# BCS dialects: Kajkavian (HR), Chakavian (Čakavian; HR), Shtokavian (Štokavian; BiH, HR, MNE, SR)



## pallina89

Sorry If it is off topic but *Čakavian* is a dialect?


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## phosphore

More like a language on its own, but with no official status.


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## pallina89

Language of a specific town of Serbia?


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## phosphore

No. Chakavian is considered as one of three main dialects of Croatian and is spoken exclusively in Croatia, in parts of Istria and on the islands (and perhaps also in some coastal parts of Dalmatia).


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## pallina89

Ah, I see.
I knew (I hope to write it in a good way): Shtokavian
Am I right?


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## slavic_one

There are three main Croatian dialects: štokavština (shtokavian), kajkavština (kajkavian) and čakavđtina (chakavian). Čakavian is spoken in Istria (mainly ekavian) and Dalmacija (mainly ikavian). But for example here in Istria almost every village speaks different (lexic, way of pronouncing...). Really, I think štokavian and kajkavian could also became language on it's own coz they're pretty different from štokavian (which is taken as a base of standard Croatian). They (ča. and kaj.) seems to be older (in compare with East Slavic lngs).
Kajkavian is spoken mainly in Zagorje, Međimurje, Gorski kotar... and štokavian in Slavonija (all three variants, ijekavian, ekavian and ikavian).
And yes, while štokavian is present in Serbian, čakavian and kajkavian are only Croatian dialects.
Sorry for off-topic.


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## pallina89

Really interesting.
At this point, I would like to open a topic about Shtokavian, becouse it is more 'fluent' in Serbia, as you said.
I's like to know about differences of writing or words.


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## sokol

Mod note:
Moved from this thread.

There are already some threads about individual features of BCS dialects so I thought let's take the opportunity and make a contrastive thread - features of the main dialect groups, and how they compare to each other.


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## slavic_one

Sokole, to su samo hrvatski dijalekti, ne BCS. Jedino ako će se pridodati i dijalekti iz Srbije i BiH, onda ok.

Uostalom, svaki od ova tri *narječja* još ima puno *dijalekata*.


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## sokol

Znam da oboje su samo hrvatska narječja - ali već imamo rasprava na oboje.

As there are already discussions about Kajkavian and Chakavian (sorry for continuing in English but writing in BCS is quite strenuous for me ), and also as you've mentioned Shtokavian too, I thought a contrastive thread about all three main dialect groups would be nice. (There's no distinction similar to "narječje" and "dijalekat" in English. )

And yes, of course all three dialect groups are sub-divided into many sub-dialects. I'll add nation symbols to the dialects, hope that's okay then for you.


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## slavic_one

http://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dijalekt

Interesting link on that topic. It says the sub-dialects are divided by pronounciation of jat: ikavian, ekavian, jekavian, ikavian-ekavian; or by interogative word: čakavian, cakavian, cokavian, štokavian, štakavian, šćakavian.

And then there are lists of sub-dialects of every dialect. I don't know where exactly is every of them spoken, but will tell you that in Istria there are planty of dialects, some neighbour villages have different words for same thing. And then for example in Labin, they pronounce "a" almost as "o", as they do in Dubrovnik (which is on far south of Croatia).


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## slavic_one

As far as I know kajkavian is only ekavian, in čakavian there are present all three variants (couldn't tell you exactly which is where, but ekavian mainly in Istria - at least Eastern - and ikavian in Dalmacija), and štokavian is mainly ijekavian, but also ikavian (around N. Gradiška, think Vinkovci too), and ekavian (East Slavonija - Vukovar, Ilok, Osijek, but sometimes it's more jekavian in those parts also).


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## TriglavNationalPark

slavic_one said:


> As far as I know kajkavian is only ekavian


 
Don't some Kajkavian dialects have an "ej" reflex (ml*ej*ko < *mlěko), much like a number of eastern Slovenian dialects?


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## sokol

I can give a very short introduction in those divisions:

*- Kajkavian:*
Only spoken by Croats (in the north and north-east) and split into many sub-dialects; in Zagreb, as we've established in several discussions here in the forum, a mixed Kajkavian/Shtokavian dialect is spoken (native of course would be Kajkavian).
Some dialectologists think that once there must have been a dialect continuum from Kajkavian to Shtokavian Slavonian with old accentuation but this is difficult to prove as the link (if it existed) has been broken long ago by migration waves.
Old Slavonic "jat" <ě> = <ѣ> developped mostly to <e> or <je> but to classify Kajkavian as "ekavian" or similar doesn't make much sense as not only "jat" = long "e" changed but also long "o": so different sound processes were at work with Kajkavian, the "jat" categorisation only should be applied for Chakavian and Shtokavian. (This has been established in the "Kajkavian Ekavian" thread, in somewhat different words - but see esp. post 5.)

*- Chakavian:*
Only spoken by Croats on the coast (mostly on islands and Istria) and also split in many sub-dialects (as with Kajkavian the Chakavian dialect region has been split by migration waves - dialects became isolated and developped a life of their own).
Chakavian definitely once was spoken on a wider area on the Croatian mainland but lost much ground to Shtokavian; some Ikavian-Shtokavian in fact might be "shtokavised Chakavian". Linguists agree that there has been a dialect continuum between Chakavian and Shtokavian.
Concerning the development of "jat" Chakavian has ekavian, ikavian and jekavian dialects; Istrian Chakavian is mixed ekavian-ikavian.

*- Shtokavian:*
Spoken by Croats, Bosnians, Serbs and Montenegrins.
It is mainly divided by accentuation:
- Novoshtokavian (New-Sht.) = dialects using the accentuation which is used in Croatian, Serbian and Bosnian standard language (though in Croatian there's influence from Zagreb speech to not use "classic" accentuation anymore): with four tonemic accents /è/ = short-rise, /ȅ/ = (very) short-fall, /é/ = long-rise, /ȇ/ = long-fall (or "rise-fall" as I hear it).
Novoshtokavian dialects indeed are younger, their accentuation system is an innovation unique to Novoshtokavian.
- Staroshtokavian (Old-Sht.) = dialects which too have tonemic accents but differ from the Novoshtokavian system of four tonemic accents; Slavonian (I think) has 5 accents, to give an example. Those dialects are "older", as well as Kajkavian and Chakavian, from the perspective of a historical linguist - which however does not necessarily mean more conservative. 
Other Staroshtokavian dialects are especially šćakavsko-jekavski (in Bosnia) and the southernmost dialects spoken in Montenegro, Kosovo and Serbia (see for that the Croatian Wiki entry).
Zetsko-sandžački govori, as described there, are the dialect group which is considered the dialect most typical for Montenegrins (though not all Montenegrins speak this dialect).

*- Torlakian:*
Some linguists consider Torlakian dialects as Shtokavian dialects but it has been argued in this forum several times (and I agree with that ) that those dialects should be considered a separate group: they're transitional to Bulgarian and Macedonian dialects; and they're spoken only by Serbians.



TriglavNationalPark said:


> Don't some Kajkavian dialects have an "ej" reflex (ml*ej*ko < *mlěko), much like a number of eastern Slovenian dialects?


I think so, but I'm not sure.
I'll try and dig something up, there's some Kajkavian material hidden somewhere in my flat.


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## phosphore

How were the Slovene dialects separated from Kajkavian ones anyway? Is there some universal characteristics shared by all dialects from one side of the border and absent in those on the other side or the border is purely political? If political, how and when was it decided where the border would be drawn?


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## sokol

phosphore said:


> How were the Slovene dialects separated from Kajkavian ones anyway? Is there some universal characteristics shared by all dialects from one side of the border and absent in those on the other side or the border is purely political? If political, how and when was it decided where the border would be drawn?


Kajkavian has lost dual long ago - but relatively late in terms of historical linguistics: I've once read a pamphlet where a guy claims, sometime in the 1850ies, that Kajkavians still would "like to use" dual (or something like that). But as this pamphlet anyway wouldn't be a reliable source I'm not bothering digging this up again (would be difficult anyway because I've found it in Graz library, and I'm living in Vienna now).

Also in Kajkavian dialects word-final /v/ is pronounced [f]; a feature which however is shared by some eastern Slovene dialect speakers. On the other hand, the Kajkavian dialects of Sotla valley (the region where Tito was born) speak a dialect which supposedly is closer to Slovene dialects than most.
But probably the Slovene and Kajkavian dialects which are closest to each other are Slovene Prekmurje and Kajkavian Međimurje dialects: which however doesn't say much about Slovene and Kajkavian as both Prekmurje and Međimurje dialects are quite special and probably once were closer to each other than to "mainland" Slovene and "mainland" Kajkavian respectively - both belonged to Hungary proper (and neither to Styria nor to Croatia).

Also you shouldn't underestimate that Kajkavian and Slovene were seperated for centuries by a political boundary, even if this boundary was "within" Habsburg monarchy: it still worked as a boundary as the Kajkavian dialect region belonged to the Hungarian part of the monarchy.
And political boundaries over centuries begin to develop into dialectal boundaries: this is a well-known and proven fact in German dialectology (I'm talking about borders between German-speaking states obviously, not about cases like Alsace where of course the French border too had influence).

Over centuries Kajkavian speakers were oriented towards an entirely different region than Slovene speakers; and also linguists thinks that Slovene and Kajkavian always have been separate (if closely related) dialect groups.
It's just that the dialect continuum south and east of Kajkavian became disturbed through migration of Shtokavian speakers (more precisely: Novoshtokavian speakers). One can still easily see that there's a dialect continuum between Slovene and Kajkavian, but the dialect continuum to old Slavonian (suggested by some linguists, as mentioned above) has been lost, again due to migration of Novoshtokavians who separated (and isolated) both dialect groups.

Which reminds me - I should have mentioned, for those who aren't native speaker and unfamiliar with the linguistic situation: Novoshtokavian dialects are by far the most widespread dialects in the whole region - due to migration waves induced by the Ottoman Empire from (at least) the 16th century onwards.
Novoshtokavian dialects were a kind of lingua franca even before Croats and Serbs began to codify their respective standard languages anew (in the middle of the 19th century): this also is an important factor why Novoshtokavian succeeded as basis for both Croatian and Serbian standard languages.

But both in Croatia and Serbia a significant number of speakers speaks other dialects: it is Kajkavian and Chakavian in Croatia which stand out, and Torlakian (or would the English say "Torlak"?) in Serbia (plus, to a lesser degree, Staroshtokavian; in Bosnia there's only Novo- and Staroshtokavian).


Oh and a PS cf. Staroshtokavian: don't be mislead by calling vastly differente dialects like Slavonia and Zetski dialect "Staroshtokavian": they're an extremely unhomogenic group as they represent, more or less, the dialect situation before the spread of Novoshtokavian over the whole region.
So while Novoshtokavian dialects are relatively closely related to each other this is not the case for Starosthokavian: the latter is rather a collective term for those non-Novoshtokavian dialects which survived at the fringes of Novoshtokavian.


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## TriglavNationalPark

sokol said:


> Also you shouldn't underestimate that Kajkavian and Slovene were seperated for centuries by a political boundary, even if this boundary was "within" Habsburg monarchy: it still worked as a boundary as the Kajkavian dialect region belonged to the Hungarian part of the monarchy.


 
Indeed. The importance of political boundaries is particularly evident in the Slovenian region of Bela Krajina, where Slovenian borders not on Kajkavian, but on Shtokavian BCS (a result of Turkish incursions). While some elements transitional to BCS are evident in the local dialect, the Kolpa (Kupa) River, which has long formed a political boundary, does form a well-defined border between Slovenian dialects and Shtokavian in most respects.

The one exception are a few Serbian Orthodox villages on the Slovenian side of the river (the focus of a documentary on Slovenian television tonight). Their residents settled in Slovenia centuries ago as Uskoks, refugees from the Turkish invasions. Unlike Catholic Uskoks, the Orthodox Uskoks preserved Shtokavian BCS until the present time. Unfortunately, Shtokavian BCS now slowly dying out among younger people in these villages because of emigration, intermarriage and increased mobility. Anyway, it was probably the villagers' different religion that prevented intermarriage and helped to preserve their language and Serbian national identity, whereas Catholic Uskoks, who were also originally Shtokavian speakers, ended up assimilating far earlier and lost their separate ethnic and linguistic identity (In other words, they became Slovenian early on and abandoned Shtokavian BCS, while still introducing some of their own lingustic features into the local Slovenian dialect. Interestingly, a number of Shtokavian songs survive in Bela Krajina and are now considered Slovenian).


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## jadeite_85

TriglavNationalPark said:


> Interestingly, a number of Shtokavian songs survive in Bela Krajina and are now considered Slovenian).



I remember in elementary school those two songs from Bela Krajina: 

"hruške jabuke sljive
mene voli Ive
a ja Iva neču
za drugim umreču

hruške jabuke rane
mene voli Ane
a ja Ane neču
za drugom umreču"

and

"lepa Anka kolo vodi
kolo vodi i govori
mili Bože al sam lepa
črne oči i obrvi
daj mi brate konja svojga
pa ču biti sestra tvoja"

I think this is Shtokavian dialect with Slovenian influences


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## TriglavNationalPark

jadeite_85 said:


> I remember in elementary school those two songs from Bela Krajina:
> 
> "hruške jabuke sljive
> mene voli Ive
> a ja Iva neču
> za drugim umreču
> 
> hruške jabuke rane
> mene voli Ane
> a ja Ane neču
> za drugom umreču"
> 
> and
> 
> "lepa Anka kolo vodi
> kolo vodi i govori
> mili Bože al sam lepa
> črne oči i obrvi
> daj mi brate konja svojga
> pa ču biti sestra tvoja"
> 
> I think this is Shtokavian dialect with Slovenian influences


 
Precisely! Thare are typical Bela Krajina songs, but they're essentially in Shtokavian BCS -- not just in terms of lexis, but also in terms of grammar (note the *ču + infinitive* future instead of *bom + past participle*). The songs arrived with the Uskoks, but whereas the new settlers' Shtokavian dialects ultimately merged with the local Slovenian dialects, these Shtokavian lyrics survived.

For comparison's sake, here's how the first stanza would look like in standard Slovenian:

*Original:*

"hruške jabuke sljive
mene voli Ive
a ja Iva neču
za drugim umreču"

*Standard Slovenian:*

"hruške jabolka slive
mene ljubi Ive
jaz pa Iva nočem
za drugim bom umrla"


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## jadeite_85

Oh I deleted my post by mistake.

Also in BCS is fruške not hruške, and šljive rather than sljive. So it's really an interesting dialect. And they dance kolo with those songs.


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## sokol

jadeite_85 said:


> Oh I deleted my post by mistake.


Post recovered. 


jadeite_85 said:


> Also in BCS is fruške not hruške, and šljive rather than sljive. So it's really an interesting dialect. And they dance kolo with those songs.


An interesting dialect indeed! Also it should be "crni" in Serbian but not "črni", to name another one, but then there is "pa ču biti" which again clearly is BCS (that is, Serbian in this case; "lepa" also indicates even ekavian Serbian, or is this dialect else jekavian and "lepa" is Slovene influence?).

It is really a mixed dialect I think, more or less BCS but strongly influenced by Slovene - as may occur in untypical situations like this one.


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## TriglavNationalPark

sokol said:


> Post recovered.
> 
> An interesting dialect indeed! Also it should be "crni" in Serbian but not "črni", to name another one, but then there is "pa ču biti" which again clearly is BCS (that is, Serbian in this case; "lepa" also indicates even ekavian Serbian, or is this dialect else jekavian and "lepa" is Slovene influence?).


 
These settlers apparently migrated northwards from Jekavian areas (particularly modern-day Bosnia-Herzegovina and Monenegro), so I suppose "lepa" is an example of Slovenian influence.

From what I've read, Shtokavian-influenced future forms with *hoteti (to want) + infinitive* survive -- or at least survived until recently -- in the southern Bela Krajina dialect. However, I assume "ču biti" would by now have been "Slovenianized" to "čem biti"*. The rest of Bela Krajina uses the standard Slovenian *biti (to be) + past participle* future.

* "čem biti" is the also the conditional form used throughout Bela Krajina.


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## Orlin

Ovo je zanimljiva tema u kojoj se radi o prevodu s kajkavskog na štokavski jedne stare kajkavske pesme:
http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=1417062
Osim takvog prevoda, koji su izvršili hrvatski forera, ima poredbe kajkavskog narečja sa standardnim slovenačkim i druge zanimljive informacije.


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## slavic_one

jadeite_85 said:


> Oh I deleted my post by mistake.
> 
> Also in BCS is fruške not hruške, and šljive rather than sljive. So it's really an interesting dialect. And they dance kolo with those songs.



It's actually "kruške".

And I also know that song


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## sokol

Orlin said:


> Ovo je zanimljiva tema u kojoj se radi o prevodu s kajkavskog na štokavski jedne stare kajkavske pesme:
> http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=1417062


This reminds me of another distinctive Kajkavian feature: "l" is not vocalised in the participle, so "pogledal" reads /pogledal/ while it is /pogledau/ in Slovene (also in dialects; the last /u/ is non-syllabic).

I am not entirely sure about Eastern Slovene dialects (which are the ones closest to Kajkavian), but I think they too vocalise "l" in participles, as opposed to Kajkavian.


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## Ayazid

I am curious: how much "alive" are Kajkavian and Čakavian in their pure form today, especially among young people? Taking into consideration that the Croatian standard language is based on shtokavian and that most Croatians speak shtokavian, isn't there any trend of these non-standard dialects becoming gradually more and more shtokavian too? Again, I am talking mainly about young people who are generally more likely to speak more watered down and dialect-free version of any language (it is certainly true in the case of Czech).


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## sokol

Somewhere in this forum (I couldn't find the relevant post) native speakers confirmed that in Zagreb (originally Kajkavian) a mixed dialect is spoken, something like a "kajkavised Shtokavian" (or probably "shtokavised Kajkavian").

But that's only to be expected, in a metropolis like Zagreb and the capital of Croatia at that.


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## sokol

Finally I've found time to dig up my notes about BCS dialects.

From Mijo Lončarić (1990): Kaj - jučer i danas: Ogledi o dijalektologiji i hrvatskoj kajkavštini (s kartom narječje i bibliografijom) (Čakovec); I have only made a few notes when reading this book (in Ljubljana, so no longer available).

Those who can access the book: from p. 105-117 he is arguing the history of Kajkavian; he proposes that in the 10th century the South Slavic linguistic union slowly broke up: that is, before that point in time South Slavic languages were more or less "one" language with little dialect variation, and between 10th and 15th century 5 major dialect groups developed:
- Slovene (North)
- Kajkavian (North-East)
- Čakavian (South-West)
- Šćakavian (Central)
- Štokavian (East)
It is a well-known fact of BCS dialectology that all Neo-Shtokavian speakers (approximately) west of Drina river only migrated there after the dialect groups were fully developed (migration was caused by the expansion of the Ottoman Empire).
Thus dialectologists only can speculate how exactly those dialect groups were distributed prior to the migration period.

Now, some snippets about individual dialects (always referring to Lončarić):

- p. 201: He emphasises that the development of jat to "e" is only the most common in Kajkavian but by no means the only one - in my notes I've only written that "all kinds of combinations" are possible but unfortunately I haven't listed them. If memory serves me right there was at least "e", "ie = je", and "ei = ej".

- p. 215: The dialect of Hum na Sutli (a small dialect spoken only east of Sotla river, right on the Slovene border; it's also the region where Tito grew up) vocalises the l-participle, contrary to most Kajkavian dialects: vesel > veseu [ve'seu̯].
Also I _think_ I remember (but I didn't write it down in my notes) that Hum dialect to me looked to be the one Kajkavian dialect which is most similar to Slovene (while Slovene Prekmurje dialect is probably the one Slovene dialect most similar to a Kajkavian = Međimurje dialect).

- p. 228f: Kajkavian preserved supine (as well as most Slovene dialects - some I think lost) while other BCS dialects did not; however, Kajkavian usually makes use of the BCS indefinite pronoun "sve" ("saf" in masculinum) even though "ves" is attested once (p. 229 in the book); also pronouns generally make use of the BCS system "ovaj - taj - onaj" or similar.

Then of course Kajkavian does not differentiate "ć" and "č". For Čakavian and Štokavian dialect speakers they are phonemes but Kajkavian speakers usually have problems learning to distinguish them when learning standard language.


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## TriglavNationalPark

Very interesting, sokol!



sokol said:


> It is a well-known fact of BCS dialectology that all Neo-Shtokavian speakers (approximately) west of Drina river only migrated there after the dialect groups were fully developed (migration was caused by the expansion of the Ottoman Empire).
> Thus dialectologists only can speculate how exactly those dialect groups were distributed prior to the migration period.


 
I've always wondered which dialect was the most widespread in the territory of today's Bosnia-Herzegovina before the westward spread of Shtokavian. Would it have been Chakavian (or Shchakavian)? I've read that Kajkavian was once spoken in much of Slavonia before Shtokavian took over. Did Kajkavian ever extend into present-day Bosnia? Does your source speculate about any of this?



sokol said:


> - p. 228f: Kajkavian preserved supine (as well as most Slovene dialects - some I think lost)


 
Many Slovenian dialects effectively lost it because the infinitive became identical to the supine. Of course, some dialects and standard Slovenian have preserved it.


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## sokol

TriglavNationalPark said:


> sokol said:
> 
> 
> 
> Thus dialectologists only can speculate how exactly those dialect groups were distributed prior to the migration period.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I've always wondered which dialect was the most widespread in the territory of today's Bosnia-Herzegovina before the westward spread of Shtokavian. Would it have been Chakavian (or Shchakavian)? I've read that Kajkavian was once spoken in much of Slavonia before Shtokavian took over. Did Kajkavian ever extend into present-day Bosnia? Does your source speculate about any of this?
Click to expand...

For this I have to refer to another source: Dalibor Brozović, Pavle Ivić: Jezik, srpskohrvatski/hrvatskosrpski, hrvatski ili srpski (Zagreb 1988) [written obviously before the common name for Croatian and Serbian was given up; Brozović is a Croat and Ivić a Serb, both are experts for BCS dialects]. Also Asim Peco (a Bosnian linguist, his works too are top-notch) would be relevant here but unfortunately I haven't found my notes of Peco: he did field studies on Šćakavian = Shchakavian.

Kajkavian supposedly never was spoken in Bosnia but extended further east in Slavonia than today; Ivić mentions (p. 56; I'm paraphrasing) that _*most*_ dialects which were transitional between Chakavian and Shtokavian died out or were assimilated during the migration period (Shchakavian is one of those that survived), and that _*all*_ dialects transitional between Kajkavian and Shtokavian died out. I didn't make any notes there about dialects which were transitional between Kajkavian and Chakavian so probably he didn't mention any.

So the assumption is that a) Kajkavian extended further east, and b) that there were transitional dialects to (Staro-Shtokavian) Slavonian dialects.

Staro-Shtokavian *Slavonian* only is spoken by Croats which is a strong indicator that these dialects already were spoken there before the migration period; the dialect is described on p. 74-78 (in Brozović-Ivić as quoted above):
- Accent: very conservative, four /ȁ ȃ ã á/ or five /ȁ à ȃ ã á/ accents (vs. Neo-Shtokavian /ȁ à ȃ á/)
- Jat: they are Ikavian or Ekavian (Ekavian dialects partly have open "e", but partly close "e" which reminds me of Slovene which too has two "e" sounds while Neo-Shtokavian has not)
- Relations to Shchakavian: old đ (dj) many times developed to šć (_ognjišće_ given as an example on p. 75 - which would be _ognjište_ in Shtokavian but _ognjišče_ in Slovene)
- Imperfect is dead but aorist still used
- /ć đ č dž/ are differentiated clearly mostly by speakers in the south while northerners don't
To name but a few of its characteristics. Even from what remained of old Slavonian dialect shows some transitional features to Kajkavian so there is indeed reason to believe that once there had been transitional dialects.

Concerning *Shchakavian*, pity I couldn't find my notes on Asim Peco; from memory I think the prevailing theory is that coastal Croatia mostly was Chakavian while what today is Bosnia-Hercegovina mostly was Shchakavian (supported also by the few transitional features in Old Slavonian).
The hypothetical ancient eastern border of Chakavian on the mainland (from Brozović as quoted above, p. 81) might have been Una river in the north (so reaching slightly into modern Bosnia) along the dinara range and down to (and following) Cetina river; some dialectologists, mentions Brozović, claim that Chakavian had reached down to Makarska and all the way to Dubrovnik but for this, he says, no proof has been found so he is discounting this.

The *Old Serbian* dialect of course too was Staro-Shtokavian (with old accentuation): Kosovski-Resavski dialect being the old ekavian variety of it while the ijekavian one is Zetsko-Južnosandžački.

So the picture *before the migration* induced by the Ottoman Empire is reconstructed roughly as follows:

- Chakavian: Istria, islands and mainland following the Dinara range down to some point south of Split; transitional featuers between Chakavian on the one hand and Slovene plus Kajkavian on the other but (as far as I know) no dialects which are clearly "transitional" dialects between them; on the other hand there are clear indicators for a smooth dialect continuum linking Chakavian to Shtokavian.

- Kajkavian: Modern Kajkavština (plus of course younger settlements of Shtokavian speakers which divided the Kajkavian dialect region) extended further east, and also (supposedly) there were transitional dialects to Shtokavian. The dialect continuum between Kajkavian and Slovene still is intact to a degree while only some features link Kajkavian to Chakavian.

- Old Shtokavian: Shchakavian in Bosnia, Old Slavonian in Slavonia, Zetski in Montenegro and south-western Serbia and Kosovsko-Resavski in south-east Serbia and possibly (?) Šumadija region (Central Serbia) formed a dialect continuum. Supposedly there was a smooth transition to Kajkavian (even though transitional dialects are lost), and there definitely was a smooth transition to Chakavian.

The Novo-Shtokavian accentuation system developed somewhere in the centre of this region, so possibly Eastern Bosnia and Western/Central Serbia. I am not sure if the exact origin of this new accentuation ever has been nailed down - if so I didn't make any notes on that when I read those books more than a decade ago.


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## TriglavNationalPark

Thank you *so* much for this fascinating info, sokol!


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## TriglavNationalPark

Getting back to phosphore's question:



phosphore said:


> How were the Slovene dialects separated from Kajkavian ones anyway? Is there some universal characteristics shared by all dialects from one side of the border and absent in those on the other side or the border is purely political?


 
I just remembered something: Does Kajkavian have the vocative case? If it does, that may be another thing separating it from Slovenian, where the vocative has been extinct for centuries (in *all* dialects, as far as I know).


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## doorman

Ayazid said:


> I am curious: how much "alive" are Kajkavian and Čakavian in their pure form today, especially among young people? Taking into consideration that the Croatian standard language is based on shtokavian and that most Croatians speak shtokavian, isn't there any trend of these non-standard dialects becoming gradually more and more shtokavian too? Again, I am talking mainly about young people who are generally more likely to speak more watered down and dialect-free version of any language (it is certainly true in the case of Czech).


As far as I can see, no, not really. I, for one, always speak Čakavian when I'm home (in Istria) - not just with my family, but with friends and other people also, even the ones that usually don't speak it.

From what I've seen, same thing goes for Kajkavian - especially in Zagorje. You may address them in Shtokavian, but in most cases they'll reply in Kajkavian.


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## sokol

TriglavNationalPark said:


> I just remembered something: Does Kajkavian have the vocative case? If it does, that may be another thing separating it from Slovenian, where the vocative has been extinct for centuries (in *all* dialects, as far as I know).


Here is a download link for a PDF grammar of Kajkavian by Barbara Štebih:
http://hrcak.srce.hr/file/14439

On p. 334f she mentions Vitković's grammar from the 18th century where vocative case is mentioned (don't let yourself be mislead by "ablativ case" which is but a simple genitive).
However, it seems that in modern Kajkavian vocative no longer is used (see Croatian Wiki).

So this does not tell us much about the relationship between Slovene and Kajkavian: after all ancient Slovene too still had vocative case, and even if someone would know when it died out in Slovene written language it might be the case that some Slovene dialects conserved vocative as long (or longer) than Kajkavian.


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## doorman

sokol said:


> However, it seems that in modern Kajkavian vocative no longer is used (see Croatian Wiki).



Indeed, it isn't. Same goes for Čakavian. The vocative form is simply replaced by the nominative one.


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## DenisBiH

sokol said:


> It is a well-known fact of BCS dialectology that all Neo-Shtokavian speakers (approximately) west of Drina river only migrated there after the dialect groups were fully developed (migration was caused by the expansion of the Ottoman Empire).




Would you please cite a source for this statement, sokol? I can agree that speakers of what is classified as istočnohercegovački dialect to the west of, roughly, the vertical line made by Bosna and Neretva rivers might be to a large degree migrants.

I know of no source that has the speakers of mlađi ikavski / bosansko-dalmatinski (which is also neoshtokavian) being predominantly migrants to their areas. They did probably migrate to an extent, both within their area and sometimes beyond, both westward and eastward as Ottoman borders expanded (Catholics fleeing westward) and retracted (Muslims fleeing eastward). But to say they are all migrants to the area they now inhabit is a gross, gross exaggeration. If anything, the distribution of their pockets/enclaves in western Bosnia / Krajina suggests a native population's area shrinking, giving way and being split by the influx of istočnohercegovački speakers and possibly, assimilation. I know this is a potentially sensitive topic so I would like to stress I have no national agenda here, if someone can point to a source proving otherwise, I would be glad to read it. More to the point, if the speakers of modern mlađi ikavski / bosansko-dalmatinski are entirely or mostly migrants, where exactly did they migrate from?

I would also seriously question the extent to which speakers of istočnohercegovački eastern of Bosna-Neretva line (eastern Herzegovina, eastern Bosnia, western Montenegro, south-western Serbia) are migrants. Might be me missing something, but...


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ecja.jpg/613px-DijalektiStokavskogNarecja.jpg


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## sokol

I oversimplified, DenisBH, sorry for that. 

I've read Asim Peco who is one of the linguists thinking that mlađi ikavski originally is one of the transitional dialects between Chakavian and Shtokavian, or that this dialect possibly once even _*was*_ a Chakavian rather than a Shtokavian dialect, that this dialect probably was the dialect spoken of old in most of modern Bosnia.

The dialect I actually _*meant*_ when saying they were migrants east of (approximately) Drina is speakers of _istočno-hercegovački dijalekat - Eastern Hercegovin dialect_. This dialect is spoken by Croats, Bosnians and Serbs alike, it is the dialect on which all BCS standard languages are based.

I should have used proper dialectology terms to avoid confusion.


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