Czechs among Serbs and Croats: An overview of a sociolinguistic expedition in 2022

Abstract

In August 2022, the author conducted a second field study in the Czech diasporas of Serbia and Croatia. It focused on the descendants of the settlers from Bohemia and Moravia, who arrived to the lands bordering the Ottoman Empire during the 19th century. The Czech communities in these regions are in contact not only with the majority ethnic groups, Serbian and Croatian, but also with other minorities, among which in Serbia are Hungarians and Romanians; and in Croatia Serbs, Hungarians, Slovaks, Ukrainians, Italians. In the village of Češko Selo in Vojvodina for the first time the author visited the annual gastronomic and musical festival “The Serbian Banat”, which is attended by representatives of the Czech minority and guests from the Czech Republic. Over 30 hours of interviews were recorded during the expedition. In conversations with the Czechs, traditions and rituals associated with holidays and important events of the calendar and family cycle were discussed, as well as issues of the language and cultural policy of the states in which they live. Interviews with Serbs and Croats were devoted to the perception of the Czech diasporas “from outside”. Five cemeteries were documented, and it is planned to digitalize the epitaphs for further complex linguistic analysis.