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.
Vlachs in the history of Croatia
The Vlachs were predominantly Orthodox Christian by religion, and also, the traditional social grouping of Vlachs was the Orthodox group itself. The Orthodox Vlachs spoke the Eastern Herzegovinian dialect while the Catholic Vlachs (the Bunjevci), spoke the Western Herzegovinian dialect. The Vlachs were also called on some occasions as "Rasciani sive Serviani" and "Valachicae seu Rascianae gentis", which was an exonym for the Serbs or Orthodox Christians. In the 1500–1800 period in Europe, the religious difference was one of the main cultural differences in ethnic groups. The state triangle at Lika in what is today Croatia was an area in which Roman Catholicism, Serbian Orthodoxy, and Islam met. Ethno-confessionally, the Orthodox Vlachs were part of the Serb identity since the mid 16th-century.