Contents

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Overview of Croatian

Alphabet and Pronunciation

Nouns and Gender

Case

Pronouns

Adjectives

Adverbs

Verbs

Prepositions

Conjunctions

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Overview of Croatian

Before the break-up of Yugoslavia, the Croatian language was usually taught as Serbocroatian..  Political considerations and nationalist aspirations have done much to foreground the differences between Croatian and Serbian, and there are very few scholars left who treat these languages as if they were merely dialects of the same native tongue.  Although it is often not easy to specify systematically how the two languages differ, the prevailing political and educational currents treat them as separate entities, and so shall this Basic Grammar.  Someone mastering this grammar should be ready to speak and understand Basic Croatian, but should also be prepared for some regional differences among languages spoken in  the countries created out of pre-1991 Yugoslavia. Generally, east of the Drina river, one will hear Ekavski variant in pronunciation while west of the Drina one may hear the Ijekavski.  The differences are based on how the Old Slavic letter jat got codified.  The Ekavian/Ijekavian variants create the following differences: mleko/mlijeko (milk), video/vidio (he saw), pre/prije (before).  The Ekavian/Ijekavian differences are often taken to represent the differences between Serbian and Croatian, but there are many Serbs who use the Ijekavian pronunciation. More telling differences may include common vocabulary words:

English	Serbian (Transliterated)	Croatian

Bread	hleb	kruh
Train	voz	vlak
A thousand	hiljada	tisu¾a
Typing	kucanje	tipkanje
Trousers	pantalone	hla“e
Depo	stanica	kolodvor
Defense	odbrane	obrana
Factory	fabrika	tvornica
January	januar	sije“anj
February	februar	velja“a
March	mart	o•ujak
April	april	travanj
May	maj	svibanj
June	juni	lipanj
July	juli	srpanj
August	avgust	kolovoz
September	septembar	rujan
October	oktobar	listopad
November	novembar	studeni
December	decembar	prosinac


Alphabet
Alphabet and Pronunciation

Croats use the Latin alphabet:

Croatian Alphabet	Closest Engish Sound
Aa	father
Bb	bomb
Cc	howitzer
ƒ“	cheese
‰¾	cherish
Dd	dud
D•d•	June
Ðð	fudge
Ee	jet
Ff	fly
Gg	gun
Hh	hot
Ii	tea
Jj	yam, bay
Kk	kill
Ll	let
Ljlj	bullion
Mm	mad
Nn	never
Njnj	onion
Oo	no
Pp	pet
Rr	rat (rolled)
Ss	stable
„”	shoe
Tt	tank
Uu	boot
Vv	very
Zz	zap
…•	measure


Noun
Nouns and Gender

Like other Slavic languages, Croatian groups its nouns into one of three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter. Persons, places, things, or ideas will have their respective gender, case, and number reflected by the word endings.  A fairly safe assumption is that masculine nouns will end in consonants, feminine in a (and ocassionally t), and neuter in o or e.

Masculine

“ovjek	Man

igra“	Player

vojnik	Soldier

ulaz	Entrance

Feminine

•ena	Woman

zgrada	Building

ulica	Street

ambasada	Embassy

smrt	Death

budu¾nost	Future

Neuter

dijete	Child

janje	Lamb

lice	Face

selo	Village

pismo	Letter

See Also

Pronouns

Adjectives


Case

Since word order tends to determine sentence meanings in English, English speakers are generally unfamiliar with the case system (inflections) unless they have studied foreign languages.  Inflected foreign languages like Croatian rely on word endings to create meaning.  Older textbooks on Croatian grammar tend to use all seven cases, but since (in practice if not in theory) dative and locative use the same endings, locative examples will not be given.

Nominative is used for the subject of a sentence; answers questions such as What is this? Who is this?

Accusative is used for the direct object of a sentence; answers questions such as What do you see? Whom are you seeking? Whom does she love?  If the answer to the question is a masculine animate noun, it usually has an a ending; if it is inanimate, it remains in the nominative.

Genitive shows possession and origin; answers questions such as From whom/what did you get that?

Dative is used with  indirect objects; answers questions such as To/About/Of whom are you speaking?

Instrumental shows the means by which an action is performed; answers questions such as With whom were you speaking?  With what will you do that?

Vocative is used for addressing, summoning,  or calling persons and for apostrophizing objects.

 Mr. Kuzmanovich, how are you?/ Gospodine Kuzmanovi¾u, kako ste?

 My God!/ Bo•e moj!

Oh, youth and beauty!/ O, mladosti I lepoto!

Serbian Cases for Singular and Plural Nouns

Case of Noun	son/sons	wife/wives	food/foods
Nominative	sin/sinovi	•ena/•ene	jelo/jela
Genitive	sina/sinovima	•ene/•ena	jela/jela
Dative	sinu/sinovima	•eni/•enama	jelu/jelima
Accusative	sina/sinove	•enu/•ene	jelo/jelima
Vocative	sine/sinovi	•eno/•ene	jelo/jela
Instrumental	sinom/sinovima	•enom/•enama	jelom/jelima


Pronouns

Personal and Reflexive Pronouns

Personal pronouns refer to the nouns that precede them.  Croatian pronouns agree in gender and number with their antecedents. The case of a pronoun is determined by its use in the sentence. Although the plural form of you (vi) may be capitalized to show respect, the I (ja) is capitalized only at the beginning of the sentence. Like personal pronouns, reflexive pronouns refer to the nearest antecedent subject and is evident in constructions using  se and sebe.   Depending on the context,  they can be translated  as myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, or themselves.

Nominative cases of  Croatian personal pronouns are as follows:

Person	Singular	Translation	Plural	Translation

1st person	ja	I	mi	we
2nd person	ti	you	vi	you
3rd person	on/ona/ono	he/ she/ it	oni	they

Like nouns, personal and reflexive pronouns are inflected.

Case	I	you	he	she	it	we	you	they	-self
Nominative	ja	to	on	ona	ono	mi	vi	oni	---
Accusative	mene	tebe	njega	nju	ga	nas	vas	njih	sebe
	me	te	ga	ju,je				ih	se
Genitive	mene	tebe	njega	nje	je	nas	vas	njih	sebe
	me	te	ga	je				ih
Dative	meni	tebi	njemu	njoj	mu	nama	vama	njima	sebi
	mi	ti	mu	joj		nam	vam	njih	si
Instrumental	mnom	tobom	njim	njom	njim	nama	vama	njima	sobom
Possessive Pronouns

Possessive pronouns show possession or ownership of something.  They take the gender, number, and case of the nouns they modify.

The nominative forms of these possessive pronouns are:

Masculine	   Feminine	  Neuter

1st person, singular (my)	moj	moja	moje
2nd person, singular (your)	tvoj	tvoja	tvoje
3rd person sing. (his/its, her)	njegov	njegova	njegovo
	njen	njena	njeno
ones own (singular)	svoj	svoja	svoje
1st person, plural (our)	na”	njegova	na”e
2nd person, plural (your)	va”	na”a	va”e
3rd person (their)	njihov	va”a	njihovo
ones own (plural)	svoji	svoje	svoja

Interrogative/Relative Pronouns

These pronouns are used in constructing questions. Among the more common are:

Translation	Masculine	Femenine	Neuter

who	ko
what	”ta
whose	“iji	“ija	“ije
which	koji	koja	koje
what kind of	kakav	kakva	kakvo
Demonstrative Pronouns

The demonstrative pronouns include:

To, ovo	this

To, Taj, Onaj, Ona, Ono	that

Takav, Takvi	such

Negative Pronouns

At sentence level, Croatian  not only permits but requires double negatives, so a construction such as Nikto nije ovde (There is no one here) would be translated literally as There is no one not here.

The most commonly used negative pronouns are:

Nitko	no one

Ni”ta	nothing, nothingness

Indefinite Pronouns include netko (someone, anyone) and ne”to (something, anything, somewhat)

See Also:

Nouns and Gender

Case


Adjectives

Adjectives modify nouns and pronouns and take on their case, number, and gender.   The following chart lets you follow the transformation of the demonstrative pronoun this, the adjective young and nouns boy, woman, and face.

Masculine, singular

Case	this	young	boy
Nominative	ovaj	mladi	dje“ak
Genitive	ovoga	mladog	dje“aka
Dative	ovome	mladom	djecaku
Accusative	ovoga	mladog	djecaka
Instrumental	ovim	mladim	djecakom
Vocative	--------	mladi	dje“a“e

Masculine, plural

Case	these	young	boys
Nominative	ovi	mladi	djecaci
Genitive	ovih	mladih	djecaka
Dative	ovim	mladim	djecacima
Accusative	ove	mlade	dje“ake
Instrumental	ovim	mladim	djecacima
Vocative	------	mladi	dje“aci

Feminine, singular

Case	this	young	woman
Nominative	ova	mlada	zena
Genitive	ove	mlade	zene
Dative	ovoj	mladoj	zeni
Accusative	ovu	mladu	zenu
Instrumental	ovom	mladom	zenom
Vocative	------	mlada	zeno

Feminine, plural

Case	these	young	women
Nominative	ove	mlade	zene
Genitive	ovih	mladih	zena
Dative	ovim	mladim	zenama
Accusative	ove	mlade	zene
Instrumental	ovim	mladim	zenama
Vocative	-------	mlade	•ene

Neuter, singular

Case	this	youthful	face
Nominative	ovo	mlado	lice
Genitive	ovog	mladog	lica
Dative	ovom	mladom	licu
Accusative	ovo	mlado	lice
Instrumental	ovim	mladim	licem
Vocative	-------	mlado	lice

Neuter, plural

Case	these	youthful	faces
Nominative	ova	mlada	lica
Genitive	ovih	mladih	lica
Dative	ovim	mladim	licima
Accusative	ova	mlada	lica
Instrumental	ovim	mladim	licima
Vocative	------	mlada	lica

See Also:

Nouns and Gender

Case


Adverbs

Adverbs modify verbs and adjectives.  They do not decline.

brzo	quickly

lako	easily

dobro	fine, well

Interrogative adverbs:

dokle	to where

za”to	why

kada	when

Indefinite adverbs:

negdje	somewhere

nekako	somehow

kadkada, ponekad	sometimes

See Also:

Adjectives


Verb Conjugations: Tense and Mood
Verbs

Most of the time Croatian verbs function like English ones.  The key difference is aspect, or information pertaining to the degree of completion of the action the verb describes.  As a result, Croatian verbs are usually a part of binary pair: perfective verbs describe actions already completed in the past or ones that will be completed in the future and the imperfective verbs describe ongoing actions. Fine shades of difference in meaning may be generated through the prefixes the perfective form takes. Imperfective is occasionally referred to as durative.

Imperfective: pisati (to write), “uvati (to keep), ra“unati (to calculate, to reckon)

Perfective: napisati (to finish writing), sa“uvati (to have kept), izra“unati (to finish calculating)

Reflexive Verbs

Adding reflexive pronouns to transitive verbs makes them reflexive. Dete se pere is essentially the abbreviated reflexive form of  Dete pere sebe (The child is washing itself.) Se and  sebe are usually translated  as itself, oneself, himself, herself, themselves but can also mean each other as in Oni se “uvaju (They are guarding each other.)

Present tense of to have

Person	Verb	Translation
1st person singular	imam	I have
2nd person singular	imalj	You have
3rd person singular	ima	He/She/It has
1st person plural	imamo	We have
2nd person plural	imate	You have
3rd person plural	imaju	They have

Present tense of to be

1st person singular	ja sam	I am
2nd person singular	ti si	You are
3rd person singular	on/ona/ono je	He/She/It is
1st person plural	mi smo	We are
2nd person plural	vi ste	You are
3rd person plural	oni su	They are

Past Tense

This trick works for figuring out the past tense for most Croatian verbs: Beginning with the appropriate form of to be, remove the infinitive ending (usually ti or “i) from the verb in question, and add the correct past tense ending demanded by the subject of the verb: masculine singular (-o), masculine plural (-li),  feminine singular (-la), feminine plural (-le), neuter singular (-lo), and neuter plural (-la).

Future Tense

Although Croatian differentiates between the future tenses of perfective and imperfective verbs, the safest approach for a speaker of basic Croatian is to place the present forms of the verb 'to be' immediately before an infinitive form.

Below is the conjugation of the verb hteti (to want), with the emphatic form in parentheses.  The emphatic form ho- suggests immediate as opposed to more distant future.

Person	to be forms	Verb	Translation
1st person singular	ja (ho)cu	i¾i	I will go
2nd person singular	ti (ho)ce”	ostati	You will stay
3rd person singular	on/ona/ono (ho)¾j	pjevati	He/She/It will sing
1st person plural	mi (ho)¾jmo	doci	We will come
2nd person plural	vi (ho)¾jte	po¾i	You will leave
3rd person plural	oni/one/îna (ho)¾j	pisati	They will write


Prepositions

Preposition	Meaning
u	in, into
oko	about
od, iz	from, of
do	to, up to
s, sa	with
na	on, at


Conjunctions

Common Croatian conjunctions used to connect clauses are:

i	and
ali	but
ili	or
da bi	in order that
dok	while
ako	if
te	and so, therefore
“im	as soon as
iako, mada, premda	although
jer	because
nego, no	instead, but
pa ipak	and still
zato	because