Croatian phrasebook
Croatian is a Slavic language spoken by around 5 million people. It is the official language of Croatia and an official language of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It also is an official regional language in the province of Burgenland in Austria. It has three main dialects: Chakavian, spoken primarily on the islands, along the Croatian coast and in the Lika region, Kajkavian, spoken in Zagreb and other parts of northern and northwestern Croatia, and Stokavian, spoken in the rest of Croatia. This phrasebook gives an overview of useful phrases in Standard Croatian.
Croatian belongs to the "synthetic" language group, which means that unlike English and other "analytical" languages, different grammatical aspects are expressed in one word by changing the structure of that word—adding an ending or prefix, modifying the core of the word, etc. In analytical languages such as English, the same is achieved by using separate auxiliary verbs, pronouns or adjectives while the actual word remains unchanged. In Croatian, one word is often sufficient to express what English can only achieve by using multiple words.
Pronunciation
Croatian uses the Latin alphabet. The spelling of Croatian is largely phonetic, that is, most words are written exactly as they are pronounced. However, there are quite a few exceptions. Those words that are written in capitals signify the stress of the word. The pseudo-phonetic guide is used for the pronunciation.
Vowels
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This page was last edited at 14:59, on 27 December 2008 by Fernando Guasch. Based on work by Peter Fitzgerald, Wikitravel user(s) Texugo, Episteme, HappyV, Userfriendly and Airin, Anonymous user(s) of Wikitravel and others.
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