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Chakavian DialectChakavian (Čakavian, čakavski) dialect is one of the three dialects of Croatian language. The name of the dialect stems from the interrogatory pronoun for "what", which is "ča" in čakavian. Čakavian is nowadays spoken mainly in Istria, the Adriatic sea coast, Dalmatian littoral and the islands. Čakavian can be classified as a dialect of the Central South Slavic diasystem, generally referred to as the Serbo-Croatian language, but čakavian is an exclusively Croatian dialect. Probably the only valid argument for the categorization into the wider group would be that interference of čakavian with shtokavian dialect has given rise to a šćakavian mixture, a few subdialects spoken in western and eastern Bosnia by Croats and Bosniaks, and recorded in monuments of medieval (12th–15th century) and Counter-Reformation (17th century) literacy and literature: tombstone inscriptions, legal documents and Catholic polemical and liturgical works. However, čakavian dialect in its pure form is now spoken by Croats only. History Čakavian is the oldest Croatian dialect that had made visible appearance in legal documents — as early as 1275 ("Istrian land survey") and 1288 ("Vinodol codex"), the predominantly vernacular čakavian is recorded, mixed with elements of Church Slavic. Proto-čakavian can be traced back to 1100 and Baška tablet. Initially, čakavian dialect covered much wider area than today — the major part of central and southern Croatia, as well as western Bosnia and Herzegovina. During and after Ottoman intrusion and subsequent warfare (15th-18th centuries), the čakavian area has become greatly reduced, so it is now spoken in a much smaller area, as described above. In more than eight centuries čakavian has, understandably, undergone many phonetic, morphological and syntactical changes, and yet, contemporary dialectology is particularly interested in it since it has retained accentuation system characterized by the proto-Slavic new rising accent and the old position of stress. Characteristics Čakavian dialect is divided along several criteria. According to the reflex of old Slavic phoneme yat (which is explained on Shtokavian dialect page) it is categorized as: - ekavian (northeastern Istria, Rijeka)
- ikavian-ekavian (islands Krk, Pag, Lika region)
- ikavian (western Istria, islands Vis, Hvar, Korčula, Pelješac)
- ijekavian (Lastovo island)
Other linguists have combined phonetic and phonological criteria, resulting in 6 groups of subdialects: - Buzet dialect
- southwest Istrian or štokavian-čakavian
- northern čakavian or ekavian čakavian
- middle čakavian or ikavian-ekavian
- southern čakavian or ikavian čakavian
- Lastovo dialect or ijekavian čakavian
There is no unanimous opinion on the set of traits a dialect has to possess to be classified as čakavian (rather than admixture with štokavian or kajkavian), but the following traits are frequently encountered: - interrogatory pronoun is "ča" or "zač"
- old accentuation-3 accents
- phonological features that give /a/ for old Slavic phonemes in characteristic positions: "language" is jazik in čakavian and jezik in štokavian
- contracted aorist tense
- "j" where štokavian is characterized by "đ", and Bulgarian and Russian "žd": for "between", čakavian "meju", štokavian "među", and Russian "meždu"
Due to its archaic nature and impressive corpus of developed early vernacular literary, čakavian dialect has attracted numerous dialectologists who have meticulously tarced nuances of it, so that čakavian is among the best described Slavic dialects. The representative modern work in the field is Čakavisch-deutsches Lexikon, 1.-3, Koln-Vienna, 1979-1983, authored by Croatian linguists Hraste and Šimunović and German Olesch. More — Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts is currently engaged in editing multivoluminous dictionary of Čakavian literary language, based on the wealth of literature written in čakavian. Čakavian literary language Since čakavian was the first Croatian dialect to extricate from Church Slavic matrix, both literacy and literature in this dialect abound with numerous texts-from legal and liturgical to literary: lyric and epic poetry, drama, novel in verses, as well as philological works that contain čakavian word-stock. Monuments of literacy began to appear in 11th and 12th century, and artistic literature in the 15th century. While there were 2 zones of čakavian: northern and southern (both mainly along Adriatic coast and islands, with centres like Senj, Zadar, Split, Hvar, Korčula), there is enough unity in idiom to allow us to speak on one čakavian literary language with regional variants. This language by far surpassed the position of simple vernacular dialect and strongly influenced other Croatian literary dialects, particularly štokavian: first štokavian texts like Vatican Croatian prayer book, 1400, are transcriptions from čakavian original, and early štokavian literary and philological output, mainly from Dubrovnik (1500-1600), is essentially a mixed idiom, štokavian-čakavian. The most famous čakavian author is Marko Marulić. Also, the first Croatian dictionary, authored by Faust Vrančić, is mainly čakavian in its form. The tradition of Čakavian literary language had died out in the 18th century, but it has helped shape standard Croatian language in many ways (chiefly in morhology and phonetics), and čakavian dialectal poetry is still a vital part of Croatian literature. Example Ča je, je, tako je navik bilo, ča će bit, će bit, a nekako već će bit!
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