Demographics of Croatia
Croatian replaced Latin as the official language of the Croatian government in 1847. The Croatian lect is generally viewed as one of the three standard varieties of the Shtokavian dialect of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language. Croatian is written using the Latin alphabet and there are three major dialects spoken on the territory of Croatia, with the Shtokavian idiom used as the literary standard. The Chakavian and Kajkavian dialects are distinguished by their lexicon, phonology, and syntax.
Dialects of Serbo-Croatian
Kajkavian literary language gradually fell into disuse since Croatian National Revival, ca. 1830–1850, when leaders of the Croatian National Unification Movement (the majority of them being Kajkavian native speakers themselves) adopted the most widespread and developed Serbo-Croatian Shtokavian literary language as the basis for the Croatian standard language. However, after a period of lethargy, the 20th century has witnessed new flourishing of literature in Kajkavian dialect – this time as Croatian dialectal poetry, main authors being Antun Gustav Matoš, Miroslav Krleža, Ivan Goran Kovačić, Dragutin Domjanić, Nikola Pavić etc. Nowadays, Kajkavian lexical treasure is being published by the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts in "Rječnik hrvatskoga kajkavskoga književnoga jezika"/"Dictionary of the Croatian Kajkavian Literary Language", 8 volumes (1999).