The recent research has shown that young Croats are more and more illiterate which does not come as a surprise, and I don’t think it relates only to young people. In Croatia it’s quite normal that you do not know how to properly express yourself, that you make mistakes as you write, and the more mistakes you make, the bigger the Croat you are. Now, this might seem to have no sense at all, but people who suffer from Croatism are the most illiterate people of all time. The sad thing is that many of these people have university degrees, some of them are even writers with published books.
Recent research also showed that Croatian pupils only have 5 classes of Croatian language per week in schools. When they start school they have 5 classes a week, when they are in the final classes of secondary school it comes down to 4 classes a week, in vocational schools (read those who could not get enrolled in any other school/those who do not like to learn) Croatian language is taught only 3 times a week for 45 minutes. No wonder we are where we are.
Somehow, I could find excuses for young people, they know no better, they use a kind of stripped down language on social networks which has rules of its own and from the linguistic point of view it could be regarded as a special register. But then also, there is a kind of register that we would expect from an educated person, let’s say a professor at the university would not be somebody who would write a post on Facebook or Twitter that just makes you want to grab a red pencil and correct it.
What does the kind of language that you use tell me about you? If you don’t know how to use your language properly and you try to present yourself as a person with the strong desire to defend anything and everything that is Croatian, then you are a fake. If you don’t write and speak properly, but particularly write, at the times of spellcheckers, you are superficial.
On the other hand, maybe all this is a part of the bigger plan, if you don’t know how to write, you don’t know how to read, if you don’t read properly, you don’t understand what you have read and it is much easier to manipulate with such a group of people than with the people who will wonder about what they have been reading and who would come back to you for more or who would want you to elaborate, clarify, explain, argumentate, reason… When you don’t understand what is going on, you feel threatened, insecure, vulnerable, and most often than not you will not raise your voice and expose yourself.
Yours Truly,
Word-lover and Grammar Nazi
