The CROATIAN Language:
Croatian is the native tongue of more than 18 million people in present-day Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro), Croatia, and Bosnia and Hercegovina. Croatian is not spoken to any extent outside these countries. Croatian the official language of Croatia and is a dialect of Serbo-Croatian. Although it is actually one language, Serbo-Croatian is designated as Serbian when spoken by Serbs (mostly belonging to the Orthodox Eastern Church) and written in a form of Cyrillic alphabet, but as Croatian when spoken by Croats (mostly Roman Catholics) and written in a modified version of the Roman alphabet. A feature that sets Croatian apart from other Slavic languages is its use of musical pitch or intonation. It possesses four kinds of musical accent: two rising inflections, one long and one short, and two falling inflections, one long and one short. Gramatically, Serbo-Croatian resembles Polish. Croatian is mutually intelligible with Serbo-Croatian but there are differences between the two dialects. Differences such as pronunciation, intonation and word choice. The divergence in writing is the principal difference between the Serbian and Croatian versions of Serbo-Croatian. The Pimsleur Croatian course is Croatian as spoken by Croats. |
