EasyCroatian_r47.an

Easy Croaan (rev. 47b) / 58 Colloquial and Formal 340 / 600
such thing is telling time in 12-hour manner, and in quarters and halves. It has two
variants, inland and coastal:
time inland coast
14:00 dva dva
14:15 frtalj tri dva i kvarat
14:30 pol(a) tri ® dva i po(l)
14:45
tri frtalj tri tri manje kvarat
tri frtalja tri dva i trikvarat
15:00 tri tri
Observe that inland, number of quarters is relative the last full hour, but expressions
use the next hour! This is a quite non-obvious way to express time. This is similar to
ways in Southern Germany and Austria (and frtalj (frtalj-) comes from German
‘viertel’, meaning quarter). The same non-obvious scheme is common in Hungarian.
This is only a very shallow outline of the real language diversity in Croatia. If we
would add neighboring countries (i.e. Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia)
we would have more variation, especially in terms related to home and cooking,
names of various tools, etc. Terms in Serbia sometimes are more common with
colloquial terms in inland Croatia, due to the common German influence, so
paradajz is spoken in both Zagreb and Belgrade; however, there are also many
terms used in Serbia which are almost unknown in Croatia. A very brief overview of
such terms is given in A9 Bosnian, Serbian and Montenegrin.
________
® Expressing 14:30 as pola tri is also very common in Serbia and Bosnia, but tri
frtalja tri = 14:45 is unknown in these countries.