Illyrian movement

Fearing provincial particularism, reformers believed that the Illyrian name would make it easier to implement literary unity.

In Central Europe, where the Habsburg Empire had long asserted control over a variety of ethnic and cultural groups, nationalism appeared in a standard format.

The beginning of the 19th century "was the period when the smaller, mostly Slavic nationalities of the empire – Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs – remembered their historical traditions, revived their native languages as literary languages, reappropriated their traditions and folklore, in short reasserted their existence as nations.

Influenced by his father Josip, who was the first mayor in French-controlled Karlovac and one of its first Freemasons, Juraj Šporer attempted to publish the first newspaper in the 'home-born' (Croatian: domorodnom) language.

[5] In the beginning of the 1830s, a group of young Croatian writers initially led by Ljudevit Gaj gathered in Zagreb and established a movement for national renewal and unity of all South Slavs within the Habsburg Monarchy.

Count Janko Drašković published his Dissertation in 1832, a pamphlet that later came to be considered the political, economic, social and cultural program of the movement, as it promoted the native language as official, more autonomy from central government, and better education and enlightenment for the common people.

[6] The greatest issue for Illyrians was the establishment of a standard language as a counter-weight to Hungarian, and the promotion of Croatian written literature and official culture.

[8] On 5 December 1835, Gaj published a Proclamation announcing the publication of Ilirske narodne novine ("Illyrian folk newspapers") and Danica ilirska, abandoning old alphabet and introducing the Shtokavian dialect.

In that huge garden there are beautiful flowers everywhere: let us gather everything of the best in one wreath, which will never wither.Beside the fundamental Illyirian ethnological notion of South Slavs as the descendants of ancient Illyrians, awareness of national distinctiveness was also present.

"[10] In an attempt to overcome regional fragmentation and achieve unification, followers of the movement promote Illyrian name, making concessions in language and orthography.

Drawing on existing literary traditions in three different dialects, and in an attempt to ease the linguistic and cultural unification, Illyrians advocate the usage of some archaic forms in grammar, and some Kajkavian and Chakavian words.

[11] Acting on the intention of Illyrians to create a common literary language and orthography for all South Slavs, Gaj in his 1835 article Pravopisz abandoned his original alphabet.

Of the many letters with diacritics he initially proposed, only č, ž, š and ě were retained,[12] and due to printing difficulties carons were used instead of tildes.

All of the possible yat reflexes (i, e, je or ije, depending on the dialect) were covered by the letter ě, which was derisively called "horned e" (rogato e).

[13] As opposed to the alphabet which is in a slightly modified form used to this day for Croatian, grammatical and orthographic practices advocated by Illyrians provoked resentment and opposition by some contemporaries as well as by future generations of linguists.

In another cultural success, in 1846 the composer Vatroslav Lisinski wrote the first opera in Croatian, Ljubav i zloba ("Love and Malice").

Speaking in front of the Sabor on 23 October 1847, Ivan Kukuljević Sakcinski advocated Croatian as the official language instead of Latin and the deputies subsequently voted unanimously in favor of said proposition.

Ljudevit Gaj had, in fact, appealed to Serbia (along with Dalmatia and Russia) for moral and financial support given their ethnic and cultural connections.