The Čakavian dialects of Croatian are spoken primarily in Istria, on the Croatian coast and islands, and in scattered areas in the Croatian interior; in the Burgenland (Austria); and in neighboring parts of Hungary and Slovakia. While these dialects show influences of extensive language contact (primarily with Venetian Italian or German), they preserve many archaic features, especially in their prosodic systems, which make them valuable sources of data for historical Slavic linguistics.

Čakavian is one of th…