Croatian (Hrvatski)

Croatian in a South Slavic language spoken mainly in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina and ther neighbouring countries by about 5.5 million people.

The oldest texts in Croatian date back to the 11th century and were written in the Glagolitic alphabet, mainly in Croatia. The earliest text in the Latin alphabet dates from 1345. The Glagolitic alphabet was eventually replaced by the Latin alphabet in Croatia.

Up to the mid 19th century there was no standard written form of Croatian, but there was extensive literature in different dialects. In 1850 a group of Serbian and Croatian writers and linguists decided to create a standard written form based on the widely-used Štokavian dialect.

Croatian contains many words of Latin and German origin but many new Croatian words are created by combining and adapting existing ones.

Croatian is closely related to and mutually intelligible with Serbian, Bosnian and Montenegrin. For more information see an article about Serbo-Croatian language issues.

Croatian alphabetic with Cyrillic equivalents

Sample text in Croatian

Sva ljudska bića rađaju se slobodna i jednaka u dostojanstvu i pravima. Ona su obdarena razumom i sviješću i trebaju jedna prema drugima postupati u duhu bratstva.

Translation

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
(Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

Useful phrases in Croatian | Tower of Babel in Croatian

Croatian language learning materials