Shtokavian - Definition and Overview

Shtokavian (Štokavian, štokavski) is the primary dialect of the Central South Slavic languages system, Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian.

The štokavian dialect is spoken in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Hercegovina, and the greater part of Croatia. The Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian standard languages are all based on the neo-štokavian dialect. Its name comes from the form for interrogatory pronoun "what", which is "što" in štokavian dialect.

The primary subdivisions of štokavian are based on 2 principles: one is whether the subdialect is old-štokavian or neo-štokavian, and the different ways the old Slavic phoneme jat has been changed. Generally, modern dialectology recognizes 7 štokavian subdialects (there are opinions that one or two subdialects more exist, but this is not universally accepted).

Early history of štokavian

Proto-štokavian idiom had appeared in the 12th century. In the following century or two, štokavian was divided into two zones: western, which covered the major part of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Slavonia in Croatia, and eastern, dominant in the easternmost Bosnia and Herzegovina and greater parts of Montenegro, Kosovo and Serbia. The western štokavian was characterized by 3-accents speech, while eastern štokavian was marked by 2-accents. There was a possibility that štokavian dialect would further disintegrate, but it didn't happen. According to the research of historical linguistics, the old-štokavian was well established by the mid-1400s. In this period it had been still mixed with Church Slavonic in various degrees, as well as with čakavian dialect in Croatia and many parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The new štokavian

The so-called "neo-štokavian innovations" (essentially morphological and phonetic changes) have begun in the 1500s in the Neretva river basin in Herzegovina and spread into greater parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia and Croatia.

The neo-štokavian dialect possesses the following features that distinguish it from the old-štokavian:

• the four-accents speech

• the suffix -o instead of -l in the past participle ("govorio" instead of "govoril" for "spoke"-although this characteristic is present in the major part of old-štokavian texts, and is subsequently omitted in the list of differences between two dialectal systems)

• "long plural", ie. class of nouns with characteristic suffices used in formation of the plural (sg. "grad"/city, pl."gradovi"/cities, instead of old-štokavian "gradi"/cities)

• loss of the phoneme "h" in everyday speech in many occasions ("'oću" instead of literary "hoću", meaning "I will")

• equal forms for dative, locative and instrumental in plural declension

The yat reflexes

The Proto-Slavic vowel jat has changed over time and is now being rendered in three different ways or reflexes:

• In Ekavian (ekavski), jat has morphed into the vowel e
• in Ikavian (ikavski), the vowel i
• in Ijekavian or Jekavian (ijekavski or jekavski), the diphthong ije or je depending on whether the vowel was long or short.

Historically, the yat reflexes had been inscribed in Church Slavic texts before the significant development of štokavian dialect, reflecting the beginnings of the formative period of the vernacular. In early documents it is still either almost exclusively or predominantly Church Slavic of Serbian or Croatian variant (technical term is recension). First undoubtedly ekavian "yat reflex" had been inscribed in a document in Serbia ("beše"/it was), dated 1289, ikavian in Bosnia in 1331 ("svidoci"/witnesses), and first ijekavian in Croatia in 1399 ("želijemo"/we wish, a hyperijekavism). Partial inscriptions can be found in earlier texts (for instance, ikavian form is written in a few Bosnian documents in the latter half of the 13th century), but philologists generally accept the aforementioned data for yat reflexes. The intrusion of the vernacular into Church Slavic grew in time, to be finally replaced by the vernacular idiom. This process has taken place for Croats, Serbs and Bosniaks independently and without mutual interference until mid-19th century. 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 Koran, where this phoneme is the carrier of specific semantic value.

Ekavian, sometimes called eastern, is spoken primarily in Serbia, and very limited area in eastern Croatia. Ikavian, sometimes called western, is spoken in western and central Bosnia, western Herzegovina, in Slavonia and the major part of Dalmatia in Croatia. Ijekavian, sometimes called southern, is spoken in many parts of Croatia including southern Dalmatia, most of Bosnia, Herzegovina, Montenegro. The following are some examples (however, one must be cautious with Ijekavian version-the presented examples are actually from Croatian standard language, while Serbian and Montenegrin speakers of Ijekavian variant of standard Serbian tend to "ekavise" their speech in numerous occasions-in short, Croatian on one hand, and Serbian Ijekavian and Bosnian (predominantly) on the other, tend to differ also in the frequency of "ije/je" form, Croatian showing the tendency of "ijekavisation". Examples would, for instance, include word for "transport", which is "prijevoz" in Croatian, and "prevoz" in Bosnian and Serbian Ijekavian):

Ethnic affiliation of native speakers of štokavian dialect

During the 1st half of the 19th century, protagonists of nascent Slavic philology were, as far as South Slavic dialects were concerned, embroiled in frequently bitter polemic about "ethnic affiliation" of native speakers of various dialects. This, from contemporary point of view, rather bizarre obsession was motivated primarily by political and national interests that prompted philologists-turned-ideologues to express their views on the subject. The most prominent contenders in the squabble, with conflicting agenda, were Czech philologist Josef Dobrovsky, Slovak Pavel Šafarik, Slovene Jernej Kopitar and Franz Miklosich, Serb Vuk Karadžić and Croatian Bogoslav Šulek and Vatroslav Jagić.

Essentially, the dispute was about who can, philologically, be labelled as "Slovene", "Croat" and "Serb"-with the very mundane aim of expanding one's national territory and influence. Born in the climate of romanticism and national awakening, these polemical "battles" only succeeded in poisoning relations between the aforementioned nations, especially because the štokavian dialect cannot be split along ethnic lines. Like many other dialects (for instance, Plattdeutsch), it is "multiethnic" by its very nature.

However, contemporary native speakers, after process of national crystallization and identification had been completed, can be roughly identified as predominant speakers of various štokavian subdialects. Since 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-štokavian speakers along ethnic lines in present times is as follows:

• Kosovo-Resava (Ekavian) dialect: vastly Serbian
• Zeta-Sanjak dialect (Ijekavian): Bosnian Muslim (Bosniak) and Serbian
• Slavonian dialect (fluctuating "yat": mainly Ikavian, also Ijekavian and Ekavian): vastly Croatian
• Eastern-Bosnian dialect(Ijekavian): vastly Bosnian Muslim (Bosniak) and Croatian

Generally, the neo-štokavian dialect is divided as follows with regard to the ethnicity of its native speakers:

• Šumadija-Vojvodina dialect (Ekavian): vastly Serbian
• Dalmatian-Bosnian dialect(Ikavian): vastly Croatian and Bosnian Muslim (Bosniak)
• Eastern-Herzegovinian (Ijekavian): Serbian (predominantly- well over 50%), Croatian and Bosnian Muslim (Bosniak)

Earliest texts of štokavian dialect

Proto-štokavian, or Church Slavic with ingredients of nascent štokavian, were recorded in legal documents like the charter of ban Kulin, regulating the commerce between Bosnia and Dubrovnik in Croatia, dated 1189., and in liturgical texts like Gršković’s and Mihanović’s fragments, ca. 1150, in southern Bosnia or Herzegovina. But, their idiom being almost exclusively Church Slavic, these documents cannot be considered to represent proper štokavian texts. First vernacular štokavian text is the Vatican Croatian Prayer Book, written a decade or two before 1400 in Dubrovnik. In next two centuries štokavian vernacular texts had been written mainly in Dubrovnik, other Croatian cities and islands influenced by Dubrovnik, as well as in Bosnia, by Croatian Franciscans and Bosniak Muslim vernacular alhamiado literature - the first example being "Chirwat turkisi" or "Croatian song", dated 1589. First Serbian štokavian vernacular texts are from the 18th century, Gavrilo Venclović’s and Jovan Rajić’s poems.

Standard languages

Standard languages Croatian, Bosnian and Serbian are all based on neo-štokavian dialect.

However, it must be stressed that standard languages, irrespectively of their mutual differences, have been stylised in such manners that parts of the neo-štokavian dialect have been retained — for instance, declension — but other features were purposely omitted or altered — for instance, the phoneme "h" was re-instated in standard languages.

Croatian language has had the longest tradition of štokavian vernacular literacy and literature, but due to the influence of other Croatian dialects, čakavian and kajkavian, it took almost 4 and half centuries for štokavian to prevail as the dialectal basis for Croatian standard. In other periods, čakavian and kajkavian dialects, as well as hybrid čakavian-kajkavian-štokavian interdialect "contended" for the Croatian national koine- but eventually lost, mainly due to the historical and political reasons. By 1650s it was fairly obvious that štokavian will be the dialectal basis for Croatian standard, but this process was finally completed in 1850s, when neo-štokavian Ijekavian, based mainly on Dubrovnik, Dalmatian, Bosnian and Slavonian literary heritage has become national standard language.

Serbian language was much faster in standardisation. Although vernacular literature was present in the 18th century, it was Vuk Karadzic who, during 1818-1851 period, made a radical break with the past and established Serbian neo-štokavian folklore idiom as the basis of standard Serbian (until then, educated Serbs had been using Serbian Slavic, Russian Slavic and hybrid Russian-Serbian language). Although he wrote in Serbian Ijekavian, the majority of Serbs have adopted Ekavian, which is dominant in Serbia. Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia, as well as Montenegrins, use Ijekavian variant of standard Serbian language.

Bosnian language is only currently beginning to take shape. Bosniaks have been using a sort of hybrid of Serbian Ijekavian and Croatian languages, with some specific traits. After the collapse of Yugoslavia, Bosniaks affirmed their wish to stylise their own standard language, based on neo-štokavian dialect, but reflecting their characteristics- from phonetics to semantics.

Also, contemporary situation is unstable with regard to the accentuation, since phoneticians have observed that 4-accents speech has, in all likelihood, shown to be increasingly unstable, which resulted in proposals that 3-accents norm be prescribed. This is particularly true for Croatian, where the influence of čakavian and kajkavian dialects on standard language is, contrary to all expectations, waxing, not waning in the past 50-70 years.

Croatian, Serbian and Bosnian standard languages, although all based on neo-štokavian dialect (or, more precisely, various subdialects) and mutually intelligible, are recognizably different in their prescribed forms as standard or literary languages. Their structures are almost identical in basic grammar, but different in all fields that define a language- from phonetics, phonology and morphology to syntax, semantics and pragmatics. For instance, the sound inventory in Croatian and Serbian is different: Croatian has 32 phonemes and Serbian 31. For other traits, see Differences in official languages in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia.

Example: Što jest, jest; tako je uv(ij)ek bilo, što će biti, (biće|bit će), a nekako već će biti!
(The first option in the middle of the sentence is a difference between Ekavian and Ijekavian. The second option in the middle is difference between Serbian and Croatian norms, respectively.)

Another "classic" example is:

English: Cooking salt is a compound of sodium chloride

Croatian: Kuhinjska sol je spoj natrija i klora.

Serbian: So za kuvanje jeste jedinjenje natrijuma i hlora.

Bosnian: Kuhinjska so je spoj natrija i hlora.

External links

• Map of Serbo-Croatian dialects (http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/540/langdial/serbcrot.html)
• Map of štokavian dialects (in Croatian) (http://ostava.012webpages.com/Slika%20dijalekata%20po%20D.%20Brozovicu.htm)