Croatian

Before anything about learning, a question every newcomer meets: are Croatian and Serbian one language?

This is a genuine controversy, and this guide will set out both sides rather than take one.

The side saying it is one language: in 2017 a group of intellectuals and organisations from Bosnia, Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia published the Declaration on the Common Language, asserting that the four are one polycentric standard language — one language with several standard varieties, as English has British and American ones. Before publication, more than two hundred writers, scientists, journalists and activists from all four countries signed it.

The side objecting: the Croatian government rejected the declaration. The argument is that a language belongs to a community with its own sense of identity, that the written standards have developed differently, and that merging them erases a cultural reality.

The practical point for a learner is this: anyone who learns one of the four understands the other three almost completely. That is a fact rather than a position. Whether to call them one language or four is a separate question, and it has no purely linguistic answer.

Beyond that: Croatian has been an official language of the European Union since 2013, and its orthography is among the most regular in Europe.

Croatian has one advantage a learner notices on the first day: the spelling is very nearly one letter, one sound.

No silent letters, no vowels shifting under stress, no exception rules. Learn thirty letters and you can read any word in the language, including one you have never met. This is not accidental — it is the result of a nineteenth-century reform on the principle write as you speak.

The second striking feature is that consonants can form syllables. The country's name — Hrvatska — begins with two consonants and then an r doing the work of a vowel. There are well-known sentences made entirely of consonants that are nonetheless pronounceable.

Croatian grammar is typically Slavic, resting on three pillars.

One: seven cases. Nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, locative and instrumental. Nouns, adjectives, pronouns and numerals all inflect.

Two: three genders with several declension patterns. This is where the time goes, since each gender has its own endings and several patterns within it.

Three: verbal aspect. Almost every verb exists as a pair — an imperfective describing process, a perfective describing a completed act. This is not tense but a way of viewing an action, and English has no direct equivalent.

Two further points come up constantly. Past-tense verbs agree in gender — a man and a woman say it differently. And word order is fairly free because the cases mark the roles, but there is a strict rule about the position of short unstressed words, and this is where learners sound most unnatural.

Against that: no articles, and the basic sentence structure is not alien.

Reading Croatian has one obstacle and one large advantage.

The obstacle: seven cases mean using a dictionary requires recognising the base form. Beginners often cannot look a word up because they cannot strip the ending. This skill needs drilling on its own and improves faster than expected.

The advantage: you can read all four standards. Books, newspapers and websites in Serbian, Bosnian and Montenegrin are all readable — except where a Serbian text is in Cyrillic, and that script takes a few days to learn. This multiplies your reading sources several times over.

Start with news. Short sentences, predictable subjects, plenty of international vocabulary.

Next comes Croatian Wikipedia, on subjects you already know well.

In literature, Miroslav Krleža is the major twentieth-century name, but his prose is demanding so save it. One interesting point: he also wrote in the Kajkavian dialect, which differs considerably from the standard, so his work shows the distance between standard and dialect.

Listening to Croatian has an advantage worth exploiting: your sources are not limited to Croatia.

Because the four standards are mutually intelligible, you can listen to radio and watch film from Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Montenegro. For a language of five million speakers, that is a large difference in the volume of material available.

What you need is to know which standard you are hearing. The most recognisable difference is the ije–e alternation — the same word is mlijeko in the Croatian standard and commonly mleko in the Serbian. Spotting that tells you immediately which side you are listening to.

The best listening for beginners is television news, measured and clearly pronounced.

On dialect, know that Kajkavian around Zagreb and Čakavian on the coast differ substantially from the standard, and you will not follow them even once fluent in the standard. That is a property of the language rather than a problem with your listening.

And one practical point: everyday conversation in Zagreb is conducted in a Kajkavian-influenced variety rather than in the bookish standard.

Croatians generally appreciate a foreigner learning their language, because it is a small language and it is rare.

Three things to do early.

Accept getting cases wrong and speak anyway. Seven cases means many errors for a long time. Listeners understand and usually do not correct.

Get the pronoun right. Croatian distinguishes familiar ti from formal Vi. With older people and strangers, use Vi.

Learn the vocative for names. Croatian has a distinct vocative and uses it daily.

A note on context, and it matters: whether Croatian and Serbian are one language is a sensitive subject. A learner should know both arguments and should not offer a conclusion in conversation. The safe and honest position is to say you are learning Croatian, and if asked, to acknowledge that you can also follow the other standards.

It is also worth knowing that using a distinctively Serbian word while speaking in Croatia will be noticed — not a large matter, but people register it.

Writing Croatian requires a keyboard with č, ć, š, ž and đ. The Croatian layout is available on every operating system and is worth installing.

The commonest error in learner writing — and in native writing too — is confusing č and ć. Because many regions merge the sounds in speech, the ear does not help, and it must be learnt word by word or through the morphological rules that hint at it.

The second commonest is the wrong case after a preposition. Each preposition demands a particular case and no rule predicts which.

On spelling, one difference from the Serbian standard is worth knowing: Croatian writes certain elements separately where Serbian sometimes joins them, particularly in the future tense.

On register, formal written Croatian prefers native-derived coinages to international borrowings. This is where the coining preference shows most clearly.

A few things are worth knowing when using Croatian.

The one language or four question is genuinely sensitive. In 2017 more than two hundred intellectuals from four countries signed the Declaration on the Common Language, asserting it is one polycentric language; the Croatian government objected. Both sides have arguments, and a learner should know both without adjudicating.

The preference for coining is deliberate. Using zrakoplov rather than avion is not accidental but language policy, and it is bound up with identity.

The dialects are very much alive. People in Zagreb speak Kajkavian at home and write the standard at work. Coastal people speak Čakavian. These are not slang but dialects with long histories.

Regional difference is much discussed. Coastal Dalmatia and the inland region around Zagreb have quite different cultures, and people joke about it constantly.

The word fjaka is worth knowing if you go to the coast. The midday state of doing nothing is regarded as something to attain rather than as laziness.