Croatian is a South Slavic language spoken by approximately 5.6 million speakers in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, with recognized minority status in Serbia, Montenegro, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Romania, Hungary, Austria and Italy. Croatian is also widely spoken in Slovenia as a second language and it is one of the official languages of the European Union.
Croatian is mutually intelligible with Serbian, Montenegrin and Bosnian and shares the common features of Slavic and Balkan Sprachbund languages.