Najnowsze chorwacko-serbskie różnice leksykalne (na przykładzie słownictwa z zakresu nowych technologii i mediów społecznościowych)
New lexical differences between Croatian and Serbian: the case of new technologies and social media-related vocabulary

Summary/Abstract: The article analyzes the extent of similarities and differences between Croatian and Serbian lexis related with new technologies and social media. Vocabulary of various functional scopes of language was considered – i.e., both specialized and colloquial lexical items. The material was verified on the basis of usage of a given form as confirmed by corpora consisting of content of websites in Croatian and Serbian. Lexical items either not noted there or documented by a negligible number of examples were omitted. Phrases unconfirmed by the corpora, while suggested by publications concerned with language standards or lexicography – e.g. Croat. očvrsje, očvršće ‘hardware’ – were disregarded as well. The subject of study were neosemantisms (ažurirati ‘update’, lozinka ‘password’) and neologisms (datoteka ‘file’, pretraživač ‘search engine’) identical in both languages, as well as ivergent forms, e.g. Croat. račun vs. Serb. nalog ‘user account’, or Croat. sučelje vs. Serb. interfejs ‘interface’. The analysis of the gathered material indicates no tendency for the communication gap in the lexis in question to increase, as the processes described do not result in an emergence of new lexemes that would be completely unknown to one of the parties; what is more, mutual comprehensibility is being maintained by English words incorporated into both languages as global, international loanwords.

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