Croatian Language, an Introduction to Serbo-Croatian

Croatian is part of Serb-Croatian, but with a standard register and independent state of its own, this is a world in its own right. In this video we take a look at Serbo-Croatian by focusing on Croatian, providing you with all the key points of introduction to grammar that you need to proceed with going forward in Croatian. From the Croatian alphabet, to noun cases, and how to ask questions, this video will be very useful for anyone wanting to visit this beautiful country - Croatia - or anyone curious about this language or wanting to study it more and build a solid foundation for his or her knowledge.

00:00 Beginning
17:15 Classification
01:36 Dialects and ethnicities
02:57 History
03:57 Alphabet
06:49 Dropping pronouns
07:11 Articles
07:48 Greetings
08:48 Nouns
10:48 Cases
15:13 Adjectives
16:13 Possessives
17:15 Pronouns
19:29 Possessives
21:39 Asking questions
23:11 Quick run

Images & video: pixabay, pexels, unsplash

[flimsedom]

I once tried to learn Serbocroatian. It was quite fun to sprinkle this language into my repertoire. As a German native speaker I was told to pronounce the words with a Viennese accent (always stressing the first syllable for instance) and this made it easy to read it.
Thank you very much for sprinkling your videos and kind regards!

[yuribliman]

As a Russian and Ukrainian native speaker, I find the Croatian language pretty intelligible. As far as I understand, Croatian grammar is closer to Ukrainian grammar, especially to the Western dialects of the Ukrainian language. Croatian shares a lot of its vocabulary with the other Slavic languages. I had the experience of speaking with Croats and Bosniaks in my native languages, it was a bit of a struggle but not too much.

[vaidotast]

It is interesting for me as a Lithuanian to watch this video as I see so many similarities in grammar and even in words. The Proto-Balto-Slavic language had to be awesome :)

[raderadumilo]

The dialects of Serbo-Croatian vary quite a bit. The north-west of Croatia, and south of Serbia speak virtually different languages from the rest of the area where the language is spoken. When I served in the army in the south of Serbia, it took me two months to start understanding my sergeant. 😂 Also, I've spent a lot of time in Zagorje (north-west of Croatia). Takes a while to start compiling.

[robertberger]

Another interesting characteristic of Serbo-Croatian is its pitch accent . You can change the meaning of a word with intonation . This is also true of Slevenian .

[nenadbulic]

I attended a Croatian school and learned in the Croatian language, but I understand Serbian because of its influence on TV, radio, magazines, and comics back in the Yugoslavian era. I remember an example from the YU army when I was not allowed to say "Razumijem" (I understand/ On command/ Yes Sir) but "Razumem", although the right Croatian translation is "Na zapovjed". There are many examples where the same word has different meaning (CRO sunčeva zraka - SRB sunčev zrak; svježi zrak - svež vazduh; točka - tačka, tačka gnjojiva - kolica đubriva, etc.)

[danijeljovic]

2:40 it's ironic how Bosniaks are totally fine with this language being called Serbo-Croatian even though their ethnicity isn't included in the name meanwhile Serbs roll their eyes when they see it and Croats have a full blown meltdown

[MUb]

shtokavian dialect which is pretty much "serbo-croatian" standardized language spread from western serbia (rascia region) and bosnia and herzegovina, with partly monte negro and dalmatia region( mainly dubrovnik)

[NenadRaos]

Many ado about spelling. Croatian, as well as Serbian, are strictly phonetical languages. You need 15-30 min to learn correctly read in Croatian. There is also an error in this video. Ny is not Ny but Nj because there is no letter y in Croatian (as well as letters Q and W).

[joshadams]

Lovely to see this LangFocus-style video! Since you know both Romanian and Croatian, you might enjoy doing a video on the Balkan Sprachbund.

[LiorSultanov]

As a Russian speaker I think that I would discern most of the vocabulary in a text and would grasp some parts of the spoken language. The sentences were similar most of the time but admittedly also relatively basic. I feel like the phonology makes it easier to understand than, say, Polish. I find it interesting that West and South Slavs put the reflexive pronouns before the verb while East Slavs after it so that it merges.

[smileyface]

For the thing as the same language: in the 19th century they made efforts to unite the south slavs so they made the new standardized language. In the kingdom of Croatia Chakavian was the main language used. When the ottomans came many chakavians escaped. And they later made the languages the same. Croatian is a diffirent language.

[darkoracic]

Nos da ! I am a Croat who used to live and work in North Wales for 5 years. I want to inform you, without any political notions, that serbian langugage sounded much different before the croatization made by Vuk Karadžić. Very similar to bulgarian, containing about 4000 turcisms and 4 cases only compared to croatian, 7. Todays serbian is a croatized version of 19.th century original which is readily available from serbian literature from 19th century.

[danebajrovic]

I speak a mxed dialect of my village, mix of štokavian and čakavian dialects but I can speak Brinje čakavian as well. Thanks for the video

[maspalfiker]

Why is it so important for the "Western" intelectuals to keep putting Croatian and Serbian into the one same language? Both exhisted well before exYugoslavia where they were put into one language because of politics. These two are very simmilar, but it is only the foreigners who have a problem with them being separate languages.

[HibikiKano]

Speaking as a Slovene from the central region who is too young to have had S-C thought in school, and has very limited exposure to Serbian or Croatian media.
With great effort I can somewhat understand the kajkavan dialect or Croatian and the effort is mutual thank to kajkavan being more exposed to Slovene media and language. The further away the harder it gets on both sides, quite quickly becomes unintelligible.

Sure if I switch to Standard-Slovene intelligibility stretches a few villages further down. But Standard-Slovene is largely synthetic, made to connect the major Slovene dialects together, and formed in a time when they tried to remove non-Slavic influences from the language, making up new words to fill those gaps, or just plugging them by taking words from S-C or Slovakian. Also the accent and stress change to how normal Slovenes speak in their native dialects often breaking the flow of the language.

[varnica]

As a Croatian I understand that the languages are practically the same but the main points of differences are the latinica-cirilica you pointed out, serbians dont use the infinitive form of verbs (example: ”I want to work” -> cro is w’ the infitive: “Želim raditi”; serb is wout but w’ “da” and present form: “Želim da radim”), and obviously there are going to be differences in vocabulary. But from my experience living in coastal Dalmatia I have an easier time understanding a person from Belgrade than somebody coming from Zagorje region like city Čakovec or something like that. On the other hand a Belgradian has no chance understanding a person from Dalmatian islands and I, from the coastal area, can; just like the Čakovecian can understand Slovenian a lot more easier than me. So to conclude you this explenation of vocab - theres a lot of dialects and neighboring regions always have something similar in dialect vocabs but as closer u get to the Italian, Slovenian or Albanian border the differences become more extreme.
I would also like to explain you why we call our “croatian” group of dialects like so and “serbian” group of dialects like so - first of all the main point, if you are catholic then you are a croat and if orthodox then serbian, also again cirilica latinica, but to clear things a little - the type of letter specific group writes usually is also followed by a specific religion (cirilica connected to orthodox, latinica to catholic; except for minorities like for example, orthodoxian living in croatia is going to be used to writing in latinica but is going to be refered as a croato serbian which probably doesn't make sense to you i suppose haha but to put in a nutshell a serbian living in croatia probably writes in latinica and vice versa)
For the end i would like to just ask you to not really mock (i assume u didnt want to sound like that in the video) the absurdity that one language is croatian and the other serbian even though it sounds the same to you cus people here are sensitive to that topic cus as u know things happend not long ago. This sounded like a cliche liberal american girl asking for an apology after a racist joke but listen bro, we here in balkans like to joke about everything, as you can see from the first part of this sentence hahaha, ... but balkan politics brother...thats when a conversation can become really ugly😂
And btw u dont have to apologize for the part mentioned in the last part of my comment, we dont hate people cus of that u are just giving us a reason to hit you when we see you next time in person but after that we go get some drinks together - thats how we work😆

[morismateljan]

A quick way to differentiate two ch's:
Č - gotcha!
Ć - got ya!

[octavianb]

One interesting fact is that in Bosnia and Herzegovina they use both alphabets 😅. Latin and Cyrilic. Also, regarding J, someone from the region told me that it is pronounced like YA.

[MegaTratincica]

A very interesting and simple presentation of the Croatian standard language. I congratulate you on the effort of correct pronunciation, but it would be better if the sentence examples were pronounced by someone who is a native Croatian language. Thus, 'foreigners' would gain a better insight into the 'soundness' of the language. In any case, well done! 😊