Shtokavian
The primary subdivisions of Shtokavian are based on three principles: one is different accents whether the subdialect is Old-Shtokavian or Neo-Shtokavian, second is the way the old Slavic phoneme jat has changed (Ikavian, Ijekavian or Ekavian), and third is presence of Young Proto-Slavic isogloss (Schakavian or Shtakavian).
[5] According to Frederik Kortlandt, the shared innovations originate from a "Trans-Carpathian" homeland, and by the 4th and 6th century, "the major dialect divisions of Slavic were already established".
[8][12][10] According to Ivo Banac in the area of today's Slavonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina (west of Brčko, Vlasenica and Neretva line) and on the littoral between the Bay of Kotor and Cetina, medieval Croats spoke an old West Shtokavian dialect, which, some believe, stemmed from Chakavian, while medieval Serbs spoke two dialects, old East Shtokavian and Torlakian.
It was the result of migrations (particularly of Neoshtokavian-Eastern Shtokavian speakers), political-cultural border change and also caused by the Ottoman invasion (since the 16th century).
[16] Migratory waves were particularly strong in the 16th–18th century, bringing about large-scale linguistic and ethnic changes in the Central South Slavic area (see also Great Serb Migrations).
Experts' opinions are divided with regard to the extent these texts, especially the Kulin ban parchment, contain contemporary Shtokavian vernacular.
Numerous legal and commercial documents from pre-Ottoman Bosnia, Hum, Serbia, Zeta, and southern Dalmatia, especially Dubrovnik are mainly Shtokavian, with elements of Church Slavic.
The first major comprehensive vernacular Shtokavian text is the Vatican Croatian Prayer Book, written in Dubrovnik a decade or two before 1400.
[27] The following notation is used for Shtokavian accents: The following table shows the examples of Neo-Shtokavian retraction: As result of this process, the following set of rules emerged, which are still in effect in all standard variants of Serbo-Croatian: In practice, influx of foreign words and formation of compound words have loosened these rules, especially in spoken idioms (e.g. paradȁjz, asistȅnt, poljoprȉvreda), but they are maintained in standard language and dictionaries.
The Timok-Prizren group falls to the Balkan language area: declension has all but disappeared, the infinitive has yielded to subjunctives da-constructions, and adjectives are compared exclusively with prefixes.
[citation needed] Torlakian is spoken in Metohija, around Prizren, Gnjilane and Štrpce especially, in Southern Serbia around Bujanovac, Vranje, Leskovac, Niš, Aleksinac, in the part of Toplica Valley around Prokuplje, in Eastern Serbia around Pirot, Svrljig, Soko Banja, Boljevac, Knjaževac ending up with the area around Zaječar, where the Kosovo-Resava dialect becomes more dominant.
Also called the Archaic Šćakavian, it is spoken by Croats who live in some parts of Slavonia, Bačka, Baranja, Syrmia, in Croatia and Vojvodina, as well as in northern Bosnia.
Also called Jekavian-Šćakavian,[29] Eastern Bosnian dialect has Jekavian pronunciations in the vast majority of local forms and it is spoken by the majority of Bosniaks living in that area, which includes the bigger Bosnian cities Sarajevo, Tuzla, and Zenica, and by most of Croats and Serbs that live in that area (Vareš, Usora, etc.).
In the central area of the subdialect, the diphthong uo exists in some words instead of the archaic l and more common u like vuok or stuop, instead of the standard modern vuk and stup.
[citation needed] Other phonetic features include sounds like ʑ in iʑesti instead of izjesti, ɕ as in ɕekira instead of sjekira.
This dialect can be also found in parts of Banatska Klisura (Clisura Dunării) in Romania, in places where Romanian Serbs live (left bank of the Danube).
The majority of its speakers are Croats who live in Lika, Kvarner, Dalmatia, Herzegovina, and of north Bačka around Subotica in Serbia and south Bács-Kiskun of Hungary, and in Molise in Italy.
Exclusively Ikavian accent, Bosnian and Herzegovinian forms use o in verb participle, whereas those in Dalmatia and Lika use -ija or ia like in vidija/vidia.
Historical linguistics, textual analysis and dialectology have dispelled myths about allegedly "unspoilt" vernacular speech of rural areas: for instance, it is established that Bosniaks have retained phoneme "h" in numerous words (unlike Serbs and Croats), due to elementary religious education based on the Quran, where this phoneme is the carrier of specific semantic value.
The following are some generic examples: Long ije is pronounced as a single syllable, [jeː], by many Ijekavian speakers, especially in Croatia.
The Ikavian pronunciation is the only one that is not part of any standard variety of Serbo-Croatian today, though it was a variant used for a significant literary output between the 15th and 18th centuries.
The most prominent contenders in the squabble, with conflicting agenda, were the Czech philologist Josef Dobrovský, the Slovak Pavel Šafárik, the Slovenes Jernej Kopitar and Franz Miklosich, the Serb Vuk Karadžić, the Croat of Slovak origin Bogoslav Šulek, and the Croatians Vatroslav Jagić and Ante Starčević.
The dispute was primarily concerned with who can, philologically, be labelled as "Slovene", "Croat" and "Serb" with the aim of expanding one's national territory and influence.
Because standard languages propagated through media have strongly influenced and altered the situation in the 19th century, the following attribution must be treated with necessary caution.
The distribution of Old-Shtokavian speakers along ethnic lines in present times is as follows: Generally, the Neo-Shtokavian dialect is divided as follows with regard to the ethnicity of its native speakers: The standard Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian variants of the pluricentric Serbo-Croatian standard language are all based on the Neo-Shtokavian dialect[36][37][38] as it was formalized in SFR Yugoslavia.
In other periods, Chakavian and Kajkavian dialects, as well as hybrid Chakavian–Kajkavian–Shtokavian interdialects "contended" for the Croatian national koine – but eventually lost, mainly due to historical and political reasons.
After the collapse of Yugoslavia, Bosniaks affirmed their wish to stylize their own standard language, based on the Neo-Shtokavian dialect, but reflecting their characteristics—from phonetics to semantics.
This is particularly true for Croatian, where, contrary to all expectations, the influence of Chakavian and Kajkavian dialects on the standard language has been waxing, not waning, in the past 50–70 years.
[citation needed] The Croatian, Serbian, and Bosnian standard variants, although all based on the East Herzegovinian subdialect of Neo-Shtokavian and mutually intelligible, do differ slightly, as is the case with other pluricentric languages (English, Spanish, German and Portuguese, among others), but not to a degree which would justify considering them as different languages.
In 2017, numerous prominent writers, scientists, journalists, activists and other public figures from Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia signed the Declaration on the Common Language, which states that in Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro a common polycentric standard language is used, consisting of several standard varieties, similar to the situation in German, English, or Spanish.
