Croatian language: New words to replace foreign ones  

Croatian magazine “Jezik” and the “Dr. Ivan Šreter” Foundation have published 19 words that have been shortlisted for the competition for the best new Croatian word and the “Dr. Ivan Šreter” Award for 2020.

Three words will soon be declared the best and of the 19 candidates, as many as eight are words trying to replace foreign words associated with the COVID epidemic.

Those included are velepošast for the word pandemic, subolest for the word comorbidity, dišnik or disajnik for respirator and društvostaj or obustavka for the word lockdown.

The word hihobran has been proposed for sneeze protectors, or plexiglass shields, and samoosama for the word self-isolation.

The word novosnik has also been suggested for newsletter, obnovnik for regenerator, suncozor for solar panel, rukozborac for people who use sign language or a hearing impaired, preklikati for screenshot, zabranjenica for taboo and prebrisač or prebrisnik for corrector/proofreader.

244 words from 166 applicants were received for the competition for the best new Croatian words. The commission will choose the three best new words, and the results will be published in “Jezik” magazine during the Days of the Croatian Language in mid-March, HRT reported.

The awards have been organised by the literary magazine since 1993 and are named after Dr. Ivan Šreter (1951–1991), a Croatian physician who was sentenced to jail time in Yugoslavia in 1987 for choosing to use the distinct Croatian umirovljeni časnik to refer to his patient as a retired officer, rather than using penzionisani oficir.