Chakavian dialect: Encyclopedia II - Chakavian dialect - History

Chakavian dialect - History

Čakavian is the oldest Croatian dialect that had made visible appearance in legal documents — as early as 1275("Istrian land survey")[ http://www.istrianet.org/istria/history/istarski_razvod/index.htm ] and 1288 ("Vinodol codex"), the predominantly vernacular čakavian is recorded, mixed with elements of Church Slavic. Proto-čakavian can be traced back to 1100 and Baška tablet.

Initially, čakavian dialect covered much wider area than today — the major part of central and southern Croatia, as well as western Bosnia and Herzegovina. During and after Ottoman intrusion and subsequent warfare (15th-18th centuries), the čakavian area has become greatly reduced, so it is now spoken in a much smaller area, as described above.

In more than eight centuries čakavian has, understandably, undergone many phonetic, morphological and syntactical changes, and yet, contemporary dialectology is particularly interested in it since it has retained accentuation system characterized by the proto-Slavic new rising accent and the old position of stress.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki