Chakavian dialect

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Chakavian dialect (Čakavian, čakavski, proper name: čakavica) is an old dialect of the Croatian language. The name of the dialect stems from the interrogatory pronoun for "what", which is "ča" (or "ca") in Chakavian. Chakavian is nowadays spoken mainly at northeastern Adriatic: in Istria, Kvarner Gulf, in most Adriatic islands, and in the interior valley Gacka, more sporadically in the Dalmatian littoral and central Croatia.

Chakavian may be classified as a dialect of the Central South Slavic diasystem, generally referred from the Croatian language but is exclusively a Croatian dialect.
Probably the only valid argument for its inclusion into this wider group would be that interference of Chakavian with the shtokavian dialect had given rise to a Šćakavian mixture^{[citation needed]}, a few subdialects spoken in western Bosnia and in Herzegovina by Croats and Bosniaks; this mixture is recorded in monuments of medieval (12th to 15th century) and Counter-Reformation (17th century) literacy and literature: tombstone inscriptions, legal documents and Catholic polemical and liturgical works. However, the Chakavian dialect sensu stricto is now spoken by Croats only.

The language used by the Croats of Northern Burgenland (in Austria and in Hungary) is also mostly Chakavian, with few small islets of Chakavian dialect speakers in Hungary (most eastern Chakavians are there). The most archaic Chakavian archidiom Gan-Veyãn is still partially spoken at Baška in the island of Krk.

Contents 1 History 2 Area of use 3 Characteristics 4 Non-palatal tsakavism 5 Čakavian literary language 6 Recent studies 7 Chakavian media 8 Examples 9 Literature

[edit] History

Chakavian is the oldest written Croatian dialect that had made visible appearance in legal documents - as early as 1275 ("Istrian land survey")[1] and 1288 ("Vinodol codex"), the predominantly vernacular Chakavian is recorded, mixed with elements of Church Slavic. Archaic Proto-Chakavian can be traced back to 1105 in Baška tablet. All these and other early Chakavian texts up to 17th century are mostly written in Glagolitic alphabet.

Initially, the Čakavian dialect covered a much wider area than today including about 2/3 of medieval Croatia: the major part of central and southern Croatia southwards of Kupa and westwards of Una river, as well as western Bosnia and Herzegovina. During and after the Ottoman intrusion and subsequent warfare (15th-18th centuries), the Chakavian area has become greatly reduced and in Croatian mainlands it is recently almost replaced by Shtokavian; so it is now spoken in a much smaller coastal area, than indicated above.

As expectable, in more than nine centuries Chakavian has undergone many phonetic, morphological and syntactical changes chiefly in turbulent mainlands, and less in isolated islands. Yet, contemporary dialectologists are particularly interested in it since it has retained the old accentuation system characterized by a proto-Slavic new rising accent and the early position of stress, and also numerous proto-Slavic and some proto-Indoeuropean archaisms in its vocabulary.

[edit] Area of use

Chakavian in its actual use is the rarest Croatian dialect including 12% Croats only. It is now mostly reduced in southwestern Croatia along eastern Adriatic: Adriatic islands, and sporadically in mainland coast, with rare inland enclaves up to central Croatia, and minor enclaves in Austria and Montenegro.

• The majority of Adriatic islands are Chakavian, except the easternmost ones (Mljet and Elafiti).
• Its largest mainland area is the subentire Istra Peninsula, and coastal valley Vinodol; minor coastal enclaves occur sporadically in Dalmatian mainland around Zadar, Biograd, Split, and in Pelješac peninsula.
• Within Croatian inlands, its major area is Gacka valley, and minor enclaves occur in Pokupje valley and Žumberak hills, northwards around Karlovac.
• Chakavians out of Croatia: minor enclave of Bigova (Trašte) at Boka Kotorska in Montenegro, refugees before Turks in Burgenland (eastern Austria) and SW Slovakia, and recent emigrants in America (chiefly at New Orleans, Los Angeles, and Vancouver).

[edit] Characteristics

The Chakavian dialect is divided along several criteria. According to the reflex of the old Slavic phoneme yat (which is explained on Shtokavian dialect page) it is categorized as:

1. ekavian (northeastern Istria, Rijeka and Bakar, Cres island): yat = e
2. ikavian-ekavian (islands Lošinj, Krk, Rab, Pag, Dugi, mainland Vinodol and Pokupje): i or e
3. ikavian (southwestern Istria, islands Brač, Hvar, Vis, Korčula, Pelješac, Dalmatian coast at Zadar and Split, inland Gacka): yat = i
4. yekavian (Lastovo island, Janjina in Pelješac): yat = ye (je)

Other linguists have combined some phonetic and phonological criteria, resulting in 6 groups of subdialects:

1. Buzet dialect transitive to Kaykavian (northern Istra)
2. southwest Istrian or mixed Shtokavian-Chakavian
3. northern Chakavian or Ekavian-Chakavian (NE Istra and Cres)
4. middle Chakavian or Ikavian-Ekavian in Kvarner islands and Vinodol valley
5. southern Chakavian or Ikavian-Chakavian in middle Dalmatia and Gacka valley
6. southeastern or Ijekavian-Chakavian in Lastovo and Janjina

There is no unanimous opinion on the set of traits a dialect has to possess, to be classified as chakavian (rather than its admixture with shtokavian or kaykavian); the following traits were mostly proposed:

• interrogatory pronoun is "ča" or "zač" (in some islands also "ca" oz "zace");
• old accentuation and 3 accents (mostly in ultima or penultima);
• phonological features that give /a/ for old Slavic phonemes in characteristic positions: "language" is jazik (or zajik) in Čakavian and jezik in Štokavian;
• "j" replacing the Shtokavian "đ" (dj), and Bulgarian "žd": for "between", Čakavian meju, Shtokavian među, and Bulgarian meždu;
• "m" shifts to "n" at the end of words: standard Croatian volim ("I love"), sam ("I am"), selom ("village" - Instrumental case) become Chakavian volin, san, selon.
• In conditional occur specific prefixes: bin-, biš-, bimo-, bite-.
• contracted or lacking aorist tense;

[edit] Non-palatal tsakavism

Besides the usual chakavian (with typical pronoun "ča"), in some Adriatic islands and in eastern Istra is spoken also another special variant lacking most palatals, with other parallel deviations called "tsakavism" (cakavizam):

• Instead of palatal "č" is always sibilant "ts" (c): pronouns ca and zac (or ce and zace).
• Instead of palatals š (sh) and ž (zh) are sibilants s and z (or transitive sj and zj).
• Instead of đ (dj), lj and nj are the simple d, l and n (without jotation).
• Frequent diphthongs instead of simple wovels: o > uo, a > oa, e > ie, etc.
• Yat (jat): besides usual short i (or e) also is presented longer y (= ue).
• Appertaing is often noted by possessive dative (rarely adjective nor genitive)
• Vocative is mostly lacking and replaced ny a nominative in appellating construction.
• Auxiliary particles are always before the main verb: se- (self), bi- (if), će- (be).

The largest area of tsakavism is in eastern Istra at Labin, Rabac and nearby dozen villages; minor mainland enclaves are towns Bakar and Trogir. Tsakavism is also frequent in Adriatic islands: part of Lošinj and nearby islets, Baška in Krk, Pag town, northwest parts of Brač, Hvar town, and subentire Vis with adjacent islets, etc.

[edit] Čakavian literary language

Since Čakavian was the first Croatian dialect to extricate from the 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. Chakavian was the main public and official language in medieval Croatia from 13th to 16th century.

Monuments of literacy began to appear in the 11th and 12th centuries, and artistic literature in the 15th. While there were two zones of Chakavian, northern and southern (both mainly along the Adriatic coast and islands, with centres like Senj, Zadar, Split, Hvar, Korčula), there is enough unity in the idiom to allow us to speak of one Chakavian literary language with minor regional variants. This language by far surpassed the position of a simple vernacular dialect and strongly influenced other Croatian literary dialects, particularly Štokavian: the first Štokavian texts like the Vatican Croatian prayer book, dated to 1400, are transcriptions from a Chakavian original. The early Shtokavian literary and philological output, mainly from Dubrovnik (1500-1600) up to Džore Držić, was essentially a mixed idiom Shtokavian-Chakavian, mostly similar as now Yekavian-Chakavian of Lastovo and Janjina.

The most famous early Chakavian author is Marko Marulić in 15th/16th century. Also, the first Croatian dictionary, authored by Faust Vrančić, is mostly Chakavian in its form. The tradition of Chakavian literary language had declined in the 18th century, but it has helped shape standard Croatian language in many ways (chiefly in morphology and phonetics), and Chakavian dialectal poetry is still a vital part of Croatian literature.

The most prominent representatives of Chakavian poetry in the 20th century are Vladimir Nazor and Drago Gervais. At the end of the 1980ies in Istria there began a special sub-genre of rock music "Ča-val" (Cha wave); artists that were part of this scene used the Chakavian dialect in their lyrics, and often fused rock music with traditional Istra-Kvarner music.

[edit] Recent studies

Due to its archaic nature, early medieval development, and impressive corpus of vernacular literacy, the typical Chakavian dialect has attracted numerous dialectologists who have meticulously documented its nuances, so that Chakavian was among the best described Slavic dialects, but its atypical tsakavism was partly neglected and less studied. The representative modern work in the field is Čakavisch-deutsches Lexikon, vol. 1.-3, Koeln-Vienna, 1979-1983, by Croatian linguists Hraste and Šimunović and German Olesch.

Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts is currently engaged to edit a multivoluminous dictionary of the Chakavian literary language, based on the wealth of literature written in chakavian. So far one published more than forty dictionaries of local chakavian tongues, the largest among them including more than 20,000 words are from Split town, Gacka valley, islands Brač and Vis, Baška in Krk, Beli in Cres, etc.

[edit] Chakavian media

During Yugoslavia in 20th century, the archaic Chakavian was mostly restricted in private communication, poetry and folklore. By the recent regional democratizing and cultural revival from 1990ies, Chakavians partly regained their former half-public positions chiefly in Istra peninsula and coastal towns, being now presented there in some modern public media e.g.:

• New special project Chakavian Wiki -encyclopaedia or WikiCha on internet (Chakavian Wikislavia), started from autumn 2007 in site: chak.volgota.com, and some double pages also in hr.volgota.com.
• Biannual periodical "Čakavska rič" (Chakavian word), with 34 annual volumes, published from 1967 by the Literal Association ('Književni krug') in Split city.
• Annual periodical Pannonische Jahrbuch with dozen volumes partly in Chakavian of Burgenland Croats, published from 1994 by Pannonisches Institut in Gutterbach (Burgenland, Austria).
• Annual periodical 'Vinodolski zbornik' with dozen volumes published in Crikvenica, including different texts in the local Chakavian of Vinodol valley.
• A major perpetual program in the Chakavian of Dalmatia is given by the Urban television in Split city. Other minor half-Chakavian media with temporary Chakavian contents include also the local radio programs in towns Split and Rijeka, and Krk island radio, etc.

[edit] Examples

• Ča je, je, tako je vavik bilo, ča će bit, će bit, ma nekako će već bit! (mainland half-Chakavian)

• Chakavian 'Paternoster' of Adriatic islanders (bold = Chakavian stress): Elatjaće kyeš vaneh nebah, senay elamy urudba tvoja, nay ariva una carmada tvoja tar naybi utemba tvoja koti va nebah osce vaneh tlah. Sey noas pohlib seydni naydas nami danaske tarnay laškas nami une darzi nase koti mye laškamo darznikon nasin, osce nayne pejas noas vane uocani, lehnay bukšas noas ud seyh hudobih. Vasye vykoj vykov, Amen.

[edit] Literature

• J. Božanić: Čakavska rič, vol. 1.- 32., Književni krug Split.
• J. Hamm, M. Hraste, P. Guberina: Govor otoka Suska. Hrvatski dijalektološki zbornik 1, Zagreb 1956.
• M. Hraste, P. Šimunović, R. Olesch: Čakavisch-deutsches Lexikon, Band I-III, Köln-Wien, 1979 - 1983.
• M. Kranjčević: Ričnik gacke čakavšćine. Čakavski sabor, Otočac 2003.
• B. Matoković-Dobrila: Ričnik velovaroškega Splita, Denona, Zagreb 2004.
• A. Roki-Fortunato: Libar Viškiga jazika. Libar Publishing, Toronto 1997.
• P. Šimunović: Rječnik bračkih čakavskih govora, Brevijar, Supetar 2006.
• N. Velčić: Besedar Bejske Tramuntane. Čakavski sabor i Adamić d.o.o, Cres-Lošinj 2003.
• M. Yoshamya: Glossaries of east Kvarner (Baška, Rab, Vinodol) - dictionary, grammar and culture, vol. 1: 1224 p., ITG - Zagreb 2005