About This Keyboard
Croatian (Hrvatski) is a South Slavic language spoken by approximately 7 million people worldwide. It is the official language of Croatia and one of the official languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the European Union. Significant Croatian-speaking communities live in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Australia, the United States, and Canada. Croatian uses the Latin script, adapted with five special diacritical characters that are essential for correct spelling.
Croatian literature dates back to the 11th century with the Baška tablet (Bašćanska ploča), one of the oldest Glagolitic inscriptions. The modern standardised language took shape in the 19th century during the Illyrian Movement, which sought to unite South Slavic languages under a common literary standard. Today, Croatian is closely related to Serbian and Bosnian, though the three are recognised as separate standard languages with distinct vocabularies, pronunciations, and orthographic traditions.
The five special letters in Croatian — č, ć, đ, š, and ž — represent sounds that do not exist in English. Without these diacritics, words change meaning entirely (e.g., 'kupac' means buyer, while 'kupač' means swimmer). This makes having access to the full Croatian alphabet absolutely essential for accurate written communication.
How to use this keyboard — 5 tips:
1. Diacritics access: The Croatian diacritics (č, ć, đ, š, ž) appear on the on-screen keyboard. Click them directly or use the physical keyboard shortcuts shown on the layout.
2. Standard QWERTY base: Croatian uses a QWERTZ layout (Z and Y are swapped compared to English). Letters like q, w, x, and y are used only in foreign loanwords.
3. Capital diacritics: Hold Shift while clicking diacritics to type uppercase Č, Ć, Đ, Š, Ž for proper nouns and sentence starts.
4. Text direction: Croatian is written left-to-right, same as English. No special directional settings are needed.
5. Copy and use: After typing, click Copy to paste your Croatian text into emails, messages, or documents without losing any diacritical characters.
Common Croatian phrases:
• Bok — Hi / Bye (informal)
• Hvala (Hvala) — Thank you
• Molim (Molim) — Please / You're welcome
• Kako si? (Kako si?) — How are you? (informal)
• Dobro jutro — Good morning
• Laku noć — Good night
• Gdje je...? — Where is...?
• Ne razumijem — I don't understand
• Koliko košta? — How much does it cost?
• Govorite li engleski? — Do you speak English?