Croatian idioms denoting speech process: Aspects of university students’ phraseological and cross-linguistic competence

The conducted research provided insight into specific segments of the phraseological competence of the younger generation of native speakers, which refers to the recognition and use of Croatian idioms that describe the speech process, as well as the knowledge of English equivalents. The results of the research showed a significant disparity between the knowledge of idioms and the self-assessment of their use in the language, which indicates that certain idioms are slowly disappearing from the speech of young people (Hansdóttir, 2024). Although the younger generation of speakers did not show a high level of interlingual phraseological competence regarding this semantic group of idioms, they simultaneously represent a valuable source of additional interpretations of the meaning of idioms, and a relevant reflection of contemporary language use which is not represented in phraseological sources. The paper aims to encourage further empirical and corpus-based research on the knowledge and active use of a broader range of idioms, both in native and foreign languages, to gain deeper and more relevant insights into the phraseological competence of the younger generation of speakers.