| Introduction |
| Usefulness | Not immensely useful unless you want to visit the former Yugoslavia but a fascinating and incredibly beautiful language. Newspapers in Serbo-Croatian are widely available all over Europe, as well as several TV channels. |
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| Chic factor | Serbo-Croatian in itself does not have a high cultural aura such as French or Japanese. People will often wonder why you studied did. Are you from this part of the world? Did you marry there? If you do speak other slavic languages, however, the chic factor appears and you'll be seen as a well-travelled linguist rather than an arms dealer. |
| Countries | It is mostly spoken in the former Yugoslavia (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro), though some speakers are to be found in the neighbouring countries as well as expatriates communities all over Europe and in Australia and Canada. |
| Speakers | Around 20 million speakers worldwide. |
| Travel | Serbo Croatian is useful only when travelling in the former Yugoslavia but this is a very scenic and attractive travel destination, wich beaches, mountains, old cities and antique monasteries. The food is great - an asset in this part of the world. The countries of the former Yugoslavia boast much natural beauty, including around 6000km of Adriatic coastline, dozens of inhabited offshore islands and green undulating countryside. They also have a surprisingly large amount of good quality contemporary music. The real culture is to be found in this relatively unspoiled land enjoying a superb local beer on a hot summer’s evening! |
| Variations | For nationalistic reasons, Serbo-Croat has recently been divided into three separate languages, namely Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian. This division is a much debated topic amongst former-Yugoslavs. As for the foreign learner, from my experience I can tell you the regional differences seem to me to be very minor and are far less pronounced than, say, the differences between the British English dialects spoken in Newcastle and London. In former Yugoslavia nobody refers to the language as Serbo-Croatian anymore, and some people, especially in Croatia, believe that there never was such a thing as Serbo Croatian in the first place, but two languages artificially united for a century. Try to stay clear of such a controversy and just keep in mind that for the learner, you can learn a "standard" Serbo-Croatian that will get you understood in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Croatia. |
| Culture | As well as Nobel prize winning literature and some fantastic independent films, there are quite a lot of books you can buy. |
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| Difficulties |
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| Difficulty | I rate this language as difficult to learn  along with virtually all other slavic languages, for the non-slavic speaker. Serbo-Croat has a system of seven cases each of which, in principle, changes with male/female/neuter, singular/plural, noun/adjective. However, in practice there is a lot of similarity between individual declensions and the number of combinations one needs to learn is greatly reduced (for example male and neuter nouns behave very similarly). |
| Pronunciation | Unless you cannot roll r’s, the sounds of the language are easy to pronounce except when attempting to master the subtle difference between the two types of ‘ch’ sound. There are often clusters of consonants, as in the word Srpsko-Hrvatski (=Serbo-Croat). |
| Grammar | Although most Serbo-Croatian words decline with number, sex and case, so that the syntax should be relatively free in principle (as it is in Russian), the language makes use of many so-called enclitics, which are essentially short words whose positions in a sentence are very important. Amongst other words, many pronouns have both long and short forms (eg. njih & ih = them) and there is a complicated set of rules that determine the order in which these type of words should appear in a sentence. By and large, Serbo-Croatian syntax is as complex as that of Russian, and if you are into language for the long run, you might as well start with Russian first. |
| Vocabulary | Memorising Serbo-Croatian words is difficult for Latin/Germanic language speakers, since they are usually very alien. There is a benefit of the root sytem, however, in which many words can be formed out of a single root word, eg. prst=finger and prsten=ring. This makes memorisation easier once the learner has progressed beyond the basics. |
| Transparency | Real language lovers might also benefit from learning Serbo-Croat for travel in Eastern Europe if they already know another slavic language, since it is said that knowing any two slavic languages allows one to communicate in all of the others. The language (nowadays called Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and their variations) is strongly related to Russian, Ukrainian and Bulgarian. A knowledge of either one will get you a large discount on vocabulary acquisition. |
| Spelling | Words are pronounced exactly as they are written, though one must learn to use the correct stresses (but this is easier to predict than in Russian). |
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| Ressources |
| Books | There's little material available, at least compared to, say, Russian. I learn’t with David Norris’ “Teach Yourself Serbo-Croat” and the Linguaphone course:
· Linguaphone, Linguaphone do not advertise their own Serbo-Croat courses (probably since they’re relatively dated recordings) but if you call them they may have some left in stock. Their course takes you to a strong intermediate level, with around 2000 words. I found this course invaluable for building vocabulary and speaking/listening beyond the beginner’s level.
· Teach Yourself Serbo-Croat, (now called Teach Yourself Croatian etc.) is a good place to start and learn the grammar, though it’s not large enough to build intermediate skills and words.
For intermediate courses other than Linguaphone you might want to try the FSI courses or the Dobro Dosli series by Jasna Baresic. |
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| Schools | There are three schools in London, namely the Croatian Language School, The School of Slavonic and East European Studies and the University of Westminster. |
| Links | · Try Croatia and Serbia’s national radio-television streams at: http://www.hrt.hr/ and http://www.rts.co.yu/
· This page may be useful for beginners: http://home.freeuk.com/iandart/
· Some information about the contemporary music of the former Yugoslavia: http://www.sretnodijete.com/info/kritike.html and some in English: http://www.klikeri.co.yu/tajnigrad/ohausviewer.php?ohausid=I04 |
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