Croatian grammar

Croatian grammar is very similar to other languages of the Serbo-Croatian diasystem and descends from Old Croatian which was used until the 16th century. It differs little from the language used in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro. There are also minor differences with the Kajkavian and Chakavian dialects spoken in Croatia.

Croatian has three grammatical gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter), a relatively large number of grammatical cases (7) but few verb tenses.

This page outlines the grammar of Croatian grammar.

Nouns

The two most important things regarding nouns in Croatian are the seven cases and the so-called "fleeting 'a'".

Noun endings

Adjectives

Some of the declensions for adjectives are the same as for nouns, and so they might rhyme: velika kuća (sing. nom.), veliku kuću (sing. acc.). Others might be confusing: jednim klikom (with one click, sing. masc. instrum.).

Singular

yntax

Croatian has a rich case structure that is reflected in the declension of nouns and adjectives. This makes syntax of little use and allows for very great freedom of word order. In English, for example, the difference between 'Man bites dog' and 'Dog bites man' is shown by syntax. In Croatian "čovjek grize psa" and "čovjek a grize pas" have the same word order, but the meanings are shown by the noun endings. Any word of the three words is grammatically correct, and the meaning clear because of the declensions.

They are certain words that have no accent (enclitics) that must come in a fixed order. They are, in order, question words (only "li"), verbs (clitic forms of 'to be', sam, si, je, smo, ste, and su, and of 'will' ("ću, ćes, će, ćemo", and "ćete"), dative pronouns ("mi, ti, mu, nas, vas, im,a" and "si"), the reflexive accusative pronoun (only "se"), and the accusative pronoun ("me, te, ga, je, ju, nas, vas", and "ih"). The clitics must be at the second position of the sentence. The first element may be a single word or a premodifier-noun combination, e.g. "Taj se čovjek vara", 'That person deceives himself', or "Taj ćovijek se vara".

ee also

* Croatian language
* Štokavian dialect
* Kajkavian dialect
* Chakavian dialect

External links

wikibooks|Croatian
* http://learn-croatian.com Phrases and grammar
* http://www.hr/hrvatska/language/index.en.htm Beginner's Croatian
* http://www.visit-croatia.co.uk/croatianfortravellers Croatian for Travellers with audio files.