Variations: Colloquial and Formal

If you look into a Croatian dictionary and look for a word for clothes iron (the thing to iron your shirt), very likely, you’ll find the word glačalo. However, that word is extremely rare in real use: a large majority uses another word, pegla (there’s yet another word for that term, which will be explained later).

The word glačalo is considered ‘standard’ and will be used only in formal circumstances, in written formal language; in casual writing, even in newspapers, pegla dominates, it’s more than 20 times more common. We say that the word pegla is colloquial.

But what do ‘standard’ and ‘colloquial’ really mean? The ‘standard’ is a form of Croatian taught in schools, used on Public TV news and in some newspapers, and advertised in style manuals. It’s considered ‘proper’, and some people get angry when anyone uses anything else. However, most people use something a bit different in almost all situations. In reality, there are ‘layered cakes’ of ways people write and speak:

setting	‘standard’	‘colloquial’
formal	news on Public radio news on Public TV some Croatian teachers some professors...	formal occassions entertaiment shows on TV TV interviews lectures at university...
normal	some movies some books newspapers scientific articles some professors...	at work most daily situations local radio stations partially movies and books Facebook, portals, blogs...
‘relaxed’	—	with friends, having fun dialogues in some novels Facebook, some blogs...

The ‘standard’ column means using all forms and words considered ‘proper’ – only them – and pronouncing them in the ‘proper’ way. Virtually nobody does that in daily life. Speeches by the members of Croatian Parliament aren’t like that. Judges in courts of law don’t speak like that. But there’s some writing like that, because it’s easier to write in a prescribed way than to speak. And if you don’t really write in the ‘proper’ way, someone can proof your writing and ‘correct’ it. And to assist in ‘correcting’, there are thick style manuals – sometimes approaching a thousand pages – and a zillion web pages, something having simply tables with two columns – ‘proper’ and ‘wrong’.

In this chapter, I’ll focus on the middle and the top cake layers: the ‘relaxed’ way of speaking will be explained later, as you don’t need it to understand most writing and speech, and you likely won’t be able to speak Croatian in a ‘relaxed’ way for a while.

English has also ‘proper’ isn’t and ‘wrong’ ain’t – but the ‘proper’ form prevails completely in writing, on TV, in books, on web sites and in most public situations – and you can safely go to England or US and use isn’t all the time, and never sound odd. You will eventually learn ain’t, e.g. to understand the song Ain’t No Sunshine.

Not so in Croatia. There are many things which are standard – ‘proper’ in style manuals – but almost never used in speech, and you will sound odd if you use them. There are standard nouns that are almost never used in speech, for example:

	Std. Croatian	colloq.
airplane	zrakoplov	avion (»)
fridge	hladnjak	frižider (»)
elevator	dizalo	lift

If you do a Google™ search on the .hr domain for the phrases u liftu and u dizalu (both meaning in elevator, of course), you’ll get results like these:

u liftu	34600
u dizalu	3480

Such results, 10:1 in favor of the ‘colloquial’ word – in writing! – are common: many colloquial words prevail even in newspapers and fiction books, including translations. However, you will see the rare ‘standard’ word from time to time.

Even worse are some subtle differences between Standard Croatian and ‘colloquial’ forms. One example is the word bol pain: most manuals suggest it ‘should’ be masculine (inanimate, of course) when it means physical pain, and feminine when it stands for emotional pain.

This advice is ignored by almost everyone in Croatia – including medical textbook writers, government agencies, universities, newspapers, pharmaceutical companies, etc. Just check these results for acute pain (24:1 in favor of feminine) and chronic pain (50:1 in favor of feminine):

akutna bol (f) 1400 akutni bol (m) akutan bol (m) 52 5

kronična bol (f) 8500 kronični bol (m) kroničan bol (m) 100 70

(The masculine constructions above have two forms, due to the optional -i on adjectives.)

So, it’s safe to say that masculine bol is today marginal in Croatia, even in writing – except in Standard Croatian grammars and style guides. (Of course, the word bol usually switches its gender in plural to masculine.)

(It’s also interesting that feminine bol has been used in writing in Croatia since 1468.)

Sometimes, Standard Croatian uses a whole phrase, while in everyday use, there is a simple word:

	Std. Croatian	colloq.
whipped cream	tučeno slatko vrhnje	šlag
semolina	pšenična krupica	griz

It’s interesting that some manuals insist on the spelling gris (see Examples).

Sometimes, standard and colloquial forms happily coexist. For example, the following adjectives are common but colloquial; however standard words are also often used in real life:

	Std. Croatian	colloq.
fresh	svjež	friški
violet	ljubičast	lila
pink	ružičast	roza

There are couple of verbs as well, again the standard words are heard as well:

	Std. Croatian	colloq.
lack, miss	nedostajati (nedostaje)	faliti
fry	pržiti	frigati

There are some nouns that are specific to Croatian, and feel more formal, but they are used alongside other, international-sounding nouns, and there’s even a small difference in meaning (that’s not always observed):

library	knjižnica	biblioteka
music	glazba	muzika
system	sustav	sistem (»)

Then, there are some verbs that are usually used in a form that’s slightly different than in a (Standard Croatian) dictionary. Two common verbs are:

	Std.	colloq.
count	brojiti	brojati (broji)
paint	bojiti	bojati (boji)

On the internet, colloquial forms are 3-4 times more common than the standard forms (which are basically limited to newspapers, books, and official writings), and the colloquial forms completely prevail in speech. The meaning paint above doesn’t include art, only when you paint a fence, wall, etc.

Many verbs with inf in -jeti also have a standard and a colloquial form. For example, these are standard forms:

smrdjeti (smrdi, smrdio, smrdjela) stink starjeti (stari, stario, starjela) grow old svrbjeti (svrbi, svrbio, svrbjela) itch štedjeti (štedi, štedio, štedjela) save (money, resources) vrtjeti (vrti, vrtio, vrtjela) spin, turn

Instead of these forms, you’ll very frequently see – especially in casual writing and conversation, but also in some newspapers – the following simplified forms, having just -i-:

smrditi stink stariti grow old svrbiti itch štediti save (money, resources)  vrtiti spin, turn

colloquial, quite common

Just compare Google™ statistics for past-f forms on the Internet (.hr domain):

	...jela	...ila
smrd...	2100	9700
star...	310	1200
svrb...	2800	2200
šted...	11000	7000
vrt...	14000	24000

Bear in mind that the Internet also includes edited text (laws, newspapers) where colloquial forms are quite rare.

For more information about such verbs, check A3 Verbs.

I will list all those verbs with both forms in the infinitive, e.g.

vrtjeti / vrtiti spin, turn

There are nouns that are used in two forms in real life, one masculine, another feminine – and the feminine form actually prevails – while Standard Croatian insists on the masculine form only. The common ones are:

	Standard	common (colloq.)
handle, hold	držak (dršk-)	drška
planet	planet (»)	planeta
visit	posjet	posjeta

Some colloquial feminine nouns are much more common, e.g. za dršku is 14 times more frequent (on the Internet) than za držak.

Then, Standard Croatian insists on three-way demonstrative adverbs of place and destination:

Standard	loc.	dest.
close	ovdje	ovamo
mid	tu	tamo
distant	ondje	onamo

However, the adverb ondje is quite rare in real life – you can find it mostly in books – most speakers use only two-way distinctions, while tamo serves two roles:

colloq.	loc.	dest.
close (here)	ovdje tu	ovamo
not close (there)	tamo	tamo (onamo)

For example, on the newspaper site jutarnji.hr, the adverb tamo is 5 times more frequent than ondje. On the discussion site forum.hr, it’s 27 times more frequent. The adverb onamo is also less frequent than the others, so I’ve put it into brackets.

Sometimes, Standard Croatian – that is, people who write style manuals and proof text – slowly accept forms actually used. One example is the word kazeta cassette. Style manuals insisted on the form kaseta for decades – which was completely marginal in real life – but it seems the form kazeta has been recently finally accepted.

If you buy a Croatian style manual with an idea to learn Croatian better, use it wisely: they usually list most common ‘mistakes’, so you’ll get a glimpse of how people in Croatia really speak and write. Never take any advices from such manuals for granted – recall the noun bol pain above.

↓ Examples (click to show)

In this billboard, there are various words for vacuum cleaner – they all mean the same, but some are formal, other colloqual, with the remark Imamo ih sve We have them all:

This sticker on a wall of a hospital in Zagreb advertises a “campaign of measuring pain”:

As you can see, the word bol pain is here feminine (the ending -i in G, the feminine form of the adjective neliječen untreated).

Another example is from another hospital – this direction sign features the word prijem reception; however, many Croatian style manuals and even some dictionaries insist on the form prijam, which is actually rarer in use, and almost non-existant in speech:

Recall also the example from 16 Giving to Someone, Going to Someone, where the word posjeta visit was used on a billboard in a national park, instead of the ‘proper’ posjet, which is much rarer in speech and writing. The phrase hvala na posjeti thanks for the visit is very common, you can find it in cafes, restaurants, and shopping malls, like this one in Zagreb:

In a supermarket in Zagreb, both griz and gris are available (the standard term for semolina, pšenična krupica, appears in a small print). Of course, they are the same thing:

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