Dialects of Serbo-Croatian

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Shtokavian subdialects (Pavle Ivić, 1988). Yellow is the widespread Eastern Herzegovinian subdialect that
forms the basis of all national standards, though it is not spoken natively in any of the capital cities.

The dialects of Serbo-Croatian include the vernacular forms of Serbo-Croatian as a

whole or as part of its standard varieties: Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian.
They are part of the dialect continuum of South Slavic languages[1][2] that joins
the Macedonian dialects to the south, Bulgarian dialects to the southeast and Slovene
dialects to the northwest.[3]
The division of South Slavic dialects to "Slovene", "Serbo-Croatian", "Macedonian" and
"Bulgarian" is mostly based on political grounds: for example all dialects within modern
Slovenia are classified as "Slovene", despite some of them historically originating from
other regions, while all dialects in modern Croatia are classified as "Croatian" (or
"Serbo-Croatian" before 1990) despite not forming a coherent linguistic entity (and
some are proven to originate from parts of what is today Slovenia). Therefore, "Serbo-
Croatian dialects" are simply South Slavic dialects in countries where a variant of
Serbo-Croatian is used as the standard language. [3][4]
The primary dialects are named after the most common question word
for what: Shtokavian (štokavski) uses the pronoun što or šta, Chakavian
(čakavski) uses ča or ca, Kajkavian (kajkavski), kaj or kej. The pluricentric Serbo-
Croatian standard language and all four contemporary standard variants are based on
the Eastern Herzegovinian subdialect of Neo-Shtokavian.[5][6][7] The other dialects are not
taught in schools or used by the state media. The Torlakian dialect is often added to the
list, though sources usually note that it is a transitional dialect between Shtokavian and
the Bulgaro-Macedonian dialects. Burgenland Croatian and Molise Slavic are varieties
of the Chakavian dialect spoken outside the South Slavic dialect continuum, which
combine influences from other dialects of Serbo-Croatian as well as influences from the
dominantly spoken local languages.
Another frequently-noted distinction among the dialects is made through the reflex of
the long Common Slavic vowel jat; the dialects are divided along Ikavian, Ekavian, and
Ijekavian isoglosses, with the reflects of jat being /i/, /e/, and /ije/ or /je/ respectively.

Contents

 1Main dialects
o 1.1Shtokavian dialect
 1.1.1History
 1.1.2Distribution and subdialects
 1.1.3Characteristics
o 1.2Chakavian dialect
 1.2.1History
 1.2.2Distribution and subdialects
 1.2.3Characteristics
o 1.3Kajkavian dialect
 1.3.1History
 1.3.2Distribution and subdialects
 1.3.3Characteristics
o 1.4Comparative analysis
 2Torlakian dialect
 3Other varieties
o 3.1Burgenland Croatian
o 3.2Molise Slavic
 4Division by jat reflex
 5See also
 6References
 7Bibliography
 8Further reading

Main dialects[edit]
South Slavic languages and dialects

show
 Western South Slavic

show

Eastern South Slavic

show

Transitional dialects

show

Alphabets

 v
 t
 e

Shtokavian dialect[edit]
Main article: Shtokavian dialect
History[edit]
The Proto-Shtokavian idiom appeared in the 12th century. In the following century or
two, Shtokavian was divided into two zones: western, which covered the major part
of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Slavonia in Croatia, and eastern, dominant in
easternmost Bosnia and Herzegovina and greater parts of Montenegro and Serbia.
Western Shtokavian was principally characterized by three-accentual system, while
eastern Shtokavian was marked by two-accentual system. According to research of
historical linguistics, the Old-Shtokavian was well established by the mid-15th century.
In this period it was still being mixed with Church Slavonic to varying degrees, as
geographically transitory to Chakavian and Kajkavian dialects spoken on the territory of
today's Croatia, with which it had constituted a natural dialect continuum.
Distribution and subdialects[edit]

Map of Shtokavian dialects

Originally the dialect covered a significantly smaller area than it covers today, meaning
that the Štokavian speech had spread for the last five centuries, overwhelmingly at the
expense of Čakavian and Kajkavian idioms. Modern areal distribution of these three
dialects as well as their internal stratification (Štokavian and Čakavian in particular) is
primarily a result of the migrations resulting from the spread of Ottoman Empire on
the Balkans.[8] Migratory waves were particularly strong in the 16th–18th century,
bringing about large-scale linguistic and ethnic changes on the Central South Slavic
area (See: Great Serb Migrations).
By far the most numerous, mobile and expansionist migrations were those of Ijekavian
Štokavian speakers of eastern Herzegovina, who have flooded most of Western Serbia,
many areas of eastern and western Bosnia, large swathes of Croatia
(Banovina, Kordun, Lika, parts of Gorski kotar, continental parts of northern Dalmatia,
some places north of Kupa, parts of Slavonia, southeastern Baranya etc.).[9] This is the
reason why Eastern Herzegovinian dialect is the most spoken Serbo-Croatian dialect
today, and why it bears the name that is only descriptive of its area of origin. These
migrations also played the pivotal role in the spread of Neo-Štokavian innovations. [10]
Shtokavian dialect spoken by Croats has more dialects, there are innovative new
Shtokavian dialect ikavian as it is spoken in west Herzegovina, Dalmatian
Hinterland, Lika, parts of Velebit area and in some places of Gorski
kotar, Vojvodina, Bačka and in neighboring Hungarian areas. New Shtokavian is spoken
by Croats in east Herzegovina, more recently in the Dubrovnik area and in many places
of the former Military Frontier.[11]
The Shtokavian dialect is divided into Old Shtokavian and Neo-Shtokavian subdialects.
Subdialects grouped under Old-Shtokavian are the following:

 Slavonian dialect (also called Archaic Šćakavian).

 East Bosnian dialect (also called Jekavian-Šćakavian);
 Zeta–South Raška dialect (also called Đekavian-Ijekavian);
 Kosovo–Resava dialect (also called Older Ekavian);
 Prizren–Timok dialect (also called Old-Serbian)
Neo-Shtokavian dialects comprise the following subdialects:

 Bosnian–Dalmatian dialect (also called Western Ikavian or Younger Ikavian);

 Bunjevac dialect (Shtokavian–Younger Ikavian dialect);
 Dubrovnik dialect (also called Western Ijekavian);
 Eastern Herzegovinian dialect (also called Neo-Ijekavian);
 Užican dialect (also called Zlatibor dialect);
 Šumadija–Vojvodina dialect (also called Younger Ekavian);
 Smederevo–Vršac dialect.
Characteristics[edit]
Shtokavian is characterized by a number of characteristic historical sound
changes, accentual changes, changes in inflection, morphology and syntax. Some of
these isoglosses are not exclusive and have also been shared by neighboring dialects,
and some of them have only overwhelmingly but not completely been spread on the
whole Štokavian area. The differences between Štokavian and the neighboring Eastern
South Slavic dialects of Bulgaria and North Macedonia are clear and largely shared with
other Western South Slavic dialects, while the differences to the neighboring Western
South Slavic dialect of Čakavian and Kajkavian are much more fluid in character, and
the mutual influence of various subdialects and idioms play a more prominent role.
General characteristics of Štokavian are the following: [12]

1. što or šta as the demonstrative/interrogative pronoun;

2. differentiation between two short (in addition to two or three long) accents,
rising and falling, though not in all Štokavian speakers;
3. preservation of unaccented length, but not consistently across all
speeches;
4. /u/ as the reflex of Common Slavic back nasal vowel /ǫ/ as well as the
syllabic /l/ (with the exception of central Bosnia where a
diphthongal /uo/ is also recorded as a reflex);
5. initial group of v- + weak semivowel yields u- (e.g. unuk < Common Slavic
*vъnukъ);
6. schwa resulting from the jer merger yields /a/, with the exception of Zeta-
South Sandžak dialect;
7. metathesis of vьse to sve;
8. čr- > cr-, with the exception of Slavonian, Molise and Vlachia (Gradišće)
dialect;
9. word-final -l changes to /o/ or /a/; the exception is verbal adjective in the
Slavonian southwest;
10. d' > /dʑ/ (<đ>) with numerous exceptions
11. cr > tr in the word trešnja "cherry"; some exceptions in Slavonia, Hungary
and Romania;
12. /ć/ and /đ/ from jt, jd (e.g. poći, pođem); exceptions in Slavonian and
Eastern Bosnian dialect;
13. so-called "new iotation" of dentals and labials, with many exceptions,
especially in Slavonia and Bosnia;
14. general loss of phoneme /x/, with many exceptions;
15. ending -ā in genitive plural of masculine and feminine nouns, with many
exceptions;
16. ending -u in locative singular of masculine and neuter nouns (e.g. u
gradu, u m(j)estu);
17. infix -ov- / -ev- in the plural of most monosyllabic masculine nouns, with
many exceptions (e.g. in the area between Neretva and Dubrovnik);
18. syncretism of dative, locative and instrumental plural of nouns, with many
exceptions;
19. preservation of ending -og(a) in genitive and accusative singular of
masculine and neuter gender if pronominal-adjectival declension
(e.g. drugoga), with exceptions on the area of Dubrovnik and Livno;
 20. special form with the ending -a for the neuter gender in nominative plural
of pronominal-adjectival declension (e.g. ova m(j)esta and no ove
m(j)esta);
21. preservation of aorist, which is however missing in some areas (e.g.
around Dubrovnik);
22. special constructs reflecting old dual for numerals 2–4 (dva, tri, četiri
stola);
23. many so-called "Turkisms" (turcizmi) or "Orientalisms", i.e. words
borrowed from Ottoman Turkish.
As can be seen from the list, many of these isoglosses are missing from certain
Štokavian idioms, just as many of them are shared with neighboring non-Štokavian
dialects.
Chakavian dialect[edit]
Main article: Chakavian dialect
History[edit]
Chakavian is the oldest written Serbo-Croatian dialect that had made a visible
appearance in legal documents - as early as 1275 ("Istrian land survey") and 1288
("Vinodol codex"), the predominantly vernacular Chakavian is recorded, mixed with
elements of Church Slavic. Archaic Chakavian can be traced back to 1105 in the Baška
tablet. All these and other early Chakavian texts up to 17th century are mostly written
in Glagolitic alphabet.
Distribution and subdialects[edit]

Distribution of the Chakavian dialect at the end of the 20th century

Initially, the Chakavian dialect covered a much wider area than today including about
two thirds of medieval Croatia: the major part of central and southern Croatia
southwards of Kupa and westwards of Una river, as well as western and
southwestern Bosnia and Herzegovina. During and after the Ottoman intrusion and
subsequent warfare (15th–18th centuries), the Chakavian area has become greatly
reduced and in the Croatian mainland it has recently been almost entirely replaced by
Shtokavian, so it is now spoken in a much smaller coastal area than indicated above.
Chakavian is now mostly reduced in southwestern Croatia along the eastern Adriatic:
Adriatic islands, and sporadically in the mainland coast, with rare inland enclaves up to
central Croatia, and minor enclaves in Austria and Montenegro.
  The majority of Adriatic islands are Chakavian, except the easternmost ones
(Mljet and Elafiti); and easternmost areas of Hvar and Brač, as well as the
area around the city of Korčula on the island of Korčula.
 Its largest mainland area is the subentire Istria peninsula, and Kvarner littoral
and islands; minor coastal enclaves occur sporadically in the Dalmatian
mainland around Zadar, Biograd, Split, and in Pelješac peninsula.
 Within the Croatian inland, its major area is the Gacka valley, and minor
enclaves occur in Pokupje valley and Žumberak hills, northwards
around Karlovac.
 Chakavians outside Croatia: minor enclave of Bigova (Trašte) at Boka
Kotorska in Montenegro, the mixed Čičarija dialect in Slovenia, refugees from
the Turks in Burgenland (eastern Austria) and SW Slovakia, and recent
emigrants in North America (chiefly in New Orleans, Los Angeles,
and Vancouver).
The Chakavian dialect comprises the following subdialects:

 Buzet dialect;
 Middle Chakavian;
 Northern Chakavian;
 Southern Chakavian;
 Southeastern Chakavian;
 Southwest Istrian.
Characteristics[edit]
There is no generally accepted opinion on the set of characteristics a dialect has to
possess to be classified as Chakavian (rather than its admixture with Shtokavian or
Kajkavian), but the following characteristics are most commonly proposed:

 interrogatory pronoun is "ča" or "zač" (in some islands also "ca" or "zace");

 old accentuation and 3 accents (mostly in ultima or penultima);
 phonological features that yield /a/ for Old Slavic phonemes in characteristic
positions: "language" is jazik (or zajik) in Chakavian and jezik in Shtokavian;
 "j" replacing the Shtokavian "đ" (dj): for "between", Chakavian meju,
Shtokavian među;
 "m" shifts to "n" at the end of words: standard Croatian volim ("I
love"), sam ("I am"), selom ("village" - Instrumental case) become
Chakavian volin, san, selon.
 in conditional occur specific prefixes: bin-, biš-, bimo-, bite-, bis
 contracted or lacking aorist tense;
 some subdialects on island of Pag have kept the archaic form of imperfect
Besides the usual Chakavian (with typical pronoun "ča"), in some Adriatic islands and in
eastern Istra another special variant is also spoken which lacks most palatals, with other
parallel deviations called "tsakavism" (cakavizam):
  palatal "č" is replaced by the sibilant "ts" (c):
pronouns ca and zac (or ce and zace);
 palatals š (sh) and ž (zh) are replaced by sibilants s and z (or transitive sj and
zj);
 đ (dj), lj and nj are replaced by the simple d, l and n (without iotation);
 frequent diphthongs instead of simple vowels: o > uo, a > oa, e > ie, etc.;
 Yat (jat): longer y (= ue) exists in addition to the usual short i (or e);
 appurtenance is often noted by possessive dative (rarely adjective nor
genitive);
 vocative is mostly lacking and replaced by a nominative in appellating
construction;
 auxiliary particles are always before the main verb: se- (self), bi- (if), će- (be).
The largest area of tsakavism is in eastern Istra at Labin, Rabac and a dozen nearby
villages; minor mainland enclaves are the towns Bakar and Trogir. Tsakavism is also
frequent in Adriatic islands: part of Lošinj and nearby islets, Baška in Krk, Pag town, the
western parts of Brač (Milna), Hvar town, and subentire Vis with adjacent islets.
Kajkavian dialect[edit]
Main article: Kajkavian dialect
History[edit]
Dialectogical investigations of the Kajkavian dialect had begun at the end of the 19th
century: the first comprehensive monograph was written in Russian by Ukrainian
philologist A. M. Lukjanenko in 1905 (Kajkavskoe narečie). Kajkavian is not only a folk
dialect, but in the course of history of Serbo-Croatian it has been the written public
language (along with the corpus written in Čakavian and Štokavian). Kajkavian was the
last to appear on the scene, mainly due to economic and political reasons. Although the
first truly vernacular Serbo-Croatian texts (i.e. not mixed with Church Slavonic) go back
to the 13th century (Chakavian) and to the 14th century (Shtokavian), the first Kajkavian
published work was Pergošić's "Decretum" from 1574. After that, numerous works
appeared in Serbo-Croatian Kajkavian literary language in the following centuries.
Kajkavian literary language gradually fell into disuse since Croatian National Revival,
ca. 1830–1850, when leaders of the Croatian National Unification Movement (the
majority of them being Kajkavian native speakers themselves) adopted the most
widespread and developed Serbo-Croatian Shtokavian literary language as the basis for
the Croatian standard language. However, after a period of lethargy, the 20th century
has witnessed new flourishing of literature in Kajkavian dialect – this time as Croatian
dialectal poetry, main authors being Antun Gustav Matoš, Miroslav Krleža, Ivan Goran
Kovačić, Dragutin Domjanić, Nikola Pavić etc. Nowadays, Kajkavian lexical treasure is
being published by the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts in "Rječnik hrvatskoga
kajkavskoga književnoga jezika"/Dictionary of the Croatian Kajkavian Literary
Language, 8 volumes (1999).
Distribution and subdialects[edit]
Kajkavian is spoken in North Croatia, including the capital Zagreb, as well as in a few
enclaves in Austria, Hungary, and Romania. Though its speakers are ethnic Croats and
Kajkavian is thus generally considered a dialect of Serbo-Croatian, it is closer to
neighboring Slovene than it is to Chakavian or Shtokavian.[13] The Kajkavian area of
Croatia is bordered on the northwest by Slovene language territory. It is bordered on the
east and southeast by Shtokavian dialects roughly along a line that was the former
division between Civil Croatia and the Habsburg Military Frontier; in southwest along
Kupa and Dobra rivers, it persisted in ancient (medieval) contact with Chakavian
dialects.
The major cities in northern Croatia with prevailing urban Kajkavians are chiefly Zagreb
(old central city, Sesvete and V. Gorica), Koprivnica, Krapina, Križevci, Varaždin,
Čakovec, etc. The typical and archaic Kajkavian is today spoken chiefly in Zagorje hills
and Medjimurje plain, and in adjacent areas of northwestern Croatia where other
immigrants and Štokavian standard had much less influence. The most peculiar
Kajkavian archidiom (Baegnunski) is spoken at Bednja in northernmost Croatia. The
mixed half-Kajkavian towns along the eastern and southern edge of Kajkavian speaking
area are Pitomača, Čazma, Kutina, Popovača, Sunja, Petrinja, Ozalj, Ogulin, Fužine,
and Čabar, with included newer Štokavian enclaves of Bjelovar, Sisak, Glina, Dubrava,
Zagreb and Novi Zagreb. The southernmost Kajkavian villages
are Krapje at Jasenovac; and Pavušek, Dvorišče and Hrvatsko selo in Zrinska Gora.[14]
Kajkavian dialects have been classified along various criteria: Serbian
philologist Aleksandar Belić had divided (1927) the Kajkavian dialect according to the
reflexes of Proto-Slavic phonemes /tj/ and /DJ/ into three subdialects: eastern,
northwestern and southwestern. However, later investigations have not corroborated
Belić's division. Contemporary Kajkavian dialectology originates mainly from Croatian
philologist Stjepan Ivšić's work "Jezik Hrvata kajkavaca"/The Language of Kajkavian
Croats, 1936, which is based on accentuation characteristics. Due to great diversity of
Kajkavian speech, primarily in phonetics, phonology and morphology – the Kajkavian
dialectological atlas is notable for its bewildering proliferation of subdialects: from four
identified by Ivšić, up to six proposed by Croatian linguist Brozović (formerly accepted
division) and even as many as fifteen, according to a monograph authored by Croatian
linguist Mijo Lončarić (1995).
The most commonly accepted division of Kajkavian dialect lists the following
subdialects:

 Zagorje–Međimurje;
 Turopolje-Posavina;
 Križevci-Podravina;
 Prigorje;
 Lower Sutlan;
 Goran.
Characteristics[edit]
Kajkavian is closely related to Slovene and to the Prekmurje dialect in particular. The
speakers of Prekmurje dialect are Slovenes and Hungarian Slovenes who belonged to
the Archdiocese of Zagreb during the Habsburg era. Higher amounts of
correspondences between the two exist in inflection and vocabulary. Some Kajkavian
words also bear a closer resemblance to other Slavic languages (such as Russian) than
they do to Shtokavian or Chakavian. For instance gda seems (at first glance) to be
unrelated to kada, however, when compared to the Russian когда, the relationship
becomes more apparent, at the same time in Slovene: kdaj, in Prekmurje Slovene gda,
kda. Kajkavian kak (how) and tak (so) are exactly like their Russian cognates, as
compared to Shtokavian and Chakavian kako and tako, in Prekmurje Slovene in
turn tak, kak (in Slovene like Chakavian: tako, kako). (This vowel loss occurred in most
other Slavic languages; Shtokavian is a notable exception, whereas the same feature
of Macedonian is probably not a Serbian influence, because the word is preserved in
the same form in Bulgarian, to which Macedonian is much more closely related than to
Serbian.). Another distinctive feature of Kajkavian is the use of another future tense.
Instead of Shtokavian and Chakavian future I ("ću", "ćeš", and "će" + infinitive),
Kajkavian speakers use future II ("bum", "buš" and "bu" + active verbal adjective).
Future II in Standard Croatian can only be used in subordinate clauses to refer to a
condition or an action which will occur before other future action. For example, the
phrase "I'll show you" is "Ti bum pokazal" in Kajkavian whereas in standard Croatian it
is "Pokazat ću ti". This is a feature shared with Slovene: bom, boš, bo.