Younger Ikavian
Shtokavian Serbo-Croatian dialect
Younger Ikavian (Serbo-Croatian: mlađi ikavski), also called Western Ikavian/Western Neoshtokavian Ikavian (zapadni ikavski/zapadni novoštokavski ikavski), or Bosnian–Dalmatian dialect (bosansko-dalmatinski dijalekt), is a subdialect of Shtokavian Serbo-Croatian spoken primarily by Croats in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Italy. It is spoken to a lesser extent by Bosniaks and rarely by Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Most speakers use the Latin alphabet.
Area of use
In Croatia, it is spoken in pockets of Gorski Kotar, south of Novi Vinodolski in the Lika hinterland, Kordun, central Slavonia, Dalmatia, and in small pockets on the Dalmatian islands of Šolta, Brač, Hvar, and Korčula.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, it is spoken west of the rivers of Bosna and Neretva, in the Bačka region of Serbia and Hungary (inc. Budapest), and in Molise, Italy.
Characteristics
This dialect is a sub-dialect of the Shtokavian dialect group, specifically the western sub-group. It is a descendant of Western Shtokavian, which was spoken in parts of Dalmatia, Western Bosnia and Western Herzegovina. Western Shtokavian had several typically western features like Schakavism, Ikavism, a reflex "j", an acute accent, which makes it closely related to the Chakavian dialects.
Although one of the dialect's characteristics is its Ikavian yat reflex (*/ě/ > /i/), there do exist some local differences with rare examples of the Ekavian or Ijekavian reflex.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Younger Ikavian” as shtokavian Serbo-Croatian dialect. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3449155. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Younger Ikavian” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.