Croatian is a Slavic language that grew out of a group of dialects shared by Serbs, Bosnians and Montenegrins. Croatian is pronounced as it is spelt, although it does contain a few tricky consonants that do not appear in English.

Here is a brief guide to their pronunciation:

• č like ‘ch’ as in church
• ć like ‘tu’ as in future
• đ like ‘d’ as in due
• dž like ‘j’ as in Janet
• j like ‘y’ in yellow
• š like ‘sh’ as in shoe
• ž like ‘s’ as in pleasure

Most Croats under the age of 45 speak at least some English – and in the tourist industry, good knowledge of English and other languages is widespread.

Use of key Croatian phrases will be widely appreciated however; especially courtesies like molim (please), hvala (thanks), dobar dan (hello) and do viđenja (goodbye).