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Best way to start learning Bosnian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| !LH@N Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6819 days ago 487 posts - 531 votes  Speaks: German, Turkish*, English Studies: Serbo-Croatian, Spanish | Message 9 of 25 16 July 2008 at 8:23am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Sorry for keeping this thread alive, but this is an important question for me and maybe there is somebody out there who has an answer!
Regards, Ilhan 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Eduard Decaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6023 days ago 166 posts - 170 votes 2 sounds Speaks: Dutch*, NorwegianC1, Swedish, Danish, English, German, ItalianB1, Spanish, Serbo-Croatian, French Studies: Portuguese | Message 10 of 25 16 July 2008 at 10:13am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Hi Ilhan. I bought TY Croatian from Amazon.com including the CDs. Although this course is pretty much the same as TY Serbo-Croat from 15 years ago, I reckon it'll do well.
With regard to choosing between TY Croatian and TY Serbian: - TY Croatian uses the 'ijekavian' dialect and the Latin alphabet, which (to me) seems to be in use in the Federation of Bosnia and Hercegovina. - TY Serbian uses the 'ekavian' dialect and to a large extend the Cyrillic alphabet, popular in the part of BiH called Republika Srpska. I find the TY Croatian pretty ok. Altogether it roams a vocabulary of about 1500 words. I know, because I all entered them into Anki(.com). Anyway, as said earlier, both languages are so much alike that, whichever you choose, you will be able to use it in Bosnia. Check also the wiki entrance on the Bosnian language: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_language 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| !LH@N Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6819 days ago 487 posts - 531 votes Speaks: German, Turkish*, English Studies: Serbo-Croatian, Spanish | Message 11 of 25 16 July 2008 at 10:15am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Thanks for your answer!
Regards, Ilhan 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Eduard Decaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6023 days ago 166 posts - 170 votes 2 sounds Speaks: Dutch*, NorwegianC1, Swedish, Danish, English, German, ItalianB1, Spanish, Serbo-Croatian, French Studies: Portuguese | Message 12 of 25 21 July 2008 at 4:01am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I understand that you're now focusing on Bosnian. How is this coming along? Have you found useful course material which is focused on Bosnian or at least clearly makes a distinction between the language varieties used in Bosnia Herzegovina?
And what interests me most: have you found sources for using the vocabulary that is particularly Bosnian? And are you immersing into the language already? I find myself listening to various Croatian radio stations on the internet while at work, depending on which stations aren't yet blocked by Websense... Even when not listening actively, one sort of gets used to the language, the sound of it, and lateron word order and regularly used words. The same could be done with Bosnian radio, though you may want to listen to radio stations that use Bosnian primarily as the given language. Perhaps some sort of Sarajevan radio station would do the trick or the local/regional radio station of any other district of Bosnia and Herzegovina. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| !LH@N Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6819 days ago 487 posts - 531 votes Speaks: German, Turkish*, English Studies: Serbo-Croatian, Spanish | Message 13 of 25 21 July 2008 at 5:08am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Hello Eduard, I'm happy to see you're interested in this :)
I didn't start studying as of now, I am just collecting the material that I will need. I want to reach basic fluency in Spanish by the end of the year, that's when I'll start learning Bosnian. I found Ronelle Alexander's books extremely interesting and I am going to get them for sure. I don't know if I should get the audio files that go with the books, it wouldn't be of any harm but they are kind of expensive and a student's bank account is not the biggest :) I have the old FSI Serbo-Croatian here, and got Pimsleur Croatian, TY Serbian and Magner's book, too. I plan on getting TY Croatian. You are very right, finding Bosnian materials is exeptionally hard, most of what I've seen focuses on Croatian or Serbian (or both, but not Bosnian). From what I have understood though Bosnian is pretty much like Croatian and so that won't be a problem. I have the advantage that I know several Bosnian people who are eager to help me out, so I hope to dive into a Bosnian environment very soon after I start learning the language. I will also get "Derviš i smrt" by Meša Selimović and a Bosnian newspaper for educated people, not boulevard crap (though not from Sarajevo but from Tuzla, which won't make that big of a difference I guess). I plan on doing the following: I'll use six days of the week for active study, and I will take off Sundays (I won't study actively, which doesn't mean I am not going to listen to any Bosnian or read or something, I just won't do active study). I'll start with one lesson of Pimsleur Croatian every day (only one lesson because I want to get their content really thoroughly!). After I am done with all of Pimsleur Croatian (only 10 lessons -.-) I'll review all the material. I'll divide my active study time into two phases, Phase 1 (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday) and Phase 2 (Thursday, Friday, Saturday). Each phase I will do one lesson of BCST (the textbook by Ronelle Alexander), one lesson of TY Croatian and one lesson of TY Serbian. I will use all three days, which means I won't be doing BCST on Monday, TYC on Tuesday and TYS on Wednesday or something like that, but I will use all three materials all three days to get a very thorough understanding of the lessons and material covered in them. I don't know how I am going to utilize those lessons though, since I haven't assembled all the materials (maybe you have a tip for me how you use TY Croatian?) I will also go through one lesson of FSI Serbo-Croatian each week. I don't know how I will utilize Magner's book as of now, or if I will utilize it at all. After about the first few lessons I will do it Barry Farber style and dive into my Bosnian newspaper, in which I'll try reading every article and mark all the words I don't understand. I'll write them down on a piece of paper, look them up in a dictionary, reread the article and then make flashcards for myself. Your tip with the radio sounds great! This seems to be very effective way! Do you use a program to get the radio stations, or do you use their websites? I am writing my other question down here again in case you might over-read it: how do you exactly utilize TY Croatian? Regards, Ilhan 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Eduard Decaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6023 days ago 166 posts - 170 votes 2 sounds Speaks: Dutch*, NorwegianC1, Swedish, Danish, English, German, ItalianB1, Spanish, Serbo-Croatian, French Studies: Portuguese | Message 14 of 25 21 July 2008 at 5:38am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Hi! Nice to get such a quick answer :)
I use TYCroatian at the moment and I just try to read the texts and do the accompagnying exercises in the given order. At first I started a bit too quickly, not being able to cram/remember rows of grammatical declensions, so now I'll be taking it a bit slower. Also, I bought some newspapers and weeklies I came across at a local newspaper stand. At the moment they only seem to sell Serbian NIN and Vesti, which I'm sort of 'decoding' using my Croatian-Norwegian dictionary. This works quite fine as I more or less start to develop a feeling telling me where to put in the (i)j, in order to find ekavian words in an ijekavian dictionary. It's about the same thing as you are planning to do: write down all words you don't know. I do however have a comment on you planning to do all those courses parallel. Although I understand that you really want to learn Bosnian thoroughly, you may want to reconsider using so many courses at the same time. I took a look at the book by Ronelle Alexander (as I found it on Google Books with many pages accessible!) and it looks like a good one. In order not to blend too many different pedagogical methods, I advise you to use that book as your main book (get the audio too!!! it'll be worth the few beers you can't buy because of the money it costs) and use your other books for learning extra words, exercises that may not be not covered well enough in your primary course book, grammatical overviews etc. If you do choose to do everything at the same time, you risk ending up learning chaotically and actually learning slower. Take it from the educational professional I am working on becoming ;). Next to TY Croatian, I use a copy of an old book from 1962. This book is awful in a pedagogical way, but on the other hand it has good declension tables and good focus on ijekavian and ekavian as two seperate branches (of the same language, as this book was written in a time when the two language varieties were planned on being more and more equal). I'm planning on making a short overview of these declensions and I can send it or perhaps upload it on the forum, if possible. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| !LH@N Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6819 days ago 487 posts - 531 votes Speaks: German, Turkish*, English Studies: Serbo-Croatian, Spanish | Message 15 of 25 21 July 2008 at 6:38am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Hi :)
Yeah your answer came pretty quick, too.
Yes I do have that problem all the time, I want to hurry through my courses and at the beginning when it is easy I rush through them and all the sudden forget everything, and when it gets harder I get in even bigger trouble.
Thank you for your tip! I planed on using BCST as my main book anyways, but from what it looked like to me (and what it said in the introduction) it seems like it was aimed at a classroom audience, and since I don't have that I am scared I might miss a lot of vocabulary and won't be able to learn the language as good as I want to! I think you're right, and so I am rethinking of using only BCST and FSI Serbo-Croatian. But, from an educational professional's point of view ;), how would you recommend me supplementing my studies with TY Croatian and Serbian?
Wow that would be really cool! Regards, Ilhan 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Eduard Decaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6023 days ago 166 posts - 170 votes 2 sounds Speaks: Dutch*, NorwegianC1, Swedish, Danish, English, German, ItalianB1, Spanish, Serbo-Croatian, French Studies: Portuguese | Message 16 of 25 21 July 2008 at 6:57am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I'd use the TY-books for, indeed, complementing. Get to know the basics first from one book only, and then lateron, when you feel more comfortable with the language you can 'pick and choose' from the other books.
Most important is, however, to have a clear and reachable target. It is better to use a bit more time and learn slower, because in the end you will be learning better and more thorough. Basically, I would aim at doing about 15 pages of your book daily, and not change the pace until you've reached, let's say, page 100. If you're quicker than this, then use your time for learning vocabulary, make your own translation exercises and read newspapers and the like with a dictionary like described above. Perhaps we can help each other out? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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