You write as you speak: one letter = one sound.
| letter | sound | example |
|---|---|---|
| c | “ts” as in cats | cijena (price) |
| č | hard “ch” as in church, tongue further back | čaj (tea) |
| ć | soft “ch”, like the “t” in British “tune” | kuća (house) |
| dž | hard “j” as in jungle | džep (pocket) |
| đ | soft “j”, like the “d” in British “duke” | međa (boundary) |
| š / ž | “sh” / “s” in pleasure | šuma, žena |
| j | “y” as in yes | jaje (egg) |
| lj / nj | “lli” in million / “ny” in canyon | ljubav, konj |
| h | “ch” in Scottish loch | hljeb |
| r | rolled, can act as a vowel | prst, srce, Srbija |
Tip for č / ć: č often comes from k (ruka → ručni, junak → junače), ć from t (brat → braća, platiti → plaćen, kratak → kraći), đ from d (mlad → mlađi, roditi → rođen). Dž appears mostly in loanwords: džep, džamija.
Written assimilation: sladak → slatka, vrabac → vrapca, težak → teška.
Ijekavian / ekavian: an old vowel gives ije (long) or je (short) in ijekavian (Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian in Bosnia and Montenegro) and e in ekavian (Serbia): mlijeko / mleko, lijep / lep, rijeka / reka, dijete / dete, vjera / vera, mjesto / mesto, htjeti / hteti, vidio / video. Within a word family, long ije becomes short je: lijep → ljepši, dijete → djeca; after consonant + r, short je becomes e: vrijeme → vremena. Wortlo writes ijekavian.
Capitals: lower case for days, months, languages and nationality adjectives (ponedjeljak, januar / siječanj, bosanski); capitals for inhabitants (Bosanac, Francuskinja) and for polite Vi in a letter.
Word stress: it is not written. It almost never falls on the last syllable and very often falls on the first: kuća, žena, jezik, Sarajevo. The ije in rijeka, lijep is pronounced as a single long syllable. Tones (rising / falling) vary from region to region: imitate what you hear.
Translate the words from your reading, review them as flashcards and practise with gap-fill sentences.
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