Language Diversity - Language Diversity - Map of Minorities & Regional and Minority Languages of Europe for and about linguistic and cultural diversity in Europe.

Language

Croatian (+Burgenland-Croatian) (hrvatski (+gradišćansko-hrvatski))

Description

Croatian is a South-Slavic language from the Indo-European language family.  In Croatia the language is spoken by approximately 4 million people. Croatian is an official language in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Montenegro. Furthermore it is an official language in the region of Burgenland in Austria, in the region of Vojvodina in Serbia and in some regions in Hungary.The Croatian language can be divided into three main dialects: Kajkavian (northern Croatia, region around Zagreb), Chakavian (Istria, Dalmatic Coast, Adriatic Islands) and Shtokavian (central and southern Croatia, western Bosnia and Herzegovina). Standard Croatian is based, just like Serbian and Bosnian, on a Shtokavian dialect.Burgenland Croatian is a regional language variety (the standard form of which is mainly based on Chakavian). Also Molise-Croatian is different and based on Shtokavian dialect that came to Italy many centuries ago and that was strongly influenced by the Italian dialects that it was surrounded by.

Important Words

Hello - zdravo

Cheers - Živjeli! Nazdravlje!

You are not alone - TI NISI SAM

Special

Croatian is written in the Latin alphabet and has some special additional letters such as: Č, Ć, DŽ, Đ, Š, Ž.

Language families

  1. Indo-European
  2. Slavic
  3. South-Slavic
  4. Western South-Slavic
  5. Croatian (+Burgenland-Croatian)

Countries (Official language)

Croatia (3.977.000 Speaker)