FROM ENGLISH TO HRVATSKI: KEY PHRASES

Polako (Slowly/Slow Down): This is a frequently used word, often used to encourage caution or patience.  Let this phrase become your mantra. Slow down: breathe, absorb, feel, relax. Practice polako.   

Bez muke nema nauke (No Pain, No Gain): This translates to “Without hardship there is no knowledge” and reflects the value of perseverance.  

Molim (please) After a Croatian helps you with anything you need, do not forget to say hvala (thanks). They will most likely point out it was not a problem at all – ništa (nothing) – and they mean it for real.  

Kad ćemo na kavicu (when will we have coffee) may be the most common question a Croatian may ask in their life. Instead of the word kava (coffee), we even use the word kavica, which is a diminutive of kava to convey just how much we love it. 

A Brief History

Croatian is a South Slavic language spoken by about 5 to 6 million people, mostly in Croatia, but also in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and beyond. It developed from old Slavic dialects and picked up influences from Latin, Italian, Turkish, and Hungarian. There are three main dialects, but Štokavian became the standard. It got its modern form in the 1800s during a cultural movement to bring South Slavs together. Today, Croatian uses a Latin-based alphabet (with a few funky letters) and is still going strong—at home and in Croatian communities all over the world.

Interesting Facts About the Language

• The Croatian language is part of the the Slavic language family, along with Serbian, Bosnian, Montenegrin, and Slovenian.
• Due to its diverse history and many foreign influences, Croatian includes borrowed words from German, Hungarian, Italian, and Turkish.
• Croatian is a highly phonetic language, and learners can usually pronounce most words correctly once they familiarize themselves with spelling and pronunciation rules.
• The writing system of Croatian consists of 30 letters and uses Gaj’s Latin alphabet. It includes most standard Latin letters but excludes q, w, x, and y, while including special letters: č, ć, dž, đ, lj, nj, š, and ž. 
• The Croatian language doesn’t include definite or indefinite articles like “the” or “a.” You are expected to understand definiteness from context or grammatical structure.
• There are interesting words in Croatian that contain no traditional vowels, such as “krv” (blood) or “prst” (finger), syllabic consonants like “r” function as vowels in these cases.

What Croatian Means to Me