Sunday, April 7, 2024

Croatian Word-Initial Consonant Clusters

Croatian is a Slavic language. One characteristic of Slavic languages is the large number of consonant clusters. Let us illustrate the permissible word-initial consonant clusters of Croatian with ten words.

gdje (who)
hvala (thank you)
knjiga (book)
mlijeko (milk)
ptica (bird)
tko (who)
vjelar (wind)
zdravo (hello)
žlica (spoon)
zvijezda (star)

The ten words have consonant clusters which do not occur in English. Many Croatian consonant clusters also appear word-medially and word-finally. All Slavic languages allow a large number of consonant clusters. This is evident in the list of Croatian words.


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