Here's the short version: say bok to friends and in shops in Zagreb, say dobar dan to anyone you don't know or who's older, and keep doviđenja for a polite goodbye. Get those three right and you'll never open a conversation wrongly. The rest is nuance — and I got most of it wrong before I got it right.
Published 12 August 2026
My first week in Split I walked into a bakery and cheerfully said bok to a woman who must have been seventy. She gave me a look. Not rude — just the look you give a foreigner who's being over-familiar. A Croatian friend explained later: bok is grand for mates and the guy your age at the coffee counter, but with someone older or in a proper shop you lead with dobar dan. Same idea as not calling your bank manager "mate". Nobody teaches you that on an app, so here's the version I wish I'd had.
Bok is the everyday Croatian hello — light, warm, and gloriously efficient because it also means bye. You'll hear it a thousand times a day in Zagreb. Dobar dan (literally "good day") is your safe, polite default: a stranger, an older person, a pharmacy, a hotel desk. And doviđenja is the polite goodbye when bok feels too casual. If you learn nothing else before your trip, learn those three.
Croatian is phonetic, so once you know the sounds you read every word correctly. A couple of notes: č and ć are both roughly "ch" (č is harder, ć is softer), j is a "y" as in "yes", and đ is a soft "j" like the start of "jam".
| Croatian | Say it | When |
|---|---|---|
| Bok | bohk | Casual hi/bye, anytime |
| Dobar dan | DOH-bar dahn | Polite hello, midday to evening |
| Dobro jutro | DOH-bro YOO-tro | Good morning, until ~11am |
| Dobra večer | DOH-bra VEH-cher | Good evening |
| Laku noć | LAH-koo notch | Good night (heading to bed) |
| Doviđenja | doh-vee-JEH-nya | Polite goodbye |
| Ćao | chow | Casual hi/bye, coast especially |
| Vidimo se | VEE-dee-mo seh | See you (later) |
| Pozdrav | POZ-drav | Neutral hello, and a sign-off in emails |
To one person you know, it's kako si? To someone you're being polite with, or a group, it's kako ste? That si versus ste split is the same formality dial as the greeting itself: si is the friendly "you", ste is the respectful one. Get in the habit early — Croatians clock it instantly, and defaulting to ste with an older stranger is never wrong.
The trap: kako si is a real question, not the automatic English "y'alright?" that expects no answer. You'll get an actual reply. A safe one back is dobro, hvala ("good, thanks"), or evo, dobro ("getting on fine"). Then lob it back: a ti? ("and you?").
Rule of thumb I still use: if I'd shake their hand, I say dobar dan. If I'd nod, I say bok.
Regional flavour is half the fun. Bok is the sound of Zagreb and inland Croatia. Down in Dalmatia — Split, Hvar, the islands — you'll hear a relaxed ćao just as much, borrowed straight from Italian across the water and worn in over centuries. Neither is wrong anywhere; it's just that a Splićanin leans ćao and a Zagrepčanin leans bok. Copy whoever's serving you and you'll blend right in.
One more that punches above its weight: pozdrav. It's a friendly, neutral "hello" out loud, but it's also how half the country signs off a text or an email — the Croatian "cheers/regards". Drop it at the end of a message to your landlord and you'll look like you've been here a while.
You walk into a konoba or a corner shop. Here's the whole exchange, start to finish:
— Dobar dan. (You, on the way in.)
— Dobar dan, izvolite? ("Good day, what would you like?")
— Jednu kavu, molim. ("One coffee, please.")
— … Hvala. Doviđenja! (You, on the way out.)
That's it. Four lines, and you've bookended the whole thing politely without a word of English. Nail the entrance and exit and the middle takes care of itself.
Is Croatian really different from Serbian here? The greetings mostly overlap, but bok is the giveaway that you're in Croatia — a Serb would say ćao or zdravo, not bok. If you're curious how far the languages diverge, we get into it in one language or four?
Do I even need this if everyone speaks English? In tourist Split, plenty do. But the first ten seconds set the tone, and opening in Croatian changes how the whole exchange goes — warmer, less transactional. It's the cheapest goodwill you'll ever buy, and it's exactly why greetings are lesson one. If you're weighing up the effort, is Croatian hard to learn? is an honest read.
Learn these before you land and you'll spend your trip being met halfway instead of pointed at a menu. When you're ready to go past hello, the beginner's roadmap to Croatian lays out the right order — and the Gora app drills all of this out loud with a patient AI fox who won't sigh when you say bok to the wrong person. Pozdrav.