# Croatian: Dialects and media



## DarkChild

I stumbled across an article that discussed an issue for some in the dubbing of cartoons for children using words and expression from the Kajkavian dialect of Croatian which aren't familiar to speakers of Stokavian (which happens to be Standard Croatian). It was being said that since the native dialect of the capital Zagreb is Kajkavian, this dialect was finding its way in national media. 

I read on wikipedia that the two dialects are actually not highly intelligible mutually and that Kajkavian is closer to Slovenian. There is also a third dialect (forgot its name).

Can someone enlighten us on this situation? Are there any other countries where the capital's speech is so different from the standard language?


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## ahvalj

DarkChild said:


> Are there any other countries where the capital's speech is so different from the standard language?


Austria and especially Switzerland, though in these cases the entire dialectal source of the literary language lies abroad and thus the entire country speaks a language different from the standard one.

Kiev until recently was predominantly Russian-speaking, surrounded by Ukrainian-speaking rural areas.


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## vianie

A local language does not change as fast the country borders, mainly if the capital borders two different non Slavic countries. And the authentic Bratislava's speech definitely belongs to the non standard language. Nay, the people on a major part of Western Slovakia mutually digest the selfsame sticky accentuation. The national media are a solid partner of it too. Soon, one should not be surprised (s)he can hear it opening a fridge.


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## DarkChild

ahvalj said:


> Austria and especially Switzerland, though in these cases the entire dialectal source of the literary language lies abroad and thus the entire country speaks a language different from the standard one.
> 
> Kiev until recently was predominantly Russian-speaking, surrounded by Ukrainian-speaking rural areas.



I meant in Slavic countries.



vianie said:


> A local language does not change as fast the country borders, mainly if the capital borders two different non Slavic countries. And the authentic Bratislava's speech definitely belongs to the non standard language. Nay, the people on a major part of Western Slovakia mutually digest the selfsame sticky accentuation. The national media are a solid partner of it too. Soon, one should not be surprised (s)he can hear it opening a fridge.


So you feel the media increasingly uses Bratislava speech?

But in the Croatian case it's extreme because it's not just accent and words, but the whole dialect is almost a different language.


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## ahvalj

Well, Kiev (Ukraine) was an even more extreme example. Hard to tell how strong the ukrainization will be, but the situation when the capital of a country largely didn't speak the title language of this country was more striking than in Croatia. This of course raises the question why the language not spoken in the capital and half of the country has become the only official language, but the national revival is of course more important than the everyday convenience.


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## vianie

DarkChild said:


> So you feel the media increasingly uses Bratislava speech?


Not so. The whole media room is extending.


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## DarkChild

It sounds like the media room is being remodeled or something


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## bigic

Standard Serbian is based on 2 dialects: Eastern Herzegovina and Šumadija-Vojvodina. The first dialect, sometimes in ekavized form, is spoken in the western part of our country and is also the base for standard Bosnian and Croatian. The second dialect is spoken in most of Vojvodina and central Serbia and our capital Beograd.


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## killevippen

DarkChild said:


> There is also a third dialect (forgot its name).



Čakavian.




DarkChild said:


> Are there any other countries where the  capital's speech is so different from the standard language?



Well, Bulgaria. 

Although, with all that leveling that took place in the last century, this is not the case anymore.


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## DarkChild

killevippen said:


> Čakavian.
> 
> Well, Bulgaria.
> 
> Although, with all that leveling that took place in the last century, this is not the case anymore.



I know, but it's not the same because the dialects are mutually intelligible and the difference is mostly the e/ya, verb conjugations, and stress patterns. I don't think even in the past there was a great difficulty in understanding each other. In the Croatian case, they aren't mutually intelligible.


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## killevippen

DarkChild said:


> I know, but it's not the same because the  dialects are mutually intelligible and the difference is mostly the  e/ya, verb conjugations, and stress patterns. I don't think even in the  past there was a great difficulty in understanding each other.


This is largely true, but there were also some difficulties with the  lexicon, which is arguably the biggest obstacle for mutual  intelligibility. The proverbial Мачка руча поганци comes to mind: there  is not a chance a hypothetical Eastern Bulgarian from the first half of  the last century could understand that without being exposed to any  Western dialect before. 

I think the situation we have (or  rather, had) with standard Bulgarian, on the one hand, and "ideal" (not  influenced by literary language) Western idioms, on the other, is  quite similar to the respective situation with the standard Štokavian  Croatian and Kajkavian dialects. Kajkavian is not a single unified  language (although it does have its own literary norm) but a continuum  of dialects - while the things can get rather "exotic" in e.g.  Međimurje, the variation spoken in Zagreb is not that far removed from  Štokavian. Roughly speaking, the former is analogous to Torlakian  (transitional to another language and almost unintelligible for speakers  of the standard language) and the latter - to the dialect spoken in  Pernik (somewhat hard to understand at times, but manageable).

Plus,  of course, there is no "pure" Kajkavian spoken in Zagreb anymore - just  like in Sofia, standard language has its strong influence on everyday  speech.


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## prst

killevippen said:


> the variation spoken in Zagreb is not that far removed from  Štokavian


There is no one single idiom that can be called a Zagreb idiom. The only idiom that can be said "not to be far removed from Štokavian" is the Zagreb rendition of Štokavian (although that already exhibits very large differences to Štokavian in phonology, accentuation, vocabulary and grammar).
Natives speak Kajkavian to each other, but only Kajkavian-influenced Štokavian with non-Kajkavians.



killevippen said:


> there is no "pure" Kajkavian spoken in Zagreb anymore


There is. It only takes 5 minutes to go from center of the city to speak to someone who speaks in a way that's entirely mutually unintelligible to a non-native.

The idea of a gradual transition betwene Zagreb and Međimurje with Zagreb having "moderate and almost Štokavian" Kajkavian doesn't correspond to reality. Even Kajkavian spoken in Turopolje (south-east of Zagreb) is still very very distinct from any Štokavian lect.

The only part where this "transition" is evident is in the way people speak _Štokavian_, with those further away speaking it with a much stronger accent. But for their native Kajkavian, the distinction to Štokavian is quite sharp no matter if they're from south-east of Zagreb (even closer to Štokavian speaking areas) or the very border with Slovenia.


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## killevippen

prst said:


> The only idiom that can be said "not to be far removed from Štokavian" is the Zagreb rendition of Štokavian (although that already exhibits very large differences to Štokavian in phonology, accentuation, vocabulary and grammar).
> Natives speak Kajkavian to each other, but only Kajkavian-influenced Štokavian with non-Kajkavians.



That would be the case with the few Zagreb Croatians I've talked to, then - I didn't notice anything unusual save for the occasional _kam_ and _kolko_ and the lack of distinction between _ć_ and _č_.

Thank you for the clarification; I've never really studied Kajkavian and I'm speaking out of (very limited) personal experience and from what I've read on the subject. Still, I find that "entirely unintelligible" is an exaggeration.


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## vianie

I'm going to make my statement a bit more clear. Yes, I've exaggerated that, but there's a relevant reason why. I feel sorry for any generalisation, anyway. The problem is, "our" people perceive the omnipresent Bratislava accent neutrally (in the better case), or as something cool (in the worse case). I've been facing several tragicomical situations, when some strange central or eastern Slovak automatically switch to the wannabe Bratislava accent when hearing I'm from the west. For me, it's not just a thing of intonation as Azori previously stated, but a whole complex of such inconsistent features the Bratislava accent brings to me, that it's not just making me hard to listen the radio or watch the TV often, but it's making me hard to consider myself to be the same nationality as all the individuals using it. Accent is an essential part of my Slovak identity and I just want to be listening something I like and I can identify with. Unfortunatelly, the people using a digestable Bratislava accent are in minority. Fortunatelly, I'm not alone in this and you can google some similar reactions, so the situation is not so hopeless for us.


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## Diaspora

I am not sure if there is any other Slavic country other than Croatia where the capital and the largest city is outside of the standard language area. I am a hardcore Shtokavian Croatian speaker and it is easier for me to understand Macedonian than Kajkavian Croatian. Though I have heard that pure Kajkavian is not common in Zagreb anymore because of Shtokavian migrants and language standardization. Maybe people from Zagreb can comment on this? And people from Kiev can comment on the language situation there?


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## Mishe

It's astonishing and amazing how Kajkavian is similar to Slovenian and yet - due to political reasons - this is still somewhat controversial (can't seem to grasp the idea why?).


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