Croatian: Lonely Planet Phrasebook - European Travel Books

Paperback - 15 March, 2005 - Lonely Planet Publications
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By: Gordana Ivetac, Ivan Ivetac and Lonely Planet Phrasebooks
ISBN: 1740599969

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Reviews by readers

Surprisingly good for a pocket book

This book covers the basics in a way that is simple and useful. Three topics are covered in the book: the basic grammar, useful phrases and a 2000 word dictionary. The book is small enough to fit in your pocket and covers each of these topics with an efficient layout.

For the grammar, first of all its usually missing from most phrasebooks and dictionaries. But, when you find a grammar section, its usually not useful for travel because its too much detail. For example, in "Barron's TravelWise Croatian" book, four standard verb endings (-am,-jem,-em,-im) are described for present tense conjugation. What that book lacks is information to figure out which ending goes with which verb. In this book, a "rule of thumb" way to add a single ending to all verbs is described. Its simplier to learn and works well with the format of the book. Its not prefect so maybe language experts cringe but its practical.

For the phrases, it is a majority of the book. A couple things I liked were that for phrases that begin with the same words, the words are not repeated. The other is it includes an English pronunciation hint for the Croatian phrase. Both might seem like common sense but several books don't do this.

My main criticism with this book is the English pronunciation hint seems strange. The stressed syllable uses italics instead a bold font. And the transliteration use combinations of english letters for one sound. Compare these "ya ne go-vorim" and "ya ne gaw-vaw-reem". Which is easier to use?

For the dictionary, it is not huge but its a two way dictionary with gender and pronunciation. Its more words than you can memorize for a trip anyway. There is also a separate culinary reader for looking up food dishes. If there were a second edition to this book, the author should fine tune the vocabulary in this book. Its kind of funny seeing "Tequila" as a drink but not finding "Lobster" or "Squid" for food. Why go to Croatia to drink tequila? And of course its translates to "Te-kee-le".

This book is not prefect so it gets 4 stars not 5. For a Croatian language reference book that fits in your pocket this is the best book out there. If you have more time to study, review the "Teach yourself", "Colloquial" and "Barron's" Croatian books.

Full of errors

This should be a good phrase book. All new phrase books from Lonely Planet are modelled on the same base, and that base is modern and extensive. So why is this Croatian phrasebook so bad despite being modelled on the same base.

Silly mistakes:
To take one funny example, the Croatian phrase "I'm here with my boyfriend" is translated by the English phrase "I'm here with my girlfriend". Of course, the Croatian phrase "I'm here with my girlfriend" is translated as "I'm here with my boyfriend". Needless to say, this could make for some funny situations.

Confusion with Serbian:
Despite being a Croatian phrase book, this book often uses the Serbian form of a word instead of the Croatian one. Although the scars of the wars are healing, this is not the best way to make friends.

Outdated words:
Many of the words and phrases used are correct, but very outdated and never used in normal speech.

Grammatical errors:
Now and then, you see things like "poslati cu", even a beginner would know that it's "poslat cu".

The silly mistakes and the grammatical errors are not very common, but the confusion with Serbian and the use of outdated words is much too common. The language used often sounds stilted.

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