Variations: Ikavian (dite vs dijete)

N

A

DL

G

24

I

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
dijete child	dite  ▶
dvije two (f)	dvi  ▶
lijep adj. nice, beautiful	lip  ▶
mlijeko milk	mliko  ▶
vrijeme time/weather	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.

↓ Something Possibly Interesting (click to show)

Why are Ikavian songs so common in Croatia? It’s very hard to answer. Most people in Croatia don’t live in Ikavian or coastal areas. However, if we overlay the map of all contestants in the first three seasons of The Voice Croatia who made it to the live shows, where each contestant is a bigger black dot, over the population map, we have a very interesting result:

You can see how inland cities, especially Zagreb, are under-represented: Split and its vicinity have the same number of contestants as Zagreb and its vicinity, despite having 3 times fewer people! There were 6 contestants from the islands – including one from the island of Iž, having population less than 650, who sang AC/DC for her audition – and none from the Međimurje, the most northern region, despite both having roughly the same population. Out of 52 contestants, 30 come from the coast or areas close to the coast.

Likely answers are: singing is more popular in coastal areas, which includes Ikavian Split, and that styles of singing from the coast are more popular everywhere. But this only implicates further questions...

↓ Examples (click to show)

There are so many popular Croatian songs in Ikavian, that it’s hard to give just a few examples!

This hit performed by Goran Karan – Lipa si, lipa – is not about a tree (Std. lipa lime tree, tilia), but about a woman (beautiful, of course).

Za tobom noćas	For you tonight
plaču mandoline	mandolins cry
najlipša ružo	The most beautiful rose
ikad procvitala	ever blossomed
Lipa si, lipa	You’re beautiful, beautiful {to f}
anđeli ti sliče	angels look like you
Lipa si, lipa	You’re beautiful, beautiful {to f}
usne, tvoje lice	the lips, your face
Jubi me, jubi	Kiss me, kiss
i kad zora svićesvitati	even when a dawn breaks
sa neba pada	From skies fall
po nama cviće	flowers onto us
dođidoći u ponoć	Come at midnight
prođiproći kraj fontane	pass by the fountain
da misec vidi	So the Moon can see
tvoje lipe oči	your beautiful eyes
(Nenad Ninčević)

The third verse contains a phrase in the vocative case, the only case we haven’t covered so far. It’s used to directly address or call someone.

You can listen to it on YouTube™.

Another example is U prolazu In passing. It’s again a purely Ikavian song:

Pusti, neka vitar nosi	Let the wind carry
ove naše zadnje riči	These last words of ours
svitlo sja u tvojoj kosi	Light shines in your hair
tvoj me pogled i sad liči	Your look still heals me
u prolazu, u prolazu	In passing, in passing
(Jakša Fiamengo)

Note how me² is strictly placed, splitting tvoj pogled. A bit later, there are verses:

I dok čekan, tekuteći ure	And while I’m waiting, hours ‘flow’
ko zna ča i komu broje	Who knows what and whom they count

This seems obscure, but ‘flowing of hours’ is a bell on a clock-tower, ‘counting’ hours. The word ura is a bit archaic version of sat, but widely understood and used in many regions (and even found in textbooks).

However, the word ča what is specific for a group of dialects that are named after it (called Čakavian or Chakavian in English). They have a number of interesting features, which are almost completely absent in this song. These dialects were much used in Croatian Renaissance literature. (You maybe recall that ča is an extremely archaic form of što, from 28 Asking Who and What). They will be covered later.

You can listen to it on YouTube™ – check the performance by Tamara Obrovac, generally considered outstanding.

A venerated tradition in Dalmatia is klapa – groups singing a capella. They are mostly men, but they are women groups too.

This song, A vitar puše (the form vitar is obviously Ikavian), contains some interesting features:

Su pjatom juve	With a plate of soup
kad projduprojti dani	When days pass
i stvari luše	And fancy things
ova nas jubav	This love
jača i rani	Strengthens and feeds us
a vitar pušepuhati!	And the wind is blowing!
(Jakša Fiamengo)

You can see here loss of h, e.g. rani instead of hrani.

There’s another interesting form: projdu instead of prođu. This is an older form which is retained in many dialects – in many places – but is today absent from Dalmatia, except maybe on the islands. In that verse, the verb is placed before the subject, which continues into the next verse, so these verses mean when days and fancy things pass i.e. when we get old and poor.

This is actually a pop song, performed by Oliver Dragojević, but check the version by women from Klapa Neverin on YouTube™.

All songs above were modern, late 20th century works, both lyrics and melody. The next song, Ju te san se zajubija I fell in love with you is a traditional song:

Ju te san se	With you I’ve
zajubija	fallen in love {m}
druge ne bi	Another one I wouldn’t
poželija	wish {m}
cesarica da bi bila	Even if she were an empress

There’s an interesting (and archaic) feature: the verb poželiti perf. wish (Ikavian form) uses G (druge) instead of A (drugu) for its object, when negated. (This is not a classic perf. verb, as you cannot "complete" wish: such verbs will be explained in 68 Sneeze Once and Start Blooming.)

You can check a performance by a big choir, made of merged klapa’s on YouTube™.

There’s more. In early 21st century, the most influential group from Split – in a category of its own, kind of mixture of pop, hip-hop and traditional sounds – is The Beat Fleet, usually shortened to TBF. Any song performed by them is worth listening; their works touch a wide range of themes, including love, everyday life, drugs, urban decay, politics.

This is a kind of love song, Fantastična Fantastic (f) – about a friend who becomes a drug addict and hallucinates having a girlfriend, literally a fantasy:

Mara nije ima mobitel	Mara had no cellphone
nikad nije bia doma	he was never at home
i onda jednog jutra	And then one morning
sam ga sreasresti past-m isprid lifta	I met him in front of the elevator {m}
a Mara je bia sritan	and Mara was happy
ka nikad	like never (before)
i sta je pričat:	And he started to talk:
upozna sam	I’ve met {m}
ljubav svog života	the love of my life
prije misec dana	a month ago
kad sam se spustia	When I went down {m}
do dućana	to the store
po kruv i mliko	To get bread and milk
u onoj plastičnoj boci	in that plastic bottle
na blagajni ugleda te oči	I saw those eyes at the checkout {m}
(Aleksandar Antić)

One form is worth explaining: in parts of Dalmatia, the verb stati (stane) perf. come to stand also means start, begin.

The language in their songs is how younger people in Split actually speak, there is a lot of influence from Standard Croatian (here srea instead of Ikavian sria, prije instead of Ikavian pri, later you can hear tjedan week, a word which is traditionally not used in Dalmatia, etc.), a lot of local slang, words offensive to some (older people) etc. Check the live performance on YouTube™.

Search Post

Label :