Croatian is a Slavic language spoken mainly in the country of Croatia, bordering the
Adriatic Sea, a small part of Italy, Hungary, Slovenia, and Bosnia & Herzegovina. It's closely related to Serbian and Bosnian (although considered an individual language) and shares many similarities with other languages of the Balkan region including Slovenian, but is unrelated to Albanian.
It has
three main dialects;
ijekavski, ekavski and
ikavski. These dialects are so named because of how they change particular words within the language; for example, the word for
"milk" would be pronounced and written three different ways according to dialect. In
ijekavski,
"mlijeko;" in
ekavski,
"mleko;" and in
ikavski,
"mliko." The word for
"pretty" or
"nice" would change from
"lijepo" to
"lepo" to
"lipo" according to the dialect. In Croatia and in formal Croatian speaking and writing, ijekavski is almost always used. Ekavski is spoken in some parts of Croatia, but mostly in Serbia and Bosnia. It is the formal dialect used in those countries. Ikavski is used on the coast in some places and in other smaller regional areas.
If you're learning Croatian specifically,
you'll be learning ijekavski, as that's what all of your books and instruction will most likely be in.
Its alphabet has
30 letters, missing a few letters found in English and adding a few new. Fortunately for the learner,
it's phonetic, meaning each letter has exactly the same sound at all times no matter what, which makes this an easy language to pronounce, once you get used to some of the new sounds.
This is a language which will take
plenty of patience - unless you have
previous experience with a Slavic language, learning this from scratch will be difficult. However, it's a beautiful language belonging to an even more gorgeous country, and once you can converse in it, you'll be amazed to listen to the stories of the locals. You might just find yourself being invited to sit down, enjoy a delicious meal made over an open fire with homegrown food, share some homemade rakija or blackberry juice, and learn about the history of a place whose youngest cities are already hundreds of years old.
 Croatia - Paklenica National Park |
Next lesson: Pronunciation! The Croatian Alphabet
For learning
Croatian | Category
Uncategorized | Level
Unspecified |
Second language
English | Created
Jul 30, 2008 13:54 | Views
1297 |
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