700 thousand patients per year and employ 5,205 medical doctors, including 3,929 specialists. There are 6,379 private practice offices, and a total of 41,271 health workers in the country. There are 63 emergency medical service units, responding to more than a million calls. The principal cause of death in 2008 was cardiovascular disease at 43.5% for men and 57.2% for women, followed by tumours, at 29.4% for men and 21.4% for women. Other significant causes of death are injuries, poisonings and other external causes (7.7% men/3.9% women), digestive system diseases (5.7% men/3.6% women), respiratory system diseases (5.1% men/3.5% women) and endocrine, nutritional and metabolic diseases (2.1% men/3.0% women). There is no other cause of disease affecting more than 3% of the population. In 2014 only 22 Croatians had been infected with HIV/AIDS and 4 had died from the disease. In 2008 it was estimated by the WHO that 27.4% of Croatians over age of 15 were smokers. According to 2003 WHO data, 22% of the Croatian adult population is obese.

Net monthly income in September 2011 averaged 5,397 kuna ( 729 euro), dropping 2.1% relative to the previous month. In the same month, gross monthly income averaged 7,740 kuna ( 1,046 euro), and it includes the net salary along with income tax, retirement pension insurance, healthcare insurance, occupational safety and health insurance and employment promotion tax. The average net monthly income grew compared to 5,311 kuna ( 717 euro) in 2009 or 3,326 kuna ( 449 euro) in 2000. The highest net salaries were paid in financial services sector, and in April 2011 those averaged 10,041 kuna ( 1,356 euro), while the lowest ones, paid in the same month, were in the manufacturing and leather processing industries, averaging at 2,811 kuna ( 380 euro). Since January 2016, the minimum wage in Croatia is 3,120 kuna before tax ( 400 euro).

Number of employed persons recorded steady growth between 2000 and 2008 when it peaked, followed by 4% decline in 2009. That year, there were 1.499 million employed persons, with 45% of that number pertaining to women. The total number of employed persons includes 252,000 employed in crafts and freelance professionals and 35,000 employed in agriculture. The most significant sources of employment in 2008 were manufacturing industry and wholesale and retail trade (including motor vehicle repair services) employing 278,640 and 243,640 respectively. Further significant employment sector was construction industry comprising 143,336 jobs that year. In the same year, more than 100,000 were employed in public administration, defence and compulsory social insurance sector as well as in education. Since 2009, negative trends persisted in Croatia with jobs in the industry declined further by 3.5%. Number of unemployed and retired persons combined exceeded number of employed in August 2010, as it fell to 1.474 million. In 2009, labour force consisted of 1.765 million persons out of 3.7 million working age population—aged 15 and over. In October 2011, unemployment rate stood at 17.4%. 7.2% of employed persons hold a second job.

In comparison with the member states of the European Union (EU), Croatia's median equivalent household income in terms of the Purchasing Power Standard (PPS) stands at 470, topping average PPS of the ten countries which joined the EU in 2004 (EU10), as well as Romania and Bulgaria, while significantly lagging behind the EU average. Within Croatia, the highest PPS is recorded in Istria County (769), the City of Zagreb (640) and the Primorje-Gorski Kotar County (576). The lowest PPS is observed in the Bjelovar-Bilogora County and the Virovitica-Podravina County (267).

2011 census recorded a total of 1,534,148 private households in Croatia as well as 1,487 other residential communities such as retirement homes, convents etc. At the same time, there were 1,923,522 permanent housing units—houses and apartments. 2001 census recorded 1.66 million permanent housing units, including 196 thousand intermittently occupied and 42 thousand abandoned ones. Average size of a permanently used housing unit is. The intermittently used housing units include 182 thousand vacation houses and 8 thousand houses used during agricultural works. The same census also recorded 25 thousand housing units used for business purposes only. As of 2007, 71% of the households owned their own housing and had no mortgage or other loans to repay related to the housing, while further 9% were repaying loans for their housing. The households vary by type and include single households (13%), couples (15%), single parent households (4%), couples with children (27%) and extended family households (20%). There are approximately 500 homeless persons in Croatia, largely living in Zagreb.

Average urbanisation rate in Croatia stands at 56%, with the maximum rate recorded within the territory of the City of Zagreb, where it reached 94.5% and Zagreb metropolitan area comprising the City of Zagreb and the Zagreb County, where it stands at 76.4%. Very significant rate of urbanisation was observed in the second half of the 20th century. 1953 census recorded 57% of population which was active in agriculture, while a census performed in 1991
noted only 9.1% of population active in that field. This points to augmentation of urban population and reduction of rural population.

In Croatia, the Albanian language is one of the officially recognized minority languages of the country and is primarily spoken by the Albanians and Arbanasis. As defined in the 2011 census, the number of Albanians in the country was estimated to be 17,513. They are mostly concentrated in the coastal cities of Croatia and the capital city of Zagreb.

Albanians

The Albanians (, ) are an ethnic group native to the Balkan Peninsula and are identified by a common Albanian ancestry, culture, history and language. They primarily live in Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia as well as in Croatia, Greece and Italy. They also form a diaspora with communities established in the Americas, Europe and Oceania.

The history of the Albanian diaspora is centuries old and has its roots in migration from the Middle Ages, initially established in Southern Europe and subsequently on across other parts of the world. Between the 13th and 18th centuries, sizeable numbers of Albanians migrated to escape either various social, economic or political difficulties.

One population who became the Arvanites settled Southern Greece between the 13th and 16th centuries assimilating into and now self-identifying as Greeks. Another population who emerged as the Arbëreshës settled Sicily and Southern Italy constituting the oldest continuous Albanian diaspora. Smaller populations such as the Arbanasis whose migration dates back to the 18th century are located in Southern Croatia and scattered across Southern Ukraine.

Albanians are primarily composed of two sub-ethnic groups known as the Ghegs and Tosks. In the 13th century, the Ghegs converted to Roman Catholicism from Eastern Orthodoxy as a means to resist the Slavic Serbs. In the 15th century, Skanderbeg led the medieval Albanian resistance to the Ottoman conquest. During the 17th and 18th centuries, Albanians in large numbers converted to Islam, in part due to the privileged legal and social position of Muslims in the empire and coercion by Ottoman authorities in times of war. Albanians attained important political and military positions within the empire and culturally contributed to the wider Muslim world. Following the Albanian National Awakening, during the Balkan Wars, in 1912, Albanians were partitioned between the newly-formed Independent Albania and Serbia, Greece and Montenegro. From 1945 to 1992, Albania was ruled by a communist government. Albanians in neighbouring Yugoslavia underwent periods of discrimination that concluded with the breakup of that state in the early 1990s and eventually the independence of Kosovo in 2008.

The Albanians () and their country Albania () have been identified by many ethnonyms. The most common native ethnonym is "Shqiptar", plural "Shqiptarë"; the name "Albanians" (Byzantine Greek: "Albanoi/Arbanitai/Arbanites"; Latin: "Albanenses/Arbanenses") was used in medieval documents, that gradually entered European languages from which other similar derivative names emerged.

From these ethnonyms, names for Albanians were also derived in other languages, that were or still are in use. In English "Albanians"; Italian "Albanesi"; German "Albaner"; Greek "Arvanites", "Alvanitis" (Αλβανίτης) plural: "Alvanites" (Αλβανίτες), "Alvanos" (Αλβανός) plural: "Alvanoi" (Αλβανοί); Turkish "Arnaut", "Arnavut"; South Slavic languages "Arbanasi" (Арбанаси), "Albanci" (Албанци); Aromanian "Arbineş" and so on.

The term "Albanoi" (Αλβανοί) is first encountered twice in the works of Byzantine historian Michael Attaliates, and the term "Arvanitai" (Αρβανίται) is used once by the same author. He referred to the "Albanoi" as having taken part in a revolt against the Byzantine Empire in 1043, and to the "Arbanitai" as subjects of the Duke of Dyrrachium (modern Durrës). These references have been disputed as to whether they refer to the people of Albania. Historian E. Vranoussi believes that these "Albanoi" were Normans from Sicily. She also notes that the same term (as "Albani") in medieval Latin meant "foreigners".

The reference to "Arvanitai" from Attaliates regarding the participation of Albanians in a rebellion around 1078 is undisputed. In later Byzantine usage, the terms "Arbanitai" and "Albanoi" with a range of variants were used interchangeably, while sometimes the same groups were also called by the classicising name Illyrians. The first reference to the Albanian language dates to the latter 13th century (around 1285).

The ethnonym "Albanian" has been hypothesized to be connected to and stem from the "Albanoi", an Illyrian tribe mentioned by Ptolemy with their centre at the city of Albanopolis. Linguists believe that the "alb" part in the root word originates from an Indo-European term for a type of mountainous topography, from which other words such as "alps" are derived. Through the root word "alban" and its rhotacized equivalents "arban", "albar", and "arbar", the term in Albanian became rendered as "Arbëneshë/Arbëreshë" for the people and "Arbënia/Arbëria" for the country. The Albanian language was referred to as "Arbnisht" and "Arbërisht". While the exonym Albania for the general region inhabited by the Albanians does have connotations to Classical Antiquity, the Albanian language employs a different ethnonym, with modern Albanians referring to themselves as "Shqip(ë)tarë" and to their country as "Shqipëria". Two etymologies have been proposed for this ethnonym: one, derived from the etymology from the Albanian word for eagle (shqipe, var., shqiponjë). In Albanian folk etymology, this word denotes a bird totem, dating from the times of Skanderbeg as displayed on the Albanian flag. The other is within scholarship that connects it to the verb 'to speak' ("me shqiptue") from the Latin ""excipere"". In this instance the Albanian endonym like "Slav" and others would originally have been a term connoting "those who speak [intelligibly, the same language]". The new ethnonyms "Shqip(ë)tarë" and "Shqipëria" emerged and replaced the older ethnonyms "Arbëneshë/Arbëreshë" and "Arbënia/Arbëria" between the late 17th and early 18th centuries. That era brought about religious and other sociopolitical changes. As such a new and generalised response by Albanians based on ethnic and linguistic consciousness to this new and different Ottoman world emerging around them was a change in ethnonym.

Approximately 5 million Albanians are geographically distributed across the Balkan Peninsula with about half this number living in Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia and Montenegro as well as to a much smaller extent in Croatia and Serbia. There are also significant Albanian populations in Greece. Insignificant comunities are available in Bulgaria and Romania.

In the Republic of Macedonia, there are approximately 500.000 Albanians constituting the largest minority group in the country. The vast majority of the Albanians are largely concentrated around the municipalities of Tetovo, Gostivar, Struga and Skopje in the northwest and southwest of Macedonia.

In Montenegro, the Albanian population of Montenegro is currently estimated to be around 30.000 forming as well as one of the constituent minority groups of the country. They predominantly live in the coastal region of Montenegro around the municipalities of Ulcinj and Bar but also around Plav and the capital city of Podgorica. The cities of Ulcinj and Tuzi constitute the major centres of the Albanian community in Montenegro.

In Romania, the Albanians are recognized as a minority group and are hence represented in Parliament of Romania and enjoy ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious rights in the country. The Albanian migration to Romanian territory dates back to the 16th century however the actual number of Albanians in Romania is unofficially estimated at around 500 to 10.000.
An estimated 2.2 million Albanians live in the territory of Former Yugoslavia, the greater part, which is close to two million, in Kosovo. Rights to use the Albanian language in education and government were given and guaranteed by the 1974 Constitution of SFRY and were widely utilized in Macedonia and in Montenegro before the Dissolution of Yugoslavia.

The presence of Albanians in Kosovo as well as in the adjacent regions of Toplica and Morava is recorded since the Middle Ages. As the Serbs expelled many Albanians from the wider Toplica and Morava regions in Southern Serbia, which the 1878 Congress of Berlin had given to the Principality of Serbia, many of them settled in Kosovo. In Kosovo, they and their descendants are known as "Muhaxher" (meaning "the exiled", from the Arabic muhajir).

During the First Balkan War, Serbia and Montenegro, after expelling the Ottoman forces in present-day Albania and Kosovo, committed numerous war crimes against the Albanians, which were reported by the European, American and Serbian opposition press. Further during the Kosovo War, Serbian paramilitary forces committed war crimes in Kosovo, although the Serbian government claims that the army was only going after suspected Albanian terrorists. This triggered a 78-day NATO campaign in 1999. Nowadays, Albanians in Kosovo constitute the majority with 1,616,869 million.

Culturally, Albanians in Kosovo are very closely related to Albanians in Albania. Traditions and customs differ even from town to town in Kosovo itself. The spoken dialect is Gheg, typical of northern Albanians. The language of state institutions, education, books, media and newspapers is the standard dialect of Albanian, which is closer to the Tosk dialect. The most widespread religion among Albanians in Kosovo is Islam, mostly Sunni, and Roman Catholicism.

There are small Albanian populations dating to migrations from the 18th century. One group known as the "Arbanas" are located on Croatia's Dalmatian coast and fled Ottoman repression. The second known as the "Албанці" (Albantsi) are located in scattered communities across southern Ukraine and descend from Albanian warriors who fought against the Ottoman Empire during the Russo-Turkish wars and allowed to settle in the Russian Empire.

The Albanian migration to Italy can be broadly categorised into several migration cycles that occurred throughout history which in turn can be attributed to factors such as political or religious difficulties that emerged in the Balkan Peninsula. It dates back between the 15th and 17th centuries as once numerous Albanian and other Balkan soldiers, known as the Stratioti, were recruited to the Italian Peninsula as prominent mercenaries by the Neapolitans, Sicilians and Venetians. The Stratiotis, composed of Christians and Muslims, served initially for the Republic of Venice in their campaigns, among others, against the Ottoman Empire.
The Arbëreshës are the traditional Albanian population of Italy and started to settle Southern Italy following the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans and Constantinople between the 14th and 16th centuries. Today, the Albanian community constitute one of the largest ethnolinguistic minority in Italy which is protected by law.

The total number of Arbëreshës is approximately 260,000 scattered across Sicily, Calabria and Apulia. There are as well numbers outside of Italy such as in North and South America, especially in such countries as Argentina, Canada, Chile, Uruguay and the United States.

Centuries later in the end of the 20th century occurred another and simultaneously the largest migration cycle of Albanians to Italy surpassing the earlier migration of the Arbëreshë. Their migration stems from severe political and social oppression during decades of isolation from the outside world under the communist regime leaded by Enver Hoxha.

Between 2015 and 2016, the number of Albanians regularly residing in Italy was numbered to be around 480,000 and 500,000. Tuscany, Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna represent the regions with the strongest presence of the modern Albanian population in Italy. In 2012, 41.5% of the Albanian population were counted as Muslim, 38.9% as Christian including 27.7% as Roman Catholic and 11% as Eastern Orthodox and 17.8% as Irreligious.

In Croatia, the Albanian language is one of the officially recognized minority languages of the country and is primarily spoken by the Albanians and Arbanasis. As defined in the 2011 census, the number of Albanians in the country was estimated to be 17,513. They are mostly concentrated in the coastal cities of Croatia and the capital city of Zagreb.

The history of Albanian presence in Croatia can be traced back to the Middle Ages. In this period, there was a significant Albanian community in Ragusa with numerous families of Albanian origin inclusively the Sorgo family who came from the Cape of Rodon in central Albania, across Kotor in eastern Montenegro, to Dalmatia.

By the 13th century, Albanian merchants were trading directly with the peoples of the Republic of Ragusa which increased familiarity between Albanians and Ragusans. The capture of Albania by the Ottoman Empire and the death of Skanderbeg caused many Christian Albanians to flee to Dalmatia and other countries including Italy and Greece.

In the 18th century, the suppression of Catholicism increased rapidly and dramatically which led the Arbanasis to flee to Dalmatia. They found initially refuge in Kotor and moved further north to Zadar where they established the village Borgo Erizzo which is at the present day a neighbourhood of Zadar.

An estimated 275,000–600,000 (Includes dual citizens, temporary migrants, and undocumented) Albanians live in Greece, forming the largest immigrant community in the country. They are economic migrants whose migration began in 1991, following the collapse of the Socialist People's Republic of Albania.

The Arvanites and Albanian-speakers of Western Thrace are a group descended from Tosks who migrated to southern and central Greece between the 13th and 16th centuries. They are Greek Orthodox Christians, and though they traditionally speak a dialect of Tosk Albanian known as Arvanitika, they have fully assimilated into the Greek nation and do not identify as Albanians. Arvanitika is in a state of attrition due to language shift towards Greek and large-scale internal migration to the cities and subsequent intermingling of the population during the 20th century.

The Cham Albanians were a group that formerly inhabited a region of Epirus known as Chameria, nowadays Thesprotia in northwestern Greece. Many Cham Albanians converted to Islam during the Ottoman era. Muslim Chams were expelled from Greece during World War II, by an anti-communist resistance group, as a result of their participation in a communist resistance group and the collaboration with the Axis occupation, while Orthodox Chams have largely assimilated into the Greek nation..

In the 20th and 21st centuries, there have been increasingly large numbers of Albanian people settling in other parts of Western and Northern Europe. In Albania, the collapse of communism triggered a new wave of migration and led to the emergence of a new diaspora, largely within Southern Europe, in such countries as Greece and Italy. In the 1990s, the estimated number of Albanians outside the territory of Albania was approximately 500,000 of whom 90% was settling in neighbouring Greece.

There are approximately 200.000 Albanians in Switzerland with the main concentration in the cantons of Zürich, Basel, Lucerne, Bern and St. Gallen. The neighbouring Germany is home to around 250.000 to 300.000 Albanians while in Austria there are around 40.000 and 80.000 Albanians concentrated in the states of Vienna, Styria, Salzburg, Lower and Upper Austria. A large proportion of these people are from Kosovo and Macedonia with a lesser extent from Albania and other territories however, the number of Albanians in all three countries has sharply increased following the conflicts in the Balkans and the human tragedy in Kosovo.
The largest number of Albanians in Scandinavia is to be found in Sweden where 100,000 people of Albanian descent are thought to live. However, according to official data, only around 50,000 people have declared Albanian as their first language. A smaller number of Albanians have also settled in Norway and Denmark with more than 11,000 and 8,000 Albanians respecitvely.

In the United Kingdom, the number of Albanian nationals living in the UK increased from around 2,000 in 2004 to around 14,600 in 2015. As of other estimations, the population of Albanians in the UK lies between 70,000 and 100,000. Albanian migrants live in all parts of the UK especially in England.

The Albanian diaspora in Turkey was formed during the Ottoman era through economic migration and early years of the Turkish republic through migration due to sociopolitical discrimination and violence experienced by Albanians in Balkan countries. According to a 2008 report prepared for the National Security Council of Turkey by academics of three Turkish universities in eastern Anatolia, there were approximately 1,300,000 people of Albanian descent living in Turkey. According to that study, more than 500,000 Albanian descendants still recognize their ancestry and or their language, culture and traditions. There are also other estimates regarding the Albanian population in Turkey that range from being 3–4 million people up to a total of 5 million in number, although most of these are Turkish citizens of either full or partial Albanian ancestry being no longer fluent in Albanian (cf. German Americans). This was due to various degrees of either linguistic and or cultural assimilation occurring amongst the Albanian diaspora in Turkey. Nonetheless, a sizable proportion of the Albanian community in Turkey, such as that of Istanbul, has maintained its distinct Albanian identity. Albanians are active in the civic life of Turkey.
In Egypt there are 18,000 Albanians, mostly Tosk speakers. Many are descendants of the Janissaries of Muhammad Ali Pasha, an Albanian who became Wāli, and self-declared Khedive of Egypt and Sudan. In addition to the dynasty that he established, a large part of the former Egyptian and Sudanese aristocracy was of Albanian origin. Albanian Sunnis, Bektashis and Orthodox Christians were all represented in this diaspora, whose members at some point included major Renaissance figures ("Rilindasit"), including Thimi Mitko, Spiro Dine, Andon Zako Çajupi, Milo Duçi, Fan Noli and others who lived in Egypt for a time. With the ascension of Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt and rise of Arab nationalism, the last remnants of Albanian community there were forced to leave. Albanians have been present in Arab countries such as Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, and for about five centuries as a legacy of Ottoman Turkish rule.

The first immigration of Albanians to Canada began already in the 19th and 20th centuries though the largest wave of migration from the Balkan Peninsula to Canada was in 1999, when 7,000 people mostly Albanians from Kosovo, arrived in that country. They primarily settled in Canada's industrial cities, mostly Toronto, Montreal and Edmonton, which was besides the United States a major centre of Albanian migration to North America.
Albanian Canadians have their roots in Albania, although the country of their birth could be Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Italy or Greece. In 2016, Canada was home to approximately 36,185 Albanians from Albania and 2,870 Albanians from Kosovo predominantly distributed in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa and Vancouver.

The largest population of Albanians in the Americas is predominantly to be found in the United States. According to the 2013 American Community Survey, there are 194,028 Albanian Americans (American citizens of full or partial Albanian descent).

The descendants of the Arbëreshës from Italy were the first ethnic Albanians to arrive in the United States. The immigration of the Arbëreshës to the country occurred at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. Having a strong sense of identity, the Arbëreshë Americans are often distinguishable from other Albanian Americans with regard to their italianized names and a common religion. They are often indistinguishable from Italian Americans because of being assimilated into the Italian American community.

Albanian immigration to Australia took place in the late 19th century and much of the 20th century. Following the introduction of migration quotas by the United States, people who had planned to immigrate to the States were forced to choose Australia instead. The majority of them had Muslim and Orthodox backgrounds and tended to live in Victoria and Queensland but also in Western and Northern Australia.

Italy's annexation of Albania and its alliance with Nazi Germany against the allies marked a difficult time for Albanian and Italian Australians as they were thought by Australian authorities to pose a fascist threat. However, the number of Albanian immigrants slowed consequently during that time but also due to immigration restrictions placed by the communist regime in Albania.

The most recent Albanian immigrants came mostly from Kosovo and the former Yugoslavian countries inclusively Macedonia and Serbia and Montenegro. The immigrants were mostly Muslims but also Orthodox and Catholics among them the relatives of the renowned Albanian nun and missionary Mother Teresa.
In 2016, approximately 4,041 persons resident in Australia identified themselves as having been born in Albania, while 15,901 persons identified themselves as having Albanian ancestry, either alone or in combination with another ancestry. There are many Albanian Australians that were born in Italy, Macedonia as well as Kosovo, due to this they are recorded under those statistics.

An old Bulgarian text compiled around the beginning of the 11th century contains a possible reference to Albanians. It is preserved in a Serbian manuscript dated 1628 and was first published in 1934 by Radoslav Grujic. It is a fragment of a once longer text that endeavours to explain the origins of peoples and languages in a question-and-answer form similar to a catechism. It divides the world into seventy-two languages and three religious categories: Orthodox Christians, half-believers (i.e. non-Orthodox Christians) and non-believers. Grujic dated it to the early 11th century and if this and the identification of the "Arbanasi" as Albanians are correct it would be the earliest written document referring to the Albanians as a people or language group.

It can be seen that there are various languages on earth. Of them, there are five Orthodox languages: Bulgarian, Greek, Syrian, Iberian (Georgian) and Russian. Three of these have Orthodox alphabets: Greek, Bulgarian and Iberian. There are twelve languages of half-believers: Alamanians, Franks, Magyars (Hungarians), Indians, Jacobites, Armenians, Saxons, Lechs (Poles), Arbanasi (Albanians), Croatians, Hizi, Germans.

The first undisputed mention of Albanians in the historical record is attested in Byzantine source for the first time in 1079–1080, in a work titled "History" by Byzantine historian Michael Attaliates, who referred to the "Albanoi" as having taken part in a revolt against Constantinople in 1043 and to the "Arbanitai" as subjects of the duke of Dyrrachium. It is disputed, however, whether the "Albanoi" of the events of 1043 refers to Albanians in an ethnic sense or whether "Albanoi" is a reference to Normans from Sicily under an archaic name (there was also a tribe in Italy by the name of "Albanoi"). However a later reference to Albanians from the same Attaleiates, regarding the participation of Albanians in a rebellion around 1078, is undisputed. At this point, they are already fully Christianized, although Albanian mythology and folklore are part of the Paleo-Balkan pagan mythology, in particular showing Greek influence.

From the late 11th century the Albanians were called Arbën/Arbër and their country as Arbanon, a mountainous area to the west of Lake Ochrida and the upper valley of the river Shkumbin. It was in 1190, when the rulers of Arbanon (local Albanian noble called Progon and his sons Dhimitër and Gjin) created their principality with its capital at Krujë. After the fall of Progon Dynasty in 1216, the principality came under Grigor Kamona and Gulam of Albania. Finally the Principality was dissolved in 1255. Around 1230 the two main centers of Albanian settlements, one around Devoll river in what is now central Albania, and the other around the region which was known with the name Arbanon.

In 1271 Charles of Anjou created the Kingdom of Albania, after he captured a part of the Despotate of Epirus. A major attempt to advance further in direction of Constantinople failed at the Siege of Berat (1280–1281). A Byzantine counteroffensive soon ensued, which drove the Angevins out of the interior by 1281. The Sicilian Vespers further weakened the position of Charles, and the Kingdom was soon reduced by the Epirotes to a small area around Durrës. The kingdom however held out until 1368, when the city was captured by Karl Thopia. The presence of the kingdom reinforced the influence of Catholicism and the conversion to its rite, not only in the region of Durrës but in other parts of the country. A new wave of Catholic dioceses, churches and monasteries were founded, a number of different religious orders began spreading into the country, and papal missionaries also reached the territories of the Kingdom of Albania. Those who were not Catholic in Central and North Albania converted and a great number of Albanian clerics and monks were present in the Dalmatian Catholic institutions.

In the 14th century a number of Albanian principalities were created. These included Principality of Kastrioti, Principality of Dukagjini, Princedom of Albania, and Principality of Gjirokastër. At the beginning of the 15th century these principalities became stronger, especially because of the fall of the Serbian Empire. Some of these principalities were united in 1444 under the military alliance called League of Lezha.

At the dawn of the establishment of the Ottoman Empire in Southeast Europe, the geopolitical landscape was marked by scattered kingdoms of small principalities. The Ottomans erected their garrisons throughout southern Albania by 1415 and established formal jurisdiction over most of Albania by 1431. However, in 1443 a great and longstanding revolt broke under the lead of the Albanian national hero Gjergj Kastrioti Skanderbeg, which lasted until 1479, many times defeating major Ottoman armies led by sultans Murad II and Mehmed II. Skanderbeg united initially the Albanian princes and later established a centralized authority over most of the non-conquered territories, becoming Lord of Albania. He also tried relentlessly but rather unsuccessfully to create a European coalition against the Ottomans. He frustrated every attempt by the Turks to regain Albania, which they envisioned as a springboard for the invasion of Italy and western Europe. His unequal fight against the mightiest power of the time won the esteem of Europe as well as some support in the form of money and military aid from Naples, the papacy, Venice, and Ragusa. Finally after decades of resistance, Ottomans captured Shkodër in 1479 and Durrës in 1501. Skanderbeg's long struggle to keep Albania free became highly significant to the Albanian people, as it strengthened their solidarity, made them more conscious of their national identity, and served later as a great source of inspiration in their struggle for national unity, freedom, and independence. The invasion triggered a several waves of migration of Albanians from Albania, Epirus and Peloponnese to the south of Italy, constituting an Arbereshe community. Albanians were recruited all over Europe as a light cavalry known as stratioti. The stratioti were pioneers of light cavalry tactics during this era. In the early 16th century heavy cavalry in the European armies was principally remodeled after Albanian stradioti of the Venetian army, Hungarian hussars and German mercenary cavalry units (Schwarzreitern).
By the 16th century, Ottoman rule over Southeast Europe was largely secure. The Ottomans proceeded in stages, first appointing a qadi along with governors and then military retainers in the cities. Timar holders, not necessarily converts to Islam, would occasionally rebel, the most famous case of which is Skanderbeg. His figure would be used later in the 19th century as a central component of Albanian national identity. Ottoman control over the Albanian territories was secured in 1571 when Ulcinj, presently in Montenegro, was captured.

The most significant impact on the Albanians was the gradual Islamization process of a large majority of the population, although such a process only became widespread in the 17th century. Mainly Catholics converted in the 17th century, while the Orthodox Albanians became Muslim mainly in the following century. Initially confined to the main city centres of Elbasan and Shkodër, by this time the countryside was also embracing the new religion. In Elbasan Muslims made up just over half the population in 1569–70 whereas in Shkodër this was almost 90% and in Berat closer to 60%. In the 17th century, however, Catholic conversion to Islam increased, even in the countryside. The motives for conversion according to scholars were diverse, depending on the context. The lack of source-material does not help when investigating such issues. Reasons in various different contexts included the incentive to escape high taxes levied on Christian subjects, ecclesiastical decay, coercion by Ottoman authorities in times of war, and the privileged legal and social position Muslims had over that of Christians within the empire.

Areas such as Albania, Western Macedonia, Southern Serbia, Kosovo, parts of northern Greece and southern Montenegro in Ottoman sources were referred to as "Arnavudluk" or Albania. The Ottoman period that followed in Albania after the end of Skanderbeg's resistance was characterized by other changes. Many Albanians gained prominent positions in the Ottoman government such as: Iljaz Hoxha, Hamza Kastrioti, Koca Davud Pasha, Zağanos Pasha, Köprülü Mehmed Pasha (head of the Köprülü family of Grand Viziers), the Bushati family, Sulejman Pasha, Edhem Pasha, Nezim Frakulla, Haxhi Shekreti, Hasan Zyko Kamberi, Ali Pasha of Gucia, Muhammad Ali of Egypt and Ali Pasha of Tepelena who rose to become one of the most powerful Muslim Albanian rulers in western Rumelia. During the Ottoman era Albanians involved in imperial service could also be found across the empire in Egypt, Algeria and across the Maghreb as vital military and administrative retainers.

In the 1870s, the Sublime Porte's reforms aimed at checking the Ottoman Empire's disintegration had clearly failed. The image of the "Turkish yoke" had become fixed in the nationalist mythologies and psyches of the people in the Balkan peninsula, and their march toward independence quickened. Because of the higher degree of Islamic influence, the Albanians internal social divisions, and the fear that they would lose their Albanian-inhabited territories to the emerging Balkan states, Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, and Greece, were the last of the peoples in the Balkans to desire division from the Ottomans.

The national awakening as a coherent political movement began after the Treaty of San Stefano, according to which Albanian-inhabited territories were to be ceded to other states of the Balkans, and focused on preventing that partition. The Treaty of San Stefano was the impetus for the nation-building movement, which was based more on fear of partition than national identity. Even after, Albania declared independence on 28 November 1912, national identity was fragmented and possibly non-existent in much of the newly proposed country. The state of disunity and fragmentation would remain until the communist period following second World War, when the communist nation-building project would achieve greater success in nation-building and reach more people than any previous regime, thus creating Albanian national communist identity.

The majority of the Albanian people speak the Albanian language which comprise an independent branch within the Indo-European languages. It is a language isolate to any other known living language in Europe and indeed no other language in the world has been conclusively associated to its branch.
The Albanian language is spoken by approximately 5 million people throughout the Balkan Peninsula as well as by communities around the Americas, Europe and Oceania. Numerous variants and dialects of Albanian are used as an official language in Albania, Kosovo and the Republic of Macedonia. The language is also spoken in other countries whence it is officially recognised as a minority language in such countries as Croatia, Italy, Montenegro, Romania and Serbia.
There are two principal dialects of the Albanian language, Gheg and Tosk. The geographical dividing line is traditionally considered to be the Shkumbin River with Gheg spoken in the north of it and Tosk in the south. Dialects spoken in Croatia (Arbanasi), Kosovo, Montenegro and Northwestern Macedonia are Geg dialects, while those spoken in Greece (Arvanites, Çam), Southwestern Macedonia and Italy (Arbëreshë) are Tosk dialects.

The origin of the Albanian langauge is a contentious subject that has given rise to numerous hypotheses. The hypothesis of Albanian being one of the descendant of the Illyrian languages is based on geography where the languages were spoken however not enough archaeological evidence is left behind to come therefore to a definite conclusion.

Another hypothesis associates the Albanian language with the Thracian language. This theory takes exception to the territory, since the language was spoken in an area distinct from Albania, and no significant population movements have been recorded in the period when the shift from one language to the other is supposed to have occurred.

Most Albanians in Albania speak foreign languages as revealed by a new study carried out by Eurostat, the statistical agency of the European Union, which analyzed the demography of the adult population 25-64 of several European countries as of 2016. The results of the Adult Education Survey, released in May 2018, showed that the 39.9% of the 25–64 years old albanians is able to use at least one foreign language. The main foreign language known is English with 40.0%, followed by Italian with 27.8% and Greek with 22.9%. The English speakers were mostly young people, the knowledge of Italian is stable in every age group, while there is a decrease of the speakers of Greek in the youngest group.

The Albanians in Italy are either Albanian immigrants from the 1990s, who came in Italy following the breakdown of the communist regime in Albania in 1990 and speak standard Albanian and the Italian language, or the Arbëreshë people, Albanian refugees who fled from Albania for Southern Italy between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries in consequence of the Ottoman invasion of the Balkans, who nowadays speak the Arbëresh language, a variety of Albanian that derives from Tosk spoken in southern Albania and follows a similar divergence pattern to Arvanitika.

The Albanian people are traditionally adherents of different spiritual traditions and religious faiths and beliefs.
Nowadays most Albanians are non observant with many who are irreligious. A majority among Albanian Muslims are Sunni, while a large minority are Bektashi (an esoteric Shia-derived sect known for liberal attitudes) and there are also smaller Sufi groups, while Christians are split between Orthodox and Catholics with a smaller presence of Protestant sects.

The Albanians first appear in the historical record in Byzantine sources of the late 11th century. At this point, they were already fully Christianized. All Albanians were Orthodox Christians until the middle of the 13th century when the Ghegs were converted to Catholicism as a mean to resist the Slavs. Christianity was later overtaken by Islam, which kept the scepter of the major religion during the period of Ottoman Turkish rule from the 15th century until 1912. Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Roman Catholicism continued to be practiced with less frequency.

During the 20th century the monarchy and later the totalitarian state followed a systematic secularization of the nation and the national culture. This policy was chiefly applied within the borders of the current Albanian state. It produced a secular majority in the population. All forms of Christianity, Islam and other religious practices were prohibited except for old non-institutional pagan practices in the rural areas, which were seen as identifying with the national culture. The current Albanian state has revived some pagan festivals, such as the Spring festival () held yearly on 14 March in the city of Elbasan. It is a national holiday.
The communist regime which ruled Albania after World War II persecuted and suppressed religious observance and institutions, and entirely banned religion to the point where Albania was officially declared to be the world's first atheist state. Religious freedom returned to Albania following the regime's change in 1992. Albanian Sunni Muslims are found throughout the country, Albanian Orthodox Christians as well as Bektashis are concentrated in the south, while Roman Catholics are found primarily in the north of the country.

According to 2011 census, 58.79% of Albania adheres to Islam, making it the largest religion in the country. The majority of Albanian Muslims are Sunni with a Bektashi minority. Christianity is practiced by 16.99% of the population, making it the second largest religion in the country. The remaining population is either irreligious or belongs to other religious groups. Before World War II, there was given a distribution of 70% Muslims, 20% Eastern Orthodox, and 10% Roman Catholics. Today, Gallup Global Reports 2010 shows that religion plays a role in the lives of only 39% of Albanians, and ranks Albania the thirteenth least religious country in the world.
The results of the 2011 census, however, have been criticized as questionable on a number of grounds, and have been said to drastically underrepresent the number of Orthodox, Bektashi and irreligious Albanians, with problems including whole communities reporting that they had not been contacted, workers filling out questions without even asking the respondents and a drastic difference between the final results and the preliminary results with regard to religion (which showed over 70% declining to answer the question about religion).

For part of its history, Albania has also had a Jewish community. Members of the Jewish community were saved by a group of Albanians during the Nazi occupation. Many left for Israel c. 1990–1992 when the borders were opened after the fall of the communist regime, but about 200 Jews still live in Albania.

A modest amount of literature written by early Albanians was about religious themes. The earliest known use of written Albanian is a baptismal formula (1462) written by the Archbishop of Durrës Paulus Angelus. In 1555, a Catholic clergyman Gjon Buzuku from the Shestan region published the earliest known book written in Albanian titled "Meshari" (The Missal) regarding Catholic prayers and rites containing archaic medieval language, lexemes and expressions obsolete in contemporary Albanian. Other Christian clergy such as Luca Matranga in the Arbëresh diaspora published (1592) in the Tosk dialect while other notable authors were from northern Albanian lands and included Pjetër Budi, Frang Bardhi, and Pjetër Bogdani. With the conversion to Islam of many Albanians, Muslim poetic and other literary traditions were adopted giving rise to authors such as the "Bejtexhinj" (Albanian poets) and included individuals like Nezim Frakulla, Hasan Zyko Kamberi, Muhamet Kyçyku, and brothers Shahin and Dalip Frashëri. They compiled Albanian literature infused with expressions, language and themes stemming from the Middle East and their local socio-cultural environment. Albanian literature was composed in the Arbëresh diaspora by individuals such as Giulio Variboba, Nicola Chetta, Giuseppe Schirò, Giuseppe Serembe, Girolamo de Rada and others relating to religious, secular, poetic and eventually patriotic themes like Skanderbeg. From the 19th century "Rilindja" (Albanian national awakening), a corpus of Albanian literature with patriotic and other themes emerged calling for Albanian unity, self-determination and celebrating Albanian culture, language, legends and other figures of sociopoltical, cultural and historic importance. Figures who left their mark during this period were the poet brothers Naim and Sami Frashëri, Pashko Vasa, Luigj Gurakuqi and others.

Albanian independence (1912) until the advent of the Second World War marked a transition from patriotic and political Rilindja related literature to more distinctive, expressive and matured forms of Albanian literature, prose and poetry focusing upon additional themes of contemporary life. Andon Zako Çajupi, Ndre Mjeda, Faik Konitza, Fan Noli who translated many foreign works into Albanian, Gjergj Fishta who composed the epic the "Highland Lute", Ernest Koliqi, modernist poets Migjeni and Lasgush Poradeci and others. Albania, post World War Two emerged as a communist state and Socialist realism became part of the literary scene. Authors and poets emerged such as Sejfulla Malëshova, Dritero Agolli and Ismail Kadare who has become an internationally acclaimed novelist and others who challenged the regime through various sociopolitical and historic themes in their works. Martin Camaj wrote in the diaspora while in neighbouring Yugoslavia, the emergence of Albanian cultural expression resulted in sociopolitical and poetic literature by notable authors like Adem Demaçi, Rexhep Qosja, Jusuf Buxhovi. The Albanian literary scene at the beginning of the 21st century remains vibrant producing new novelists, authors, poets and other writers.

Albanian folk music displays a variety of influences. Albanian folk music traditions differ by region, with major stylistic differences between the traditional music of the Ghegs in the north and Tosks in the south. Modern popular music has developed around the centers of Korca, Shkodër and Tirana. Since the 1920s, some composers such as Fan S. Noli have also produced works of Albanian classical music.

Kajkavian is spoken in North Croatia, including the capital Zagreb, as well as in a few enclaves in Austria, Hungary, and Romania. Though its speakers are ethnic Croats and Kajkavian is thus generally considered a dialect of Serbo-Croatian, it is closer to neighboring Slovene than it is to Chakavian or Shtokavian. The Kajkavian area of Croatia is bordered on the northwest by Slovene language territory. It is bordered on the east and southeast by Shtokavian dialects roughly along a line that was the former division between Civil Croatia and the Habsburg Military Frontier; in southwest along Kupa and Dobra rivers, it persisted in ancient (medieval) contact with Chakavian dialects.

Dialects of Serbo-Croatian

The dialects of Serbo-Croatian include the regional varieties of Serbo-Croatian as a whole or as part of its standard varieties: Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian. They are part of the dialect continuum of South Slavic languages that joins the Macedonian dialects to the south, Bulgarian dialects to the southeast and Slovene dialects to the northwest.

The primary dialects are named after the most common question word for "what": Shtokavian ("štokavski") uses the pronoun "što" or "šta", Chakavian ("čakavski") uses "ča" or "ca", Kajkavian ("kajkavski"), "kaj" or "kej". The pluricentric Serbo-Croatian standard language and all four contemporary standard variants are based on the Eastern Herzegovinian subdialect of Neo-Shtokavian. The other dialects are not taught in schools or used by the state media. The Torlakian dialect is often added to the list, though sources usually note that it is a transitional dialect between Shtokavian and the Bulgaro-Macedonian dialects. Burgenland Croatian and Molise Slavic are varieties of the Chakavian dialect spoken outside the South Slavic dialect continuum, which combine influences from other dialects of Serbo-Croatian as well as influences from the dominantly spoken local languages.

Another common distinction among the dialects is made through the reflex of the long Common Slavic vowel "jat" and thus the dialects are divided into Ikavian, Ekavian, and Ijekavian, with the reflects of "jat" being /i/, /e/, and /ije/ or /je/ respectively.

The Proto-Shtokavian idiom appeared in the 12th century. In the following century or two, Shtokavian was divided into two zones: western, which covered the major part of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Slavonia in Croatia, and eastern, dominant in easternmost Bosnia and Herzegovina and greater parts of Montenegro and Serbia. Western Shtokavian was principally characterized by three-accentual system, while eastern Shtokavian was marked by two-accentual system. According to research of historical linguistics, the Old-Shtokavian was well established by the mid-15th century. In this period it was still being mixed with Church Slavonic to varying degrees, as geographically transitory to Chakavian and Kajkavian dialects spoken on the territory of today's Croatia, with which it had constituted a natural dialect continuum.

Originally the dialect covered a significantly smaller area than it covers today, meaning that the Štokavian speech had spread for the last five centuries, overwhelmingly at the expense of Čakavian and Kajkavian idioms. Modern areal distribution of these three dialects as well as their internal stratification (Štokavian and Čakavian in particular) is primarily a result of the migrations resulting from the spread of Ottoman Empire on the Balkans. Migratory waves were particularly strong in the 16th–18th century, bringing about large-scale linguistic and ethnic changes on the Central South Slavic area (See: Great Serb Migrations).

By far the most numerous, mobile and expansionist migrations were those of Ijekavian Štokavian speakers of eastern Herzegovina, who have flooded most of Western Serbia, many areas of eastern and western Bosnia, large swathes of Croatia (Banovina, Kordun, Lika, parts of Gorski kotar, continental parts of northern Dalmatia, some places north of Kupa, parts of Slavonia, southeastern Baranya etc.). This is the reason why Eastern Herzegovinian dialect is the most spoken Serbo-Croatian dialect today, and why it bears the name that is only descriptive of its area of origin. These migrations also played the pivotal role in the spread of Neo-Štokavian innovations.

The Shtokavian dialect is divided into Old Shtokavian and Neo-Shtokavian subdialects. Subdialects grouped under Old-Shtokavian are the following:

Neo-Shtokavian dialects comprise the following subdialects:

Shtokavian is characterized by a number of characteristic historical sound changes, accentual changes, changes in inflection, morphology and syntax. Some of these isoglosses are not exclusive and have also been shared by neighboring dialects, and some of them have only overwhelmingly but not completely been spread on the whole Štokavian area. The differences between Štokavian and the neighboring Eastern South Slavic dialects of Bulgaria and Macedonia are clear and largely shared with other Western South Slavic dialects, while the differences to the neighboring Western South Slavic dialect of Čakavian and Kajkavian are much more fluid in character, and the mutual influence of various subdialects and idioms play a more prominent role.

General characteristics of Štokavian are the following:

As can be seen from the list, many of these isoglosses are missing from certain Štokavian idioms, just as many of them are shared with neighboring non-Štokavian dialects.

Chakavian is the oldest written Serbo-Croatian dialect that had made a visible appearance in legal documents - as early as 1275 ("Istrian land survey") and 1288 ("Vinodol codex"), the predominantly vernacular Chakavian is recorded, mixed with elements of Church Slavic. Archaic Chakavian can be traced back to 1105 in the Baška tablet. All these and other early Chakavian texts up to 17th century are mostly written in Glagolitic alphabet.

Initially, the Chakavian dialect covered a much wider area than today including about two thirds of medieval Croatia: the major part of central and southern Croatia southwards of Kupa and westwards of Una river, as well as western and southwestern Bosnia and Herzegovina. During and after the Ottoman intrusion and subsequent warfare (15th–18th centuries), the Chakavian area has become greatly reduced and in the Croatian mainland it has recently been almost entirely replaced by Shtokavian, so it is now spoken in a much smaller coastal area than indicated above.

Chakavian is now mostly reduced in southwestern Croatia along the eastern Adriatic: Adriatic islands, and sporadically in the mainland coast, with rare inland enclaves up to central Croatia, and minor enclaves in Austria and Montenegro.

The Chakavian dialect comprises the following subdialects:

There is no generally accepted opinion on the set of characteristics a dialect has to possess to be classified as Chakavian (rather than its admixture with Shtokavian or Kajkavian), but the following characteristics are most commonly proposed:Besides the usual Chakavian (with typical pronoun "ča"), in some Adriatic islands and in eastern Istra another special variant is also spoken which lacks most palatals, with other parallel deviations called ""tsakavism"" (cakavizam):

The largest area of tsakavism is in eastern Istra at Labin, Rabac and a dozen nearby villages; minor mainland enclaves are the towns Bakar and Trogir. Tsakavism is also frequent in Adriatic islands: part of Lošinj and nearby islets, Baška in Krk, Pag town, the western parts of Brač (Milna), Hvar town, and subentire Vis with adjacent islets.

Dialectogical investigations of the Kajkavian dialect had begun at the end of the 19th century: the first comprehensive monograph was written in Russian by Ukrainian philologist A. M. Lukjanenko in 1905 ("Kajkavskoe narečie"). Kajkavian is not only a folk dialect, but in the course of history of Serbo-Croatian it has been the written public language (along with the corpus written in Čakavian and Štokavian). Kajkavian was the last to appear on the scene, mainly due to economic and political reasons. Although the first truly vernacular Serbo-Croatian texts (i.e. not mixed with Church Slavonic) go back to the 13th century (Chakavian) and to the 14th century (Shtokavian), the first Kajkavian published work was "Pergošić"'s "Decretum" from 1574. After that, numerous works appeared in Serbo-Croatian Kajkavian literary language in the following centuries.

Kajkavian literary language gradually fell into disuse since Croatian National Revival, ca. 1830–1850, when leaders of the Croatian National Unification Movement (the majority of them being Kajkavian native speakers themselves) adopted the most widespread and developed Serbo-Croatian Shtokavian literary language as the basis for the Croatian standard language. However, after a period of lethargy, the 20th century has witnessed new flourishing of literature in Kajkavian dialect – this time as Croatian dialectal poetry, main authors being Antun Gustav Matoš, Miroslav Krleža, Ivan Goran Kovačić, Dragutin Domjanić, Nikola Pavić etc. Nowadays, Kajkavian lexical treasure is being published by the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts in "Rječnik hrvatskoga kajkavskoga književnoga jezika"/"Dictionary of the Croatian Kajkavian Literary Language", 8 volumes (1999).

Kajkavian is spoken in North Croatia, including the capital Zagreb, as well as in a few enclaves in Austria, Hungary, and Romania. Though its speakers are ethnic Croats and Kajkavian is thus generally considered a dialect of Serbo-Croatian, it is closer to neighboring Slovene than it is to Chakavian or Shtokavian. The Kajkavian area of Croatia is bordered on the northwest by Slovene language territory. It is bordered on the east and southeast by Shtokavian dialects roughly along a line that was the former division between Civil Croatia and the Habsburg Military Frontier; in southwest along Kupa and Dobra rivers, it persisted in ancient (medieval) contact with Chakavian dialects.

The major cities in northern Croatia with prevailing urban Kajkavians are chiefly Zagreb (old central city, Sesvete and V. Gorica), Koprivnica, Krapina, Križevci, Varaždin, Čakovec, etc. The typical and archaic Kajkavian is today spoken chiefly in Zagorje hills and Medjimurje plain, and in adjacent areas of northwestern Croatia where other immigrants and Štokavian standard had much less influence. The most peculiar Kajkavian archidiom "(Baegnunski)" is spoken at Bednja in northernmost Croatia. The mixed half-Kajkavian towns along the eastern and southern edge of Kajkavian speaking area are Pitomača, Čazma, Kutina, Popovača, Sunja, Petrinja, Ozalj, Ogulin, Fužine, and Čabar, with included newer Štokavian enclaves of Bjelovar, Sisak, Glina, Dubrava, Zagreb and Novi Zagreb. The southernmost Kajkavian villages are Krapje at Jasenovac; and Pavušek, Dvorišče and Hrvatsko selo in Zrinska Gora.

Kajkavian dialects have been classified along various criteria: Serbian philologist Aleksandar Belić had divided (1927) the Kajkavian dialect according to the reflexes of Proto-Slavic phonemes /tj/ and /DJ/ into three subdialects: eastern, northwestern and southwestern. However, later investigations have not corroborated Belić's division. Contemporary Kajkavian dialectology originates mainly from Croatian philologist Stjepan Ivšić's work "Jezik Hrvata kajkavaca"/The Language of Kajkavian Croats, 1936, which is based on accentuation characteristics. Due to great diversity of Kajkavian speech, primarily in phonetics, phonology and morphology – the Kajkavian dialectological atlas is notable for its bewildering proliferation of subdialects: from four identified by Ivšić, up to six proposed by Croatian linguist Brozović (formerly accepted division) and even as many as fifteen, according to a monograph authored by Croatian linguist Mijo Lončarić (1995).

The most commonly accepted division of Kajkavian dialect lists the following subdialects:

Kajkavian is closely related to Slovene and to the Prekmurje dialect in particular. The speakers of Prekmurje dialect are Slovenes and Hungarian Slovenes who belonged to the Archdiocese of Zagreb during the Habsburg era. Higher amounts of correspondences between the two exist in inflection and vocabulary. Some Kajkavian words also bear a closer resemblance to other Slavic languages (such as Russian) than they do to Shtokavian or Chakavian. For instance "gda" seems (at first glance) to be unrelated to "kada", however, when compared to the Russian "когда", the relationship becomes more apparent, at the same time in Slovene: "kdaj," in Prekmurje Slovene "gda, kda". Kajkavian "kak" ("how") and "tak" ("so") are exactly like their Russian cognates, as compared to Shtokavian and Chakavian "kako" and "tako," in Prekmurje Slovene in turn "tak, kak" (in Slovene like Chakavian: "tako, kako"). (This vowel loss occurred in most other Slavic languages; Shtokavian is a notable exception, whereas the same feature of Macedonian is probably not a Serbian influence, because the word is preserved in the same form in Bulgarian, to which Macedonian is much more closely related than to Serbian.). Another distinctive feature of Kajkavian is the use of another future tense. Instead of Shtokavian and Chakavian future I ("ću", "ćeš", and "će" + infinitive), Kajkavian speakers use future II ("bum", "buš" and "bu" + active verbal adjective). Future II in Standard Croatian can only be used in subordinate clauses to refer to a condition or an action which will occur before other future action. For example, the phrase ""I'll show you"" is ""Ti bum pokazal"" in Kajkavian whereas in standard Croatian it is ""Pokazat ću ti"". This is a feature shared with Slovene: "bom", "boš", "bo".

The Serbo-Croatian dialects differ not only in the question word they are named after, but also heavily in phonology, accentuation and intonation, case endings and tense system (morphology) and basic vocabulary. In the past, Chakavian and Kajkavian dialects were spoken on a much larger territory, but have subsequently been replaced by Štokavian during the period of migrations caused by Ottoman Turkish conquest of the Balkans in the 15th and the 16th century. These migrations caused the koinéisation of the Shtokavian dialects, that used to form the West Shtokavian (more closer and transitional towards the neighbouring Chakavian and Kajkavian dialects) and East Shtokavian (transitional towards the Torlakian and the whole Bulgaro-Macedonian area) dialect bundles, and their subsequent spread at the expense of Chakavian and Kajkavian. As a result, Štokavian now covers an area larger than all the other dialects combined, and continues to make its progress in the enclaves where subliterary dialects are still being spoken.

The main bundle of isoglosses separates Kajkavian and Slovenian dialects on the one hand from Štokavian and Čakavian on the other. These are:

Other characteristics distinguishing Kajkavian from Štokavian, beside the demonstrative/interrogatory pronoun "kaj" (as opposed to "što/šta" used in Štokavian), are:

Characteristics distinguishing Čakavian from Štokavian, beside the demonstrative/interrogatory pronoun "ča", are:

The differences among the dialects can be illustrated on the example of Schleicher's fable. Diacritic signs are used to show the difference in accents and prosody, which are often quite significant, but which are not reflected in the usual orthography.

The Torlakian dialects are intermediate between the Eastern and Western branches of South Slavic, and have been variously described, in whole or in parts, as belonging to either group. In the 19th century, their classification was hotly contested between Serbian and Bulgarian writers.

Most Serbian linguists (like Pavle Ivić and Asim Peco) classify Torlakian as an Old-Shtokavian dialect, referring to it as Prizren-Timok dialect. However, this opinion was not shared by the Croatian linguists and thus Milan Rešetar classified the Torlak dialects (which he called "Svrlijg") as a different group from Shtokavian.

All old Bulgarian scientists as Benyo Tsonev, Gavril Zanetov and Krste Misirkov classified Torlakian as dialect of Bulgarian language. They noted the manner of the articles, the loss of most of the cases, etc. Today Bulgarian linguists (Stoyko Stoykov, Rangel Bozhkov) also classify Torlakian as a "Belogradchik-Tran" dialect of Bulgarian, and claim that it should be classified outside the Shtokavian area. Stoykov further argued that the Torlak dialects having a grammar that is closer to Bulgarian was indicative of them being originally Bulgarian.

In Macedonian dialectology, the Torlakian varieties spoken on Macedonian territory (Kumanovo, Kratovo and Kriva Palanka dialects) are classified as part of a North-Eastern group of Macedonian dialects.

The Torlakian dialects, together with Bulgarian and Macedonian, display many properties of the Balkan linguistic area, a set of structural convergence features shared also with other languages of the Balkans such as Albanian and Aromanian. In terms of areal linguistics, they have therefore been described as part of a prototypical "Balkan Slavic" area, as opposed to other parts of Serbo-Croatian, which are only peripherally involved in the convergence area.

Burgenland Croatian ("gradišćanskohrvatski jezik") is a regional variety of the Chakavian dialect spoken in Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. It is recognized as a minority language in the Austrian state of Burgenland where it is spoken by 19,412 people according to official reports (2001).

This variety 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 came from the northern Adriatic coast. Burgenland Croats did not 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 the 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 and the Prekmurje dialect of Slovene (spoken in Prekmurje and Hungary) was to press with interact. The first Prekmurje Slovene works (for example Old hymn-book of Martjanci) was applied to the Burgenland Croatian books. A few writers of the Prekmurje dialect were of Burgenland Croatian descent (for example Jakab Szabár) and also the Burgenland Croatian language (József Ficzkó).

The variety 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 standard Croatian. Sampled differences from standard Croatian are presented in the table in turn.

Burgenland Croatian written language is based mainly on the local Chakavian speech with some influences from the other Croatian dialects spoken in Burgenland. These dialects include:

Molise Slavic or "Slavomolisano" is a variety of the Shtokavian dialect with some Chakavian influences spoken in the province of Campobasso, in the Molise Region of southern Italy, in the villages of Montemitro ("Mundimitar"), Acquaviva Collecroce ("Živavoda Kruč") and San Felice del Molise ("Štifilić"). There are fewer than 1,000 active speakers, and fewer than 2,000 passive speakers. The language has been preserved since a group of Croats emigrated from Dalmatia abreast of advancing Ottoman Turks. The residents of these villages speak a Chakavian dialect with Ikavian accent. The Molise Croats, however, consider themselves to be Italians who speak a Slavic language, rather than ethnic Slavs. Some speakers call themselves "Zlavi" or "Harvati" and call their language simply "na našo" ("our language").

The language was preserved until today only in the aforementioned three villages, although several villages in Molise and Abruzzo region are aware of their Slavic and Croat ancestry. The existence of this Croat colony was unknown outside Italy until 1855 when Medo Pucić, a linguist from Dubrovnik, during one of his journeys in Italy overheard a tailor in Naples speaking with his wife in a language very similar to Pucić's own. The tailor then told him that he came from the village of Kruč, then part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Subsequently, the "Gajica", the modern Croatian alphabet, was adopted to the language.

The language is highly Italianized and also retains many archaic features. Because the colony was established before the discovery of the Americas, all the names of animals and plants introduced from the Americas are borrowed from Italian or created from whole cloth. Along with these, Molise Slavic features the following characteristics:

A basic distinction among the dialects is in the reflex of the long Common Slavic vowel "jat", usually transcribed as *ě. Depending on the reflex, the dialects are divided into Ikavian, Ekavian, and Ijekavian, with the reflects of "jat" being /i/, /e/, and /ije/ or /je/ respectively. The long and short "jat" is reflected as long or short */i/ and /e/ in Ikavian and Ekavian, but Ijekavian dialects introduce a "ije"/"je" alternation to retain a distinction.

Standard Croatian and Bosnian are based on Ijekavian, whereas Serbian uses both Ekavian and Ijekavian forms (Ijekavian for Montenegrin, Croatian and Bosnian Serbs; Ekavian for most of Serbia). Influence of standard language through state media and education has caused non-standard varieties to lose ground to the literary forms.

The jat-reflex rules are not without exception. For example, when short "jat" is preceded by "r", in most Ijekavian dialects developed into /re/ or, occasionally, /ri/. The prefix "prě-" ("trans-, over-") when long became "pre-" in eastern Ijekavian dialects but to "prije-" in western dialects; in Ikavian pronunciation, it also evolved into "pre-" or "prije-" due to potential ambiguity with "pri-" ("approach, come close to"). For verbs that had "-ěti " in their infinitive, the past participle ending "-ěl" evolved into "-io" in Ijekavian Neoštokavian.

The following are some examples:

Croatian (; "" ) is the standardized variety of the Serbo-Croatian language used by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina and other neighboring countries. It is the official and literary standard of Croatia and one of the official languages of the European Union. Croatian is also one of the official languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a recognized minority language in Serbia, and neighboring countries.

Croatian language

Standard Croatian is based on the most widespread dialect of Serbo-Croatian, Shtokavian, more specifically on Eastern Herzegovinian, which is also the basis of Standard Serbian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin. In the mid-18th century, the first attempts to provide a Croatian literary standard began on the basis of the Neo-Shtokavian dialect that served as a supraregional "lingua franca" pushing back regional Chakavian, Kajkavian, and Shtokavian vernaculars. The decisive role was played by Croatian Vukovians, who cemented the usage of Ijekavian Neo-Shtokavian as the literary standard in the late 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, in addition to designing a phonological orthography. Croatian is written in Gaj's Latin alphabet.

Besides the Shtokavian dialect, on which Standard Croatian is based, there are two other main dialects spoken on the territory of Croatia, Chakavian and Kajkavian. These dialects, and the four national standards, are usually subsumed under the term "Serbo-Croatian" in English, though this term is controversial for native speakers, and paraphrases such as "Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian" are therefore sometimes used instead, especially in diplomatic circles.

In the late medieval period up to the 17th century, the majority of semi-autonomous Croatia was ruled by two domestic dynasties of princes ("banovi"), the Zrinski and the Frankopan, which were linked by inter-marriage. Toward the 17th century, both of them attempted to unify Croatia both culturally and linguistically, writing in a mixture of all three principal dialects (Chakavian, Kajkavian and Shtokavian), and calling it "Croatian", "Dalmatian", or "Slavonian". It is still used now in parts of Istria, which became a crossroads of various mixtures of Chakavian with Ekavian/Ijekavian/Ikavian dialects.

The most standardized form (Kajkavian–Ikavian) became the cultivated language of administration and intellectuals from the Istrian peninsula along the Croatian coast, across central Croatia up into the northern valleys of the Drava and the Mura. The cultural apex of this 17th century idiom is represented by the editions of ""Adrianskoga mora sirena"" ("Siren of Adriatic Sea") by Petar Zrinski and ""Putni tovaruš"" ("Traveling escort") by Katarina Zrinska.

However, this first linguistic renaissance in Croatia was halted by the political execution of Petar Zrinski and Fran Krsto Frankopan by the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I in Vienna in 1671. Subsequently, the Croatian elite in the 18th century gradually abandoned this combined Croatian standard.

The Illyrian movement was a 19th-century pan-South Slavic political and cultural movement in Croatia that had the goal to standardize the regionally differentiated and orthographically inconsistent literary languages in Croatia, and finally merge them into a common South Slavic literary language. Specifically, three major groups of dialects were spoken on Croatian territory, and there had been several literary languages over four centuries. The leader of the Illyrian movement Ljudevit Gaj standardized the Latin alphabet in 1830–1850 and worked to bring about a standardized orthography. Although based in Kajkavian-speaking Zagreb, Gaj supported using the more populous Neo-Shtokavian – a version of Shtokavian that eventually became the predominant dialectal basis of both Croatian and Serbian literary language from the 19th century on. Supported by various South Slavic proponents, Neo-Shtokavian was adopted after an Austrian initiative at the Vienna Literary Agreement of 1850, laying the foundation for the unified Serbo-Croatian literary language. The uniform Neo-Shtokavian then became common in the Croatian elite.

In the 1860s, the Zagreb Philological School dominated the Croatian cultural life, drawing upon linguistic and ideological conceptions advocated by the members of the Illyrian movement. While it was dominant over the rival Rijeka Philological School and Zadar Philological Schools, its influence waned with the rise of the Croatian Vukovians (at the end of the 19th century).

Croatian is commonly characterized by the "Ijekavian" pronunciation (see an explanation of yat reflexes), the sole use of the Latin alphabet, and a number of lexical differences in common words that set it apart from standard Serbian. Some differences are absolute, while some appear mainly in the frequency of use.

Croatian, although technically a form of Serbo-Croatian, is sometimes considered a distinct language by itself. Purely linguistic considerations of languages based on mutual intelligibility ("abstand" languages) are frequently incompatible with sociopolitical conceptions of language so that varieties that are mutually intelligible may be considered separate languages. Differences between various standard forms of Serbo-Croatian are often exaggerated for political reasons. Most Croatian linguists regard Croatian as a separate language that is considered key to national identity. The issue is sensitive in Croatia as the notion of a separate language being the most important characteristic of a nation is widely accepted, stemming from the 19th-century history of Europe. The 1967 Declaration on the Status and Name of the Croatian Literary Language, in which a group of Croatian authors and linguists demanded greater autonomy for the Croatian language, is viewed in Croatia as a linguistic policy milestone that was also a general milestone in national politics.

The terms "Serbo-Croatian" or "Serbo-Croat" are still used as a cover term for all these forms by foreign scholars, even though the speakers themselves largely do not use it. In Croatia, this is often based on the argument that the official language in Yugoslavia, a standardized form of Serbo-Croatian, was "artificial" or a political tool used to combine two distinct people. Within ex-Yugoslavia, the term has largely been replaced by the ethnic terms Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian.

The use of the name "Croatian" for a language names has been historically attested to, though not always distinctively; the Croatian–Hungarian Agreement, for example, designated "Croatian" as one of its official languages, and Croatian became an official EU language upon accession of Croatia to the EU on 1 July 2013. In 2013, the EU started publishing a Croatian language version of its official gazette.

Standard Croatian is the official language of the Republic of Croatia and, along with Standard Bosnian and Standard Serbian, one of three official languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is also official in the regions of Burgenland (Austria), Molise (Italy) and Vojvodina (Serbia). Additionally, it has co-official status alongside Romanian in the communes of Carașova and Lupac, Romania. In these localities, Croats or Krashovani make up the majority of the population, and education, signage and access to public administration and the justice system are provided in Croatian, alongside Romanian.

Croatian is officially used and taught at all the universities in Croatia, and at the University of Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

There is no regulatory body that determines the proper usage of Croatian. The current standard language is generally laid out in the grammar books and dictionaries used in education, such as the school curriculum prescribed by the Ministry of Education and the university programmes of the Faculty of Philosophy at the four main universities. In 2013, a "Hrvatski pravopis" by the Institute of Croatian Language and Linguistics received an official sole seal of approval from the Ministry of Education.

Attempts are being made to revive Croatian literature in Italy.

The most prominent recent editions describing the Croatian standard language are:Also notable are the recommendations of "Matica hrvatska", the national publisher and promoter of Croatian heritage, and the Lexicographical institute Miroslav Krleža, as well as the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Numerous representative Croatian linguistic works were published since the independence of Croatia, among them three voluminous monolingual dictionaries of contemporary Croatian.

Croatian language

Croatian (; "" ) is the standardized variety of the Serbo-Croatian language used by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina and other neighboring countries. It is the official and literary standard of Croatia and one of the official languages of the European Union. Croatian is also one of the official languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a recognized minority language in Serbia, and neighboring countries.

Standard Croatian is based on the most widespread dialect of Serbo-Croatian, Shtokavian, more specifically on Eastern Herzegovinian, which is also the basis of Standard Serbian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin. In the mid-18th century, the first attempts to provide a Croatian literary standard began on the basis of the Neo-Shtokavian dialect that served as a supraregional "lingua franca" pushing back regional Chakavian, Kajkavian, and Shtokavian vernaculars. The decisive role was played by Croatian Vukovians, who cemented the usage of Ijekavian Neo-Shtokavian as the literary standard in the late 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, in addition to designing a phonological orthography. Croatian is written in Gaj's Latin alphabet.

Besides the Shtokavian dialect, on which Standard Croatian is based, there are two other main dialects spoken on the territory of Croatia, Chakavian and Kajkavian. These dialects, and the four national standards, are usually subsumed under the term "Serbo-Croatian" in English, though this term is controversial for native speakers, and paraphrases such as "Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian" are therefore sometimes used instead, especially in diplomatic circles.

In the late medieval period up to the 17th century, the majority of semi-autonomous Croatia was ruled by two domestic dynasties of princes ("banovi"), the Zrinski and the Frankopan, which were linked by inter-marriage. Toward the 17th century, both of them attempted to unify Croatia both culturally and linguistically, writing in a mixture of all three principal dialects (Chakavian, Kajkavian and Shtokavian), and calling it "Croatian", "Dalmatian", or "Slavonian". It is still used now in parts of Istria, which became a crossroads of various mixtures of Chakavian with Ekavian/Ijekavian/Ikavian dialects.

The most standardized form (Kajkavian–Ikavian) became the cultivated language of administration and intellectuals from the Istrian peninsula along the Croatian coast, across central Croatia up into the northern valleys of the Drava and the Mura. The cultural apex of this 17th century idiom is represented by the editions of ""Adrianskoga mora sirena"" ("Siren of Adriatic Sea") by Petar Zrinski and ""Putni tovaruš"" ("Traveling escort") by Katarina Zrinska.

However, this first linguistic renaissance in Croatia was halted by the political execution of Petar Zrinski and Fran Krsto Frankopan by the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I in Vienna in 1671. Subsequently, the Croatian elite in the 18th century gradually abandoned this combined Croatian standard.

In the 1860s, the Zagreb Philological School dominated the Croatian cultural life, drawing upon linguistic and ideological conceptions advocated by the members of the Illyrian movement. While it was dominant over the rival Rijeka Philological School and Zadar Philological Schools, its influence waned with the rise of the Croatian Vukovians (at the end of the 19th century).

Croatian is commonly characterized by the "Ijekavian" pronunciation (see an explanation of yat reflexes), the sole use of the Latin alphabet, and a number of lexical differences in common words that set it apart from standard Serbian. Some differences are absolute, while some appear mainly in the frequency of use.

The terms "Serbo-Croatian" or "Serbo-Croat" are still used as a cover term for all these forms by foreign scholars, even though the speakers themselves largely do not use it. In Croatia, this is often based on the argument that the official language in Yugoslavia, a standardized form of Serbo-Croatian, was "artificial" or a political tool used to combine two distinct people. Within ex-Yugoslavia, the term has largely been replaced by the ethnic terms Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian.

The use of the name "Croatian" for a language names has been historically attested to, though not always distinctively; the Croatian–Hungarian Agreement, for example, designated "Croatian" as one of its official languages, and Croatian became an official EU language upon accession of Croatia to the EU on 1 July 2013. In 2013, the EU started publishing a Croatian language version of its official gazette.

Standard Croatian is the official language of the Republic of Croatia and, along with Standard Bosnian and Standard Serbian, one of three official languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is also official in the regions of Burgenland (Austria), Molise (Italy) and Vojvodina (Serbia). Additionally, it has co-official status alongside Romanian in the communes of Carașova and Lupac, Romania. In these localities, Croats or Krashovani make up the majority of the population, and education, signage and access to public administration and the justice system are provided in Croatian, alongside Romanian.

Croatian is officially used and taught at all the universities in Croatia, and at the University of Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

There is no regulatory body that determines the proper usage of Croatian. The current standard language is generally laid out in the grammar books and dictionaries used in education, such as the school curriculum prescribed by the Ministry of Education and the university programmes of the Faculty of Philosophy at the four main universities. In 2013, a "Hrvatski pravopis" by the Institute of Croatian Language and Linguistics received an official sole seal of approval from the Ministry of Education.

Attempts are being made to revive Croatian literature in Italy.

The most prominent recent editions describing the Croatian standard language are:Also notable are the recommendations of "Matica hrvatska", the national publisher and promoter of Croatian heritage, and the Lexicographical institute Miroslav Krleža, as well as the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Numerous representative Croatian linguistic works were published since the independence of Croatia, among them three voluminous monolingual dictionaries of contemporary Croatian.