Croatian Language Brief Introduction
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ScribdTranslationsCROATIAN
LANGUAGE
(brief introduction)
August 2011
Author: Tatjana Radolović
www.croatanlengua.com
The language family
Croatian is a South Slavic language , along with Serbian, Slovenian, Bosnian,
Montenegrin, Macedonian and Bulgarian.
Indo-European languages
∟
Slavic languages
∟
South Slavic languages ∟
Croatian
Where is Croatian spoken?
Croatian is spoken by about 5.5 million people.
It is an official language in:
– Croatia
– Bosnia-Hercegovina, in the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina in Serbia, in
Montenegro, in some municipalities in southern Austria and in a province of Italy
- In addition, it is spoken by ethnic Croatian minorities in Hungary and Romania
and by a large part of Croatian immigrants from Western Europe and overseas,
particularly in Germany, Austria, the United States, Argentina and Chile.
The dialects
Croatian has 3 dialects :
the estocavo
the Kaikavian and the Chakavian
The Stocavian dialect is used as the official dialect (the one taught in schools and
used by the media and the administration).
Due to long periods of foreign domination, many everyday words of Italian origin are
used in the coastal area and of German origin in the northern area.
The alphabet
The Croatian alphabet has 30 letters :
ABC Č Ć D Dž Đ EFGHIJKL Lj MN Nj OPRS Š TUVZ Ž
Of the 30 letters, 3 are digraphs (two letters that represent a single sound)
Dž Lj Nj
As a general rule, Croatian is written as it is spoken , and it is very easy to learn to
read it.
It does not have silent letters, each letter corresponds to a sound.
The pronunciation
The 5 vowels (a, e, i, o, u) are pronounced the same as in Spanish, although you must
pay attention to their length and tone .
Of the 25 consonants :
- some do not exist in Spanish : z , like z in English zero c , like ts
dž, đ as j in English John . The dž is a little harder than the đ ž , like
j in French jour
- others exist in Spanish but are written differently č, ć = ch. The č is
a little harder than the ć lj = ll nj = nj j = yh = j
- the rest is pronounced the same or similar to that in Spanish
The accent
Croatian is one of the few European languages that has a tonal (musical) accent .
There are 4 four accents :
– short ascending: žèna (female)
– short descendant: kȕća (house)
– long ascending: rúka (hand)
– descending length: zlȃto (gold)
The bearer of the accent is one of the five vowels (a, e, i, o, u) but it can also be
the consonant r :
– example: trg (square), crn (black) Hr-vat (Croatian) .
In some words the accent plays the distinctive function:
lȕk (onion) ≠ lûk (bow) - they are two different words
The nouns
There are no articles in Croatian .
There are 3 genres :
- masculine: they usually end in a consonant: sto-l (table)
- feminine: usually ending in –a: kuć-a (house) .
- neuter: ending in -e and in -o: digot-e (child), sel-o (town)
Nouns are inflected , that is, they change the ending according to the function they
play in the phrase and their relationship with other elements. For this reason,
prepositions are used less in Croatian than in Spanish.
- žen-a (the woman)
- žen-e (of women)
- žen-i (to the woman, indirect object)
- žen-u (to the woman, direct object)
- sa žen-om (with the woman)
The decline
Nouns, adjectives, pronouns and numerals are declined ; which means that an ending
is added to the root of the word that indicates its relationship with other words in the
sentence.
The declension in Croatian has 7 cases : nominative, genitive, dative, accusative,
vocative, locative and instrumental.
Although adjectives, pronouns and numerals always have to coincide in the gender,
number and case of the noun to which they refer, they are inflected slightly differently
than nouns.
ov-e tri stolic-e (these three chairs)
na ov-ima tri-ma stolic-ama (on these three chairs)
The
cases:
• nominative : indicates the subject of the phrase žen-a (the woman)
• genitive : expresses property or belonging žen-e (of women)
• dative : indirect object žen-i (to the woman)
• accusative : direct object
žen-u (to the woman)
• vocative : to call žen-o! (women!)
• locative : indicates the place
u žen-i (in the woman)
• instrumental : indicates the company or the medium sa žen-om (with
the woman)
Verbs
Verbs have 3 modes :
- indicative
- imperative
- conditional
- there is no subjunctive
Depending on the
appearance they can be:
- perfectives: skočiti (jump once, finish jumping)
- imperfectives: skakati (jump repeatedly or continuously)
The verb tenses are:
- present: present
- past: past perfect, past imperfect, past indefinite, pluperfect
- future: future, future second
Author: Tatjana Radolović
http://www.lenguacroata.com
[email protected]
August 2011
