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Croatian is composed of three main dialects, one of which, Shtokavian, is shared with Serbian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin. This shared dialect is the basis of all four standard languages, so Standard Croatian grammar is quite similar to the other standards. However, there are substantial differences with the Kajkavian and Chakavian dialects, which are spoken almost exclusively within Croatia.

Books on Croatian grammar date from beginning of 17th century with the grammar of Bartol Kašić (written in Latin) in 1604. Not only did Croatian use the three dialects before the 19th century, but the orthography differed on Adriatic coast from near Hungarian border, as one was under influence of Italian, the other of Hungarian. In the 19th century Ljudevit Gaj proposed new letters from Czech (č,ž,š,ľ,ň,ď and ǧ), of which č, ž, and š were accepted; ć from Polish; and for other phonemes he introduced the digraphs lj, nj, and dž. Later dj / gj was changed to đ, following a proposal by Đuro Daničić).

Standard Croatian grammar

Standard Croatian, like Standard Serbian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin, is based on the Eastern Hercegovinian accent of the Štokavian dialect of Serbo-Croatian. There are minimal differences between them, though in practice all four peoples of a particular area often use the same forms. See differences between standard Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian.

Kajkavian grammar

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Kajkavian, spoken in the Croat capital Zagreb, is intermediate between Standard Croatian and Slovene dialects. However, it has undergone extensive influence from the Shtokavian standard.

Chakavian grammar

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Chakavian, spoken along the Dalmatian coast, is often scarcely intelligible to speakers of Standard Croatian, though like Kajkavian it has been strongly influenced by it.

References

1. ^ Težak-Babić, "Gramatika hrvatskoga jezika", Školska knjiga, Zagreb, 1994, ISBN 953-0-40008-X, p. 13

External links

• Learn-Croatian.com — phrases and grammar
• Beginner's Croatian
• Croatian for travellers, with audio files

• Croatian language
• Grammars of specific languages