General online Croatian courses from the alphabet to level B1

A general online Croatian course follows the levels of the CEFR, the Common European Framework of Reference with six levels from A1 to C2. The Foreign Service Institute (FSI), the language school of the US Department of State, lists Croatian under the name Serbo-Croatian and expects about 1,000 class hours to reach a professional working level. For Spanish or French it gives 552 to 690 hours.

You can start for free. Croaticum, the Centre for Croatian as a Second and Foreign Language at the University of Zagreb, offers the online courses A1.HR and A2.HR, each with 80 units of 45 minutes. Instructions and support are available in English. After that you need a group class or one-to-one lessons.

The table is a suggested order, not a fixed syllabus. Ask the provider in which order the course introduces the seven cases.

The Croatian alphabet has 30 letters, and each stands for exactly one sound. After a few lessons you can therefore read any word aloud correctly, including place names such as Šibenik or Krk. Three letters consist of two characters, namely dž, lj and nj.

Two pairs of sounds need more practice. Č is a hard ch as in church, as in čaj (tea), while ć is softer, with the tongue further forward, as in kuća (house). Dž is a hard j as in jungle, as in džep (pocket), while đ is a softer j, as in đak (pupil). In writing these letters change meaning, so a general course trains them with listening exercises and short dictations.

In Croatian an r can carry a syllable without any vowel, as in prst (finger) or Hrvatska (Croatia). The standard language also distinguishes four kinds of stressed syllable by pitch and length. Native speakers understand learners without correct pitch, so it comes after cases and vocabulary at the first levels.

Croatian grammar takes learners the most time. A general course spreads it across all levels and comes back to three areas again and again.

1 Seven cases

A case is a word form that shows the role of a word in the sentence. Croatian has seven, including the vocative for addressing someone, so Ivan becomes Ivane when you call him. English keeps cases only in pronouns such as he, him and his, while Croatian changes the endings of nouns and adjectives. A course works with tables and many short exercises.

2 Verb aspect

Almost every verb has an imperfective and a perfective partner. Pisati means to write as a process, napisati means to finish writing something. A course therefore teaches verbs in pairs from the start.

3 Small words in second position

Unstressed short forms such as sam (am), ga (him) and se (oneself) stand in second position in the sentence. Ja sam ga vidio and Vidio sam ga both mean I saw him. This rule only sticks after many sentence-building exercises.

Croatian has no articles to learn. Nouns are masculine, feminine or neuter, and adjectives and past-tense verbs agree with them, which is new for English speakers.

A conversation course usually expects level A2, the second of the six levels of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR). It gives you speaking time on everyday topics such as restaurants, markets, tradespeople and neighbours. Croatian adds a particular point, because the language you learn in class and the language you hear in Croatia differ.

The standard language is based on the Shtokavian dialect. People in Zagreb and the north speak Kajkavian, while on the coast and islands Chakavian is common. Many families in the diaspora also keep the regional forms of their region of origin.

A conversation course first teaches you the standard language and then shows which forms you hear regionally. If you spend a lot of time in Istria or Dalmatia, ask for listening material from that region.

The range of Croatian courses is smaller than for the big world languages, and there are fewer apps. Free courses and one-to-one lessons therefore play a larger role. Prices are rough guide values in US dollars or euros from typical offers in 2026, not survey data.

The Study in Croatia portal also lists an online A1 course and individual lessons at Croaticum, as well as a beginner e-learning course from the University of Zagreb. If you start with the free courses, you save around the first 120 hours of tuition.

Large Croatian communities live in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Argentina, Germany and Austria. Children from these families are often heritage speakers, meaning people who learned a language at home and never studied it at school. They often speak their parents' regional dialect and write with little confidence.

A course for heritage speakers therefore teaches the standard language and spelling, especially č and ć and the forms with ije and je. It explains which forms from the family are regional. For younger children with no prior knowledge, a general course with short units, songs and pictures fits.

The Croatian government also funds courses in Croatia for descendants of Croatian emigrants. Every May, the Central State Office for Croats Abroad opens a public call for courses in Zagreb, Split, Rijeka and Osijek. These courses take place in person, and an online course beforehand makes the start easier.