Croatian language facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Croatian
hrvatski
Native to	Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia (Vojvodina), Montenegro, Romania (Caraș-Severin County), Slovenia, and diaspora
Native speakers	5.55 million  (2001)
Language family	Indo-European Balto-Slavic Slavic South Slavic Western Croatian
Writing system	Latin (Gaj's alphabet) Croatian Braille
Official status
Official language in	Croatia  Bosnia and Herzegovina  Serbia (Vojvodina)  European Union
Recognised minority language in	Montenegro  Austria (in Burgenland)  Hungary (in Baranya County)  Italy (in Molise)  Romania (in Carașova, Lupac)
Regulated by	Institute of Croatian Language and Linguistics
Linguasphere	part of 53-AAA-g
Traditional extent of Serbo-Croatian dialects in Croatia and in Bosnia and Herzegovina
This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

The Croatian language is spoken mainly in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. You can also hear it in nearby countries in Europe and where Croatians live around the world.

Croatian is part of the Slavic language family. It has three main ways of speaking, called dialects: Kaikavian, Chakavian, and Shtokavian. The rules for Croatian grammar started to be written down a long time ago.

The Baska tablet, from around 1100, shows early Croatian writing.

This Croatian Prayer Book from 1380-1400 is a very old example of the language.

The first Croatian grammar book was written in Latin in 1604 by Bartol Kašić. This means that the rules for how the language works were officially recorded. Between 1604 and 1836, 17 different grammar books were created. Most of them focused on the Shtokavian dialect, but some also described the Kajkavian dialect.

In the 19th century, more grammar books were written based on Shtokavian. Important ones include "Nova ricsoslovnica illiricka" by Šime Starčević (1812) and "Grammatik der illyrischen Sprache" by Ignjat Alojzije Brlić (1833). Before the 19th century, all three Croatian dialects were used quite equally. However, how they were written down changed depending on the region. For example, near the Adriatic Sea, writing was more like Italian. Near the Hungarian border, it was more like Hungarian.

Early grammar books (from 1604-1836) used three special marks called accents: acute, grave, and circumflex. Starčević's grammar was different because it used a system with four accents. In the 19th century, Ljudevit Gaj suggested adding new letters from the Czech alphabet (like č, ž, š). He also suggested 'ć' from Polish. Other sounds were written using two letters together, like 'lj', 'nj', and 'dž'. Later, 'dj' or 'gj' was changed to 'đ' based on a suggestion by Đuro Daničić.

How Croatian is Written: The Alphabet

The Croatian language uses a Latin alphabet with 30 letters. It also has one special sound called a diphthong, "ie" or "ije", and "ŕ". This writing system is called gajica in Croatian. It is named after Ljudevit Gaj, who helped create it.

The order of the letters in the alphabet is called abeceda in Croatian. This name comes from the first four letters: "a, be, ce, de". When writing foreign names or words, or in some special jobs, Croatian uses letters that are not part of gajica, like "X, x (iks)" and "Y, y (ipsilon)".

Croatian alphabet (Gaica) 1830.c

• 

  (a)

• 

  (be)

• 

  (ce)

• 

  (če)

• 

  (će)

• 

  (de)

• 

  (dže)

• 

  (đe)

• 

  (e)

• 

  (ef)

• 

  (ge)

• 

  (ha)

• 

  (i)

• 

  (je)

• 

  (ka)

• 

  (el)

• 

  (elj)

• 

  (em)

• 

  (en)

• 

  (enj)

• 

  (o)

• 

  (pe)

• 

  (er)

• 

  (es)

• 

  (eš)

• 

  (te)

• 

  (u)

• 

  (ve)

• 

  (ze)

• 

  (že)

How Words Change: Grammatical Cases

In Croatian, nouns (words for people, places, or things) change their endings depending on how they are used in a sentence. This is called declension. It can be one of the trickiest parts of learning Croatian!

Even though it's complex, many languages have declension. English, for example, used to have it for nouns, but now it mostly only has it for pronouns (like "I" changing to "me" or "my").

Croatian has seven grammatical cases, called padeži (plural) or padež (singular). A common way to figure out which case to use is by asking a question.

• Example:
• Let's see how to find a noun's grammatical case using the table below.
• Krešimir is going to school. (Krešimir ide u školu.)

The question you would ask here is: "Where is Krešimir going?" The answer is "to school." If you look at the table, you'll see that "where?" is a question for the Locative case.

Word Types: Gender in Croatian

Croatian nouns are divided into three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. Knowing a noun's gender is super important! It changes how other words in the sentence, like adjectives (describing words), will look.

You can often tell a noun's gender by its ending, which makes it easier than memorizing every single word. There are a few exceptions, but this rule helps a lot. Even when nouns become plural (more than one), they keep their original gender. For example, 'žena' (woman) is feminine, and 'žene' (women) is still feminine, even though it ends in '-e'.

Verb Actions: Grammatical Aspects

Croatian verbs have two grammatical aspects: perfective and imperfective. These aspects show if an action is finished or still going on.

• The perfective aspect describes an action that has already been completed.
• The imperfective aspect describes an action that is still happening or is ongoing.

So, for almost every verb, you can write it in two ways: one for a finished action and one for an ongoing action. The table below shows five verbs in both their imperfective (ongoing) and perfective (finished) forms.

When Actions Happen: Grammatical Tenses

Croatian has seven grammatical tenses, which tell you when an action takes place. They can be simple or complex.

• Simple tenses use only one word (like aorist, imperfect, and present).
• Complex tenses use two or even three words (like pluperfect, perfect, first future, second future). They often use helping verbs.

Also, some tenses can only be formed with either perfective or imperfective verbs, not both.

Useful Croatian Phrases

• Basic and common expressions:

• Colours:

• Days, months & seasons

The Croatian week starts with Monday and ends with Sunday. This is different from some countries where Sunday is the first day.

• Days:

• Months:

• Directions

• Prepositions

• Numbers

How Croatian Compares to Serbian

Croatian and Serbian are very similar languages, but they have some differences in vocabulary. This table shows some words that are different between the two languages.

Images for kids

• 

  Areas where Croatian language is spoken (as of 2006)

• 

  Areas with an ethnic Croatian majority (as of 2006)

See also

In Spanish: Idioma croata para niños