Local name: Hrvatski
Language family: Indo-Europan > Balto-Slavic > Slavic > South Slavic > Western South Slavic
Native speakers: ~5.5 millions (Ethnologue.com, 2001); together with Serbian and Bosnian ~14.8 millions (Ethnologue.com 2006/2001/2004)
Script: A modified version of the Latin alphabet
Official in: Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Spoken mostly in: Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia (esp. Vojvodina)

The written Standard for Croatian is based on the Štokavian dialect, just like for Serbian, Bosnian and Montenegrin. Croatian is however made up by two other characteristic dialects; Kajkavian, spoken in the north of Croatia, in and around Zagreb, and Čakavian, spoken in the coastal areas. The different names were derivated from the word for ‘what’ in these different dialects: što, kaj and ča.

Another thing that makes Croatian special, when compared with Serbian and Bosnian, is a strong tradition of word coinage instead of word borrowing for new phenomena. For instance, the word for ‘geography’ is zemljopis (from zemlja ‘Earth’ + opis ‘description’) in Croatian, and geografija in Serbian and Bosnian.

Štokavian Jekavian: “Sjeverni vjetar i sunce”
Speaker: Andrija Age at recording: 23 (2010) Geographical reference: Slavonski Brod, HR (Google Map)


Sjeverni vjetar i sunce su raspravljali o tome tko je od njih dvoje jači, kad je naišao putnik umotan u topli kaput.
Dogovorili su se da će onaj koji prvi putnika natjera da skine kaput biti proglašen  jačim.
U tom trenutku, sjeverni vjetar je zapuhao što je jače mogao, ali što je više puhao, putnik se sve više umotavao u svoj kaput.
Stoga je na kraju sjeverni vjetar odustao!
Tada je sunce počelo sjati i putnik je odmah skinuo svoj kaput.
Sjeverni vjetar je tada bio primoran priznati, da je Sunce jače od njega.