64 lessons, Beginner (A1) to Upper intermediate (B2)
Learn Croatian in short chat lessons
Few language apps teach Croatian at all. Vocabbie has a 64-lesson course from beginner to upper intermediate, built by a founder who grew up in Croatia, in standard Croatian as written and spoken in Zagreb.
What makes Croatian hard?
Seven cases, three genders, and verbs that come in pairs (aspect) for a finished and an unfinished action. The course takes them one at a time, inside short scenes, and the reply under each answer says which case or form fit and why.
How the course is built
Each lesson is a few lines in a chat, then a question. New words show up on cards first, and the ones you miss come back sooner. Every word can be played aloud, which matters in a language with pitch accent and long and short vowels.
Who it is for
People with Croatian family, people moving to or spending summers in Croatia, and heritage speakers who understand more than they can say.
Variety taught: Standard Croatian as written and spoken in Zagreb.
Every lesson in the course
Beginner (A1), 16 lessons
Bok
Greet someone and thank them.
Good morning, good night
Greet someone correctly at any hour.
The four letters English does not have
Read and hear č, ć, š, ž.
One, two, three
Count to ten.
Zovem se
Say your name and ask someone theirs.
Ja sam, ti si
Say who you are and who someone else is.
Odakle si?
Say which country you are from and ask someone else.
Are you, or are you (polite)
Choose between speaking to a friend and to a stranger.
Nisam
Say what you are not.
Je li?
Ask something that can be answered yes or no.
Obitelj
Say who is in your family.
Three genders, no articles
Tell which group a word belongs to from its ending.
Big, small, good
Describe something so the describing word matches it.
Dani u tjednu
Say what day it is.
More than one
Talk about more than one of something.
Kava, molim
Order a drink and pay for it.
Elementary (A2), 16 lessons
Odakle si, koji jezik govoriš
Say which country someone is from and what language they speak.
Moj, tvoj, naš
Say whose something is.
Vidim kavu
Say what you see and what you want.
Volim kavu i čaj
Say what you like and what you are having.
Kad?
Say when something happens.
Koliko je sati
Ask and tell the time.
U kući, na stolu
Say where something is.
Živim u Zagrebu
Say which city or country you live in.
Kakav je život
Describe what a place is like.
Htio bih
Ask for something politely.
Želim, mogu, moram
Say what you want, can and must do.
Jednom ili stalno
Say whether something happens once or all the time.
Dajem prijatelju
Say who you give something to.
Meni, tebi, njemu
Use the short words that stand for people.
Pišem ti
Say who you are writing or speaking to.
Trebam pomoć
Ask someone for help.
Intermediate (B1), 16 lessons
Veći i najveći
Compare two things and say which is the most.
Bit će
Say what will happen.
Kad budem
Say what you will do when something else happens.
Izgled i odnosi
Describe what somebody is like.
Radim s prijateljem
Say who you do something with.
Idem autobusom
Say what you travel by.
Pisao sam ili napisao sam
Say whether you finished something or were doing it.
Posao i zanimanja
Talk about work and what people do.
Nema kave
Say that something is missing or that there is none.
Od, do, iz
Say where something goes from and to.
Prošlog ljeta
Say when something happened.
Sjećanja
Talk about something you remember.
Ime je znak
Say what a word is built from.
Riječi od riječi
Recognise a word you have not met from its parts.
Strana imena
Use a foreign name in a Croatian sentence.
Hrvati u svijetu
Talk about people in more than one country.
Upper intermediate (B2), 16 lessons
Dok čekam
Join two things happening at once into one sentence.
Čekajući te
Say what you were doing while you did something else.
Došavši kući
Say what happened first, then what followed.
Kad se to piše
Recognise these forms in something written for Croatians.
Kuća je sagrađena
Say what was done to something without saying who did it.
Piše se, radi se
Say what is done, generally, with no doer at all.
Bilo je napisano
Put the passive in the past.
Kad se tako kaže
Choose between saying who did it and leaving them out.
Rekoh, dođe
Recognise the older past in a book.
Bijaše
Recognise the other older past.
Čitanje i pisanje
Turn what you do into a thing you can talk about.
Dolazak i odlazak
Recognise the other way a verb becomes a noun.
Kako se piše, kako se govori
Tell writing apart from speech.
Molba i žalba
Write something formal.
Novine i vijesti
Read a news sentence and say what it means.
Priča do kraja
Follow the last chapter of the story.