Shtokavian Dialect

Shtokavian Dialect

Shtokavian or Štokavian ( /ʃtɒˈkɑːviən/; Serbo-Croatian: štokavski ~ штокавски) is the prestige dialect of the pluricentric Serbo-Croatian language, and the basis of its Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, and Montenegrin standards. It is a part of the South Slavic dialect continuum. Its name comes from the form for the interrogatory pronoun for "what" which is western štokavian što and eastern štokavian šta in the Štokavian dialects system. This is in contrast to the Kajkavian and Čakavian dialects (kaj and ča also meaning "what").

Štokavian is spoken in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the major part of Croatia, and the southern part of Austria’s Burgenland. The primary subdivisions of Štokavian are based on two principles: one is whether the subdialect is Old-Štokavian or Neo-Štokavian, and different accents according to the way the old Slavic phoneme jat has changed. Modern dialectology generally recognises seven Štokavian subdialects.