Burgenland Croats Burgenland Croats Burgenland Croats (, , , ) is the name for ethnic Croats in the Austrian state of Burgenland, along with Croats in neighboring Hungary and Slovakia. There are around 320,000 Croats that live in Austria. 87,000 to 130,000 of them are Burgenland Croats. Another 56,785 have Croatian citizenship. Since 1993, Croatian organizations are appointing their representatives to the Council for National Minorities of the Austrian government. Burgenland Croats began to emigrate from Lika, Krbava, Kordun, Banovina, Moslavina and Western Bosnia. These areas were occupied by the Turks in the 16th century during the Turkish wars (1533-1584). The refugee
Burgenland Croatian majority being the Chakavians. They originally came from the river Una valley. Burgenland Croats did not take part in the shaping of the present standard Croatian in the 19th century. Instead, they constructed their own written standard based mainly on the local Chakavian speech and adopted the Croatian alphabet, a modified Latin alphabet, as their script. It is still a matter of debate whether Burgenland Croatian should be classified as a Slavic micro-language of its own. Burgenland Croatian dialects are mostly viewed as isolated dialects of the Croatian. Burgenland Croatian and the Prekmurje dialect of Slovene (in Prekmurje and Hungary)