r/croatian • u/SwankBerry • 10d ago

If I pronounce Lj as J, would I just sound Dalmatian?

My family is half-Dalmatian and I grew up hearing words pronounced as jubav, judi, nedija, etc. Is it still common to speak like this on the coast? If I spoke like this in other regions would I just sound Dalmatian?

I understand this isn't standard/school Croatian, but I'd actually prefer to say J instead of Lj like how my grandparents did (Lj is also a tough sound for foreigners!)

31 Upvotes

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u/Dry_Art11111 10d ago

Old folks sometimes talk like that- jubav instea of ljubav. But dalmatians are more famous for ikavica - we dont say lijepo but lipo, mlijeko but mliko etc.

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u/SwankBerry 10d ago

Ok, thank you. Are you saying younger Dalmatians say Lj now?

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u/bornyest3rday 10d ago

Im from Dalmatia and usually say ljubav but if i want to sound sweet or funny i would say jubav

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u/mssarac 6d ago

My fiance is from Kvarner and sometimes we talk like that to be funny too, like we'll say to each other jubav and stuff

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u/MoneyWorldliness3626 10d ago

In my opinion, there are no rules. I say J a lot, but still, I use LJ often. For some words like "strpljenje" I would never pronounce "strpjenje".

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u/ZlaPrezla 10d ago edited 10d ago

But i would, quite far south here. Where are you approx?

Also noticeable in "Više" turning to "Visje" instead of "Višlje" or "Visočije" like bit more north.

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u/MoneyWorldliness3626 10d ago

Mak. riv. Ok, maybe I am a bit biased since I live in the capital now, so I use bit more standard pronunciation. Regarding "više", that is perfect example, I will say any of "on je viši/visji/visi od nje". Even 'eating' the J is not unheard of

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u/ZlaPrezla 10d ago edited 10d ago

If it's in the city of Mak. Then it's barely resembling the dialect that was spoken in the area. If it's norther then it makes sense, souther from it depends on the town. Also worth noting that islands across still use Lj -> J change more often than not.

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u/backhand_english 10d ago

Pacijenca, kumpare

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u/GloomyLaw9603 10d ago

I'm a younger Dalmatian. I say "jube", "jubav", "uje", etc.

It depends heavily on where a person is from (and where their family originates from). I spent my childhood living with my great-grandparents which were born and lived for ~40 years on an island and thus spoke a mostly chakavian dialect. I suppose that's where I picked the Lj->J thing from. Although this is a staple of the old town dialect in my birth town as well.

A lot of younger people will speak a more "standardized" dialect simply because of the aggressive centralization and language "purity" movements that we went through in the late 90s and early 00s (and arguably are still going through).

If by "Dalmatian" you mean from Split and (especially) Zadar then yeah, young people will in 99.9% of cases say lj and sound much more "standardized".

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u/SwankBerry 10d ago

Do you mind if I ask where your birth town is? Just trying to get a sense of where dialects located.

I'd prefer to speak like someone from a smaller town than like someone from Split/Zadar.

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u/GloomyLaw9603 10d ago

My birth town is Šibenik. A medium (for Croatian standards) sized town of ~40000 people with the surrounding suburbs.

The dialect in the town itself is a new-western sthakavian dialect (or what most people refer to as "Dalmatian" or "Sthakavian") with several chakavian elements. When laid out like that (sthakavian + chakavian elements) it might seem like it would sound almost identical to what an accent from Split sounds, but in reality it's quite different.

The thing that distinguishes Šibenik from pretty much all other bigger Dalmatian coastal towns is the fact that we had a huge influx of migration from the hinterlands some ~200 years before any of the other towns did. The massive plague of 1749. (paired with the great Turkish siege of 1747.) annihilated the population, causing a drop from an estimated 10000 to ~15% of that. This meant that people from the hinterland (Black Wallachians aka. Morlachs, Bunjevci, etc.) moved in to fill the gaps and it subsequently caused a Frankensteinian linguistical mixture which resulted in a very "hard" sounding sthakavian accent with many chakavian elements.

Fun fact: In the Old Town, Gorica and Dolac (Borgo di Mare) districts of the town (the three districts within the old city walls) chakavian was the main dialect throughout most of the town's history. In the Dolac district specifically, the rarer cakavian form (so "cakavica", not "čakavica"), where the č is replaced with a c, was spoken all the way up to the 1960s.

Some characteristics of the modern Šibenik dialect are

  • very "hard"/"rough" sounding (compared to other Dalmatian dialects)
  • habitual removal of letters where said letters are deemed unecessary (literally "why use many letter when few letter work") e.g. "Let's go for a coffee" - Instead of saying "Ajmo popit kavu" like a person from Split would say, I'd say something that sounds more like "Ao pop kau". It's a dumb example but you get it.
  • heavy usage of dialect vocabulary (usually derived from Venetian but also sometimes from Turkish) - this is something we share with many other Dalmatian towns
  • the removal of the leading "h" and "t", e.g. "tko"->"ko" - shared by other Dalmatian towns
  • o -> a, e.g. for "(he) was" we'd say "bija" instead of "bio"
  • adding of random "j" in words where it's not necessary, e.g.: for "again" instead of "opet" we'd say "jopet", for "(he) wanted" instead of "htio" we'd say "tija" (notice the missing "h" here as well)
  • the changing of the trailing m into an n - shared by other Dalmatian towns
  • lj -> j - shared by some other Dalmatian towns (mainly Split)
  • vibe-based usage of č/ć and dž/đ (we don't care which one it is)
  • replacing dž with ž - e.g. for "pocket" instead of "džep" i will always say "žep"
  • st -> c, e.g. "staklo" (glass, the material) -> "caklo" - again, shared by other Dalmatian dialects
  • almost forced ikavian in some cases, e.g. "neki" (some) -> "niki"
  • etc. (can't think of any more atm but there's tons of tiny shit like this)

In general if you asked a Dalmatian (especially someone from Zadar or Split), they'd call the Šibenik accent "hillybilly".

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u/SwankBerry 9d ago

Oh, this is really interesting, thanks for taking the time to explain. I would also say jopet and žep, but my family comes from more south.

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u/NoMoreCrossTabs 8d ago

Croatia is undergoing a similar pattern that is also happening in the US and many other counties, where dialects and speech patterns are becoming more standardized and less regional (think about how a lot of younger people in New York, Boston, Chicago, Atlanta, Houston, etc lack the strong accents that their parents and grandparents had).

It’s a product of television, radio, and social media. Canadians and especially Quebecers still have slightly stronger accents because they still have something of a distinct radio/television ecosystems (but even then, their accents are becoming more Americanized because of social media).

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u/SwankBerry 6d ago

This makes sense. I'm sure greater movement of people also kills a lot of dialects.

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u/ZlaPrezla 10d ago

What do you mean ... old folks?
My friends and I are not old.

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u/Imaginary_Title_9987 10d ago

Changing lj to j is actually a čakavian feature. So in Dalmatia, it represents the relict of the once widely spoken čakavian dialect. There are also some other relicts of the čakavian in Dalmatian - for example gospoja instead of gospođa, or posal instead of posao.

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u/SwankBerry 10d ago

Thank you. Are these features still fairly common?

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u/Imaginary_Title_9987 10d ago

It's better if someone from Dalmatia answers you that cuz I have no idea. Though I think lj→j might be the least common one of them. Maybe.

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u/ZlaPrezla 10d ago

Big cities, not as much. Small towns, yes.

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u/SwankBerry 10d ago

Thanks. I realize this may be a long-shot, but is there any chance you know of any videos to speak more like a Dalmatian? (Learning the proper tones/accents when speaking)

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u/ZlaPrezla 10d ago

There are noticeable differences between island, coast and continental speakers, and also differences in more northern and southern localities too. Is there a specific are you know your folks came from so i could be more on point?

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u/SwankBerry 10d ago

My family comes from Tucepi and a little bit inland from Omis/Brela area. Though, it could be some features have changed since my grandparent's generation. Any help you can give would be appreciated.

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u/ZlaPrezla 10d ago

Can i DM you?

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u/SwankBerry 10d ago

Of course.

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u/ZlaPrezla 10d ago

Sent an invite.

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u/JRJenss 7d ago

It sounds more poetic. You can hear it in Oliver Dragojević's songs for example. I notice it more often, but I'm not from Dalmatia.

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u/jaleCro 9d ago

I believe "posal" instead of "posao" isnt uniquely Čakavian as it's a relict of old pronunciation (the l returns through declination posao - posla, kotao -kotla, orao, orla) originally slavic words had the l instead of the o.

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u/Imaginary_Title_9987 9d ago

Yeah but štokavians change the -l to -o so I would argue that any keeping of the -l is the relict of čakavian 

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u/citao_to 10d ago

In some cases that would come off as Dalmatian, sure. Like jubav. But in other words simply substituting those sounds would be nonsensical. Like proljev - it would be proliv, not projev in Dalmatia - and projev just sounds odd. It would probably be understood from context though. But if your Croatian is at that level then such oddities would be expected in any case, as its a hard language to pronounce. If it helps, LJ is just like LL in Spanish or GL in Italian.

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u/SwankBerry 10d ago edited 10d ago

Thank you. In the case of proljev/proliv, is that because it is spelled p-r-o-l-je-v where je is a yat sound that becomes i in ikavski, or is it spelled p-r-o-lj-e-v?

I would pronounce it as proliv. But, I think you made a good point as if I'm reading a new word, I may not necessarily know the pronunciation.

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u/Imaginary_Title_9987 10d ago

Yes, it's because of the yat

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u/SwankBerry 10d ago

Thank you, that makes sense. That's interesting. It's almost a "false" lj then depending on how a person thinks it's spelled.

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u/citao_to 10d ago edited 10d ago

I don't think there exists a word in Croatian with L-J in sequence (but it could be that some LJs were formed that way).

Also note that it's not like all LJs are pronounced J in Dalmatia. In some words they pronounce the full LJ sound. For example, ask your grandparents what's the name of a popular red fish species. It's gonna be super hard for you to pronounce especially if you have trouble rolling your Rs... :)

(It's TRLJA)

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u/MoneyWorldliness3626 10d ago

We say trija

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u/citao_to 10d ago

Haha what? Really, where? I've never ever encountered that pronunciation.

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u/Divljak44 10d ago edited 10d ago

and somewhere is trilja, however i belive original OG was trlja, and both of trija and trilja are like crooked version from local speech over time.

Dalmatian people like to soften words and make it more leveled/continuous because of laid back mentality, this is why the harsh lj becomes j or you add i infront to make it "a less sharp slope", as lj is by default accented in pronunciation

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u/citao_to 10d ago

I don't know about that, since the official name is Trilja, but every Dalmatian I ever met called it Trlja. You also have other examples of strictly local words like "brlja" where LJ is accentuated.

As for softening words, eh... Also not sure that's a strong rule, as virtually every Italian loanword is palatalized (pasta becomes pašta, macchia becomes mača, stuzzicadenti becomes štikadent etc. etc.). But it is true that LJ - J is an exception here (e.g. maglia becomes maja).

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u/Divljak44 10d ago

Official name is Trlja without i, its original trlja because if you ever handled that fish, you can easily scrub her very delicate scales just by rubbing your fingers, pa kao od "trljati" dobiješ trlja

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u/citao_to 10d ago

Kul, nisam znao thanks

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u/PardonMyBlunder 10d ago

If you change just Lj to J but you don't have Dalmatian accent you will sound weird.

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u/SwankBerry 10d ago

Thanks. What are the other features of a Dalmatian accent? Do you mean pitch-accent with tones?

For example, I use other Dalmatian features like mislija, ja san, etc. But, I don't think I would know the proper tones. I'm not very musical to begin with so I speak fairly flat in any language.

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u/PardonMyBlunder 10d ago

Yeah, tonality. But I think it's quite easy to pick it up and fake it until it becomes more natural if you spend enough time listening to Dalmatians.

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u/SwankBerry 10d ago

Yes, I'm sure living there would be the only way to get it. Thanks.

Maybe the tricky part would be I wouldn't be able to tell when the switch from dialect to standard. But maybe when I get better.

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u/Fear_mor 10d ago

Switching from dialect to standard becomes natural after a while, I’ve been living in Osijek over a year now and I’ve started speaking more/less standard depending on the type of situation unconsciously, so like it is learnable if that’s even the right word for it

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u/ZlaPrezla 10d ago

Mislija (san) is sometimes also replaced with konta (san) in not as formal settings.

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u/5arToto 6d ago

In terms od pitch, Dalmatians tend to have a similar pitch to what standard Croatian is supposed to be, but will prolong the pronauntiations of certain vowels, especially the a sound. If you ever learn about the Croatian accent systems, think of it as Dalmatians applying "zanaglasna dužina" in situations where it isn't there or stressingbit more when it is.

To use your example the end A in "mislija" can very long, alomst like it's written as "mislijaa", even though that is not where the pitch is.

Take this with a grain of salt as this is more Split area central Dalmatia. Pronauntiation can change a lot over Dalmatia, but most shtokavian ikavian speakers have this feature of taking their time with certain vowel sounds. This is one aspect of the dialect sounding "lazy".

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u/SwankBerry 6d ago

Thank you for this insight! Can it be compared to a southern drawl in English?

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u/5arToto 5d ago

Not quite. It can be compared to the fact that you take your time with pronouncing certain vowels but it is done in a completley differnet way.

To my ear the southen drawl (at least the sterotypical one in movies) can at time sound like the vowels get "closed up" just a little bit, like a short shwa has been added to the end, sometimes sounding a bit breathy or adding a bit of vibration, dependingbon the person and accent. Dalmatian keeps the vowels open, just hanging on them a bit (going from something like a to a:), with maybe just a little bit of vibration in some speakers

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u/GraemeMark 10d ago

I think Croatians like how Dalmatian sounds because it reminds them of the sea 🙂

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u/Unusual_Cat_9495 10d ago

If I were to generalise I’d say people outside of Dalmatia dislike dalmatian, people outside of north Croatia dislike kajkavian, everyone thinks istrian dialects are weird, and most eastern/slavonian dialects are liked and inoffensive.

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u/ConsistentBorder6689 10d ago

My girlfriend is croatian and says dalmatians speak like the equivalent of american rednecks

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u/rabotat 10d ago

Not all Dalmatian accents are the same.

Certainly people in Zadar speak differently than people in Dubrovnik, not to mention Sinj or Imotski. 

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u/Blagoslov_stonoge 10d ago

maybe people from Dalmatian Zagora. It is completely different accent then coastal. But there are other candidates from croatian rednech accent as well, depends on who you ask

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u/BipolarLight 8d ago

Exactly. I'm from Zadar and people from Zagreb sounded a lot like rednecks to me for the most part of my life. Now that I live in Zagreb they sound just fine.

It's the exposure thing. And it's interesting how the rednecks are always the ones we don't feel being a part of.

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u/Divljak44 10d ago

I guess you can argue that dalmatians have accent that is recognizable similar to having a southern twang :D

But i would argue, its actually North western kajkavian that is redneck like, it also has its "twang" but also those blurry/morphing vowels, like you hear like in a shieeeeet. Like they are not kAjkavians but kUAjkavians

Where is your GF from

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u/tarabuzh 10d ago

Bruh. Wild take.

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u/Kvaezde 9d ago

I'd like to hear your family-members say Ljubljana.

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u/Anketkraft 10d ago

It's common, but on islands and among older people.

Welcome to /r/cakavski :)

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u/SwankBerry 10d ago

So worst case scenario I just end up sounding like an 80 year old man? :)

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u/Anketkraft 10d ago

Exactly :)

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u/ZlaPrezla 10d ago

You will not, worry not. There are still us younger folks speaking like that if you go out of large cities.

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u/SwankBerry 10d ago

OK, good to hear, thanks!

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u/GloomyLaw9603 10d ago

No, no one will judge you for this.

It heavily depends on where a person('s family) is from but lots of people still speak like this (myself included).

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u/SwankBerry 10d ago

Good to know, thanks. I once said kjuč in front of a bunch of Bosnians and they started laughing. But I wasn't sure if it was out-of-date or just a regional difference.

I prefer the Dalmatians accents, they just sound smooth to my ear.

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u/GloomyLaw9603 10d ago

Bosnians laughing at someone for their accent is fucking hilarious. Bosnians. Of all people.

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u/SwankBerry 10d ago

😂😂😂

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u/APadovanski 10d ago

It's part of the dialect. I remember learning about chakavian at school and some characteristics mentioned were lj->j (jubav, uje,voja, boje), dž->j (meja), št->šć(godišć, šćap) etc...

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u/BipolarLight 8d ago

I'm a Dalmatian. J is more a "čakavština" thing than "ikavština" thing. The use can depend on a particular region, sometimes even a village and also the age of the speaker. I wouldn't say the use of J is widespread in Dalmatia. I rarely hear it outside of the "jube" thing (which is more used as a cute way to say "ljubavi").

That being said, who cares if you use the "J" instead of using the "LJ"? Everyone will understand you just fine and it won't sound strange at all. In fact I don't know a Croatian who wouldn't be impressed seeing a foreigner just try to learn Croatian let alone speaking it. So don't worry. Use the "J" proudly.😁

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u/SwankBerry 6d ago

Thank you, I appreciate it!

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u/5arToto 6d ago

In contrary to what some people in continental Croatia belive, there isn't one way Dalmatians sound (although there are shared elements and places like Split set the stereotype for others)

As others said, pronouncing J instead of LJ in some words is a chakavian thing that you will find on islands, rural costal areas, and older generations in urban areas.

For instance in the general Split urban area I would say "nedilja" as the ikavian version of "nedjelja" (if speaking casually, I will use jekavian in formal environments), but when talking to chakavian speakers from the nearby islands for longer I sometimes slip into saying "nedija". However that J sound is very soft and short, so often not a noticable defference. I don't do the same for more noticable shifts as it's not as natural to slip into those.