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Burris

Jessica Burris

Professor Raymond

UWRT 1104-002

March 13, 2017

Writing Prompt #6

For this writing prompt, I decided to choose Croatia to research with more depth. It was

either Croatia or England, and I figured Croatia would be more interesting. In my family, it is my

great-grandfather on mothers side, so my mothers, mothers, father, whose parents emigrated

from Prekrizje, Croatia.

The current Croatian flag, named Trobojnica, is tricolored with red (top), white (middle)

and blue (bottom) horizontal stripes of equal size, containing the Croatian Coat of Arms in the

center. The coat of arms looks like a shield, checker boarded with red and white, with five more

shields on top, looking like a crown. From left to right, the five shields are the ancient arms of

Old Croatia, Dubrovnik, Dalmatia, Istria, and Slovania (Flag of Croatia, 2016). Over the years,

there have been many changes to the Croatian flag. While they only seem minimal, each change

was brought upon by political events that occurred in the country. This current flag was

sanctioned the year Croatia gained independence in 1991 (Flag of Croatia, 2017).

The national anthem, Lijepa naa domovino, translated as Our Beautiful Homeland,

derives from a poem written by Antun Mihanovi in 1835 by the name of Horvatska

domovina. or Croatian Homeland. The original poem consists of fourteen verses, but the

national anthem utilizes only four: verse numbers one, two, thirteen, and fourteen. Music was

placed to the poem in 1861 by Croatian-Serb composer Josip Runjanin, and Croatia adopted the

poem as their national anthem in 1972 (Lijepa naa domovino, 2017).

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There are multiple ways to become a citizen of Croatia. Besides being a citizen by birth,

if you were born to a Croatian father or Croatian mother, you can become a citizen by decent. If

you have no relations in Croatia, you can obtain citizenship by naturalization. The requirements

for this are you have to be at least 18 years of age or older, have at least 5 years of residence on

the territory of the Republic of Croatia, be proficient in the Croatian language and Latin script,

and must have attachment to the Croatian legal system and customs and acceptance of the

Croatian culture (Dual Citizenship Croatia, 2017). I was looking for examples of applications,

but they were hard to find in full. The Croatian ministry of the interior has published in the

Government gazette (Narodne Novine) a 100-question supplement rule-book for citizenship

applicants to fill in. Applicants must answer correctly at least 10 out of 15 randomly picked

questions for the test; some questions are of multiple choice answer type. The questionnaire or

test covers the applicants knowledge of Croatian language, Latin script, Croatian culture,

society, history, customs, arts, literature, sports, economy, tourism and geographic position. 15

questions covering any of these areas may be randomly picked for an individual applicant to

answer (Ina Vukic, 2012.

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References

Flag of Croatia. (2017, March 06). Retrieved March 13, 2017, from

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Croatia

W. (n.d.). Croatia | Flags of countries. Retrieved March 13, 2017, from

http://flagpedia.net/croatia

Croatia Flag colors - meaning & history of Croatia Flag. (n.d.). Retrieved March 13, 2017, from

http://croatiaflag.facts.co/croatiaflagof/croatiaflag.php

Lijepa naa domovino. (2017, March 12). Retrieved March 13, 2017, from

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lijepa_na%C5%A1a_domovino

Dual Citizenship Croatia. (n.d.). Retrieved March 13, 2017, from

https://www.dualcitizenship.com/countries/croatia.html

Croatia: new rule for citizenship applicants citizenship test. (2012, November 03). Retrieved

March 13, 2017, from https://inavukic.com/2012/11/04/croatia-new-rule-for-citizenship-

applicants-citizenship-test/