Learn Croatian - Alphabet & Pronunciation

And some tips and tricks on 'weird letters' such as č,ć,ž,đ,dž, ije, lj, nj. : )
Note: This is not the standard pronunciation but the most popular accent present in the capital and other major towns and areas.
For any questions, problems etc... contact info is here:
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/ grgo.petrov
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[@mirawenya]

I swear, you croatians are just trolling us with č and ć. I just cannot hear the difference.

[@GrgoPetrov]

+mirawenya Haha maybe, it depends a lot actually on a region. Since the capital (in general around 30-40% of population) lives in area where only one sound (let's say č) exists, people also don't hear the difference. Thus also when I speak I don't make the difference. However, what might sound like 'extrem' use of 'ć' (or even try to pronounce t+j together) can be heard for example here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/sIK9pqyZr5eXqdk skip to the end of the song when the kid speaks, you will hear very "soft" ć. Again, it's regional. And the standard is (the irony) something third.

[@mirawenya]

Grgo Petrov Thanks a lot :) Seems like for a foreigner, it doesn't matter _that_ much if I differentiate between the two. I just try to make one rather sharp ch sound, and the other more gentle so far. (I do the soft one almost like š, but with a slight t sound in front, very hard to explain) I suppose I could always ask my croatian friend if I'm doing it at all right.

[@GrgoPetrov]

mirawenya haha! right, don't bother much because even we have 3 ways of pronouncing it and it's chaotic. And every Croatian (depending on a region) will answer you differently. :-)

[@anticringe5865]

yup same hahaha

[@leonardojerkovic3618]

I'm native Croatian speaker from South Croatia. Here in this region, both Č and Ć merged into a single "ch" sound, so my advice is don't bother with it, it is not essential thing, if you overdo it, you may sound funnier then if you use neutral sound.

[@danieln.3532]

Two important remarks: 1. Grgo here uses a non-standard (but common) stress as he pronounces baZEN and paPIR; however, a lot of people (and in standard) will pronounce it as BAzen and PApir. 2. is NOT always : in words like prije, nije, dvije, smiješ, pijemo, it's clearly pronounced as ije, that is, pri-je, ni-je, dvi-je, smi-ješ, pi-je-mo. Therefore, this video oversimplifies things a bit, but it can give basic information on alphabet.

[@Uatemydoodle]

I agree.

[@IFuckingLoveFrenchToast]

Daniel N. iee iye

[@IFuckingLoveFrenchToast]

Daniel N. and also we get rid of the j in some of those words to shorten up some time cause y not?

[@NN-qv7if]

Smiješ (smjeti) would be only one syllable- pronounced fast /smješ or smieš/ even though most of us pronounce it clearly as smi-ješ

[@IFuckingLoveFrenchToast]

raise your hand if your croatian and only wanted to see the comments on this vid or if you only wanted to correct the guy ✋

[@leaknezevic2377]

Aqui Da Boi daaa 😂😂 bahahah upravo zato

[@catlover3366]

✋✋✋

[@uksz1]

hi

[@genrama]

So simple to pronunce and learning croatian .

[@gabidulcich4215]

I love you!! I'm learning so much. I speak Spanish so is much easier for me to pronounce everything but yet this is so helpful

[@greenvortex7]

Thank you so much for this. Great video that was fun and also used other languages, but more importantly you used the actual words with images that helps with retention. Great job.

[@mbpittsjr]

This is great. Very helpful. Hvala lijepa!

[@freshmapping2607]

Perfect. Simple, no stalling and just thorough.

[@AdrianBlogs]

Great video ☺️ thanks

[@jiyoungyoon9064]

This is the video that I really need!!!!♥

[@sueellenturscak8196]

Hvala! This really helped me to stop stressing out about communicating! I thought that there was some important difference between č and ć, and dž I đ, that I could not hear in speech. Maybe it's there, but it must be very subtle.

[@christiantornel3713]

Hey buddy your VIDEO IS AMAZING!! Thank you so much FROM MEXICO CITY!!

[@GrgoPetrov]

+Christian Tornel Thanks for your support, glad you like it =)

[@rodcurvelo4075]

Thanks man, I appreciate it!

[@Colbertnation64]

Hvala!

[@lindsayk40]

such a useful way of teaching! so excited to visit thanks

[@GrgoPetrov]

Thank you very much Lindsay! :)

[@IFuckingLoveFrenchToast]

Lindsay K have fun at those sharkless beaches

[@hikage100]

amazing video and helpful

[@milanbista296]

Thank you so much

[@eldrad72]

Hi ! Thanks for this useful video ! Still, I have a question : how do you pronounce words like hvala or the name of the island Hvar ? Thank you !

[@danishhadiff1328]

This thing is realy helpfully , thank you

[@zulkiflijamil4033]

Excellent video. Thank you.

[@johnsmith-qe2fd]

Amazing.... thank you!

[@GrgoPetrov]

In words such as "vrijeme, dijete, mlijeko" you can pronounce IJE as long JE. That's what most of us would pronounce it like.

[@mihaeltomasovic]

Grgo Petrov hej, hvala lijepa! i was wondering - i still have trouble with "Lj" and "Nj" i know it isn't exactly like "LEE" and "NEE" can you give me some tips please on how to correctly say it? i speak German pretty well and my Ukrainian and Russian are not bad at all... so please if you could help me at all with this i would very much appreciate it... i want to learn my native language again so badly - my family are from Montenegro and Slovenia but my mother was adopted from Slovenia and my grandparents from Montenegro were only around me for a little bit of my early years from the time i was born till i was maybe three and a half. me so they would speak to me in the Montenegrin dialect but not very much and i've forgotten it as it has been nearly 25 years (i'm 28 now) since i've spoken it after my mother brought me to live with her parents in another state in the USA. thanks for all your help!

[@GrgoPetrov]

Kristjen Štjuprić Hej! Nema na čemu =) I promise I'm going to do it, the next pronunciation guide will include all those troublesome cases such as lj / nj / r / consonants in row & tricks that will make it a lot easier etc. Please just wait 2-3 weeks more, I'm really busy at the moment. Interesting family background. Back in the days they probably learned in school Serbo-Croatian which could be called mixture of Štokavski language varieties, thus that one is also spoken in Montenegro. (I am also going to make some things more clear about BCSM infamous case with standard and non standard languages which is taboo in Croatia and Serbia). I can't remember at the moment any advice for LJ and NJ, I just need to illustrate/demonstrate how one should have his tongue and teeth positioned, after that I think it will be much easier, along with tips for breaking syllables etc. Also my pronunciation is Zagreb's (Kaikavian) pronunciation of Standard which is probably different from Montenegrin (for word stress in Slovenian, Kaikavian and Chakavian is unnatural to be on the first syllable what majority of BCSM standards teach). Hope I helped a bit! I really promise I'll try to make a new good guide for all those problematic cases with tips and demonstrations how to make the pronunciation easier and maybe sound more like a native, as well as patterns for word accent that will make it easy to remember (as I'm also not satisfied with my accent video, have better ideas now). :-)

[@mihaeltomasovic]

Grgo Petrov =) =) you are very kind my friend! thank you so much for going through all the trouble of making videos (i don't even know how it is done lol)! they are very very informative so thank you again so much! i look forward to your other videos also! Take care my friend! Sincerely, Kris

[@Bdub1952]

Thank you for doing this! My wife and I both appreciate very much.

[@vickiemusija6146]

Slovenia and Crna Gora are different, this is Croatian

[@lori6616]

Thanks

[@commenter30]

Thank you so much.

[@rbaptista21]

Hvala.

[@joskogrgurinovich7779]

Good for my wife thanx

[@zulkiflijamil4033]

uho Vatra Zastava Thank you for this excellent lesson.

[@jenniferdeane1469]

Thanks for making this. There is just one error that might make it confusing for English speakers. You said "Nj" is like "canyon" in English, which is true. But the word you display on the video is "canon" not "canyon". They are not pronounced the same. Otherwise a very helpful video.

[@GrgoPetrov]

+Jennifer Deane Thanks for the feedback and correction, should have written 'canNon' (we say 'top'), I heard that in the US it's pronounced as our 'nj'. Thanks again!

[@jenniferdeane1469]

You're welcome. But the word you want in English is "canyon", like the Grand Canyon. It has the same sound as the Croatian and Italian examples you gave (such as "abbigliamento"). Neither "canon" nor "cannon" have that same sound. But your video was very helpful nonetheless. Especially with the "ch" and "dz" sounds which had me confused before I watched it. Thanks!

[@GrgoPetrov]

Thanks again =) Must have confused it in movies when they shout "Fire the cannons!" and I heard 'nj'. I am glad I can help. As for the 'ch' and 'dz' sounds, it's depends on region (and if you watch my alternative Croatian videos, something fresh, on the groups of dialects) ... but my intention is to make it simple and how an average speaker would pronounce it.

[@5kopiyok]

Гарно пояснив!)

[@Polarcupcheck]

You made an English mistake at 3:12. Canon (big gun) is pronounced more like Kanon. Depends on accents. Some say Kanen. Canyon (big valley. Grand Canyon) is pronounced more like Kanjon or Kanjen.

[@kirkendauhl6990]

Definitely makes reading football names less weird for me. I'm not even a fan of the sport I just follow people on social media who post about Luka Murdic or whatever his name is and I'm like "I want to be able to read this at the very least, so I can pronounce a name right"

[@k1ltro]

dobro, hvala

[@luisportella1760]

thanks, man great video

[@t.j.5692]

For the biggest part you pronounce the same like us, so following some written song lyrics, and even to sing with, is really easy for us Finnish speakers, but then you have these impossible letters that we do not have, and they all sound the same. But this end part of your video was really helpful, thank you.

[@connielicious8887]

hvala 😊👍

[@Anton-ke1ni]

The pronunciation here is of Zagreb/kajkavian accent region, not standard Croatian...Please be careful ! The difference is that stress isn't on the same character.

[@GrgoPetrov]

So what if I use the pronunciation half of Croatia uses and the tourist is most likely to encounter? For the fans of the standard pronunciation one can find the videos on other channels or those reaching you Serbian/Bosnian/Montenegrin. After all, the pronunciation is the same.

[@GrgoPetrov]

"ako stranca učiš svoj jezik uči ga književno!" pa učim ga svoj jezik koji mi je prirodan. :- ) Ja ti nisam fan književnog naglaska i čitave nepotrebne drame i božanskog statusa koji mu drugi iz nekih iracionalnih razloga pridaju. Možda će ti biti jasnije ako pogledaš ostale videe na kanalu.

[@ilhamjanqarataev360]

How do you do horvatiya,Klass,My Qazaqsan Altin, Latin,, Lachin Latinskiyy,Languages.

[@beequeen9228]

great 😊😊

[@nassaki112]

my favorite to learn the alphabet haha ( ps i started 2days ago)

[@songloccongtytnhhthuongmai8492]

The "Đ" word in Vietnamese is not pronounce just like that word in Croatian.

[@whispererL]

Thank you +Grgo Petrov , I noticed that you omit diacritics while writing. Is it common among all native speakers ? and is there any kind of remarkable opposition to that ? Hvala!

[@GrgoPetrov]

+Ismail Laamri No problem! Are you referring to other Slavic or Romance languages who put the accents? We do not do that (so we are not going to write for example automobíl or automóbil). The only diacritics are those which actually stand for the sound, not the accent (č = ch, š = sh etc.)

[@whispererL]

Grgo Petrov I am referring to the letters č, ć, đ, š and ž written as (c,c,dz,s and z). Take for example these lyrics : - tekstovi-pesama.com/miroslav-skoro/sude-mi/8356/1 Words like piše, braća, najdraže, and čuva are written without the little marks above the letters.

[@GrgoPetrov]

Oh that, right. Well, that is not considered normal, it's either that the keyboard did not provied (or the language of the keyboard) on some devices or web our diacritics...or people write it when lazy. Personaly I would always write for instance lyrics as it should be...but when I'm typing on the phone and in hury, I am impatient to get č or ć (when holding c) so I'd write "hocemo ici danas van?" instead of "hoćemo ići danas van?"... So, it's mostly because people do not want to bother themselves with special characters, not that often is the case there are missing spec. characters and in general it should always be written with diacritics =)

[@notnoah9077]

making my head spin

[@Spurdaniel123]

It's exaclty the same pronunciation as in Serbian!

[@NoTraiciones]

genius, thank you, hvala! gracias ^^

[@nathanael5898]

still cant figure out when to use đ or dž and č or ć.. :s

[@GrgoPetrov]

There are some rules in ortography when to write them (despite the speaker's ability to distinguish the sounds, if you read my comments below I wrote that having this sound depends on the region and not all the regions have it so the rest of people have to learn the rules). I could make a video on those rules which you can apply and recognize easily, though for the rest you'd just have to learn the spelling by heart and get used to it by reading stuff. :) Hope I helped!

[@leaknezevic2377]

Nathanael's ESC us croatians also have trouble with writing č and ć in some words. So don't worry if you can't figure it out. You just have to know the language, the words and the way they are written correctly.

[@BurekOne]

Ć i Č su u hrvatskom jedno slovo. Kako vidim dž i đ takođe. lol

[@ytfazefan6765]

Vidi se da si završio osnovnu školu...

[@angieangie9224]

d and the dz thingy lol. It is like d= xh dz= zh (Albanian letters but yeah)

[@IFuckingLoveFrenchToast]

Angie Angie ikr even i get confused with my own language some times

[@chemistrywithomarfarid6023]

The dude said don't pay attention with ch sound and I said OK never mind I am gonna suffer with German articles instead 😂😂

[@orangexylem]

What is the difference between Dz^ and d with a line through it?

[@GrgoPetrov]

Easy solution answer: the majority of people pronounce it as the same sound and this is my advice for foreign learners too. In border areas of Croatia (towards Bosnia/Serbia) this distinction is more heard where "dž" is like "j" in "joy" but more "harder". But make your life easier and regard it as the same sound, just pay attention to the spelling.

[@Tinhaecauamvinh]

At cykle

[@dinkofabris1047]

You misprounced dž. It sounded much softer than đ and it shouldn't be the case.

[@paulinaabod]

Hello from Zagreb (I'm Argentinian). Thanks for this video. I don´t understand the difference between ž and š.

[@NN-qv7if]

Hello! Ž is just like in the french "je" (meaning "I") or Jacques. Š is like the English - show, should. I hope this helped :)

[@tudor5561]

Love from Romania But difference from j and i

[@claudioclaudegottardi254]

Č and Ć for me, sounds like CHURCH in english. Is it possible?

[@GrgoPetrov]

You're right. There are three situations among the speakers regarding Č/Ć - some make a little difference, some make enormous one where it cannot be "not heard" (imagine "ty/ky" together...like in Czech t')...and the majority along with the capital and larger urban areas don't make a difference at all (I also don't make a difference but I hear it in other reagions) ... so just learn the spelling when to apply Č and when it's Ć..as for speaking - don't even bother to make a difference, pronounce it like "ch" in cheese, chase, check... Hope this helps.

[@stefanosalvadori1389]

Hvala! :) Just a question... what's the difference between "i" and "j" in croatian?

[@GrgoPetrov]

+Stefano Salvadori nema na čemu! 'j' is like J in German (Jahr, Junge, jemand...) or in English 'Y' (year, yacht, yoghurt, yankee...). There you go - example with "year". There is a difference if you pronounce it "year" or "ear" [jiir, iir] Was that what you wanted to know? =)

[@stefanosalvadori1389]

+Grgo Petrov Thank you very much!

[@IFuckingLoveFrenchToast]

Stefano Salvadori i = ee j = yuh (y)

[@leaknezevic2377]

Um, those are just two different letters and they sound different. I is like for igla, igraonica, igra.. And j is for like jabuka, jastuk..

[@saidled2016]

I come from Brazil and I learn croatian. Could you indicate me a good croatian grammar?

[@GrgoPetrov]

Send me an email to [e-mail] and I'll check if I have some files

[@lohikaarme8064]

Đ is hard g sound and Dž is soft g sound

[@rokos74]

It's the opposite

[@lohikaarme8064]

@@rokos74 oh

[@kimberlyclements3440]

Would you be interested in giving personal lessons?

[@GrgoPetrov]

hello! thanks for the question. Could you send me an email to [e-mail] ? Hvala!

[@BiKTV]

đ pronunciation is really hard

[@GrgoPetrov]

đ or dž - like in names George, Jack, jumbo... :-D of course, based on the capital dialect (and you don't need more) :))

[@givarkjk4465]

0:04 I thought you said pathetic

[@anticringe5865]

body do u have Facebook or something to contact with u :D i knew some words like oko . škola , bok and some others xD

[@anticringe5865]

škola say's like zkola?

[@anticringe5865]

or shkola

[@GrgoPetrov]

š= sh in English or sch in German, one letter instead of 2 or more :) I have Facebook but I am not available to talk these months

[@anticringe5865]

Hvala :)

[@stephe1605]

Auto Bazen Casa Chat Gace Dado Dix Dia Epic Fuego Goro Hot Dog Igla Jad Kip Ladel Llave Mano Nebo Niño Oog Poss Rake Sonne Suit Tren Un Vela Zand Zane

[@IFuckingLoveFrenchToast]

stephen robb the frick?

[@jeanninelakes2742]

'The frick?

[@GBart]

Everything comes from Greek...

[@GrgoPetrov]

+AndroidDoctorr I was also using the examples that should be familiar even without prior knowledge of Croatian (or any other European language) so it is easier for people to remember it.

[@jmleeinla]

How would I pronounce the name Djan properly?? I must know!!! Yes. It's about a guy😉

[@GrgoPetrov]

I guess 'dj' would be pronounced as if it was "Đ" or "DŽ" (I only know a guy whose name is Đani, never heard of Džan/Đan though lol)

[@jmleeinla]

Grgo Petrov thank you!!!!!!!!!!

[@lohikaarme8064]

What the actual fuck Ć = Č ?

[@GrgoPetrov]

I tried to simplify. The majority of the population does not make the difference between the two. I take it if someone who learns Croatia visits the major places you will barely hear any difference so why bother with them.

[@lohikaarme8064]

@@GrgoPetrov okay