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You have now some basic knowledge of Croatian, and you are going to enjoy some popular Croatian tune you discovered on YouTube™. To your surprise, it contains some strange words and forms.
You look up the lyrics and find words that are not in your pocket dictionary. Then you look them up in an online dictionary, but it does not help either! What is going on?
Chances are, you picked up a song that’s not in Standard Croatian, but in a dialect – language particular to some region (this is a bit confusing, since any language is particular to a region; what is called a ‘language’, and what ‘dialect’ is simply a matter of convenience; also, dialects are usually not used by governments). There are many dialects, but there’s a big group of them, that have a characteristic i sound, and are therefore called Ikavian.
Ikavian dialects are usually found on islands and coast, cities Split and Zadar, but also inland, and in parts of Istria. Simply said, where Standard Croatian has ije or je, they have i instead. For example (I’ve listed only nominative forms):
Standard word | Ikavian |
---|---|
d |
dite ▶ |
dvije two (f) | dvi ▶ |
l |
lip ▶ |
ml |
mliko ▶ |
vr |
vrime ▶ |
djeca children | dica ▶ |
gdje where | di / gdi ▶ |
nedjelja Sunday | nedilja |
Sound clips in this chapter are recorded by a native speaker from Split, Croatia. As you can hear, short and long vowels are clearly distinguished (long i in dite vs. short in dica – corresponding to standard spellings ije vs je).
There’s no change for verbs that have -ije in their pers-3 and the -i- comes from the infinitive, such as:
piti (pije) drink
brijati (brije) shave
Verbs having infinitives in -jeti in Standard Croatian have -i- in all forms and appear regular in Ikavian; this includes the Ikavian version of razumjeti understand:
razumiti understand viditi see živiti live etc. | regular verbs in Ikavian |
There are a couple of words where just the Standard re is changed to ri:
Standard word | Ikavian |
---|---|
mreža net | mriža ▶ |
prestati (prestane) perf. stop | pristati (pristane) |
rezati (reže) impf. cut | rizati (riže) |
sreća happiness, luck | srića ▶ |
trebati impf. need/should | tribati ▶ |
usred in the middle of | usrid ▶ |
jesti eat | jisti |
orah walnut | orih |
Ikavian pristati stop looks like another verb from the same family, meaning consent, agree – prefixes pre- and pri- have merged in Ikavian! Of course, this doesn’t apply to every re in every word – these words have to be learned.
There are some words where it isn’t re vs ri, as in the two rows in the table above. Perhaps confusingly, this applies also to the negative present tense of the verb imati have and to indefinite pronouns/adjectives like neki and nešto:
Standard word | Ikavian |
---|---|
nemaš pres-2 you don’t have | nimaš |
neki adj. some | niki |
nešto something | ništo |
Why is it so? The answer is a bit of history. 900 years ago (or maybe a bit more) South Slavic dialects from the Alps to the Black Sea – covering today Slovenia, Bulgaria and everything in between – had one more vowel. We’re not sure how it was exactly pronounced, and it likely varied across that vast region; we’re sure it existed, because some old inscriptions had a special letter for it. In Latin script, it’s usually written as ě, that is, yet another letter with a weird hat (blame Czechs).
For some reason, that vowel changed its pronounciation, and in a big part of Croatia and today Bosnia-Herzegovina it changed to i. So older vrěme, trěbati and lěp changed to vrime, tribati and lip; we find the first written Ikavian forms in the 12th century.
(A couple of centuries later, when forced of the Ottoman Empire were attacking these regions, many people fled to other regions, including Istria, so we find Ikavian speech in Istria as well, where it was originally not found.)
However, in some other dialects – which were used to standardize Croatian spelling and pronunciation – ě changed – depending on the word, whether the vowel was long or short, and what sounds preceded it – to e, je or ije; in the word for walnut, it changed to a. In verbs like grějati heat it changed to i, so we got grijati, which coincides with the Ikavian form.
It’s interesting there are dialects in Croatia where the vowel ě – at least in traditional speech in villages – is a separate vowel even today. Such dialects are mostly found in the wider Zagreb area, and will be briefly introduced later. So much about history for now...
Many Ikavian dialects also have specific past-m forms: instead of -o, they have -a and -ja:
verb | Std. past-m | Ikavian |
---|---|---|
biti (je² +) be | bio | bija ▶ |
imati have | imao | ima ▶ |
vidjeti see | vidio | vidija ▶ |
When the past-m in Standard Croatian ends in -ao, in such dialects it ends in only -a (and that -a is then always pronounced long, e.g. in ima above). When other vowels are found before the final -a, some people write just -a, other -ja, so you will see both bia and bija.
Many such dialects are spoken on the Adriatic coast or near it, but not all dialects on the coast are Ikavian. The southermost parts (i.e. the Dubrovnik area) is not Ikavian. This is my rough estimate of Ikavian speakers in Croatia today against the total population (as usual, each dot represents 10000 people):

(There are also dialects which are partially Ikavian, i.e. in some words you have i, in others something else; they are shown with darker gray dots.)
There’s another variation in verbs which roughly corresponds to Ikavian (but not completely): nu/ni variation. In verbs that have standard infinitives in -nuti, and pres-3 in -ne – and there are many such verbs – there’s -niti in the infinitive and forms derived from it, while the present forms are unaffected. For example, let’s take the verb gurnuti perf. push:
form | Standard | ni-form |
---|---|---|
inf | gurnuti | gurniti |
past-m | gurnuo | gurnija |
past-f | gurnula | gurnila |
pres-3 | gurne |
Furthermore, most coastal dialects, Ikavian or not, have another interesting feature: in verb and case endings, where Standard Croatian has -m, they have -n instead:
verb | Std. pres-1 | coast |
---|---|---|
biti (je² +) be | sam | san ▶ |
imati have | imam | iman ▶ |
For nouns and adjectives (example for the instrumental case):
word | Std. I | coast | |
---|---|---|---|
žena woman/wife | ženom | ženon | |
moj my | m, n | mojim | mojin |
f | mojom | mojon |
This change affects only word-final m’s: endings -mo (pres-1pl) or -ma (DLI-pl) aren’t affected.
There’s another feature that doesn’t completely overlap with the change from -m to -n: loss of lj. Instead, such dialects have usually just j:
Standard word | coast | |
---|---|---|
people | ljudi m pl. | judi |
love | ljubav f | jubav |
trouble | nevolja | nevoja |
Additionally, the consonant l is pronounced very ‘softly’, somewhere in between how lj and l are pronounced in Zagreb. (Actually, the ‘soft’ l is a tell-tale sign that someone is from Dalmatia.)
There are some specific constructions used today in Split and the surrounding area. The most common is:
u¨ + G (Split area) = std. kod¨ + G
Therefore, you often hear and read u nas instead of kod nas for at our place, here (i.e. German bei uns).
Furthermore, there are a lot of specific words in Dalmatia (this list is by no means exhaustive, there are many hundreds specific words):
Standard word | Dalmatia | |
---|---|---|
pillow | jastuk | kušin (») ▶ |
towel | ručnik (») | šugaman (») ▶ |
clock, hour | sat | ura ▶ |
plate (to eat from) | tanjur (») | pjat / pijat ▶ |
fork | vilica | pirun (») |
son’s wife | snaha | nevista |
Many of these words also appear in the Northern Adriatic, i.e. in the Rijeka area and Istria. One of the main differences is that Split area consistently uses the Standard stress system, with all shifts, etc. while in Rijeka, the ‘western’ stress prevails.
Use of Ikavian is very widespread in Split and surrounding areas in everyday communication. A lot of local musicians produce music with Ikavian words. There are even novels and newspaper columns written in Ikavian. There are movies and ‘telenovelas’ with a lot of Ikavian forms. Since such songs and ‘telenovelas’ are quite popular in countries of former Yugoslavia, everyone understands a bit of Ikavian, despite it having no official status anywhere. (There’s a small population in Northern Serbia, called Bunjevci, which is – controversially – sometimes considered a separate ethnic group in Serbia, and their language is Ikavian. They have primary schools in Ikavian.)
The difference Ikavian vs. Standard Croatian is similar to e.g. difference between Standard Serbian and Standard Croatian. However, bear in mind that there are dialects in Croatia that much more divergent, to the point of being barely understandable, having specific sounds, case forms, and so on! They will be briefly described in later chapters.
Finally, Ikavian is far from homogeneous. What is spoken on islands would be very different than what is spoken inland. Generally, on islands and smaller towns, you’ll see larger difference from the Standard and more specific forms.
There’s a difference that is completely independent of Ikavian, but some Ikavian dialects, including Dalmatian hinterland, have it: loss of h. It was replaced by either v or j, depending on the surrounding sounds, or simply lost, e.g. in the beginning of the word (I have listed only nominatives):
Standard word | h-less |
---|---|
kruh bread | kruv ▶ |
hladan adj. cold | ladan ▶ |
suh adj. dry | suv ▶ |
Today, most people in Split – especially when they speak privately – don’t have h in most words. This produces, with other differences described above, e.g. past forms tija and tila, corresponding to Standard htio and htjela.
This loss also happened in large parts of Bosnia and whole Serbia (however, Standard Serbian has restored h at the beginning of words, so it’s hladan and suv in Standard Serbian.)
There are also Ekavian dialects, where all changes are similar to ones described above, but have e instead of i (lep, etc.). In these dialects, the vowel ě merged with the ordinary e almost always (but in some words and endings, it changed to i). They prevail in Serbia, and the Standard Serbian in Serbia is Ekavian; the verb meaning heat is grejati there. You can find more about Ekavian in A9 Bosnian, Serbian and Montenegrin.
This overview of Ikavian was intentionally brief and light; there are whole books written about various dialects, mostly dictionaries of local speech for some town or region. Unfortunately, little is available online.
Please don’t think ‘Ikavian equals ‘Dalmatian’. For example, Dubrovnik is a city in Dalmatia, but the dialect spoken there is very different from one spoken in Split, and by no means Ikavian.

This chapter was moved. Here are comments from the old location.
ReplyDeleteCez2 7/9/15 20:52
Has there ever been any discussion about elevating the ikavian pronunciation to Standard Croatian (similar to what I think Serbia does with ijekavian and ekavian)? Or has it never been a political issue?
Daniel N. 28/9/15 09:36
It was an issue in 19th century, and comes up even now once a while.
It's interesting that even court proceedings in Ikavian areas have a lot of local words in them, to dismay of judges from other areas (who are even holding seminars on usage of Standard words in courts in order to eliminate such practice).
The Croatian Standard is very strict and closed, it insists on words like glačalo which nobody uses.
Some years ago there was a magazine called Vrime published in Split, but despite its name, the publisher said they are not willing to "experiment" with Ikavian.
However, there are books published in Ikavian. For instance, Robert Pauletić wrote Himalaja u 77 priča using local speech of Split.
It's interesting that the same guy was later very vocal against using local dialects (mostly Zagreb, but also others) in synchronization of cartoons. He said that Zagreb dialect is influencing Dalmatian kids, that kids from Split are starting to use kaj and that is unacceptable — cartoons must be synchronized into Standard. (So much about "unity of culture").
LP Daniel
Wyrax 2/8/16 21:57
I'm ukrainian, for us ikavian dialect sounds closer because old-slavic letter "ѣ" in modern ukrainian also transformed in sound "i", this is now standart ukrainian pronunciation. But we have "ije"/"je" dialects too :)
Just wondering if the lj to j and ----m to -----n changes in Dalmacija are considered to be from Italian influences? I find these changes make it a little "smoother" to speak, whereas Standard Croatia sounds more carefully pronounced. (In general, I find Italian to be "smoother-sounding" than some Slavic languages, like Russian).
ReplyDeleteModern Italian not for sure. Maybe Venetian, but these things already happened in late Middle Ages.
DeleteAlso, Italian has both l and lj (spelled e.g. gli).
Thanks for the reply. I didn't realize these changes went back to far.
DeleteActually some characteristics go to the first known inscriptions. For example, famous 12th century inscriptions from Povlja on the island of Brač already show "Ikavian" forms.
DeleteCan Sunday also become "Nedija" in some regions of Dalmacija? (i.e. Both the i-shift and the loss of lj for j).
ReplyDeleteYes, of course!
Deletewhen in doubt if some forms are used, just enter into Google:
"nedija" site:hr
Also note that Ikavian forms are used also in parts of Istria and Rijeka area, e.g. the island of Krk, villages in Grobnik area etc. so you can find many examples there too.
DeleteThank you for your quick responses and all the hard work you do!
DeleteI was wondering if regional forms can also appear to be "uneducated" speech or if there is a stigma around using them in Croatia? For example, I once said "kjuč" instead of "ključ" and was laughed at in Bosnia. However, I don't know if this is viewed as village speech (or, perhaps, childish pronunciation) or if it's more of a rivalry between regions (e.g. Would "kjuč" be considered funny in Bosnia, but normal in Split and Dalmacija?). I did see that variation in Split/Dalmatian dictionaries, but I don't know if it is archaic.
ReplyDeleteMy family is Croatian from Dalmacija and Bosna, but i am not fluent. But, I still remember much of the sounds/words from my childhood and would like to keep as much of the natural dialect/regionalisms intact, rather than just learning standard Croatian.
Thanks again for all your help, Daniel. You do far more than what a textbook ever could!
Uh, I'm sorry about this comment, somehow it was lost in moderation and it wasn't published for more than a month...
DeleteWell this depends on the dialect. Regional forms from Dalmatia are often highly regarded because they appear in songs, novels and so on. Forms from some villages in the north have much lower status.
For example, there's a whole chapter on traditional dialects of the north:
Variations: Traditional Dialects #1
kjuč is just a normal form for lj-less dialects.
lp Daniel
So "bolje" is "boje"? Because "Boje" means also "colors", "of color" and "they fear", so how come this is without common confusion?
ReplyDeleteThere's no confusion as bolja has a falling tone, and boja rising.
DeleteFurthermore, boja is from Turkish, and Turkish words have been rare on the coast. For "paint", they often use pitura from Venetian or Italian...
Happy to see you have completed this chapter. I wonder how much čakavian is still present in Croatia, as it is less present than in the past…
ReplyDeleteI understand the need of uniformity for practical reasons… Still čakavian sounds are the ones that are closer to my heart. It was my parents’ language.