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Easy Croaan (rev. 47b) / 58 Colloquial and Formal 335 / 600
58 Colloquial and Formal
If you look into a Croatian dictionary and look for a word for clothes iron (the thing
to iron your shirt), very likely, you’ll find the word glačalo. However, that word is
extremely rare in real use: a large majority uses another word, pegla (there’s yet
another word for that term, which will be explained below).
The word glačalo is considered ‘standard’ and ‘formal’ and will be used only in
formal circumstances, in written formal language; in casual writing, even in
newspapers, pegla dominates, it’s more than 20 times more common. We say that
the word pegla is colloquial.
There are some formal nouns that are almost never used in speech, for example:
Std. Croatian colloq.
airplane zrakoplov avion
fridge hladnjak frižider
elevator dizalo lift
If you do a Google search on the .hr domain for the phrases u liftu and u dizalu
(both meaning in elevator, of course), you’ll get results like these:
u liftu 34600
u dizalu 3480
Such results, 10:1 in favor of the colloquial word – in writing! – are common: many
colloquial words prevail even in newspapers and fiction books, including
translations. However, you will see the rare standard word from time to time.
Sometimes, Standard Croatian uses a whole phrase, while in everyday use, there is a
simple word:
Std. Croatian colloq.
whipped cream tučeno slatko vrhnje šlag
semolina pšenična krupica griz
The following adjectives are common but colloquial; however standard words are
often used as well:
Std. Croatian colloq.
fresh svjež friški
violet ljubičast lila
pink ružičast roza