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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 movable 'a'.

Noun endings

Examples of conjugations

Singular

Plural

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

Plural

• Note: animate objects (people and animals) are treated differently in the singular masculine accusative. In this case, it is the same as singular masculine genitive. It is considered accusative even though it looks like the genitive. Exmaple: Vidim velikog psa (I see a big dog).

• Note: most adjectives ending in consonant-'a'-consonant (for example: dobar - good), the 'a' dissappears when any letter is added. Dobar becomes, for example , dobri, dobra, dobrog, dobru, dobrim, dobrom, dobre, and dobrih, according to case and number.

Verbs

Croatian verbs are normally only conjugated in the present indicative. Other tenses and moods are require helping verbs. Much more complicated is verbal aspect: the perfective and the imperfecive.

Tense

Verbs tenses can be present, past, futures I and II, and pluperfect.

• past uses the present of biti (to be) plus the perfect participle.
• Present uses only the indicative
• Future I uses the present of htjeti (will or to want) plus the infinitive.
• Future II uses the future of biti (the only verb with a simple future) plus the perfect participle.
• pluperfect, which is not often used, uses the composite past plus the perfect participle.

Mood

Besides the indicative, Croatian uses the subjunctive and the conditional. The subjuntive uses da plus the indicative. The conditional uses the aorist of biti plus perfect participle.

Verbal aspect

Verbal aspect is distinguished in English by using the simple of progressive (continuous) forms. 'He washed the dishes' indicates that the action was finished; 'He was washing the dishes' indicates that the action was ongoing (progressive). Croatian, like all Slavic languages, has something similar.

To compare the meanings of the different aspects with verbal aspect in English, one should know three basic aspects: completed (may be called preterit, aorist, or perfect according to the language in question), progressive (on-going but not completed yet, durative), and iterative (habitual or repeated). English uses one aspect for completed and iterative and another for progressive. Croatian uses one for completed and another for iterative and progressive.

Verbal aspect is the most challenging part of Croatian grammar. It exists in all other Slavic languages, but learners of Croatian who do know any other Slavic languages may never learn to use aspect correctly, though they will be understood with only rare problems. All verbs in Croatian are either perfective (svršeni) or imperfective (nesvršeni). Almost all verbs are part of a perfective/imperfective pair of verbs. When learning a verb, one must learn its verbal aspect, and the other verb for the opposite verbal aspect, e.g., prati (to wash, imperfective) goes with oprati (to wash, perfective).

Regarding aspect, verbs come in two types. In one type, the root verb is imperfective, such as prati. In this case the perfective is formed by adding the prefix 'o', as in oprati. In the other type, the root verb is perfective, such as pokušati. In this case the imperfective is formed by adding a suffix: pokušavati'.

A pattern which often arises can be illustrated with pisati, to write. Pisati is imperfective, so we need to add a prefix, in this case 'na-', to make it perfective: napisati. But if we add other prefixes to modify the meaning, the basic verb becomes perfective: zapisati (to write down) or prepisati' (to copy by hand). Since these basic verbs are perfective, we need to add a suffix to make them imperfective: zapisivati and prepisivati.

Many perfective verbs change their vowels instead of adding a suffix to become imperfective: roditi - rađati'. Typically, the 'iti' ending becomes 'ati', and the consonant becomes palatized.

Conjugation of verbs

There are three conjugations of verbs:

• 1. 'a': almost all verbs that have this conjugation end in "-ati".
  2. 'e': verbs ending in "-nuti" and all irregular verbs (as in the example below).
  3. 'i': almost all verbs ending in "jeti" or "iti" use this conjugation
  4. 'uje': verbs ending in "-ovati", "-ivati".

Syntax

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.

See also

• Serbian grammar
• Croatian language
• Croatia
• Štokavian dialect
• Kajkavian dialect
• Chakavian dialect

External links

• 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.

Bibliography