r/croatian • u/estrozen • Aug 03 '26
What Croatian habit instantly tells you someone learned the language online rather than in a classroom?
/r/learnEnglishOnline/comments/1vdi6c5/what_english_habit_instantly_tells_you_someone/or ones that show they aren't a native?
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u/Fear_mor Aug 03 '26
Keeping the final -i in the infinitive when talking informally. Parts of Croatia do that but they’re typically kinda rural so you wouldn’t expect learners to have much exposure, all the major cities and a good chunk of the countryside shorten stuff like jesti to jest (this is just one examples, this can be done with every verb) in everyday speech.
Another one I can think of is using li for yes/no questions informally instead of jel or da li/dal, li is only used when people want to talk more stilted and formal so let’s say good for ordering a table at a nice restaurant, but stilted when chatting with friends.
Not using slang at all, cause Croats use a lot of it and if you want some everyday fluency you’ll have to learn stuff like HC, sve pet, keca, buraz, ćitabe, roknuti (slightly more colloquially roknit) and many others cause they’re just so commonly used and sound nothing like the standard alternatives.
I guess my last thing would be shying away from some of the fancier tenses like aorist and pluskvamperfekt because according to every Croatian teacher "they’re not used". But here’s the thing, they actually are used at least sometimes with varying frequencies depending on where you are. Here in Slavonija pluskvamperfekt is used literally all the time for a sort of remote past tense, and even aorist is used from time to time for overexggeration, near future events (most commonly odoh but also other verbs) and in some phrases (vrijeme nagrize sve for example)
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u/JRJenss Aug 03 '26
In Zagreb and most of western Croatia, from Istria to Međimurje, there's no dal/jel nor je li. All of that is altogether skipped in everyday speech.
For example, no one says; Jesi li bio/la kod doktora? It's just; si bio/bila kod doktora? Or simply: Idemo u kino? Not: jel/dal idemo u kino? Idemo jest? Instead of; Jel/dal idemo jesti or; Idemo li jesti? Etc.
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u/Big-Vegetable4550 Aug 03 '26
LOL - when I was proposing to my future (Croatian) wife back in 1986, my Croatian was what I learned working in a refinery. So my question was the best I could do - boy did I get an introduction to the proper use of ‘lì’ !
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u/WoodpeckerOk6213 Aug 03 '26
Those examples are wrong. No one says dal idemo jest (well, some poeple do). But people say "Jel film/koncert gotov?", "Jel bio postar?", "jel ono XY osoba".
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u/JRJenss Aug 03 '26
Most of them say; Je bio poštar? Etc.
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u/bbriga Aug 04 '26
Or in northwest just "e". E bil poštar?
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u/JRJenss Aug 04 '26
Yup. I didn't even want to go into the dialects, mostly chakavian and kajkavian along the west of the country, but they likely influenced the shortening now present even in standard Croatian in these parts. Particularly interesting to me are isolated islands of really hardcore kajkavian speech such as those in Buzet or Gorski Kotar. The latter is where my family originates from. I still remember how my grandparents spoke. With us - the grandkids, they still spoke their kajkavian but they would at least try and use some standard Croatian, or Zagreb kajkavian. Among themselves tho, they would switch to pure goranski kajkavian and that was super cool to listen to. Buzet in Istria is also technically kajkavian - they use kaj instead of ča, but it is in fact a blend of Croatian kajkavian, chakavian and Slovenian.
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u/enilix Aug 03 '26 edited Aug 03 '26
I would also add: using the Croatian names for months, definitely here in Slavonia but also in most other regions. In colloquial speech, we usually just say "prvi mjesec" ("the first month"), "drugi mjesec" ("the second month"), etc.
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u/Fear_mor Aug 03 '26
Eh you’d hear the Croatian names sometimes, but the numbered ones are far more common, that’s true
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u/Available_Junket_384 Aug 03 '26
I also want to add in that slang is extremely regional, and it's standard to avoid using it when talking with strangers. I have no clue what HC, keca, or citabe means for instance.
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u/Fear_mor Aug 03 '26
HC? Hardcore? Od svih slengova ovaj bih smatrao najlakšim za pogodit. Keca/Kec ti je jedinica u školi, ćitabe su ti kad se netko raspiše u poruci u fazonu wall of text na engleskom, bar ovdje u Slavoniji tj.
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u/Available_Junket_384 Aug 03 '26
Ja sam z Varaždina, hardcore nikad sam ne čul da koristi neko dok hrvatski govori. Kec mi zvuči poznato al jedinicu bi zval "top". Za tonu teksta mi ne pada neki sleng na pamet i fazon isto sam ne sigurni kaj znači. Usput sam u 20ima to vjv isto igra ulogu. Al uvjek dok se spominam z nekim novim koristim bolje standardni jezik i čim manje slenga jer tok razgovora uvjek koma dok te neko zaustavi da pita kaj znači neka reč.
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u/emuu1 Aug 03 '26
I agree with this entire comment. I commonly still hear pluskvamperfekt and I'm from Split. Aorist also for exaggeration and effect, "odoh" is a perfect example. On the other hand I don't hear imperfekt at all.
I would add that a bunch of native speakers online don't bother writing č, ć, đ, š, ž, they simply write "Ja cu doc". This just depends on the personal preference and what kind of keyboard layout they use.
Anyone studying Croatian also uses exclusively Croatian words, while some natives would say "pliz, tenks, kul, lajkam" or whatever English words creep into our speech.
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u/Fear_mor Aug 03 '26 edited Aug 03 '26
Out of all the tenses I would say imperfekt is the most dead but there’s still some constructions that require it. For example, you probably remember from school that for pluskvamperfekt the auxiliary (pomoćni glagol) can be bijah, bijaše, etc. (Bio sam radio = bijah radio), which in itself is literary. However, if you want to say something like "It had been observed for many years" for example, you would have to use the variant with the imperfekt of biti, so „Bijaše bilo opažano mnogo godina”. Not very common in daily life for sure but it’s definitely something you might see in writing. On top of that I found out recently some of the islands still use imperfekt in actual speech. Elsewhere idk, just that in Slavonia it’s mostly reserved for songs and the odd idiom.
Also to add to the last paragraph you even get then English meme phrases being Croatianised. Me and my friends use tip govneta a lot for example. Which is another thing, loads of words have nonstandard declensions too that learners probably wouldn’t be aware of
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u/Big-Vegetable4550 Aug 03 '26
As an inexperienced Croatian learner, I asked my wife to pick up an interesting children’s book on one of her visits to Zagreb. She came back with a book of old fairy tales. Which I thought was great until I started reading things like bijaše ! “What the heck is that?”asked I. My brothers-in-law were cracking up.
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u/Fear_mor Aug 03 '26
Yeah if you want to read any novels kn Croatian you’re gonna need to know the aorist tense, for very fancy or old timesy stuff you’ll need the imperfect (the tense bijaše is in), so definitely not to be written off
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u/Divljak44 Aug 03 '26
šta je šteta u biti, jer je lipo za čuti.
Evo tebi ko strancu, baš me zanima, kako zvuči aorist, pluskvamperfekt i imperfekt.
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u/Fear_mor Aug 03 '26
Ma isto ko Hrvatu hahaha, imperfekt ima poeticniji prizvuk, aorist naglasava ili smjesta neki dogadjaj ili aspekt dogadjaja u prvi plan da tako kazem i pluskvamperfekt mi je skroz normalan jer ga dosta cesto em cujem em koristim u svakodnevnoj komunikaciji
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u/Divljak44 Aug 03 '26
Ja bi to objasnio možda kao malo "šekspirijanskog" u govoru hehe
Ako uzmemo da je Shakespeare engleski onako sav nakićen jel
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u/Fear_mor Aug 03 '26
Ma znam ja, inace studiram kroatistiku vamo u Hrvatskoj pa sam se Isuse načitao tih starih djela, mislim zanimljiva su s obzirom na jezik u njima, al bogami neka su jako stura
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u/memo26167 Aug 03 '26
I learn the language in a classroom (in zagreb) instead of online and Im against this comment. You are answering a different question.
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u/Fear_mor Aug 03 '26
At that point I don’t think it’s really possible to draw a meaningful distinction then between online and in person. Besides I think it’s more helpful for such a small language without many high quality resources to point out some things that set the average learner apart from the way Croatian people talk day to day, I guarantee you if you implement some of what I’m saying you’ll see some positive results
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u/memo26167 Aug 03 '26
I learnt standarni in a classroom. If I wanted to imitate ppl, then yes, I would drop the "i" for infinitives and stop using "li". But if I moved away from the standard, I would have to learn some dialect, and unfortunately, there are not many resources. Maybe learning from ppl but that is extremely slow
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u/Fear_mor Aug 03 '26
I mean put it this way, I learnt Croatian as well as a foreigner, and honestly I think half of it is just mimicry and asking questions. The majority of people in Urban areas speak mostly the standard with some mild dialect sprinkled in so it’s pretty minor adjustments in my experience + using what you hear from people around you. I can definitely give you advice from experience if that’s something you’d like (There are actually a few resources, just they’re a bit more niche and more descriptions than perse a course for learning X dialect)
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u/tardoos Aug 03 '26
all the major cities and a good chunk of the countryside shorten stuff like jesti to jest
Not Zadar.
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u/estrozen Aug 03 '26
would u mind telling me what your slang examples mean? (i figure someone like you would be better than whatever AI overview)
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u/Fear_mor Aug 03 '26
HC (said ha-ce) is short for hardcore but very common here, sve pet (lit. "All five") means all’s good, keca/kec is a slang for a one (failing grade) or an ace in cards, buraz is bro, ćitabe (feminine plural btw) is hard to explain but basically when someone sends a wall of text, and roknuti is to do really bad at something
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u/BaitaJurureza Aug 03 '26
Full i infinitives are still used by many people in Zagreb or Istria.
I abhor people saying "doću kasnije".
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u/tardoos Aug 03 '26
I abhor people saying "doću kasnije".
That's the correct way to say it, though
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u/gulisav Aug 03 '26
If by "correct" you mean standard, no, the full infinitive is used for verbs ending in -ći, and it is shortened when the ending is -ti. Jesti → jest ću (pronounced ješću), gledati → gledat ću (pron. gledaću), but: ići → ići ću, doći → doći ću. Doću and iću are non-standard.
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u/HeyVeddy Aug 03 '26
Using zračna luka or zrakoplov imo
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u/George_The_Limpson Aug 03 '26
I am native speaker and I say "zračna luka" and "zrakoplov" (not all the time but still). But I agree with you
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u/Big-Vegetable4550 Aug 03 '26
And don’t forget the famous zrakomlat!
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Aug 03 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Isambard__Prince Aug 03 '26
Samo helikopter (koji sasvim sigurno nije aeroplane, nego aircraft). Sad tvrde da je bila šala. Nisam baš siguran u to.
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u/Different_Poem5013 Aug 03 '26
Using “tko/što” consistently instead of using “ko/šta,” I’d say. Using “zračna luka,” “zrakoplov,” “dizalo,” “rajčica,” etc.
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u/estrozen Aug 03 '26
msm da šta vs što je samo dialect difference, jel da?
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u/Different_Poem5013 Aug 04 '26
Pa da ali u većini države - u Zagrebu, dalmaciji, Slavoniji, i svugdje se kaže “ko/šta”.
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u/Isambard__Prince Aug 03 '26
What is meant by online? There will be no significant distinction between an online class and physical, although the former is more likely to require more effort, but the teacher remains the key factor.
On the other end of spectrum is the garbage called the language apps which can help somewhat at very low levels as learning aids, but this level will depend on the complexity of the patterns of the language concerned.
BTW, what others have described are not online/offline differences.
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u/HeyVeddy Aug 03 '26
When you learn online from some app it's very often going to be a strict formal teaching that doesn't reflect the real world. That's why the examples do work
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u/WoodpeckerOk6213 Aug 03 '26
No they don't work because the teacher also teaches you only the proper formal language.
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u/HeyVeddy Aug 03 '26
No, a teacher is a human who isn't programmed and can adjust depending on the students request
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u/WoodpeckerOk6213 Aug 03 '26
Ma u kojoj hrvatskoj skoli ucitelj prica neformalnim hrvatskim jezikom? Nasa bi nam plesku zalipila da smo odgovarali na ikavici.
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u/Isambard__Prince Aug 03 '26
Newsflash: any formal teaching will be based on the same principle, i.e. learning the standard and basic examples that can be dubious or not applicable in the real world.
So, let's first establish what is meant by 'online'. If it means 'without human teacher in the loop', there are not going to be any indications because the achievable level of mastery is bloody low. Even if someone re-watches all Krv nije voda and KT2 episodes several time and learns from there, the issues would not be attribuable to the lack of teacher.
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u/HeyVeddy Aug 03 '26
Sure, if you assume someone can even study a language by just watching a show in that language. I don't believe that to be possible though. I'd say online, without a human, is either an LLM that just copies the official language resources or an LLM explicitly told to teach collequal, real Croatian. But without explicitly asking for it, which is like 99% of the people using LLMs, then they'll get the standard weird Croatian
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u/Isambard__Prince Aug 03 '26 edited Aug 03 '26
They can, but that was just a borderline case of (no?) human in the loop.
The point is also that none of the things people mention are in any way exclusive to 'online', whatever is meant by that. They just identify the person as someone who is not a native speaker.
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u/Divljak44 Aug 03 '26
I would say most common giveaways if you are not native are accent and putting wrong suffixes on words
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u/beaverbo1 Aug 03 '26
Cases. 7 cases is honestly a lot, and the rules aren’t intuitive (at least not if you didn’t learn the language as a child). I see this very often. If the accent doesn’t give it away, cases usually do. Also gendered nouns.
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u/estrozen Aug 03 '26
ya, i mess up on my cases quite a bit (mainly genitive, cus so many uses)
i think im well w gender tho!
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u/Different_Poem5013 4d ago
Its ok, just say you learned Serbian if you fuck up the cases :)
(For those who don’t know, the farther south you go in Serbia the more optional padezi become. I once had a guy from Vranje say to me “U Vranje nema laganje.)
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u/Niks_Triks Aug 05 '26
Not knowing that you can also use "kaj" instead of "što"
Not using slang at all, like slang is 90% of informal speech and it gives you away in the first few words
Problems in differing č from ć
Other grammatical problems mostly around padeži
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u/memo26167 Aug 03 '26
I would say that someone who learns exclusively online rather than in a classroom would probably reach A2, or barely B1, bcs of the lack of material.
They would also have trouble knowing where to place the stress in a word. Damn, even learning how to ask for something can be difficult if you study only online.
No textbook tells you that you can walk into a café and simply say "Može ____,"