Chakavian Dialect - History

History

Čakavian is the oldest written Croatian dialect that had made a 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. Archaic Čakavian can be traced back to 1105 in the Baška tablet. All these and other early Čakavian 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 and southwestern Bosnia and Herzegovina. During and after the Ottoman intrusion and subsequent warfare (15th–18th centuries), the Čakavian area has become greatly reduced and in the Croatian mainlands it has recently been almost entirely replaced by Štokavian, so it is now spoken in a much smaller coastal area than indicated above.

As expected, in over nine centuries Čakavian 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 old position of stress, and also numerous Proto-Slavic and some Proto-Indo-European archaisms in its vocabulary.