This is a simple introduction to the Croatian language, where you can learn the very basics easily. (At least I hope so.) It’s currently under construction: some parts are completed, some are not even started.
This site is gradually becoming available in other languages as well:
• French: Croate facile
• German Einfach kroatisch
• Spanish: Croata para todos
• Portuguese: Croata fácil
• Finnish: Helppoa kroatiaa
(My gratitude goes to the translators who wish to stay anonymous.)
Two warnings. First, I’m not a professional language teacher or linguist. Second, English is not my native tongue so you will probably find some bad English in this ‘course’. Feel free to correct me.
If you’re an expert in Croatian, or have read some book with very detailed descriptions of Croatian grammar, etc. and want to ask me why something is not described here, please bear in mind that this ‘course’ is intentionally lightweight and focuses on performance and not learning all the details and formal rules.
What is Croatian? There’s no single answer. Strictly speaking, ‘languages’ are a kind of abstractions and oversimplifications. There’s language on the public TV, but there’s also language on the streets, in movies, books and songs. People in Croatia don’t speak a ‘monolithic’ language, despite being portrayed so in many introductory, and even advanced texts. There’s a lot of regional variation, and in some parts of Croatia, extraordinary local diversity is found. This affects not only the language spoken at home, but also how people talk in public, certain words and grammar rules. I will attempt to give at least an overview of all such variations: places of significant variation within Croatia will be marked with a ® mark, and explained at the end of each chapter.
In this work, I’ll use ‘Croatian’ as ‘what is most common in use in Croatia’, especially in in everyday communication, e.g. at work, at university, in shops, at least in bigger cities, that is, how most people today speak (which is not uniform, as you will immediately see).
It turns out that the language most people in Croatia use is very close to what people in Bosnia-Herzegovina use, and quite similar to what many people in Serbia use. There are no sharp lines between Croatian, Bosnian and Serbian (defined as how people actually speak in these countries). Actually, the diversity within Croatia is much greater than e.g. difference between the standard languages you can hear on Croatian and Serbian public TV.
However, this means if you’re really interested in Bosnian or Serbian, this ‘course’ could be very useful to you; differences are small and I will summarize them at the end. Through this ‘course’, all important differences are marked: words that are really different are also marked with a ® mark, and such differences are explained at the end of each chapter. What applies to Bosnian, usually applies to Montenegrin as well. If you are interested in Croatian only, simply ignore such remarks.
Some might ask: why is this, then, only ‘Croatian’, and not ‘Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian’? There are two reasons: first, I happen to live in Croatia, so I know the actual speech and language in Croatia much better than in the 3 other countries; second, that would imply treating them on equal footing, i.e. giving many examples in three or four versions, including Serbian Cyrillic spelling from the start, and so on. Everything would get really complicated then. However, Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian books by Ronelle Alexander do exactly that – you should check them if you like such an approach.
In Croatia, there are various manuals with rules for ‘standard’, ‘proper’ language. Not of them agree what is ‘standard’, and what is not. This ‘course’ will focus primarily on the everyday language: sometimes, there's a difference between formal (or ‘standard’) and everyday (‘colloquial’) words and forms, which are used in almost all circumstances, except in laws and textbooks. Such differences will be explained as well.
Depending on your background, you might find some features of Croatian a bit strange. For example, while English apple shows a simple variation (apple, apples) the Croatian jabuka has more forms (jabuka, jabuku, jabuci, jabukom, jabuko, jabuke, jabukama). Such forms will be introduced gradually, starting from more often used forms. Knowing any language beside English is really useful, since English is one of European languages most unlike Croatian. I’ve added examples in German, French, Italian, Spanish and Swedish at various places, since they are more similar to Croatian.
Each chapter supposes that you have mastered all previous chapters. The aim of this ‘course’ is to enable you to produce and understand as many useful sentences as possible with the minimal knowledge of grammar.
Chapters 1-9 will introduce you to the very basics: alphabet, present tense, how to use nouns as objects. You’ll be able to say Ana is driving Goran to school, It’s warm today, My name is Ivan, The bus to Zadar is leaving tomorrow at three o’clock, and much more.
Chapters 10-19 will introduce you to gender in Croatian, use of adjectives, useful words like this, that, my, your, and basic uses of pronouns (me, she, us); you’ll be able to say Ana’s book is in this drawer, We’re eating in an expensive restaurant, I love her and much more.
Chapters 20-29 will introduce you to plural of nouns, adjectives and verbs, ways of expressing what you feel (e.g. I’m quite cold), expressions like car keys, my sister’s friend, past tense (I saw her), and more.
Chapters 30-39 will introduce you to more forms, ordinal numbers (first, second), more types of questions, expressing tools, company, conditional and polite expressions (e.g. I would like...), ways to express accomplishments and more.
Chapters 40-49 will introduce you to measuring, counting things, expressing existence, future tense, expressing how long actions were, and more.
Chapter 50 and later will introduce you to various kinds of sentences and ways to communicate in various situations.
A small Core Dictionary is attached to this course. It currently contains about 1800 entries, with about 2900 most used words.
I would like to express my gratitude to all those who have helped me: my wife for sound clips, Blaženka for additional sound clips; Boban Arsenijević for drawing the boundary of the standard stress area in Serbia, Dušica Božović for details on language in Serbia, CJ for many ideas and comments, Conor O’Neill for fixing my English, Kata for sound clips illustrating pronunciation characteristic for Split and parts of Croatia, Аня Немова for drawing my attention to parts of grammar I’ve overlooked, Viviam for many comments and comparisons with Brazilian Portuguese, and many others who helped me improve this work.
Some people deserve special acknowledgements.
Feel free to use this material in any way, but if you copy it, quote it, or republish it, please acknowledge the source (or link to this, etc.)
You can download the blog as:
format | updated | suitable for |
---|---|---|
AZW3 | 2018-09-25 | Amazon Kindle |
PDF (no annotations) | 2019-03-13 | tablets, PC’s, printing |
PDF (with annotations) | 2019-03-13 | tablets, PC’s, printing |
There are two versions of the PDF: one with case annotations in superscript (from the chapter 16 on), and another without them. They are otherwise identical.
You can also download a separate PDF with the most often used verbs: 250 Essential Verbs & Verb Pairs.
You can also find this basic grammar cheat sheet useful.
Happy learning!
— Daniel N.
Hi Daniel,
ReplyDeleteOnce again thanks for all your hard work. I think this new blog does provide more manageable chunks for learning and it has been a good way for me to refresh what I have learned. Give a thank you to your wife for the audio, it’s a great feature! Your blogs are the best available source for English speakers learning Croatian, in my opinion.
Some suggestions/comments for Easy Croatian:
1) Having a navigation bar on the right side, similar to Basic Croatian, would make it easier for readers to jump back and read previous chapters.
2) It would be nice to have audio of some of the more difficult endings (e.g. –oj, -ih) and pronouns (e.g. joj, ih, nju) as I think English speakers would be unsure of how much emphases to put on the final sounds/letters. (Not trying to make your wife work harder!)
3) Not imperative, but having a way to get answers for the exercises might save someone from guessing endlessly.
4) I think early in the blog it would be helpful to give a quick “heads up” of what the biggest challenges are in Croatian grammar from an English speaker perspective (i.e. cases, verb conjugation). I think this will help learners who have no knowledge of Croatian (or perhaps any additional language) mentally prepare for the challenges/frustrations they will encounter. Something like:
“Croatian grammar is difficult and very different from English. In Croatian, the endings of verbs change depending on who is doing the action (English: I speak, you speak; Croatian: Ja govorim, ti govoriš). Also, the endings of adjectives and nouns change depending on how they are used in a sentence (English: The apple is green, I eat the apple; Croatian: Jabuka je zelena, Ja jedem jabuku).
Do not be surprised to see many similar-looking words (e.g. jabuka/jabuku). They are the same words with different grammatical endings. Whereas, in English, it is important to learn proper word order, for Croatian, it is important to have correct word endings.”
5) The only important subject that is missing is religion/church/weddings/other celebrations (I know you’re not religious, so I don’t expect it, but I’m going to mention it anyways since I do think there’s quite a few terms that come up in everyday Croatian).
Bok C,
Deletethanks for your suggestions! Now, this is far from complete.
1) I will add it. With this blog, I tried to make my work as simple as possible. I will add the sidebar (likely, an expandable section, like Labels) if I find a way to have it automatically, without having to change everything whenever I move or rename a lesson. — UPDATE: I've added it.
2) Audios will be added, for sure.
3) I will enable a the reveal answer button, it's just hidden now (answers are available in both PDF and Kindle edition)
4) I don't know if that's the right thing to do. I'm getting stories that people are giving up (in language schools where they learn Croatian) because they think it's too complicated. And it's not clear what is the most complicated thing. Verb conjugation definitely not. I would avoid the term "difficult", since some people could give up immediately. I speak, you speak is different in Spanish and Italian, and those languages are often considered "easy" (they are not so easy, actually). And "I speak, you speak" is the same in Chinese, and Chinese is not that simple...
5) The last part of the blog will contain such "situations" - work, school, celebrations. but it yet needs to be written. There are big parts that are missing at the moment...
Thanks for your input, you'll see some things very soon! lp Daniel
3) is done, now you have a button to reveal an answer. lp Daniel
DeleteBravo for your work Daniel !! I can imagine how you worked hard for us in order to share your so beautiful language.
ReplyDeleteRegarding your English, it's really better than mine, you're doing well.
I need to refresh my English at the same time I learn sprskohrvatski. I think your blog is the good place to me.
Ja sam Belgijanac i moj maternji jezik je francuski. Hvala ti puno !!
Jan
Hi Jan,
Deletefirst, thanks for the kind words. I hope you will find this blog useful. You can help me by commenting, e.g. when you notice a similarity between French and Croatian (or Serbian).
Since French is more similar to Slavic languages than English (Spanish and Italian are even more similar) I hope it will be easier for you than for an average English-speaking learner.
If you need anything, you can comment here or on the Facebook page.
lp Daniel
Also, you can write comments in French, I understand it a bit.
DeleteOk Daniel ! Message bien reçu.
DeleteI noticed a similarity between the French and Croatian. You say "moram ići" and in French we say "je dois aller". Two verbs that follow but Serbians say "moram da idem".
J'espère que mon anglais est assez compréhensible pour toi car je ne suis pas un expert ;-)
Vidimo se uskoro
Jan
Hi Jan,
Deletestrictly speaking, you can say in Serbian moram ići, but in speech the form da + present prevails over the infinitive.
Ton anglais est compréhensible :)
lp
Hi Daniel, I know that this is a bit off-topic, but I'm wondering if you know of anyone in Rijeka who can tutor someone in English? I have a good friend there who wants private English lessons. Thanks in advance,
ReplyDeleteDebra N.
So, someone who knows Croatian would like to get private English lessons?
DeleteCorrect. He's 50 years old, is a native Croatian speaker, and never really learned English in school. He now wants private lessons to learn English quickly.
ReplyDeleteZdravo Daniel,
ReplyDeletedrago mi je da sam našao tvoj blog.
Belgijanac sam. Prije mnogo godina učio sam hrvatski jezik -onda još jugoslovenski-, zbog godišnjog odmora. Sada bi htio malo ponavljati. Tvoj blog mi će biti velika pomoć. Hvala
Bok, nema na čemu. LP
DeletePS bolje je "Ja sam Belgijanac."
Thank you very much for helping us! I love your blog and it's very well exaplained! Thank you for your effort and time! Puno hvala!!!
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome! LP
DeleteHi Daniel, hvala ti! for your hard work! i speak spanish and if you need help let me know, dovidenja!
ReplyDeleteThanks! What would help me most - for now - is that when you spot some similarity with Spanish, comment under the chapter. Spanish is much more similar to Croatian in many aspects than English, but I know almost no Spanish, unfortunately. lp Daniel
DeleteHello from Brazil. I'm new here. Thanks for the valuable information.
ReplyDeleteHello Daniel,
ReplyDeleteI started to learn SC a few days ago, and your course is a huge help to progress fast and keep track in a structured fashion. You may not be a professionnal linguist, but you sure as hell do an amazing work.
Best regards from France,
Julien
Thanks for nice words! I have started working on some changes few days ago, i.e. introducing additional marks for verbs that don't shift the stress to the negation in the present tense, so expect an inconsistency in stress markings here and there in the next week.
DeletePlease, read everything from the start, I'm progressing quite rapidly, even if it doesn't look like it. Please comment on anything, I will take any chance to improve the text. If it's good, it's only because many people helped with comments, questions and suggestions. lp Daniel/Croatia
PS also, all kinds of parallels with French are welcome!
Hello again Daniel,
DeleteIt's been now more than 2 weeks that I study Intensively Croatian with the help of your course, and the free courses of the HR4EU team, a gang of young linguists based in the humanities faculty of Zagreb, and also another course focused on Serbian (Arizona State University Serbian 101 course) I found in my various researches. I mention those resources, because they may act as a good complement for your course. The first one prepares for basic A1, A2, and even B1 European certification in Croatian and has extensive quizzes as well as some grammatical resources. The second is very interesting, and from the lessons I already followed on it, I think it brings some useful complements to your own course about grammar and linguistic terminology. This one especially may interest you. I can give you privately an access link or send you the whole website via mail if you wish so. If you have some other courses in mind, I’d be glad to use them as a complement as well, so it multiplies my learning patterns.
To answer your point, I don't focus much on stress for now, because I basically try to swallow the whole grammatical core (cases, tenses, perf/imp, syntax, morphological (word formation, affixes related concepts, derivational patterns)), so I keep that speech improvement for later. And when I get into it, I know that I’ll have a superb resource on hand to get quickly a handle of it. :)
I see you’re still working hard on this course, I saw already some differences between my first and second reading of some parts of your course, so I basically await your v45 to be out in pdf to reread the whole on my tablet and bring if possible pertinent comments. I still use the 5 summaries of your non-actualized blog, because I didn’t find their plain equivalent yet in your Easy Croatian course.
I stumbled also on your Memrise exercises, which I enjoy using alongside with the course.
If I had one comment to make right now, it’s about morphological rules. You already speak about that in various chapters, explaining how to transform a type of word to another (adjective->adverbs; nouns-adjectives; verbs->gerund) and make useful comparisons with English. Maybe an appendix summarizing the principal word-formation/derivation rules for beginners (so they become more quickly use to Croatian language morphology) could be useful for learners, because I noticed how getting used to the morphology helps me to learn faster (example: the “floating a” removal rule, once I understood it formally, I became much easier with the related words inflections).
Prepositions are also a very important part, especially about cases and verb formation, but not only. I’m using your former blog summary alongside your current course and some various resources to understand the conceptual meaning of each preposition, and their combinations. About that, CroDeriv is a very useful tool as well (more for native speakers than for me, but I understood the principle and it’s great), maybe get a look on it if you don’t know it already.
I also started to establish a exercises-bundle on my own on Memrise, about various list of words useful for my learning. A point that struck me is the importance of some concepts in Slavic, that almost deserve a chapter of their own about their possible derivation. For example, I used the roots “Prav” and “Vjer” (and some others) to seek for and collect many words derived from them, and observe the related patterns (perfective/imperfective; positive/negative ; direction/accomplishment, word-type switch, etc).
Above the word formation and from my understanding, to truly learn a language, one has also (to some extend) to try to understand the conceptual differences between his own mind, mainly shaped by his native language (and in my case, by English), and the language one wants to learn, especially because Croatian is separated from French by more than 5000 years of history, the loanwords, especially the recent ones, enriching languages more than they modify their core structure and semantic concepts.
DeleteMaybe a conceptual approach of Croatian/south Slavic/Slavic semantics would be an interesting development of your course for advanced learners, and also for beginners who wants to go a little deeper in their understanding, and so “fasten” their learning of Croatian. That ain’t a learner request, but more likely a wish expressed by someone who doesn’t only want to learn to speak Croatian, but also understand to some extend the “hidden spirit” underneath, the language for itself. Also because I have dear Croatian and Serbian friends who are worth the effort to make our relationship (and my first trip over there) even more enjoyable and meaningful. ��
Anyway, thank you once again for this amazing work of yours. I stumbled on your old blog months ago while searching some basic conversational items in Croatian, noticed its already great quality, and once I decided to really learn Croatian, it was my first move to come back there. And then, on this present course, and that really gave me confidence to fiercely “go into it”, saying myself “I have a proper, comprehensive, and trustable resource to start and progress with” to learn Croatian.
"To answer your point, I don't focus much on stress for now, because I basically try to swallow the whole grammatical core (cases, tenses, perf/imp, syntax, morphological (word formation, affixes related concepts, derivational patterns)),"
DeleteThis is very hard for most people. Most people who try to learn Croatian have no linguistic training whatsoever. I assume people don't know what subject, object or tense is, and mostly people don't.
I want to stay away from the "conceptual meanings". They tend to be very abstract and scare people.
There will be summaries on the right about prepositions etc. But they are not easy to write, as you have to explain spatial and temporal uses separately. I will start something, but it will take a while to get completed, with nice drawings and so (I have to create drawings that match the overall design of the blog, etc.)
"especially because Croatian is separated from French by more than 5000 years of history"
It's not really so, Croatian and French are a bit closer than you would expect from two languages separated that long. Some quite specific expressions translate almost word for word. For example:
Il s'appelle Ivan.
On se zove Ivan.
This is word-for-word, and even French s'/se is very close to Croatian se. There was also some parallel development here, and maybe even some common influence of Latin or other languages.
Besides, most languages in Europe belong to the so-called Standard Average European area, and they are more similar than expected. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Average_European
"example: the “floating a” removal rule, once I understood it formally, I became much easier with the related words inflections"
DeleteAlso, it's not very clear that there is a "floating a rule". When we have vrabac vs vrapca and vrapci do we (native speakers) really store the rule, or we have two forms in the brain? What about vrijeme vs vremena? There are definitely two forms there. What about bolestan vs bolesna? Also, likely two forms stored. Not to mention dijete vs djeteta.
Therefore, to keep consistency, I have decided to have two forms everywhere where there's any alternation. Besides, it's not clear which a's are floating (in some dialects, it's rather floating e's).
You will hear pas - psa (which is standard), but you will also hear (and read) pas - pasa, especially from speakers from Dalmatia.
I understand you would like to learn the language in a formal, structured way, but I'm afraid there's not good formal description of Croatian at all, definitely not one suitable for language learners.
Regarding morphemes, can you really deduce the meanings and use of the verb ne-do-sta-jati from its morphemes? Not really. This is a very old derivation which is completely opaque today. In fact, many derivations go back to the Balto-Slavic era, which is like 3000 years ago.
I already noticed some similarities like the one you displayed « il s’appelle Ivan »/ « on se zove Ivan ». I lack of knowledge of the different nodes of PIE evolution to see if it belongs to a system, but it certainly does. Nevertheless, french became very analytic, the only langage being more analytic imo being english, which lost most of the peculiar inflection patterns (for exemple in its conjugaison). It makes any slavic langage quite complex to learn from the ground.:)
DeleteIf we go back to Latin, ofc their is much more similarities (e.g : case system). Like you mentionned, there is many underneath similarities in the deep structures of PIE based european langages, only their analytic/derivative/inflectionnal make them seem like so different. Conceptually, once you ajust yourself to those differences, you really are in known ground : « different ways to represent the same semantical and syntactical structures ».
The fleeting a seems for me to be a rule… among other morphological rules, that only a native speaker or a seasoned learned can apprehend in a close-to-systemic manner. I think we store items « as data » first, and then make « processes », rules out of them when they repeat themselves on enough different items. Then, we may find ourselved facing another rule that add up to the first one, like in the vraBAc/vraPcA exemple. Some will repeat themselves on a regular basis (the vowel inflection), some will be more random, due to the arbitrary character of any langage evolution, some patterns being systemic, and some other only circumstancial (and often it’s between the 2). In any case, you ofc do very well to display every time the different forms related to the inflections.
In the exemple of derivation-based verb given : nedostajati « to miss », I’m gonna play ball and submit to you my idea : the ne- prefix is the obious negative prefix, the do- 2nd prefix relates to the idea of destination, staj- is a turkish root (in TR, staj word currently means « internship ») related to the idea of « presence in, more generally » « presence there », and -ati is the terminaison – verb marker (the 2 last confirmed by the meaning of stajati : to stand). So, ok, it’s not crystal clear yet, especially the -do concept that interact very specifically with the other, and it can be arbitrary to some extend.
DeleteTo deepen that, let’s do a square "semantic differencial analysis », and remove firstly the do- from nedostajati : It gives us « nestajati », which means disappear. Then, if we compare the idea of missing (nedostajati), to the idea of disappearing (nestajati), we can observe that… the 2nd prefix -do adds to « nestajati » a mearning related to the… consequence (in time perspective, which relates to destination in space perspective) of the action of disappearing : what disappears ends up missing : nedostajati.
To cross-check my interpretation, let’s complete the other side of this square, remove the ne-, readd the do- and have a look at dostajati (to suffice). And for me it’s conceptually consistent, despite once again, not crystal clear : the do- added here some kind of a destination idea to stajati (no needs to go beyond or further to what « suffices », because it’s enough : destination reached).
Then, ne- becomes before do- : The yes/no -ne prefix is usually the most important semanticaly, maybe because the affirmation/negation is the greatest conceptual/structural summa divisio in all the languages that I know, included our indo-european ones. Above the concept of "consequence/destination".
And I guess it’s also enough gibberish for today !:D
Actually, nedostajati is derived from dostajati "be enough, suffice", where do- is the same as in dovoljno "enough" = "as much as you wish" (compare volja "will"), and sta- is a perfect Indo-European root (*steh2).
DeletePersian is even more analytic than French and English, it lost genders, for example.
Exact, I was wrong on the root. Especially when there is so much words using *steh2 all around Europe, I overfocused on the j. Then the -ja is indeed a mistery, and I'm not up to quest for that anymore today ! :D
DeleteBut I'm glad you brought my attention on this, because now I gained in confidence. "All those derivations make sense, or must make sense". All the more reason to keep learning :)
Thanks for the persian reference, I really start to get passionned by all this linguistic. It's been only 2 months I started and can't get my head out of it anymore !
To come back on your course, your approach already attempts to put some order in the mess (for exemple, I use the way you order the cases), but it's true that there is nothing "systematized" enough as a whole, and one has to compose with the already great ressources his can find to put it together his way.
the -irati batch of verb is quite useful as well, and I try to get more to help myseld. :)
Thank you very much once again :)
Thank you so much for these great materials! very helpful.
ReplyDeleteBeyond any doubt, this is the best website for learning Croatian. Thank you very much for the blog and for your help.
ReplyDeleteThank you! Please suggest anything. Lp
DeleteHi Daniel,
ReplyDeleteFirst off, your website is wonderful and I can't thank you enough, this is the best resource I've found for learning Croatian.
Since you mentioned possibly translating this, I'd be very interested in a Spanish translation, because I'm finding a lot of similarities. Spanish is my native language and I keep translating examples in my head because they are much more similar than in English. Or you could maybe make an appendix with some of the examples translated into Spanish (or German, actually) to read along with the chapters? It's just a suggestion though, the website is wonderful as it is!
Hvala puno!
Espe
Yes! If you want to translate it, please send me a message on the Facebook page, so I can send you further information! Great
DeleteDear Daniel, thank you very much for your wonderful site. I have been looking for a means to learn the language --and even bought a book (BSC Texbook)-- but your site is like a miracle. I have gone over the first 17 chapters so far, and I am also working on the Easy Croatian Vocabulary on Memrise site (only the first 53 levels as of today). Experiencing the progress I made so far and feeling how much more I can build up, I just wanted to extend my hearty thanks for the invaluable time you spared and and your zeal in teaching the language. Please be assured that your work is appreciated.
ReplyDeleteThank you! This site was improved a lot over the years since 2014, and you can also help it get better, by pointing out to any too complicated, unclear or incosistent parts!
DeleteHappy learming! lp
Came across this on Reddit, after learning the alphabet and some words on https://www.hr4eu.hr/
ReplyDeletelike that site, but it felt a bit lifeless, more just "here are the words, identify them and repeat them" without much explanation.
This blog seems like pretty much all I was asking for, so excited to start my journey learning croatian through here (albeit slowly since I have Uni keeping me busy)
Thank you! Also, you can join the associated FB group, and you can ask questions or comment below each chapter, and you'll get an answer as soon as I find some time to reply. lp Daniel
DeletePS Take your time, a language can't be mastered in few months anyway. It takes years.
Hello, Daniel.
ReplyDeleteGreat job, this blog will surely help a lot of beginners learning Croatian, I am no longer a beginner (just about intermediate) but I am reading your blog and finding it very interesting and instructive.
May I ask you if you are a native speaker of Croatian?
Best regards
Hi! Thanks. I'm a native speaker of the Zagreb dialect... lp
DeleteMy dear Teacher,
ReplyDeleteMyself Parthiban Panneerselvam from Tamilnadu, India.
Thank you so much for your amazing efforts to educate others.
I started my journey to learn Croatian from last month. Croatian language is very interesting.
hope I can communicate in Croatian with locals once I reach Zagreb.
once again thank you so much for this wonderful platform.
Love from Tamilnadu, India
Greetings to Tamilnadu from Croatia!!! lp Daniel
DeleteHey Daniel! Thank you for putting all this down, really appreciate it. Could you please fix the link for the Grammar Cheatsheet? It seems to be dead
ReplyDeleteThanks, I'll look into it. I've made a new sheet meanwhile :) lp
DeleteHi.
ReplyDeleteThanks for all your hard work and providing this amazing site. The cheat sheet cannot be downloaded. It's a dead link. Thanks.
Yes, others have commented about it. I'll remove the link until I make it work again :(
DeleteJust found this blog and wow... Looking forward to diving deep into the Croatian language. My father was born in Zagreb and came to Canada when he was young. He met my mom who is from Portugal so I grew up mostly speaking English,. I am so ready to be able to communicate with my extended family as well as my boyfriends family! I feel overwhelmed but this blog makes me feel comfortable and ready for the challenge! Thanks so much for making this accessible. Will circle back once I have dived into the work!
ReplyDeleteHi! Do you speak any Croatian, even a phrase or two? Do you have someone (a relative...) to speak / exchange messages with?
Deletelp Daniel
Hi Daniel!
ReplyDeleteI recently stumbled across this in my pursuit to learn Croatian! This is AMAZING!
I am trying to download the Grammar cheat sheet, it doesn’t work? Is there any way you could email it to me or try reposting in on this blog?
Hvala puno!
Diana
Thank you for your kind words! Somethimg wrong is going on, many images are also missing ;( I'l try to fix it...
Deletekp Daniel
I seem to be having the same issue and am getting a 403 error.
DeleteI'll look into the issue...
DeleteMeanwhile, the cheat sheet is useless for absolute beginners, so just read the main site :)
Hey, Daniel! I downloaded PDF and compared it with the website and it seems like the website has a little more content (for example section 93 from the website is missing in PDF, PDF has something different there).
ReplyDeleteWill there be an updated PDF version?
Yes... the PDF is quite outdated, almost 4 years :( When I get some free time I'll fix it... hopefully this year. lp
DeleteDaniel, thank you SO MUCH for a Ukrainian version, it's so amazing and exactly what I was looking for because it's easier to learn Croatian using all the similarities with Ukrainian, rather then trying to go from English explanations. Many concepts and words are very similar so it's quite easy to understand thanks to your manual! I am pretty sure it will make my move to Croatia easier so I am very grateful
ReplyDeleteThe Ukrainian version is just a rough draft. I know only little Ukrainian, so that was mostly Google translate :( I have to complete it but I need a help from some Ukrainian...
DeleteI also have it for people who speqk Russian but I juat startrd it...
I have to write about more complex constructions yet
I have just began to study Croatian so probably I won't be of much use for you, but I speak natively in Ukrainian and Russian and my English is half-decent, so if you need any help hit me:
Deletedaedromans@gmail.com
Well I need suggestions for the Ukrainian page, corrections if something is wrong etc. It's still half done
DeleteDaniel, wow, hvala ti!!! Ja sam pola hrvatica ali malo govorim hrvatski. My dad is croatian (from the islands) and I only speak basic Croatian (more when I spend the summers there but I forget it back in the US). My boyfriend and I are moving there this summer and I wanted to understand the grammar better- I am so thankful to find this website and all of the hard work you have done. I'll comment again later with an update on my progress!
ReplyDeleteHi Taylor, thank you for your kind comments. People like you are one of reasons why I made this (actually it's not finished yet).
DeleteAs you likely know, the actual speech in Croatia varies a lot. I cover some variations from the start, but I could't cover all. One variatiin that happens on most islands (except for Cres and inslands near Dubrovnik) is so-called Ikavian. I introduced it here:
https://www.easy-croatian.com/2014/11/i3.html
You can also send me a direct message via the Facebook page, if you have some questions or suggestions
Sretno, or rather sritno!
Daniel
Hi Daniel, thank you for your incredible work!! Just wanted to ask if there’s any plan to update the AZW3 download link (which seems to be down - maybe it’s just me), or even release it in open EPUB format?
ReplyDeletePS If you were to set up some sort of easy donation link, I suspect that many an appreciative learner with the means would be happy to contribute…
Hi, thanks for the kind words; yes, there are plans, but unfortunately, my time and energy are limited. A kind of roadmap is:
Delete1. update the verbs PDF
2. update the whole site PDF
3. other stuff, like the Kindle file
However, everything is online. You have sound clips, embedded video clips, you have some interactivity and so on. You actually don't need offline files.
br / lp Daniel