On the Development of Writing among the Burgenland Croats

Written records of Burgenland Croats (BC) are examined & the effects of territorial isolation & contacts with other languages (German, Hungarian) on the BC dialect are investigated. The major cultural leaders & educators who contributed to the preservation of BC & the development of a written code for this language are presented. The principal religious, folk, & poetic works recorded in BC are analyzed for linguistic peculiarities & orthographic conventions. The extralinguistic factors that conditioned the preservation of the dialectal-archaic features of BC are discussed. Z. Dubiel