Croatian Pronunciation basics

 

 

When speaking Croatian:

  • Every single letter must be clearly enunciated
  • There are no silent letters
  • There are no special combinations of letters that together create one sound
  • Letters are pronounced the same, regardless of which their position in the word

The Croatian alphabet

The Croatian alphabet has 30 letters, with 25 consonants and 5 vowels (a, e, i, o, u). Compared to the standard Latin alphabet Croatian has the following additional letters: č, ć, dž, đ, lj, nj, š and ž and doesn't feature the letters q, w, x or y.

The 'half vowel': r

In Croatian, the letter r is sometimes treated as a vowel and therefore referred to as a 'half vowel', or syllabic consonant.

This occurs most commonly with short, single syllable words which contain no vowels at all, like (blood), (finger/toe) and (bush).

There are also some longer words with more than one syllable which feature the syllabic r, e.g. (heart), (hill) and (compassion).

Double vowels and double consonants

Generally, Croatian does not have double vowels or double consonants, however there are some exceptions. These are almost always words which themselves are formed from two other words, or of the combination of a prefix and a word.

Here are a couple of examples:

– the strongest naj (prefix for superlatives) + jači (comparative form of jak (=strong))

– dark ochre (e.g. coloured) tamno (dark) + oker (ochre)

Exercise: Try pronouncing these difficult Croatian words!

– roe deer

– cream

– southernmost

– thorn

– black

– foster father

– counter-coup

– thin

– tasteless

– light

– to be ending

– highly educated

– fast

– spectacle

– garden

– university

– inefficient

– halo

– euro

– zoology

– carrot

– dining room