Is Croatian Hard To Learn? (Helpful Content!)

Croatian is a very difficult language for English speakers to learn. It is categorized as one of the hardest languages to learn. It is very far removed from English in terms of its place in global language families, and features many difficult and tricky elements of grammar and pronunciation that learners will have a tough time mastering.

Difficult as Croatian may be to learn, the rewards for doing so are more than proportional to the work you’ll do.

But there is no glossing over the fact that learning any language, even the most closely related to English, is very difficult.

When it comes to something like Croatian, it’s a whole other question.

Let’s look into it.

How hard is Croatian to learn?

Croatian, to put it simply, is very hard to learn.

It is very far distant from English and this right away tells you that it is not going to be easy to learn to speak it.

Languages are grouped into families, and understanding the relationship between the language family of English and of the language you want to learn is a good rule of thumb for understanding how difficult it’s going to be.

English is a Germanic language, most closely related to, for example, Dutch or Norwegian.

Croatian, on the other hand, is part of the Eastern Herzegovinian language family, which more broadly belongs to the Slavic family of languages.

While both Germanic and Slavic languages are all Indo-European, this is more or less the broadest category into which languages can fit, and thus they are very far distantly related to one another.

In other words, knowing English won’t give you much of a leg up in learning Croatian.

You’ll be learning from the ground up with no real advantage from your mother tongue.

Croatian will have many elements that you’ll be unfamiliar with and a lot of alien elements that you’ll have to take time to learn.

We’ll look at this in more detail later, but Croatian pronunciation and grammar are especially difficult for English speakers.

Learning any language is a difficult task, even the languages which are considered to be among the easiest languages for English speakers to learn.

So when you are faced with learning something like Croatian, the difficulty is ramped up enormously.

All of this is not to discourage you.

Many before you have successfully learned Croatian and you possess the same capacity to do so as they do.

With time and persistence, anyone can do it—but how much time exactly?

How long does it take to learn Croatian?

It can naturally vary from person to person and situation to situation, but there is a broad idea you can get for how long any language will take to learn.

The FSI categorizes languages based on how difficult they are, and thus how long they will take, to learn.

Croatian is a category three language, and there are five in ascending difficulty.

So, it’s far from the most difficult language to learn, but you can still expect around 1100 hours of study and practice to get to the point of confidence with the language.

This is far from the end of the learning process, though.

Once you’ve gotten a good foundation, any good language teacher will tell you the best way to improve your skills is to immerse yourself in the language and speak it every day.

Living in the country is the best way to do this, and with around three to five years of this, you’ll more or less be at the point of mastery.

So, there are no shortcuts.

Learning Croatian will take lots of time to study and even more time speaking it in the real world.

What part of the language makes it so uniquely difficult to learn, then?

What makes Croatian so hard to learn?

There are many aspects of Croatian that make it very difficult, not the least of which is the case endings.

There are seven case endings in Croatian that you’ll have to learn, and this can always be more than a little confusing without practice.

Pronunciation is also often extremely difficult for English speakers at first.

Pronunciation is very different from English and long strings of consonants can look daunting to an English learner.

Croatian also uses its own alphabet, to add to the confusion: Gaj’s Latin alphabet is also used in Bosnia, Serbia, and Montenegro.

So, this is another thing you’ll have to learn.

Is Croatian harder than Arabic?

Most would agree that Croatian is going to be easier to learn for an English speaker than Arabic.

Both are difficult, but Arabic is among the most difficult languages for an English speaker to learn, whereas Croatian is a comparatively simple category three.

Again, either language is going to be very difficult to learn, and a language can only ever be “easy” relative to another.

Croatian may be a lot easier for you to learn than would be Arabic, but this does not mean it’s easy.

However you look at it, then, learning Croatian is going to be difficult and it will take a lot of time and commitment.

Learning languages is tough, even when they are linguistic neighbours to your native tongue.

When they are as far removed as Croatian is from English, you’ve got a considerably greater fight on your hands.

Again, though, don’t let this discourage you. Learning Croatian is an immensely rewarding experience in itself and you’ll benefit massively from doing so.

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