Graphy and Orthography of Croatian Texts on Venetian Bilingual Proclamations

Abstract

Venetian bilingual proclamations, printed by the Venetian government between 1740 and 1796, are very important documents giving precious data concerning the organization of Venetian rule in Dalmatia of the economic, political and cultural conditions during the last six decades of the eighteenth century. From the linguistic point of view, they represent original material contributing to a better understanding of the development of the Croatian language in the course of the eighteenth century. The fact that they were printed in Croatian as well as in Italian testifies that Croatian was almost the only language spoken by the Dalmatian population. Since the greater part of the bilingual proclamations were printed in Latin characters, the translators into Croatian did not know what graphical representation to use for these Latin characters in order to adapt them to the Croatian phonological system. Owing to numerous translators and consequently numerous graphical solutions, the graphical representations of the Croatian texts is very unequal which encumbers the correct reading and consequently the correct estimation of some linguistic phenomena. The paper gives examples of writing single sounds, a table surveying graphical realizations and a table of a survey of polysemantic graphemes.