Spelling Loanwords and Foreign Names | Croatian Grammar

Croatian writing follows a near-perfect "write as you speak" principle, and that principle forces a decision the moment a foreign word arrives: do you keep the original spelling, or respell it to match Croatian sounds? The answer splits cleanly along one line. Common nouns — everyday borrowings for clothes, jobs, technology — are usually phoneticised: respelled letter-by-letter to fit Croatian orthography. Proper names of people and places keep their original foreign spelling, but pick up Croatian case endings. Get this distinction and you will spell borrowed vocabulary the way an educated Croatian writer does.

Common nouns are phoneticised

When a loanword settles into everyday use, Croatian rewrites it so that its spelling predicts its pronunciation under Croatian rules. English digraphs and silent letters disappear; the word is rebuilt out of Croatian letters, including the diacritic ones (č, ć, š, ž, đ, dž).

Source	Croatian (phoneticised)	Meaning
(German) Jumper / jumper	džemper	sweater
(German) Chef	šef	boss
(English) computer	kompjuter / kompjutor	computer
(English) design	dizajn	design
(English) manager	menadžer	manager
(English) interview	intervju	interview

Look at what each respelling does. Džemper turns the English/German "j" sound into the Croatian digraph dž, the exact letter for that sound. Šef uses š for the "sh" of the German Chef. Dizajn spells the English design the way it sounds to a Croatian ear — di-zajn — discarding the silent "g" and the "gn" that English keeps. Menadžer rebuilds manager with dž for the soft "g" and an -er ending. Once respelled, these words inflect like any native noun.

Obukao je topli džemper jer je vani bilo hladno.

He put on a warm sweater because it was cold outside.

Naš novi šef je vrlo pristupačan.

Our new boss is very approachable.

Kupili smo novi kompjuter za ured.

We bought a new computer for the office.

Ona radi kao menadžer u velikoj firmi.

She works as a manager in a big company.

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The phoneticised form is the citation form you will find in a Croatian dictionary. If you ever see jumper or manager in the original spelling in a Croatian text, it reads as a slightly foreign, often jokey or brand-flavoured choice — not the neutral word, which is džemper, menadžer.

Variant respellings: kompjuter / kompjutor

Some loans have not fully settled, leaving two accepted spellings. Kompjuter and kompjutor coexist (the -or form is the older, more "latinate" variant). Both are correct; kompjuter is more common today. This is normal for a loan still finding its final shape, and dictionaries list both.

Stari kompjutor mi je crknuo, pa sam morao kupiti novi.

My old computer died on me, so I had to buy a new one.

Proper names keep their original spelling

Names of foreign people, cities, and countries are a different matter. Croatian does not respell them — Shakespeare stays Shakespeare, New York stays New York. What Croatian does instead is attach its case endings to the original spelling, so the foreign name declines like a Croatian noun while keeping its foreign look.

Name	With Croatian ending	Case / meaning
New York	u New Yorku	locative — „in New York"
Shakespeare	Shakespearea	genitive — „of Shakespeare"
Washington	iz Washingtona	genitive — „from Washington"
Pariz (adapted)	u Parizu	locative — „in Paris"

Proveli smo tjedan dana u New Yorku.

We spent a week in New York.

Čitam sve drame Williama Shakespearea.

I'm reading all of William Shakespeare's plays.

Vratili su se iz Washingtona prošli tjedan.

They came back from Washington last week.

Notice the mechanics in Shakespearea: the genitive ending -a is simply appended to the unchanged stem Shakespeare, even though the result looks unusual to an English eye. In speech the ending follows the pronounced end of the name, but in writing the base spelling is preserved and the Croatian suffix is added on. A few very old, long-naturalised place names are exceptions that have been fully adapted — Pariz (Paris), Beč (Vienna), London — and those decline as ordinary Croatian nouns.

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The rule of thumb: respell the thing, preserve the name. A džemper is a thing, so it is respelled; Shakespeare is a name, so it is preserved and merely takes -a, -u, -om as the grammar demands. For how those endings are formed, see genitive forms.

The letters q, w, x, y are foreign-only

Standard Croatian uses a 30-letter alphabet that does not include q, w, x, y. These four letters appear only in unadapted foreign material — preserved proper names (New York, Quebec, Wagner), foreign brand names, symbols, and untranslated quotations. The moment a word is phoneticised into Croatian, those letters are replaced by their Croatian equivalents.

Foreign letter	Croatian equivalent in phoneticised words	Example
w	v	vikend (weekend)
x	ks	taksi (taxi)
y	i or j	jogurt (yoghurt)
qu	kv	kvalitet (quality, via Latin)

Idemo na vikend u Zagreb, a taksi nas čeka u osam.

We're going to Zagreb for the weekend, and the taxi is waiting for us at eight.

Za doručak je popila jogurt i pojela kruh s medom.

For breakfast she had yoghurt and ate bread with honey.

So a borrowed thing loses its w/x/y (it becomes vikend, taksi, jogurt), but a borrowed name keeps them (New York, Wagner). This is just the two big rules — phoneticise common nouns, preserve proper names — playing out at the level of individual letters.

Common Mistakes

❌ Kupili smo novi computer.

Incorrect in neutral Croatian — the common noun is phoneticised: kompjuter.

✅ Kupili smo novi kompjuter.

We bought a new computer.

❌ Ona radi kao manager.

Incorrect as the neutral word — it is respelled menadžer.

✅ Ona radi kao menadžer.

She works as a manager.

❌ Proveli smo tjedan dana u Nju Jorku.

Incorrect — a proper name keeps its original spelling, not a phoneticised one.

✅ Proveli smo tjedan dana u New Yorku.

We spent a week in New York.

❌ Čitam drame Shakespeare.

Incorrect — the name keeps its spelling but must take the genitive ending.

✅ Čitam drame Shakespearea.

I'm reading Shakespeare's plays.

❌ Idemo na weekend u Zagreb.

Incorrect — the common noun is phoneticised; w becomes v: vikend.

✅ Idemo na vikend u Zagreb.

We're going to Zagreb for the weekend.

Key Takeaways

Croatian phoneticises common loan nouns — respells them with Croatian letters so the spelling predicts the sound: džemper, šef, kompjuter/kompjutor, dizajn, menadžer.
Foreign proper names keep their original spelling but take Croatian case endings: u New Yorku, Shakespearea, iz Washingtona.
A handful of long-naturalised place names are fully adapted exceptions: Pariz, Beč, London.
The letters q, w, x, y belong only to unadapted foreign material; phoneticised words replace them (vikend, taksi, jogurt).
The master rule: respell the thing, preserve the name.

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