EasyCroatian_r47.an

Easy Croaan (rev. 47b) / 01 Alphabet and Pronunciaon 11 / 600
Serbia. This is what you hear on the Croatian Public Radio and TV (this is the
pronunciation you will find in language manuals and good dictionaries).
Furthermore, the Standard Croatian has two kinds of stress (ways that one syllable
in the word can be stressed): with the rising tone and the falling tone. It’s a bit
similar to tones in Swedish or even Chinese. The stress in the Standard Croatian is
virtually identical to stress in the Standard Serbian or Bosnian, but many people in
Croatia don’t use standard stress in everyday communication. Furthermore, rules
governing standard stress are very complex (the stress changes in various forms of
one word) so I think it would be too complex to introduce tones in a course
intended for beginners (this approach is followed by most language schools that
offer Croatian; I will describe details later, in A9 Stress).
Therefore, I decided just to mark what vowel is stressed, when the stress is not on
the first syllable (that’s the default place of stress). This map shows roughly (the
shaded area) where the standard stress scheme (or something quite similar to it)
prevails in Croatia and neighboring countries, at least in public settings:
The ‘western stress’ is used colloquially, very often heard in Zagreb, surrounding
areas and some other cities, including Rijeka and Pula. You can hear it on local radio
stations. This is the pronunciation I personally use in everyday life, at work, in
school, etc. (It’s sometimes, confusingly, called ‘urban stress’; you will find virtually
nothing about it in textbooks.)
There are more stress schemes and ways to pronounce words in various dialects,