On a recent trip to a Croatian island, I visited a small store selling olive products and fruit preserves. I waited in line at the front counter as a gregarious Croatian man in his 30s served the tourists ahead of me. When it was my turn, I asked him in Croatian for a jar of fig marmalade.

 ‘Molim Vas jednu marmeladu od smokava,’ I said.

The cashier paused, seemingly taken aback by this Croatian-speaking tourist.

He then returned to the counter, congratulated me again on my effort and held up the jar of marmalade.

‘It’s marmelada od smokve,’ he said, correcting me. ‘Not smokava.’

He didn’t stop there. As he put the marmalade into a paper bag and took my money, he gave me a lesson in Croatian grammar.

‘Marmelada od koga? Od čega?‘ (Marmalade made of whom or of what?’), he asked, as though he was talking to a six-year-old. He let his question linger unresolved in the air for a moment before answering it.

‘Od smokve’ (Of fig), he said looking pleased with himself.

Then he handed me the marmalade and waved me out the door.

‘Send my regards to our diaspora in Australia,’ he called out as I left.

Ignorant bliss

For the first 18 years of my life, I was blissfully unaware of Croatian grammar. I spoke how I spoke, and I was happy if I could string together a sentence. I knew that the same Croatian word could have different endings. Water in Croatian is voda but a glass of water is čaša vode and to drink water is piti vodu. But I didn’t know why the end of the word changed, and I didn’t think to care.

The more time I spent in Croatia, the more I encountered these different word endings. It turned out that water wasn’t just voda, vode and vodu. It could also be vodi, vodom or vodama among other things. And it wasn’t just nouns that changed in this way. Adjectives and a bunch of other words had multiple different endings too. When I asked Croatian people why, they answered with one word: padeži.

The P word

Padeži, or cases, are grammatical categories that signify the role a word plays in a sentence. There are seven cases in the Croatian language and they’re even harder to learn than they are to explain. Ask any Croatian learner the hardest thing about the language and they’ll tell you it’s the padeži.

After discovering them, my relationship with Croatian grammar shifted from ignorant bliss to bewilderment. It was hard enough trying to remember and pronounce new words without having to learn all the different versions of each word and which one to use in each context.

For years I tried learning padeži through osmosis – by going to Croatia as often as I could and immersing myself in the language. But that only got me so far. I picked up some basic declensions (the changing of a word to indicate its grammatical case) through conversation but mostly it just made me more confused. Whenever I got frustrated about it, people would insist that my Croatian was good enough and that I shouldn’t worry about grammar.

‘We understand you,’ they’d reassure me. 

It didn’t make me feel any better. I didn’t just want to be understood in Croatian. I wanted to express myself as clearly and articulately in Croatian as I do in English. And I wanted to speak grammatically correct Croatian. After years of hoping and wishing my Croatian would improve, I finally decided to find a teacher and take some private lessons.

Thursdays with Bojan

My teacher’s name is Bojan, he lives in Zagreb and we’ve been meeting on Skype most Thursdays for the past two years. At first, I felt self-conscious speaking in front of him and exhausted at the end of every lesson. Each class seemed to highlight how much I didn’t know and how many things I was getting wrong. Even several months in, I wondered if my Croatian was getting better or worse.

Padeži were the hardest part of all. Whenever I tried to construct a complex sentence, I’d have to consult my notebook, which is filled with pages of tables and lists on the grammatical cases and how to use them: When to apply which case; how to apply them to different genders and in the singular or plural form; which cases go after which prepositions; how to decline adjectives, numbers and units of measure. I wondered how I was ever going to learn all these endless rules.

I stuck at it and gradually it started getting easier. I began incorporating the grammar rules into my speech. I felt less self-conscious when I spoke and less tired at the end of each lesson. Bojan corrected me less often too. Not because I was making fewer mistakes but because he’d make me find them and correct them myself. And usually, I could.

Speaking Croatian in the wild

When I returned to Croatia this June, my first visit in three years, I wondered whether anyone would notice the difference. As I went from house to house, visiting my relatives and answering all the usual questions, I patiently waited for someone to comment on my improved Croatian. No one did.

Are you kidding me? I thought to myself. All those hours of talking and reading and writing and dissecting this godforsaken language and no one notices any difference? Why do I even bother?

Then again, my relatives have never cared about my grammar. They care that I spend time with them. They care that I’m there.

Over the past five months, I’ve met dozens of new people who have complimented me on how well I speak Croatian. ‘You even know padeži,’ some of them have pointed out. This is always nice and reassuring to hear.

What’s most important, though, is that I feel different. While my grammar is far from perfect and I still stumble through sentences most of the time, it’s starting to make sense. I’m more confident with the basics, and curious, rather than bewildered, by what I still have to learn.

I love that I have a teacher who guides and encourages me, and bears witness to my growth. And I love travelling around Croatia, meeting and talking to new people, and trying my best to apply all those rules swirling around in my head. Sometimes I nail it. Sometimes I fail miserably. But I always try to have fun.

So when I meet someone like that cashier who sold me the fig marmalade, I try to have a laugh about it. Relax, I tell myself. You’re going to screw up. People are going to point that out from time to time. It’s all good.

But something about this interaction made me pause for thought.

Maybe it was because he made a big deal about a small thing. I’d said marmalade of figs instead of marmalade of fig. Most people would have let that slide.

Maybe it was because he’d been so patronising. Nice try diaspora girl but you can’t speak Croatian.

Or maybe, just maybe, it was because I knew I was right.  

The proof is in the marmalade

I searched my memory for the exact grammatical rule. I tried to picture my notebook and my pages of tables and lists. I scanned through all the conversations I’d had with Bojan. I remember one that involved products made from fruit but I couldn’t recall it well enough.

Then I reached into my paper bag and pulled out the jar of marmalade. Most of the labelling was written in English. But then I saw it, written on the lid in small, cursive font: Marmelada od smokava. Marmalade of figs. I was right.

Validation tingled through my body and a smile spread across my face as I figured out what to do with this information. Should I let it slide? Take the high ground? Give myself a quiet pat on the back?

Hell no.

I marched back into the shop with my jar of marmalade. I waited for Professor Fig to finish serving a customer. Then I held the jar up to his face and told him to read it.

‘Hmmm,’ he says as he studied the delicate cursive font, a resigning smile appearing on his face.

But the good Professor didn’t concede defeat right away.

He called over his friend, Šime, and asked him to tell us both how he would say fig marmalade. As though Šime was the authority on the standard Croatian language.

‘Marmelada od smokve,’ Šime replied.

To this, Professor Fig looked at me with a pleading face as if to say, ‘See. It’s not just me.’

So then I gave him a lesson in Croatian grammar.

We parted on good terms, the Professor and I. He thanked me. We had a laugh. I promised I’d send his regards to the Croatian diaspora in Australia.

Then I walked back to town through olive groves and paths lined with fig trees, soaking up the autumn sunshine and savouring my victory.

It was almost as sweet as the marmalade.