Reference books (dictionaries, grammars, orthographies, etc.) assign disyllabic value to the trigraph ije when it stands for the so-called long jat (ĕ) in standard ijekavian Serbo-Croatian. However, recent linguistic literature denies it. In order to find the truth and avoid any subjective judgment, two anthologies of Croatian poetry were examined. Poems with a fixed number of syllables in a line were considered only. One anthology contains poetry from the end of 15th century up to the present. Of 1309 instances of long jat, 1162 or 86.77 o/o are monosyllabic and 147 or 11.23 o/o disyllabic. In the same anthology, for the period since 1850, of 685 instances of long jat, 605 or 88.32 o/o are monosyllabic and 80 or 11.68 o/o disyllabic. In the other anthology, which contains poetry between the two world wars, of 144 instances of long jat, 134 or 93.06 o/o are monosyllabic and 10 or 6.94 o/o are disyllabic. Monosyllabic pronunciation is normal, average, while disyllabic pronunciation seems to be special and functional (for the purpose of rhythm or rhyme) as well as expressive (to give emphasis to a word or a form, or to draw attention to a peculiar feature, as in the case of other less frequent phonetic or morphological features in poetry).
