What writing system does Bosnian use?

Latin script (Gaj’s Latin alphabet, 30 letters, one per sound) is the predominant script and the one in everyday use; Cyrillic is also official but less widely used. Stichos writes Bosnian in the Latin alphabet.

Is Stichos suitable for complete beginners with zero prior knowledge (A0)?

Yes. A0 is a primary focus, designed for readers with no prior knowledge. A1 then adds basic everyday vocabulary and simple connected clauses as your foundation grows.

Are Stichos levels the same as CEFR levels?

Not exactly. Stichos levels use the familiar CEFR names, from A0 to B2, and are modelled on the CEFR (the Common European Framework of Reference), so a Stichos B1 is meant to feel close to a B1 in your course book. They aren't an official CEFR rating, and different books and exams draw the lines in slightly different places. A0 is Stichos's own addition, just below the framework's first level.

Are the stories written by AI, and how accurate are they?

Yes. Stories are generated by AI and then checked by further automated steps against the grammar and vocabulary rules for your level. That catches most problems, but it isn't a human editor, so an occasional unnatural phrase or slip can get through. Treat Stichos as practice material, and check anything you're unsure of with a teacher or a reference.

Can I read stories with explanations in my native language?

Yes. Stichos allows you to pair any target language with any native support language. You can read a Croatian story with French glosses, or a German story with Spanish explanations.

How does word lookup work while reading?

Tap or click any word for its meaning in that sentence, explained in your own language. In the full version, you can save any word to your Vocab Bank for later review.

Is the preview free, and what happens to my email?

Yes. The preview is free and needs no account. If you join the Reading List, we use your email to send your 3 free sample stories (PDF, after you confirm your address) and to let you know when we fully open. Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle it.

Do stories include audio or narration?

Story narration isn't part of the preview. At launch, the Premium Audio add-on reads every story aloud in a natural-sounding AI voice, in 39 of our 40 languages (Esperanto doesn't have audio support yet).

Read Beginner Bosnian Stories

Explore a free A1 Bosnian story generated live with translations built into every line.

Try a free A0 or A1 story in Bosnian, generated live, with tap-to-translate words and line-by-line translations in your language.

Rebeka i zubar

Danas je sunčan dan u Sarajevu.

Today is a sunny day in Sarajevo.

Rebeka ide kroz grad.

Rebeka goes through the city.

Ona ima veliku zubobolju.

She has a big toothache.

Zub je jako boli.

Her tooth hurts her very much.

Rebeka brzo dolazi u zubnu ordinaciju.

Rebeka quickly arrives at the dental clinic.

Doktor je tamo.

The doctor is there.

Zubar je vrlo dobar i fin.

The dentist is very good and kind.

On gleda tužnu djevojku.

He looks at the sad girl.

Rebeka sjedi na stolici.

Rebeka sits on the chair.

Rebeka tiho sjedi na velikoj stolici.

Rebeka sits quietly on the big chair.

Pogledaj gore.

Look up.

Rebeka gleda u malo svjetlo.

Rebeka looks into the small light.

Zubar pažljivo gleda bolesni zub.

The dentist carefully examines the bad tooth.

On vidi mali problem.

He sees a small problem.

Zubar uzima malu lampu i vodu.

The dentist takes a small lamp and water.

Uzmi vodu.

Take the water.

Rebeka pije hladnu vodu.

Rebeka drinks cold water.

Zubar brzo popravlja zub.

The dentist quickly fixes the tooth.

Bol nestaje.

The pain disappears.

Rebeka ima lijep osmijeh.

Rebeka has a nice smile.

Ona je sada mirna i sretna.

She is now calm and happy.

Rebeka kaže hvala i sretna ide kući.

Rebeka says thank you and happily goes home.

Quick facts about Bosnian

Speakers

About 3.3 million native speakers (2020–2023), according to the figure cited in Wikipedia's Bosnian language article. Counts vary, because speakers of the closely related standards choose which name to give their language.¹

Did you know?

Bosnian stands out among the Serbo-Croatian standards for its many Arabic, Persian and Ottoman Turkish loanwords, and for keeping an h in words such as kahva (coffee), where Serbian has kafa.¹

The main challenge

Nouns change their endings across seven cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative, locative and instrumental), with a lot of overlap between forms in the plural.²

Sources

About the Bosnian language

Language family	Indo-European → South Slavic (Shtokavian). It is one of four closely related, mutually intelligible standards, alongside Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian; its standard is based on the Eastern Herzegovinian dialect. The standard accepts only the Ijekavian pronunciation (mlijeko, not mleko).¹^,2^,3
Speakers	About 3.3 million native speakers (Ethnologue, 2020–2023). Counts vary between sources, because speakers of these closely related standards choose which name to give their language.¹
Primary script	Latin script (Gaj’s Latin alphabet, 30 letters, one per sound) is the predominant script and the one in everyday use; Cyrillic is also official but less widely used. Stichos writes Bosnian in the Latin alphabet.¹^,4^,3
Word order & typology	SVO by default, but word order is flexible because seven noun cases mark who does what. Inflection is fusional, subject pronouns are usually dropped, and unstressed clitics sit in second position in the clause.⁵^,6
Official status	An official language of Bosnia and Herzegovina alongside Croatian and Serbian (set at entity level; the state constitution names none). In official use in Montenegro, and a recognised minority language in Serbia, Croatia, North Macedonia and Kosovo.¹^,7

Bosnian reading proficiency benchmarks (CEFR)

Stichos level	Approximate framework equivalent	Reader profile
A0	Pre-A1	Early Beginner
A1	CEFR A1	Beginner
A2	CEFR A2	Elementary
B1	CEFR B1	Intermediate
B2	CEFR B2	Upper Intermediate

Stichos levels are modelled on the Council of Europe’s CEFR reading descriptors; A0 roughly corresponds to the CEFR’s Pre-A1 band. They describe what a reader can handle; Stichos does not test or certify Bosnian.

Reference corpora

Large corpora of contemporary Bosnian are recent and mostly built from the web.¹^,2

bsWaC: Nikola Ljubešić and Filip Klubička built the Bosnian web corpus by crawling the .ba domain in 2014. Version 1.1 (2016) holds about 287 million tokens in 896,059 texts, lemmatised and tagged, under a CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.¹^,2
Standard vocabulary: Stichos writes Bosnian readers with standard, dialect-neutral vocabulary and avoids regionalisms and non-standard loanwords at every level.

Readability design principles

We found no readability formula validated on Bosnian texts. The nearest published work is on Croatian, a closely related standard.¹

Decoding: Spelling is highly phonemic, with one letter for each sound, so sounding out words is rarely the hard part. Difficulty sits in case endings, verb forms and clitic order.²
Pitch accent: The standard pronunciation has a pitch accent: a stressed syllable is rising or falling, and long or short, giving four accents. Ordinary spelling marks neither the accent nor vowel length; dictionaries do.³
Croatian precedent: Sanja Brangan (2014) adapted Flesch Reading Ease to Croatian. It has not been tested on Bosnian texts.¹
Stichos: Stichos controls difficulty with level-by-level grammar rules and sentence-length limits. At A0 a sentence has at most five words and no conjunctions; the limits widen at each level.

Script & grammar scaffolding

Tenses: A0 uses only the present (prezent). A1 adds the past (perfekt), A2 the future (futur I), and B1 the present conditional (kondicional I). B2 opens futur II, passive participles and verbal adverbs (glagolski prilog). The aorist and imperfect (aorist, imperfekt) are held back until C1, where they appear for style.
Imperatives: At A0 commands appear only inside fixed formulas such as Izvolite (“here you are”), and requests take the form Jednu kafu, molim. A1 allows five informal imperatives: pogledaj, dođi, uzmi, sačekaj and sjedi.
Clitics: Pronoun and auxiliary clitics take the second position in the clause (Wackernagel’s law), with verbal clitics before object clitics except je.
Register: Friends and family use ti; strangers and formal settings use Vi with plural verb agreement.

Related academic & framework resources

The CEFR Levels (Council of Europe): The Council of Europe’s description of the six common reference levels, A1 to C2.
Bosnian web corpus bsWaC 1.1: The CLARIN.SI repository entry for the corpus, with download and licence details.
{bs,hr,sr}WaC – Web Corpora of Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian: The 2014 paper by Nikola Ljubešić and Filip Klubička describing how the corpora were built.
Quantitative Assessment of Text Difficulty in Croatian Language: Sanja Brangan’s 2014 paper in Rasprave Instituta za hrvatski jezik, proposing a Flesch-based formula for Croatian.
Bosnian language (Wikipedia): An overview of Bosnian, including its phonemic orthography.
Serbo-Croatian phonology (Wikipedia): An overview of the sounds shared by Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian, including the four-way pitch accent.

Frequently asked questions

What writing system does Bosnian use?: Latin script (Gaj’s Latin alphabet, 30 letters, one per sound) is the predominant script and the one in everyday use; Cyrillic is also official but less widely used. Stichos writes Bosnian in the Latin alphabet.
Is Stichos suitable for complete beginners with zero prior knowledge (A0)?: Yes. A0 is a primary focus, designed for readers with no prior knowledge. A1 then adds basic everyday vocabulary and simple connected clauses as your foundation grows.
Are Stichos levels the same as CEFR levels?: Not exactly. Stichos levels use the familiar CEFR names, from A0 to B2, and are modelled on the CEFR (the Common European Framework of Reference), so a Stichos B1 is meant to feel close to a B1 in your course book. They aren't an official CEFR rating, and different books and exams draw the lines in slightly different places. A0 is Stichos's own addition, just below the framework's first level.
Are the stories written by AI, and how accurate are they?: Yes. Stories are generated by AI and then checked by further automated steps against the grammar and vocabulary rules for your level. That catches most problems, but it isn't a human editor, so an occasional unnatural phrase or slip can get through. Treat Stichos as practice material, and check anything you're unsure of with a teacher or a reference.
Can I read stories with explanations in my native language?: Yes. Stichos allows you to pair any target language with any native support language. You can read a Croatian story with French glosses, or a German story with Spanish explanations.
How does word lookup work while reading?: Tap or click any word for its meaning in that sentence, explained in your own language. In the full version, you can save any word to your Vocab Bank for later review.
Is the preview free, and what happens to my email?: Yes. The preview is free and needs no account. If you join the Reading List, we use your email to send your 3 free sample stories (PDF, after you confirm your address) and to let you know when we fully open. Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle it.
Do stories include audio or narration?: Story narration isn't part of the preview. At launch, the Premium Audio add-on reads every story aloud in a natural-sounding AI voice, in 39 of our 40 languages (Esperanto doesn't have audio support yet).

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Free Sample Readers · Stichos