 Croatian replaced Latin as the official language of the Croatian government in 1847. It is a South Slavic language, and most Croatian vocabulary is derived from the Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family. Croatian is written using the Latin alphabet and has three major dialects, with Shtokavian dialect used as the standard Croatian, and Chakavian and Kajkavian dialects distinguished by their lexicon, phonology, and syntax.
