What is "shtokavian"

Shtokavian or Štokavian (; , ) is the prestige dialect of the pluricentric Serbo-Croatian language, and the basis of its Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, and Montenegrin standards. It is a part of the South Slavic dialect continuum. Its name comes from the form for the interrogatory pronoun for "what" in Western Shtokavian, što (it is šta in Eastern Shtokavian). This is in contrast to Kajkavian and Chakavian (kaj and ča also meaning "what").

Shtokavian is spoken in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the major part of Croatia, and the southern part of Austria’s Burgenland. The primary subdivisions of Shtokavian are based on two principles: one is whether the subdialect is Old-Shtokavian or Neo-Shtokavian, and different accents according to the way the old Slavic phoneme jat has changed. Modern dialectology generally recognises seven Shtokavian subdialects.