HSC Croatian Continuers cheat sheet

Croatian has pitch-based stress; stress placement is lexical, so identical spellings (e.g. 'grad' city vs 'grād' castle in some traditions) can differ in meaning - use context, not spelling alone.

The Croatian standard has four pitch accents (short falling, long falling, short rising, long rising); rising accents on a non-final syllable often signal a following clitic or an underlying long vowel.

Croatian is a pro-drop language: subject pronouns are omitted when person/number is clear from the verb ending, so the verb form is the primary cue for who is acting.

Clitics (je, sam, si, se, ga, ju, mu, ih, će) form a fixed cluster in second position: reflexive 'se' first, then auxiliary 'je/sam', then dative, then accusative/genitive pronouns.

Negation is single: 'ne' + verb negates the clause; double negatives are grammatical and required, e.g. 'Ne znam ništa' (I know nothing).

Listening tasks typically require extracting gist, specific detail, attitude, and purpose; distinguish numbers, times, and prices because Croatian uses a comma as decimal separator and a dot as thousands separator.

Dates and clock times: 'u petak' = on Friday, 'petkom' = on Fridays, 'u pola tri' = 2:30 (half toward three), 'četvrt do tri' = 2:45.

Register cues: 'Vi' plus plural verb (2nd person plural) is polite address; 'ti' plus singular verb is informal - track the pronoun and verb ending together.

Discourse markers signal turn and stance: 'dakle' (so/therefore), 'naime' (namely), 'ipak' (nevertheless), 'barem' (at least), 'jedva' (barely).

Croatian has seven cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, locative, instrumental); case is shown by noun/adjective endings and governs meaning, so identify the case before translating.

Genitive is the default case after numbers 2-4 (and 5+), after negation of direct objects, after 'bez' (without), 'iz' (from), 'od' (from), 'do' (until), and after quantifiers.

Accusative marks the direct object; for masculine inanimate nouns accusative = nominative, for masculine animate accusative = genitive - the animacy rule is a key reading cue.

Locative is always used with a preposition ('u', 'na', 'o', 'po', 'pri') and never stands alone; 'u' + locative = location, 'u' + accusative = direction.

Instrumental expresses means/company: 's' + instrumental = with (a person), bare instrumental = by means of; 's' contracts to 'sa' before s, š, z, ž.

Aspect pairs: imperfective (raditi, pisati, čitati) describes ongoing/repeated action; perfective (uraditi, napisati, pročitati) describes completed action - aspect, not tense, carries completion.

Verb 'biti' present: sam, si, je, smo, ste, su; future: ću, ćeš, će, ćemo, ćete, će + infinitive (or 'da' + present). Clitic order places 'ću/ćeš/...' before 'se' and pronouns.

Reflexive verbs take 'se' and are extremely frequent (sjećati se, zvati se, osjećati se); 'se' never begins a sentence and sits in the second-position clitic cluster.

Text-type conventions: formal letters use 'Poštovani/ Poštovana' plus 'S poštovanjem'; informal use 'Dragi/Draga' plus 'Pozdrav'; notices and ads use infinitive or imperative forms.

Croatian uses the Latin alphabet with 30 letters including digraphs dž, lj, nj; diacritics č, ć, š, ž, đ are separate letters and must be written, not replaced by c/s/z.

Croatian orthography is largely phonemic: write as pronounced, but observe the ije/je/e reflex (mlijeko, mjesto, reka) and the rule that 'ije' follows a long syllable while 'je' follows a short one.

Capitalize proper nouns and the first word of a sentence; 'Vi' is capitalized only in direct polite address in letters, not mid-sentence generally.

Punctuation follows Croatian conventions: quotation marks are „...“, decimal comma is used (3,5), and thousands are separated by a dot (1.000).

Formal letter structure: place and date top right, addressee, salutation, body paragraphs, closing formula ('S poštovanjem'), signature.

Informal letter/email structure: greeting, opening inquiry, body, closing wish ('Srdačan pozdrav'), first name.

Essay/argument text needs a thesis, 2-3 supporting points with examples, and a conclusion; Croatian connectives include 'prije svega', 'osim toga', 'međutim', 'zaključno'.

Report/notice register uses impersonal and passive-like forms: 'potrebno je', 'organizira se', 'molimo da', and infinitive headings.

Word count and task type matter: a 150-word task needs roughly 3 paragraphs; count only content words toward the target and respect the stated range.