| The Croatian language (Croatian: Hrvatski jezik) is a language of the western group of South Slavic languages which is used primarily by the Croats. Croatian is a southern variant inside the Slavic language family. Other languages in this group include Serbian, Bosnian and Slovene (language spoken in Slovenia). Croatian and Serbian used to be considered as one language (sometimes called Croatian-Serbian or Serbo-Croatian) until recent events in former Yugoslavia. Bosnian language was also classified within the general “Serbo-Croatian” group. From linguistic point of view, structurally and lexically all these languages are actually so similar that can be describe as dialectical variants of the one language. Croatian language is based on the Ijekavian pronunciation of Štokavian dialect (with some influence from Čakavian and Kajkavian) and written with the Croatian alphabet . Pronunciation The Croatian writing system is phonetically consistent: every letter is pronounced and its sound will not vary from word to word. Regarding to the position of stress, there is only one rule you have to follow: the last syllable of the word is never stressed. In most cases the accent falls on the first vowel in the word. Croatian language uses a modified Roman alphabet (unlike Serbian, which uses the Cyrillic alphabet). Many letters are pronounced like in English – but the following below may cause misunderstanding. | Basic words: | Croatian is in red! | -
Ć - as the ‘tu’ in ‘future’ -
Č – as the ‘ch’ in ‘chop’ -
C - as the ‘ts’ in ‘cats’ -
đ - as the ‘du’ in ‘verdure -
dž - as the ‘j’ in ‘just’ -
j - as the ‘y’ in ‘young’ -
lj – as the ‘lli’ in ‘million’ -
š – as the ‘sh’ in ‘ship’ -
ž – as the ‘s’ in ‘pleasure’ | | Hello | Zdravo | | Goodbye | Doviđenja | | Yes | Da | | No | Ne | | Please | Molim | | Thank you | Puno hvala | | You're welcome | Nema na Ćemu | | Excuse me | Oprostite | | Sorry (excuse me) | Pardon (izvinite) | | See you later | Vidimo se kasnije | | 
