Croatian

Same system as Bosnian and Serbian, with a habit of building new words from native roots instead of importing them.

What sets it apart

• Where Serbian borrows, Croatian coins. An aeroplane is zrakoplov, an air-floater, rather than avion.
• Latin script only, unlike Serbian, which uses both.
• Three genders, seven cases, and dual leftovers in the numbers two, three and four.
• Its literary standard was chosen in the nineteenth century from the same dialect that Serbian standardised on, which is exactly why the three are so close.
• The Croatian coast has kept Romance loanwords from centuries of Venetian rule that the inland dialects never took.

What it opens

The Adriatic in its own words, and a grammar that unlocks Bosnian and Serbian in the same purchase. Seven cases that teach you how half of Europe thinks. A thousand islands, Game of Thrones towns, and locals who switch to English instantly: unless you hold your ground in Croatian, which changes everything.

Words with no translation

All the untranslatable words →

Next to its neighbours

Where Croatian parts company with the languages closest to it, and what each one would cost you from here.

Croatian vs Bosnian → Croatian vs Bulgarian → Croatian vs Serbian →

Croatian in the archive, next to the other sixty-six →