Shtokavian Dialect - Standard Language

Standard Language

The standard Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian variants of the pluricentric Serbo-Croatian standard language are all based on Neo-Štokavian dialect.

However, it must be stressed that standard variants, irrespectively of their mutual differences, have been stylised in such manners that parts of the Neo-Štokavian dialect have been retained—for instance, declension—but other features were purposely omitted or altered—for instance, the phoneme "h" was reinstated in the standard language.

The Croatian has had a long tradition of Štokavian vernacular literacy and literature. It took almost four and half centuries for Štokavian to prevail as the dialectal basis for Croatian standard. In other periods, Čakavian and Kajkavian dialects, as well as hybrid Čakavian–Kajkavian–Štokavian interdialect "contended" for the Croatian national koine – but eventually lost, mainly due to historical and political reasons. By 1650s it was fairly obvious that Štokavian would become the dialectal basis for the Croatian standard, but this process was finally completed in 1850s, when Neo-Štokavian Ijekavian, based mainly on Ragusan (Dubrovnik), Dalmatian, Bosnian, and Slavonian literary heritage became the national standard language.

Serbian was much faster in standardisation. Although vernacular literature was present in the 18th century, it was Vuk Karadžić who, between 1818 and 1851, made a radical break with the past and established Serbian Neo-Štokavian folklore idiom as the basis of standard Serbian (until then, educated Serbs had been using Serbian Slavic, Russian Slavic and hybrid Russian–Serbian language). Although he wrote in Serbian Ijekavian accent, the majority of Serbs have adopted Ekavian accent, which is dominant in Serbia. Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia, as well as Montenegrins, use the Ijekavian accent.

The Bosnian is only currently beginning to take shape. The Bosniak idiom can be seen as a transition between Serbian Ijekavian and Croatian varieties, with some specific traits. After the collapse of Yugoslavia, Bosniaks affirmed their wish to stylise their own standard language, based on the Neo-Štokavian dialect, but reflecting their characteristics—from phonetics to semantics.

Also, the contemporary situation is unstable with regard to the accentuation, since phoneticians have observed that the 4-accents speech has, in all likelihood, shown to be increasingly unstable, which resulted in proposals that a 3-accents norm be prescribed. This is particularly true for Croatian, where, contrary to all expectations, the influence of Čakavian and Kajkavian dialects on the standard language has been waxing, not waning, in the past 50–70 years.

The Croatian, Serbian, and Bosnian standard variants, although all based on the East Herzegovinian subdialect of Neo-Štokavian and mutually intelligible, do differ slightly, as is the case with other pluricentric languages (English, Spanish, German and Portuguese, among others), but not to a degree which would justify considering them as different languages. Their structures are grammatically and phonologically almost identical, but have differences in vocabulary and semantics. See Differences between standard Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian.

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 brackets) in the middle of the sentence represents the difference between Ekavian and Ijekavian accents, whereas the second option in the middle represents the difference between Serbian and Croatian norms, respectively.)

Another example is:

English: Cooking salt is a compound of sodium and chlorine.

Croatian: Kuhinjska sol je spoj natrija i klora.

Serbian: Kuhinjska so je jedinjenje natrijuma i hlora.

Bosnian: Kuhinjska so je spoj natrija i hlora.