Unlike Serbian, which uses the Cyrillic alphabet, Croatian uses the same Latin alphabet that English uses. Therefore, beginners should already be familiar with the majority of the letters used in Croatian, although the alphabet does have some special accented characters that beginners will need to learn. In addition, "lj" and "nj" count as one letter in Croatian. For those planning to travel to the part of Croatia that is close to the Serbian border, basic familiarity with the Cyrillic alphabet may help with public signs and information.
Croatian is a phonetic language, which means that each letter represents a single sound. Stress is regular in Croatian, generally falling on the first syllable of two-syllable words. Six vowel sounds exist in Croatian: "a," "e," "i," "o," "u" and "r." The pronunciation of "a" is somewhere between the "a" in English "fat" and "father", while pronunciation of the Croatian "e" is similar to the "e" in the English word "bed." The pronunciation of "i" is similar to the sound in "police" when stressed, and the pronunciation of "o" should be as in the English word "port." "U" generally sounds like the "oo" sound in "boot," and should not present any problems for native English speakers. The most difficult vowel is "r," which consists of a short schwa sound like the "a" in English "sofa," quickly followed by a trilled "r" similar to that in Spanish. Note that the pronunciation of all vowels is less precise when in unstressed syllables, so the correct stress of Croatian words is important to pronunciation of vowels.
Croatian has 25 consonants and most of these are similar to the consonants in English. Beginners should pay particular attention to the letter "c," which has no direct English equivalent has a pronunciation somewhere between the "ch" of "check" and the "t" of "tune," while the tip of the tongue remains behind the lower front teeth. The letter "h" may also require some practice, as the pronunciation of this is similar to the "ch" in German "ach" or Scottish "loch." Note that "j," which is represented by the letters "dž" in Croatian, should always sound like English "y" as in "year" and never like the English "j" as in "jam."
Croatian is an inflected language, which means that nouns change their forms depending on their role in a sentence. Nominative, accusative, dative, genitive, locative, vocative and instrumental are the seven cases in Croatian, and nouns and adjectives have different endings for each of these. The endings will depend on whether the noun is masculine, feminine or neuter, and whether it is singular or plural. For example, the word for apple would be "jabuka" in the nominative case, changing to "jabuku" in the accusative, "jabuci" in the dative, "jabuke" in the genitive, "jabuci" in the locative, "jabuko" in the vocative and "jabukom" in the instrumental case. Even if learning the case endings may seem daunting to beginners, the tense system is simpler in Croatian than in English.