| Shtokavian | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| štokavica | ||||
| Pronunciation | ||||
| Spoken in | Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Romania, Hungary | |||
| Native speakers | 13 million (date missing) | |||
| Language family |
Indo-European
|
|||
| Standard forms |
Standard Serbo-Croatian (defunct)
|
|||
| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-3 | – | |||
| Linguist List | hrv-sht | |||
| Linguasphere | 53-AAA-ga to -gf & 53-AAA-gi (-gia to -gii) |
|||
|
Shtokavian subdialects (Pavle Ivić 1988)
|
||||
|
||||
Shtokavian or Štokavian ( /ʃtɒˈkɑːviən/; Serbo-Croatian: štokavski ~ штокавски) is the prestige dialect of the Serbo-Croatian language, and the basis of its Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, and Montenegrin standards.[1] It is sometimes called the Shtokavian diasystem or Central South Slavic diasystem when considered with its standard forms.
The Štokavian dialect is spoken in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, major part of Croatia, and in southern part of Austria’s Burgenland. The Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin standard languages are all based on the Eastern Herzegovinian variety of Štokavian. Its name comes from the form for the interrogatory pronoun for "what" which is što/што or šta/шта in the Štokavian dialect. This is in contrast to the Croatian dialects of Kajkavian and Čakavian (kaj and ča also meaning "what").
The primary subdivisions of Štokavian are based on two 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 recognises seven Štokavian subdialects (there are opinions that one or two subdialects more exist, but this is not universally accepted).
The Proto-Štokavian idiom 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 easternmost Bosnia and Herzegovina and greater parts of Montenegro and Serbia. Western Štokavian was principally characterized by three-accentual system, while eastern Štokavian was marked by two-accentual system. According to research of historical linguistics, the Old-Štokavian was well established by the mid-15th century. In this period it was still being mixed with Church Slavonic to varying degrees, as geographically transitory to Čakavian and Kajkavian dialects spoken on the territory of today's Croatia, with which it had constituted a natural dialectal continuum.
As can be seen from the image on the right, originally the Štokavian dialect covered a significantly smaller area than it covers today, meaning that the Štokavian speech had spread for the last 5 centuries, overwhelmingly at the expense of Čakavian and Kajkavian idioms. Modern areal distribution of these three dialects as well as their internal stratification (Štokavian and Čakavian in particular) is primarily a result of the migrations resulting from the spread of Ottoman Empire on the Balkans.[2] 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).
By far the most numerous, mobile and expansionist migrations were those of Ijekavian Štokavian speakers of eastern Herzegovina, who have flooded most of Western Serbia, many areas of eastern and western Bosnia, large swathes of Croatia (Banovina, Kordun, Lika, parts of Gorski kotar, continental pats of northern Dalmatia, some places north of Kupa, parts of Slavonia, southeastern Baranya etc.).[3] This is the reason why Eastern Herzegovinian dialect is the most spoken Serbo-Croatian dialect today, and why it bears the name that is only descriptive of its area of origin. These migrations also played the pivotal role in the spread of Neo-Štokavian innovations.[4]
Shtokavian dialect system (diasystem) is characterized by a number of characteristic historical sound changes, accentual changes, changes in inflection, morphology and syntax. 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. The differences between Štokavian and the neighboring Eastern South Slavic dialects of Bulgaria and Macedonia are clear and largely shared with other Western South Slavic dialects, while the differences to the neighboring Western South Slavic dialect of Čakavian and Kajkavian are much more fluid in character, and the mutual influence of various subdialects and idioms play a more prominent role.
The main bundle of isoglosses separates Kajkavian and Slovenian dialects on the one hand from Štokavian and Čakavian on the other. These are:[5]:
Other characteristics distinguishing Kajkavian from Štokavian, beside the demonstrative/interrogatory pronoun kaj (as opposed to što/šta used in Štokavian), are[6]:
Characteristics distinguishing Čakavian from Štokavian, beside the demonstrative/interrogatory pronoun ča, are[7]:
General characteristics of Štokavian diasystem are the following[8]:
As can be seen from the list, many of this isoglosses are missing from particular Štokavian idioms, just as many of them are shared with neihgboring non-Štokavian dialects.
The Štokavian dialect is divided into Old-Shtokavian and Neo-Shtokavian subdialects.
The most conservative dialects stretch southeast from Timok near the Bulgarian border to Prizren. There is disagreement among linguists whether these dialects belong to the Štokavian area, as there are many other morphological characteristics apart from rendering of što (also, some dialects use kakvo or kvo, typical for Bulgarian) which would place them into a "transitional" group between Štokavian and Eastern South Slavic languages (Bulgarian and Macedonian). The Timok-Prizren group falls to the Balkan linguistic union: declension has all but disappeared, the infinitive has yielded to subjunctives da-constructions, and adjectives are compared exclusively with suffixes. The accent in the dialect group is a stress accent, and it falls on any syllable in the word. The old semi-vowel has been retained throughout. The vocalic l has been retained (vlk = vuk), and some dialects don't distinguish ć/č and đ/dž by preferring the latter, postalveolar variants. Some subdialects preserve l at the end of words (where otherwise it has developed into a short o) – došl, znal, etc. (cf. Kajkavian and Bulgarian); in others, this l has become the syllable ja.
These speeches are dominant 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 dialect, 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. The Slavonian dialect has mixed ikavian and ekavian pronunciations. Ikavian accent is predominant in the Posavina, Baranja, Bačka, and in the Slavonian sub-dialect enclave of Derventa, while ekavian accent is predominant in Podravina. There are enclaves of one accent in the territory of the other, as well as mixed ekavian–ikavian and jekavian–ikavian areas. In some villages in Hungary, the original yat is preserved. Local variants can widely differ in the degree of neo-shtokavian influences. In two villages in Posavina, Siče and Magića Male, the l, as in the verb nosil, has been retained in place of the modern nosio. In some villages in the Podravina, čr is preserved instead of the usual cr, for example in črn instead of crn. Both forms are usual in Kajkavian but very rare in Shtokavian.
Also called jekavian šćakavian, it has jekavian pronunciations in the vast majority of local forms and it is spoken by the majority of Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) living in area that include bigger Bosnian cities Sarajevo, Tuzla and Zenica, and by most of Croats and Serbs that live in that area. Together with basic jekavian pronunciation, mixed pronunciations exist in Tešanj and Maglaj dete–djeteta (ekavian–jekavian) and around Žepče and Jablanica djete–diteta (jekavian–ikavian). 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.
Also known as Old Ijekavian, it is spoken in eastern Montenegro, in Podgorica and Cetinje, around the city of Novi Pazar in eastern Sandžak in Serbia, and in the village of Peroj in Istria. Together with the dominant jekavian pronunciation, mixed pronunciations like djete–deteta (jekavian–ekavian) around Novi Pazar and Bijelo Polje, dite–đeteta (ikavian–jekavian) around Podgorica and dete–đeteta (ekavian–jekavian) in the village of Mrkojevići in southern Montenegro. Mrkovići are also characterised by remainings of čr instead of cr as in the previously mentioned villages in Podravina.
Some vernaculars have a special reflex of ь/ъ in some cases (between a and e) which is very rare in Štokavian and Čakavian vernaculars (sän and dän instead of san and dan). Other special phonetic features include sounds like ʝ in iʝesti instead of izjesti, ç as in śekira instead of sjekira. However these sounds are known also to many in East-Herzegovina like those in Konavle,[9] and are not necessarily "Montenegrin" specificum. There is a loss of the /v/ sound apparent, seen in čo'ek or đa'ola. The loss of distinction between /lj/ and /l/ in some vernaculars is based on Albanian adstrate. Word pļesma is a hypercorrection (instead of pjesma) since many vernaculars know lj>j.
All verbs in infinitive finish with "t" (example: pjevat). These future have also most respective vernaculars of East-Herzegovinian, and actually almost all Serbian and Croatian vernaculars. The group a + o gave a ("ka" instead "kao", reka for rekao), like in other Serbian and Croatian seaside vernaculars. Otherwise, more common is ao>o.
Currently the Montenegrin language is undergoing a standardization process which will be somewhat based on the Zeta subdialect.
Also called Older Ekavian, spoken mostly in western and northeastern Kosovo (Kosovo Valley with Kosovska Mitrovica and also around Peć), in Ibar Valley with Kraljevo, around Kruševac, Trstenik and in Župa, in the part of Toplica Valley (Kuršumlija) in Morava Valley (Jagodina, Ćuprija, Paraćin, Lapovo), in Resava Valley (Svilajnac, Despotovac) and northeastern Serbia (Smederevo, Požarevac, Bor, Majdanpek, Negotin, Velika Plana) with one part of Banat (around Kovin, Bela Crkva and Vršac). 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).
Substitution of jat is predominantly ekavian accent even on the end of datives (žene instead of ženi), in pronouns (teh instead of tih), in comparatives (dobrej instead of dobriji) and in the negative of biti (nesam instead of nisam) and in Smederevo–Vršac dialects, ikavian forms can be found (di si instead of gde si?). However, Smederevo-Vršac speeches (spoken in northeastern Šumadija, lwer Great Morava valley and Banat) are considered to be part of a separate dialect, as they represent mixed speeches of Šumadija-Vojvodina and Kosovo-Resava speeches.
Also called Western Ikavian or Younger Ikavian. The majority of its speakers are Croats who live in Lika, Kvarner, Dalmatia, Herzegovina and Bunjevci and Croats of Bačka. The minority speakers of it include Bosniaks in western Bosnia, mostly around the city of Bihać, and also in central Bosnia where Croats and Bosniaks (Travnik, Jajce, Bugojno, Vitez, ..) used to speak this dialect. Exclusively ikavian accent, Bosnian and Herzegovinian forms use o in verb participle, while those in Dalmatia and Lika use -ija or ia like in vidija/vidia. Local form of Bačka was proposed as the base for the Bunjevac dialect of Bunjevci in Vojvodina.
In earlier centuries, this subdialect was the independent subdialect of Western Shtokavian subdialect. Today it is considered a part of East Herzegovina subdialect. It retained certain unique features that distinguish it from the original East Herzegovina subdialect.
Also known as Younger Ekavian, it is spoken across most of Vojvodina excluding easternmost parts around Vršac, north-western Serbia, around Kragujevac and Valjevo in Šumadija, in Mačva but only around Šabac and Bogatić excluding Loznica and Podrinje, in Belgrade and in eastern Croatia around the town of Vukovar. It is predominately ekavian (ikavian forms are of morphophonological origin). In some parts of Vojvodina the old declination is preserved. Most Vojvodina dialects and some dialects in Šumadija have an open e and o. However the vernaculars of western Serbia, and in past to them connected vernaculars of (old) Belgrade and southwestern Banat (Borča, Pančevo, Bavanište) are close to standard as a vernacular can be. The dialect presents a base for the Serbian Ekavian standard.
Also called Eastern-Herzegovininan-Krajina dialect (Serbo-Croatian: istočnohercegovačko-krajiški), or younger Ijekavian (Serbo-Croatian: mlađi ijekavski). It is the dialectal basis of the standard literary Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian, and Montenegrin languages. It encompasses by far the largest area and the number of speakers of all Štokavian dialects.
Micro groups:
The Proto-Slavic vowel jat has changed over time, coming to be pronounced differently in different areas. These different reflexes define three accents of Shtokavian:
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 predominantly Church Slavic of the Serbian or Croatian recension (variant). The first undoubted ekavian reflex (beše 'it was') is found in a document from Serbia dated 1289; the first ikavian reflex (svidoci 'witnesses') in Bosnia in 1331; and first ijekavian reflex (želijemo 'we wish', a "hyperijekavism") in Croatia in 1399. Partial attestation can be found in earlier texts (for instance, ikavian accent is found in a few Bosnian documents from the latter half of the 13th century), but philologists generally accept the aforementioned dates. In the second half of 20th century, many vernaculars with unsubstituted yat are found.[10] The intrusion of the vernacular into Church Slavic grew in time, to be finally replaced by the vernacular idiom. This process took place for Croats, Serbs and Bosniaks independently and without mutual interference until the 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 accent, sometimes called eastern, is spoken primarily in Serbia, and in some very limited parts of eastern Croatia. Ikavian accent, sometimes called western, is spoken in western and central Bosnia, western Herzegovina, in Slavonia and the major part of Dalmatia in Croatia. Ijekavian accent, sometimes called southern, is spoken in many parts of Croatia including southern Dalmatia, most of Bosnia, Herzegovina, Montenegro, as well as some parts of western Serbia. The following are some generic examples:
| English | Predecessor | Ekavian | Ikavian | Ijekavian |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| time | vrěme | vreme | vrime | vrijeme |
| beautiful | lěp | lep | lip | lijep |
| girl | děvojka | devojka | divojka | djevojka |
| true | věran | veran | viran | vjeran |
| to sit | sědĕti | sedeti (sèdeti) | siditi (sìdeti) | sjediti |
| to grow gray hairs | sědeti | sedeti (sédeti) | siditi (sídeti) | sijediti |
| to heat | grějati | grejati | grijati | grijati |
Long ije is pronounced as a single syllable, [jeː], by many Ijekavian speakers. In Zeta dialect and most of East Herzegovina dialect, however, it is pronounced as two syllables, [ije]. The distinction can be clearly heard in first verses of national anthems of Croatia and Montenegro—they're sung as "Lije-pa na-ša do-mo-vi-no" and "Oj svi-je-tla maj-ska zo-ro" respectively.
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 the Czech philologist Josef Dobrovský, the Slovak Pavel Šafárik, the Slovenes Jernej Kopitar and Franc Miklošič, the Serb Vuk Karadžić, the Croat of Slovak orgin 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. Born in the climate of romanticism and national awakening, these polemical "battles" led to increased tensions between the aforementioned nations, especially because the Štokavian dialect cannot be split along ethnic lines in an unequivocal manner.
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:
Generally, the neo-Štokavian dialect is divided as follows with regard to the ethnicity of its native speakers:
| Group | Sub-Dialect | Serbian | Croatian | Bosnian | Montenegrin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| old-Štokavian | Kosovo-Resava | x | |||
| Zeta-South Sanjak | x | x | x | ||
| Slavonian | x | ||||
| Eastern Bosnian | x | x | |||
| neo-Štokavian | Šumadija-Vojvodina | x | |||
| Dalmatian-Bosnian | x | x | |||
| Eastern Herzgovinian | x | x | x | x |
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. Experts' opinions are divided with regard to the extent these texts, especially the Kulin ban parchment, contain contemporary Štokavian vernacular. Mainly Štokavian, with ingredients of Church Slavic, are numerous legal and commercial documents from pre-Ottoman Bosnia, Hum, Serbia, Zeta, and southern Dalmatia, especially Dubrovnik. The first comprehensive vernacular Štokavian text is the Vatican Croatian Prayer Book, written in Dubrovnik a decade or two before 1400. In the next two centuries Štokavian vernacular texts had been written mainly in Dubrovnik, other Adriatic cities and islands influenced by Dubrovnik, as well as in Bosnia, by Bosnian Franciscans and Bosniak Muslim vernacular alhamiado literature – the first example being "Chirwat turkisi" or "Croatian song", dated 1589.
Standard languages Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin 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 reinstated in standard languages.
The Croatian language has had a long tradition of Štokavian vernacular literacy and literature. It took almost four 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 historical and political reasons. By 1650s it was fairly obvious that Štokavian would become the dialectal basis for the Croatian standard, but this process was finally completed in 1850s, when Neo-Štokavian Ijekavian, based mainly on Ragusan (Dubrovnik), Dalmatian, Bosnian, and Slavonian literary heritage became the national standard language.
Serbian language was much faster in standardisation. Although vernacular literature was present in the 18th century, it was Vuk Karadžić who, between 1818 and 1851, 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 accent, the majority of Serbs have adopted Ekavian accent, which is dominant in Serbia. Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia, as well as Montenegrins, use the Ijekavian accent.
The Bosnian language is only currently beginning to take shape. The Bosniak idiom can be seen as a transition between Serbian Ijekavian and Croatian varieties, with some specific traits. After the collapse of Yugoslavia, Bosniaks affirmed their wish to stylise their own standard language, based on the Neo-Štokavian dialect, but reflecting their characteristics—from phonetics to semantics.
Also, the contemporary situation is unstable with regard to the accentuation, since phoneticians have observed that the 4-accents speech has, in all likelihood, shown to be increasingly unstable, which resulted in proposals that a 3-accents norm be prescribed. This is particularly true for Croatian, where, contrary to all expectations, the influence of Čakavian and Kajkavian dialects on the standard language has been waxing, not waning, in the past 50–70 years.
The Croatian, Serbian, and Bosnian standard languages, although all based on the East Herzegovinian subdialect of Neo-Štokavian and mutually intelligible, are recognizably different in their prescribed forms as standard or literary languages. Their structures are grammatically and phonologically almost identical, but have differences in vocabulary and semantics. See Differences between standard Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian.
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 brackets) in the middle of the sentence represents the difference between Ekavian and Ijekavian accents, whereas the second option in the middle represents the difference between Serbian and Croatian norms, respectively.)
Another example is: