Flag of Croatia
Flag of Serbia
Flag of Bosnia
Problem
I just spent time learning Croatian spelling and pronounciation. Do I have to start all over again with the other nearby languages, and when I drive a few miles north-south or east-west?
The good news is that Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian are written more or less the same. Know one and you know the others. The only difference is that Serbian can also be written in Cyrillic. (Pronounced like Cyril - easy to remember Serbia and Cyril start with the same sounds.)
So if you don't know Cyrillic, you have to look for the words written in the Latin alphabet. However, be generous, for those who grew up reading Cyrillic, or anybody who has just lerned it and wants to practise it, in Serbia you have two alphabets.
Go back to my post on Croatian. Much simpler than you think, once you analyse it.
Say:
"Show me the church," š=sh č = ch
"Er, it's my pleasure." r = er ž=s as in sure or pleasure or shall
"Sh!" š=sh
"It's full of cats. This is a joy, you know." ć=ts dž=j
"Thanks a million." j=ly
"D'you know how to pronounce the d with the line through it?"
"Yes, dy."
You have now pronounced all the sounds. You can read and speak Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian.
(If you want to learn the Cyrillic I have a post on that.)
Useful Websites For Languages
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_standard_Bosnian,_Croatian,_Montenegrin_and_Serbian
TRAVEL
CROATIA
Tourist Board
croatia.hr
Independent Information
wikipedia (detailed including history)
simple wikipedia
wikitravel (with ads)
wikivoyage (without ads)
Travel Advice for your nationality and from your home government
Tour operators (Often for specific regions, or types of travel, such as budget or luxury)
Outgoing operators
Outging (usually show flights from your country of origin). If you are researching on holiday in Italy, the tickbox allowing them to know where you are will give flights from where your phone or laptop is physically, which is handy if you are planning on ongoing journey, no good if you want to go home and start from here later in the year.
Incoming
After you have booked your flights, these operators arrange tours within the country. It's worthwhile comparing which combination gives the best deal. For example, some airlines will give you a reduced price hotel room for a stopover.
Why The Reduction?
The airline might own the hotel or have some deal. I imagine that's an incentive from either the hotel, or the tourist board giving a subsidy or reducing tax to get visitors because the spend per day in the country (there are tables for figures on how much visitors from each country spend, broken down by age groups, time of year and all sorts of things - they know from the VAT they collect. The visitor's spend will be higher than the reduction on the room.
Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. I can offer you courses, one to one online or in person in the UK and Singapore, and workshops or entertaining after dinner speeches for clubs and businesses in the UK, one-off or a series. This can be worldwide anywhere if you can organize a ipad or screen connection by whatsap, Skype, visual conference call or something better, or fly me to your destination.
Please share links to your favourite posts. I have posts on learning many languages.
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