CROATIAN PRESENTED AT CONFERENCE ON MEDITERRANEAN LANGUAGES

PARIS/MARSEILLE, July 31 (Hina) - At a conference on languages in the Mediterranean, which took place in Marseille, a professor from Zagreb University, Marin Andrijasevic, spoke about linguistic characteristics of the Croatian language. The seven-day event, organised by the French society "Place Publique", ended on Saturday The conference dedicated to linguistic issues and wealth of languages in the Mediterranean gathered scholars and professors from France a dozen Mediterranean countries. Professor Andrijasevic who is currently teaching Croatian to French students in Paris, delivered a speech on the theme "The Croatian Language and the Mediterranean Basis (La langue croate et le supstrat Mediterranean)." Linguists and about 100 people in the audience took part in the discussion which followed after Andrijasevic's speech which was an antithesis of claims of a professor Paul-Louis Thomas who stuck to the opinion that Croatian and Serb languages are the one (called Serbo-Croatian language). This French linguist's conference paper was entitled "Polyglot in one language? Serbo-Croatian, Bosnian, Croatia, Montenegrin, Serb." Andrijasevic also acquainted the conference's participants of three dialects of the Croatian. He spoke of the Adriatic toponymy, citing examples of islands which have pre-Slavic names. Andrijasevic spoke about the Glagolitic alphabet, and reminded the audience that in the 14th century a scholar, Juraj from Slavionia, who became a professor at Sorbonne, taught Frenchmen about this script which he named "alphabetum chrawatorum". Prayers which Juraj wrote in Glagolitic using the French transcription are preserved in the French town of Tours. (hina) ms