A South Slavic language and the official tongue of Croatia — written in Latin script and mutually intelligible with Serbian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin.
Where it’s spoken
Croatian is the official language of Croatia, one of three official languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and a recognized minority language in Serbia, Montenegro, Austria, Hungary, Italy, and Romania. Croatian-American and Croatian-Australian diasporas number around 1.5 million combined.
What it sounds like
Croatian shares its phonology and most grammar with Serbian — together they make up what linguists call Serbo-Croatian or BCMS (Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian). It has a pitch accent system with four contrastive accents in formal speech and seven case endings on nouns.
How it’s written
Croatian uses the Latin alphabet of 30 letters, including č, ć, dž, đ, lj, nj, š, and ž. The orthography was reformed by Ljudevit Gaj in the 1830s on the Czech model. Unlike Serbian, Croatian only uses Latin script.
History
Croatian developed from a tradition combining Štokavian, Čakavian, and Kajkavian dialects. The 19th-century Illyrian Movement consolidated a literary standard on the Štokavian base, shared with Serbian. After Yugoslavia’s breakup, Croatia formalized lexical distinctions to assert linguistic identity.
Find more languages by letter
Croatian starts with C and ends with N. Browse other languages along the same letter.
Languages that contain a letter from "Croatian":