WELCOME BROCHURE

Standard Croatian is dialectally based onthe Western Štokavian dialect with theIjekavian reflex of the Common Slavic yatvowel. The Croatian linguistic area encompassestwo other major dialects, Čakavianand Kajkavian, which contribute lexicallyto the standard language. It is writtenwith the Croatian alphabet, based on theLatin alphabet. Along with Serbian andBosnian, Croatian belongs to the CentralSouth Slavic diasystem (also referred to as“Serbo-Croatian”).The modern Croatian standard languageis a continuous outgrowth of more thannine hundred years of literature written ina mixture of Croatian Church Slavonic andthe vernacular language. Croatian ChurchSlavonic was abandoned by the mid-15thcentury, and Croatian as embodied in apurely vernacular literature (Croatianliterature) has existed for more than fivecenturies.Croatian, like most other Slavic languageshas a rich system of inflection. Pronouns,nouns, adjectives and some numeralsdecline (change the word ending toreflect case, i.e. grammatical categoryand function), while verbs conjugate forperson and tense. As in all other Slaviclanguages, the basic word order is SVO;however, due to the use of declensionto show sentence structure, word orderis not as important as in languages thattend toward analyticity such as English orChinese.Nouns have three grammatical genders(masculine, feminine and neuter) thatcorrespond to a certain extent with theword ending, so that most nouns endingin -a are feminine, -o and -e neutral andthe rest mostly masculine with a small butimportant class of feminines. Grammaticalgender of a noun affects the morphologyof other parts of speech (adjectives,pronouns and verbs) attached to it.Nouns are declined into 7 cases: Nominative,Genitive, Dative, Accusative, Vocative,Locative and Instrumental.Verbs are divided into two broad classesaccording to their aspect, which can beeither perfective (signifying a completedaction) or imperfective (action is incompleteor repetitive). There are seven tenses,four of which (present, perfect, future Iand II) are used in contemporary standardCroatian, with the other three (aorist, imperfectand plusquamperfect) consideredstylistically marked and archaic.The alphabet consists of 30 letters.Useful phrasesEngleskiGood morning / Good dayGood evening / Good nightHello / ByePlease / Thank you / You’re welcomeMy name is...I’m from... / I come from...Where is...?I’m sorry / Excuse me...What time is it?Good / BadYes / NoWhat tram goes to...?One (1) / two (2) / three (3) / four (4) / five(5) / six (6) / seven (7) / eight (8) / nine (9)/ ten (10) / eleven (11) / twelve (12)I don’t understand / I don’t speakCroatianHow are you?Water / tea / coffee / juiceRed / blue / yellow / black / white / green/ brownI / you / he / she / it / we / you / theyHrvatskiDobro jutro / Dobar danDobro večer / Laku noćBokMolim / Hvala / Nema na čemuMoje ime je... / Ja sam...Ja sam iz... / Dolazim iz...Gdje je...?Oprostite...Koliko je sati?Dobro / LošeDa / NeKoji tramvaj vozi do...?Jedan / dva / tri / četiri / pet / šest /sedam / osam / devet / deset / jedanaest/ dvanaestNe razumijem / Ne pričam hrvatskiKako si?Voda / čaj / kava / sokCrveno / plavo / žuto / crno / bijelo /zeleno / smeđeJa / ti / on / ona / ono / mi / vi / oniBEFORE YOU ARRIVE 10