Chakavian or Čakavian ( /tʃɑːˈkɑːviən/; Croatian: čakavski, proper name: čakavica or čakavština, own name: čokovski, čakavski, čekavski) is a dialect of the Serbo-Croatian language spoken by a minority of Croats. It has low mutual intelligibility with the other two dialects, Štokavian and Kajkavian. All three are named after their word for "what?", which in Čakavian is ča or ca. Čakavian is spoken mainly in the northeastern Adriatic: in Istria, Kvarner Gulf, in most Adriatic islands, and in the interior valley of Gacka, more sporadically in the Dalmatian littoral and central Croatia.
Chakavian was the basis for the first literary standard of the Croats. Today, it is spoken almost entirely within Croatia's borders, apart from the Burgenland Croats in Austria and in Hungary.
Čakavian is the oldest written Croatian dialect that had made a visible appearance in legal documents - as early as 1275 ("Istrian land survey") and 1288 ("Vinodol codex"), the predominantly vernacular Čakavian is recorded, mixed with elements of Church Slavic. Archaic Čakavian can be traced back to 1105 in the Baška tablet. All these and other early Čakavian texts up to 17th century are mostly written in Glagolitic alphabet.