Kajkavian

Kajkavian is a South Slavic supradialect or language spoken primarily by Croats in much of Central Croatia and Gorski Kotar.
It is part of the South Slavic dialect continuum, being transitional to the supradialects of Čakavian, Štokavian and the Slovene language. There are differing opinions over whether Kajkavian is best considered a dialect of the Serbo-Croatian language or a fully-fledged language of its own, as it is only partially mutually intelligible with either Čakavian or Štokavian and bears more similarities to Slovene; it is transitional to and fully mutually intelligible with Prekmurje Slovene and the dialects in Slovenian Lower Styria's region of Prlekija in terms of phonology and vocabulary.
Outside Croatia's northernmost regions, Kajkavian is also spoken in Austrian Burgenland and a number of enclaves in Hungary along the Austrian and Croatian border and in Romania.

Name

The term "Kajkavian" and the broader classification of what defines this dialect are relatively modern constructs. The dialect's name originates from the interrogative pronoun "kaj". The names of the other supradialects of Serbo-Croatian also originate from their respective variants of the interrogative pronoun. The pronouns are just general indicators and not strict identifiers of the dialects. Some Kajkavian dialects use "ča", while certain Čakavian dialects, like the Buzet dialect in Istria, use "kaj". The names of these dialects are based on the most common pronoun used, not an absolute rule.
Autonyms used throughout history by various Kajkavian writers have been manifold, ranging from Slavic to Croatian or Illyrian. The naming went through several phases, with the Slavic-based name initially being dominant. Over time, the name Croatian started gaining ground mainly during the 17th century, and by the beginning of the 18th century, it had supplanted the older name Slavic. The name also followed the same evolution in neighboring Slovene Prekmurje and some other border areas in what is now Slovenia, although there the name Slovene-Croatian existed as well. The actual term Kajkavian, including as an adjective, was invented in the 19th century and is credited to Serbian philologist Đuro Daničić, while it was generally used and promoted in the 20th century works by Croatian writer Miroslav Krleža. The term is today accepted by its speakers in Croatia.
In English, Kajkavian is sometimes spelled as Kaykavian, Kaikavian or Caicavian.

Classification

Historically, the classification of Kajkavian has been a subject of much debate regarding both the question of whether it ought to be considered a dialect or a language, as well as the question of what its relation is to neighboring vernaculars.
The problem with classifying Kajkavian within South Slavic stems in part from its both structural differences and closesness with neighboring Čakavian and Štokavian speeches as well as its historical closeness to Slovene speeches. Some Slavists maintain that when the separation of Western South Slavic speeches happened, they separated into five divergent groups — Slovene, Kajkavian, Čakavian, Western Štokavian and Eastern Štokavian, as a result of this, throughout history Kajkavian has often been categorized differently, either a node categorized together with Serbo-Croatian or Slovene. Furthermore, there do exist few old isoglosses that separate almost all Slovene speeches from all other Western South Slavic dialects, and do exist innovations exist common to Kajkavian, Čakavian, and Western Štokavian that would separate them from Slovene. Croatian linguist Stjepan Ivšić has used Kajkavian vocabulary and accentuation, which significantly differs from that of Štokavian, as evidence to be a language in its own right. Josip Silić, one of the main initiators behind the standardisation of Croatian, also regards Kajkavian as a distinct language by dint of its having significantly different morphology, syntax and phonology from the official Štokavian-based standard. However, Silić's theorization about three languages and systems of Croatian, based on Ferdinand de Saussure and Eugenio Coșeriu concepts, is criticized for being exaggerated, incomprehensible and logically non-existent. According to Ranko Matasović, Kajkavian is equally Croatian as Čakavian and Štokavian dialects. Mate Kapović notes that the dialects are practical and provisory linguistic inventions which should not be misunderstood and extrapolated outside the context of the dialect continuum.
According to Mijo Lončarić, the formation of the Proto-Kajkavian linguistic and territorial unit would be around the 10th century, until the 12th century it is a separate node of Croatian-Serbian language family, between the 13th and 15th century when formed as a dialect with main features known today, until the end of the 17th century when lost a part of spoken territory, and from the 17th-18th century till present time when regained part of lost territory by forming new transitional dialects.

Characteristics

The Kajkavian speech area borders in the northwest on the Slovene language and in the northeast on the Hungarian language. In the east and southeast it is bordered by Štokavian dialects roughly along a line that used to serve as the border between Civil Croatia and the Habsburg Military Frontier. Finally, in the southwest, it borders Čakavian along the Kupa and Dobra rivers. It is thought by M. Lončarić that historically these borders extended further to the south and east, for example, the eastern border is thought to have extended at least well into modern-day Slavonia to the area around the town of Pakrac and Slatina, while East of it transitional Kajkavian-Štokavian dialects. The transitional dialects during Ottoman invasion and migrations almost completely vanished.
The Croatian capital, Zagreb, has historically been a Kajkavian-speaking area, and Kajkavian is still in use by its older and by its younger population. Modern Zagreb speech has come under considerable influence from Štokavian. The vast intermingling of Kajkavian and standard Štokavian in Zagreb and its surroundings has led to problems in defining the underlying structure of those speech-groups. As a result, many of the urban speeches have been labelled either Kajkavian koine or Kajkavian–Štokavian rather than Kajkavian or Štokavian. Additionally, the forms of speech in use exhibit significant sociolinguistic variation. Research suggests that younger Zagreb-born speakers of the Kajkavian koine tend to consciously use more Kajkavian features when speaking to older people, showing that such features are still in their linguistic inventory even if not used at all times. However, the Kajkavian koine is distinct from Kajkavian as spoken in non-urban areas, and the mixing of Štokavian and Kajkavian outside of urban settings is much rarer and less developed. The Kajkavian koine has also been named Zagreb Štokavian by some.
As a result of the previously mentioned mixing of dialects, various Kajkavian features and characteristics have found their way into the standard Štokavian spoken in those areas. For example, some of the prominent features are the fixed stress-based accentual system without distinctive lengths, the merger of /č/ and /ć/ and of /dž/ and /đ/, vocabulary differences as well as a different place of stress in words. The Zagreb variety of Štokavian is considered by some to enjoy parallel prestige with the prescribed Štokavian variety. Because of that, speakers whose native speech is closer to the standard variety often end up adopting the Zagreb speech for various reasons.
Kajkavian is closely related to Slovene – and to Prekmurje Slovene in particular. Higher amounts of correspondences between the two exist in inflection and vocabulary. The speakers of the Prekmurje dialect are Slovenes and Hungarian Slovenes who belonged to the Archdiocese of Zagreb during the Habsburg era. They used Kajkavian as their liturgical language, and by the 18th century, Kajkavian had become the standard language of Prekmurje. Moreover, literary Kajkavian was also used in neighboring Slovene Styria during the 17th and 18th centuries, and in parts of it, education was conducted in Kajkavian.
As a result of various factors, Kajkavian has numerous differences compared to Štokavian:

Kajkavian has a prothetic v- generalized in front of u. This feature has been attested in Glagolitic texts very early on, already around the 15th century. A similar feature exists in colloquial Czech, as well as in many Slovene dialects, especially from the Pannonian, Styrian and Littoral dialect groups.
Proto-Slavic *dj resulted in Kajkavian j as opposed to Štokavian đ.
The nasal *ǫ has evolved into a closed /o/ in Kajkavian.
Common Slavic *v and *v- survived as v in Kajkavian, whereas in Štokavian they resulted in u and u-, and in Čakavian they gave way to va. The same feature is maintained in most Slovene dialects.
Kajkavian has retained /č/ in front of /r/.
Kajkavian /ž/ in front of a vowel turns into /r/. A similar evolution happened in Slovene, Čakavian as well as Western Štokavian, however the latter does not use it in its standard form.
Kajkavian retains -jt and -jd clusters. This feature is shared by standard Slovene.
Like most Slavic varieties, Kajkavian exhibits final-obstruent devoicing, however it is not consistently spelled out
Diminutive suffixes in Kajkavian are -ek, -ec, -eko, -eco. The same diminutive suffixes are found in Slovene.
Negative past-tense construction in Kajkavian deviates syntactically from neighboring speeches in its placing of the negative particle. Some argued that this might indicate a remnant of the Pannonian Slavic system. Similar behavior occurs in Slovak.
Some variants of Kajkavian have a different first-person plural present-tense suffix, -mę such as the Bednja dialect, although most Kajkavian sub-dialects retain the suffix -mo.
Relative pronouns differ from neighboring dialects and languages. Kajkavian uses kateri, tęri and šteri depending on sub-dialect.
The genitive plural in Štokavian adds an -a to the end, whereas Kajkavian retains the old form.
Kajkavian retains the older locative plural.
The loss of the dual is considered to be significantly more recent than in Štokavian.
Kajkavian has no vocative case. This feature is shared with standard Slovene and most Slovene dialects.
So-called s-type nouns have been retained as a separate declension class in Kajkavian contrasted from the neuter due to the formant -es- in oblique cases. The same is true for Slovene.
Kajkavian has no aorist. The same is true for Slovene.
The supine has been retained as distinctive from infinitive, as in Slovene. The infinitive suffixes are -ti, -či whereas their supine counterparts are -t, -č. The supine and the infinitive are often stressed differently. The supine is used with verbs of motion.
The future tense is formed with the auxiliary biti and the -l participle as in standard Slovene and similar to Czech and Slovak.
Modern urban Kajkavian speeches tend to have stress as the only significant prosodic feature as opposed to the Štokavian four-tone system.
Kajkavian exhibits various syntactic influences from German.
The Slavic prefix u- has a vi- reflex in some dialects, similar to Czech vý-. This feature sets Kajkavian apart from Slovene, which shares the prefix -iz with Štokavian.

In addition to the above list of characteristics that set Kajkavian apart from Štokavian, research suggests possible a closer relation with Kajkavian and the Slovak language, especially with the Central Slovak dialects upon which standard Slovak is based. As modern-day Hungary used to be populated by Slavic-speaking peoples prior to the arrival of Hungarians, there have been hypotheses on possible common innovations of future West and South Slavic speakers of that area. Kajkavian is the most prominent of the South Slavic speeches in sharing the most features that could potentially be common Pannonian innovations.
Some Kajkavian words bear a closer resemblance to other Slavic languages such as Russian than they do to Štokavian or Čakavian. For instance gda seems to be at first glance unrelated to kada, however when compared to Russian когда, Slovene kdaj, or Prekmurje Slovene gda, kda, the relationship becomes apparent. Kajkavian kak and tak are exactly like their Russian cognates and Prekmurje Slovene compared to Štokavian, Čakavian, and standard Slovene kako and tako..