[smcl]

I'm curious - was the Croat language (or some parent of it) pretty predominant during the times of the Republic of Venice? Or is that a "new" thing after the unification of Yugoslavia, and prior to that Italian (or some Venetian dialect) was widely spoken?

[Keyframe]

It was predominant. Only difference was that latin was predominant in written form until 16th century, after which there was some kind of standardization of the language on one main dialect (we have three) and a movement(s) towards written croatian as well.

[bitcoinusername]

People living on the island Hvar speak quite a unique version of Croatian. The Venice influence is huge there, graveyard is filled with gravestones of 16th+ century elite.

I sometimes find them hard to understand due to heavy usage of words with Italian roots. But their grammar is equivalent to Croatian grammar.

They also use the word "čaj".

I'd say Croatian as a language was popular and was heavily used on coastal areas even before Italian influence, and after too.