Chakavian or Čakavian (tʃæˈkɑːviən, tʃə-, -ˈkæv-, čakavski tʃǎːkaʋskiː proper name: čakavica or čakavština tʃakǎːʋʃtina own name: čokovski, čakavski, čekavski) is a South Slavic supradialect or language spoken by Croats along the Adriatic coast, in the historical regions of Dalmatia, Istria, Croatian Littoral and parts of coastal and southern Central Croatia (now collectively referred to as Adriatic Croatia or Littoral Croatia), as well as by the Burgenland Croats as Burgenland Croatian in southeastern Austria, northwestern Hungary and southwestern Slovakia as well as few municipalities in southern Slovenia on the border with Croatia.
Chakavian represents the basis for early literary standards in Croatia, and until modern age was simply known and understood as, with Kajkavian and Shtokavian idioms in Croatia, as "Croatian language" (hrvatski jezik). Legal and liturgical to literary texts until 16th century, including literary work by "the father of Croatian literature" Marko Marulić and the first Croatian dictionary authored by Faust Vrančić, among others, are mostly Chakavian in their form. The term Chakavian and definition of the dialect are a modern age invention. As of 2020, living Chakavian has a separate language ISO 639-3 code – ckm.
Historically, the classification of Chakavian has been a subject of much debate regarding both the question of how should it be named and whether it ought to be considered a dialect or a language, as well as the question of what its relation is to neighboring vernaculars (Kajkavian, Western Shtokavian and Eastern Shtokavian).
Autonyms used throughout history by various Chakavian writers have been straightforward, ranging from mainly Croatian (harvatski, harvacki, hrvatski) to Slavic (slovinski) and Illyrian (illirski), but also other idioms, Kajkavian and Shtokavian, throughout history were named and understood as Croatian language.