My comments!

[Rui]

Dear Anna

,In two weeks I will have the pleasure to spend a one week tour around Hrvatska, visiting places like Zagreb, Trogir, Zadar, Dubrovnik etc., so I have been improving my knowledges about the country on the internet.


Therefore, two weeks ago I "clashed" into "visit-croatia" wich I, humbly, consider the best website on the subject (well, amongst those I know).


To my opinion counted a great deal the fact that a "croatian for Travellers" is available for the people. I really do not know if people will in fact speak (or at least try to speak) any Croatian, but for a Foreign language interested/curious person it was better than candies!!!!! Oh yes!!!


The sweetness becomes bigger when you have an audio section too, where you can listen to Croatian and compare it with the basic conversation knowledge you have got from Polish, thanks to your polish friend Piotr. It is quite funny how some words are likewise and others are simply "distorted" (do not get me wrong) from the "original" Polish one (once again consider it in a funny fashion).


I have been "studying" the version 3.0 of the printable Croatian booklet you have available, quite handy indeed. Unfortunally there is no audio version of it for downloading!!!!!


Well, enough talking you must be saying at the moment.


Kind regards from Portugal


Rui Vaz
p.s.- Oh, one last thing: if the H is not read in "Hrvatska", the word is pronounced like it is written and Croatian is similar to Polish, you should pronounce it "R (rolled R) - VATSKA" like if it was in English??

[Anna]

Dear Rui,



Many thanks for such a kind and detailed message! It was certainly very lovely to receive it.

I'm glad that you found our website helpful, and also that you have been able to pick up a bit of Croatian from our language guide. We created the guide as a quite basic thing, just so that travellers might learn a few phrases of the language before they go, or even just to familiarize themselves a bit with what Croatian looks and sounds like.

Hopefully, one day, we will be able to put Chapter 10 into audio (the only bit that is missing). We created the language section a few years ago when our website was quite small and not particularly busy - now it takes up a great part of our day, each day!

As in Polish and other Slavic languages, every letter of every word is pronounced. Therefore, the 'h' in Hrvatska is indeed pronounced, as a slight 'h' sound before the rolled 'r'. (Have I perhaps mistakenly said otherwise somewhere on the guide?) As I've said, the website has grown considerably over the years, so it's sometimes a little hard to keep track of absolutely everything.)



Regards,

Anna