croatian grammar books show that the codification of the language started at the beginning of the 17th century (the first grammar was written by bartol kašić in latin in 1604). this means that the rules for the language were written down. from 1604 to 1836 there were 17 grammars. most of them described the štokavian dialect, but some were about kajkavian. in the 19th century, more grammars based on štokavian were written. they were "nova ricsoslovnica illiricka", written by šime starčević (1812), and "grammatik der illyrischen sprache", written by ignjat alojzije brlić (1833). even before the 19th century, the three dialects of the croatian language were almost equally used. however, the way each dialect was written down varied throughout croatia. near the adriatic coast, it was more similar to italian, and near the hungarian border, it was more similar to hungarian.