Dialects of Serbo-Croatian
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.
[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).
New Shtokavian is spoken by Croats in east Herzegovina, more recently in the Dubrovnik area and in many places of the former Military Frontier.
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.
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.
The Chakavian dialect comprises the following subdialects: 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: 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): 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.
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 literary language gradually fell into disuse since Croatian National Revival, ca.
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.
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.
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 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.
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 Serbo-Croatian dialects differ not only in the question word they are named after, but also heavily in phonology, accentuation and intonation, case endings and tense system (morphology) and basic vocabulary.
In the past, Chakavian and Kajkavian dialects were spoken on a much larger territory, but have subsequently been replaced by Štokavian during the period of migrations caused by Ottoman Turkish conquest of the Balkans in the 15th and the 16th century.
Diacritic signs are used to show the difference in accents and prosody, which are often quite significant, but which are not reflected in the usual orthography.
The Torlakian dialects are intermediate between the Eastern and Western branches of South Slavic, and have been variously described, in whole or in parts, as belonging to either group.
[19][20] However, this opinion was not shared by the Croatian linguists and thus Milan Rešetar classified the Torlak dialects (which he called Svrlijg) as a different group from Shtokavian.
[18][26][27][28] Burgenland Croatian (gradišćanskohrvatski jezik) is a regional variety of the Chakavian dialect spoken in Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
It 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).
This variety was the language of Croatian refugees who fled Croatia during the Turkish Wars and settled in the western part of what was then Hungary, the area where they still live.
The first Prekmurje Slovene works (for example Old hymn-book of Martjanci) was applied to the Burgenland Croatian books.
[31] The language has been preserved since a group of Croats emigrated from Dalmatia abreast of advancing Ottoman Turks.
Influence of standard language through state media and education has caused non-standard varieties to lose ground to the literary forms.
