Shtokavian dialect

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 "?to" in ?tokavian dialect.

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

Early history of Štokavian

Proto-?tokavian 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 ?tokavian was characterized by 3-accents speech, while eastern ?tokavian was marked by 2-accents.There was a possibility that ?tokavian dialect would further disintegrate, but it didn't happen. According to the reasearch of historical linguistics, the old-?tokavian 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 ?tokavian

The so-called "neo-?tokavian 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-?tokavian dialect possesses the following features that distinguish it from the old-?tokavian:

• 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-?tokavian 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-?tokavian "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 distribution of old ?tokavian along ethnic lines in present times is as follows:

• Kosovo-Resava (Ekavian) dialect: vastly Serbian
• Zeta-Sanjak dialect (Ijekavian): Montenegrin, Bosniak and Serbian
• Slavonian dialect (Ikavian): vastly Croatian
• Eastern-Bosnian dialect(Ijekavian): vastly Croat and Bosniak

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

• ?tokavian-Ekavian (?umadija-Vojvodina dialect, "eastern"): vastly Serbian
• ?tokavian-Ikavian ("western"): vastly Croatian and Bosniak
• ?tokavian-Ijekavian ("southern"): Serbian and Montenegrin (predominantly — ca. 60%), Croat (ca. 20%) and Bosniak (ca. 20%)

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.

Ekavian, sometimes called Eastern, is spoken primarily in Serbia. Standard Serbian endorses both ekavian and ijekavian as equal variants; Montenegrins and Bosnian Serbs, who also call their language Serbian, use Ijekavian, while most of Serbia uses Ekavian. Some Bosnian Serbs who formerly spoke Ijekavian have begun switching to Ekavian. This used to be official politics in the Republika Srpska during the 1990s, but has been abandoned more recently.

Ikavian is spoken in western Bosnia, and in Slavonia and northwestern Dalmatia in Croatia.

Ijekavian, sometimes called Western, is spoken in many parts of Croatia including southern Dalmatia, most of Bosnia, Herzegovina, Montenegro. In Bosnia it was spoken by most members of all three ethnicities until very recently. It is the basis of the Croatian standard and the Bosniak standard.

The following are some 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	sěditi	sedeti	siditi	sjediti
to grow gray hairs	sědeti	sedeti	siditi	sijedjeti
to heat	grějati	grejati	grijati	grijati

Use in standard languages

Standard languages Croatian, Bosnian and Serbian are all based on neo-?tokavian 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-?tokavian 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.

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.

There are other differences between the standard dialects, including vocabulary, some syntax (primarily concerning preferences for da-clauses versus infinitives), and orthography. 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 an orthographic difference between Serbian and Croatian norms, respectively.)