PLEASE NOTE: This section is no longer being maintained. For a much more detailed review of Hrvatski Jezik (Croatian Language), please see Daniel Nikolic’s fantastic website: Basic Croatian
Ordinals
| 1st |
prvi |
| 2nd |
drugi / druga / drugo |
| 3rd |
treći |
| 4th |
četvrti |
Zero
One through Twenty
| 1 |
jedan |
11 |
jedanaest |
| 2 |
dva |
12 |
dvanaest |
| 3 |
tri |
13 |
trinaest |
| 4 |
četiri |
14 |
četrnaest |
| 5 |
pet |
15 |
petnaest |
| 6 |
šest |
16 |
šesnaest |
| 7 |
sedam |
17 |
sedamnaest |
| 8 |
osam |
18 |
osamnaest |
| 9 |
devet |
19 |
devetnaest |
| 10 |
deset |
20 |
dvadeset |
Intervals and Powers of Ten
| 10 |
deset |
| 20 |
dvadeset |
| 30 |
trideset |
| 40 |
četrdeset |
| 50 |
pedeset |
| 60 |
šezdeset |
| 70 |
sedamdeset |
| 80 |
osamdeset |
| 90 |
devedeset |
| 100 |
sto |
| 1,000 |
tisuća or hiljada |
| 1,000,000 |
milijun |
With corrections courtesy of: Alex, Tomislav & Daniel Nikolič
Mural, done. Woot!
Hello from Canada
I have recently met, a kind and wonderful man from Croatia and I am extremely interested in learning the language. Do you have any type literature that you could recommend to me. Perhaps even children’s grammar books so that I could be taught from the beginning.
Your web site was very informative, I rather enjoyed the fact that I could listen to the sounds. It made it easier for me to understand.
Yours truly,
Liane
Actually, there are a couple of really good books on the subject. Although, one in particular.
Teach Yourself Croatian Complete Course Audiopack; by David Norris, Vladislava Ribnikar; ISBN: 0071418806
Link
Make sure you get the book that comes with Audio CD’s, it makes a huge difference to actually hear the language and get a feel for the declensions and nuances.
Although, keep in mind, that what you are learning is very formal Croatian, whereas, there is a lot of informalities in daily use. Don’t be afraid to ask što znači X?, literally, “what does X mean?”
Concerning the numbers above I would like to make a correction:
First 2nd is not dvije; dvije is dualis of feminine nouns and means two e.g dvije jabuke (two apples). 2 as ordinal number is drugi/druga/drugo.
the number 60 is not šesdeset with s but šezdeset with z.
Although the word hiljada does exist it is not the most common word used for thousand. The word most people use today is tisuća
I realized now I have made a little mistake myself in my last correction. Well, well mistakes is what we learn from..so to the point.
Only masculine and neutre nouns are affected by dualis (or dvojina as it is called in croatian). So dvije/dve follows the regular inflected forms.
Examples:
jedan slon (masculine singular) = one elephant
dva slona ( masculine dualis) = two elephants
pet slonova (masculine plural) = five elephants
jedna torba (feminine singular) = one bag
dvije/dve torbe (feminine plural, genitive singular form is used) = two bags
pet torba (feminine plural, genitive plural form is used)
The secret behind this thing that looks so complex are a few rules that are “proportionately” easy to learn:
1) after numbers 2,3,4 and all the higher numbers that ends in these numbers comes genitive singular ending of the noun.
2) after numbers 5,6,7,8,9,10 and all the higher numbers that ends in these numbers comes genitive plural ending of the noun.
3) numbers 11-20 comes genitive plural of the noun
4) number 1 and the higher numbers that end with 1 use the nominative form and therefor can they be found expressed in all 7 cases all after how they’re used in the sentence.
I hope this was not too complex
Greetings Alex
Hi,
Please correct this: not milijuna but milijun.
And you could include:
Best regards
Daniel
Thank you all for the comments and feedback. The corrections have been made.
Alex, regarding the changes and additions that you have suggested. While the suggestions are absolutely correct and very valid, they considerably surpass what someone who is simply trying to learn the fundamentals could handle and will therefore be left as a comment rather than an addition to this particular article. Thanks for the extra information!
Hi, I have a couple of corrections.
50 is ‘pedeset’ and not ‘petdeset’ and 1000000 is not ‘milijuna’, it’s ‘milijun’. Oh and also, ‘hiljada’ isn’t used anymore for 1000. Older people still use it because they lived in Yugoslavia where it was official. ‘Tisuća’ is the only official work for thousand.