Burgenland Croatian Burgenland Croatian Burgenland Croatian ("Gradišćanskohrvatski jezik"; German: "Burgenlandkroatische Sprache"; Hungarian: "Gradišćei horvát nyelv") is a regional variety of the Chakavian dialect of Croatian spoken in Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovakia. Burgenland Croatian is recognized as a minority language in the Austrian state of Burgenland, where it is spoken by 19,412 people according to official reports (2001). Many of the Burgenland Croatian speakers in Austria also live in Vienna and Graz, due to the process of urbanization, which is mostly driven by the poor economic situation of large parts of Burgenland. Smaller Croatian minorities in western Hungary, southwestern
Burgenland 51 new bilingual village name signs were erected in Burgenland (47 Croatian and 4 Hungarian). The Burgenland Croatian language is an interesting 16th century dialect which is different from standard Croatian. In minority schools and media the local dialect is used, and it has had a written form since the 17th century (the Gospel was first translated to this dialect in 1711). Today the language is endangered by assimilation, according to the UNESCO's Red Book of Endangered Languages. The Croats of Burgenland belong to the same group as their relatives on the other side of the modern-day border with Hungary.