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Montenegrin | ||
Tags: Serbo-Croatian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| olps Newbie Canada Joined 6703 days ago 24 posts - 24 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Czech | Message 1 of 53 03 October 2010 at 7:58pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, it looks like I may need to learn a little Montenegrin. My question is somewhat about terminology. When looking for resources should I bother searching out 'Montenegrin', or should I look into Serbian or Serbo-Croation? How much of a practical difference is there between Montenegrin and surrounding languages?
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| Merv Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5278 days ago 414 posts - 749 votes  Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 2 of 53 03 October 2010 at 8:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
No offense, but none. Historically, most Montenegrins considered themselves Serbs and very many Serbs of today have Montenegrin roots. I have Montenegrin ancestors on both sides of the family and they all considered themselves Serbs as well. The relationship is Germany:Austria:German cantons of Switzerland, i.e. the same ethnic group divided into different political entities out of historical circumstances. The language is essentially a dialect of the "Serbian standard," but is ijekavian instead of ekavian. I also don't mean to offend others here, but Bosnian and Croatian are also historical fictions, at least w/ respect to Stokavian. The Croatian languages are actually three: Kajkavian, Cakavian, and Stokavian. None are mutually intelligible. Kajkavian exhibits influences of neighboring Slovene, Cakavian is a uniquely Croatian language spoken in the north and central Adriatic coast and islands, whereas Stokavian is spoken in southern Dalmatia, the Dalmatian hinterland, Slavonia and also spoken in all of Bosnia, all of Montenegro, and almost all of Serbia. It is the Stokavian language that is the literary standard language of Croatia and also is mutually intelligible with the language of Serbia and Bosnia. Its main difference lies in a few minor grammatical points (e.g. insistence on the infinitive where Serbian often allows a particle + conjugated verb construction) and vocabulary, which has been actively changed since 1991 to make it more and more different from Serbian. With respect to vocabulary, generally, Croatian Stokavian favors Slavic-rooted words and calques over foreign words, which Serbian readily accepts. E.g. music = muzika (Serbian, from Greek and Latin) = glazba (Croatian, from Slavic) or 1000 = hiljada (Serbian, from Greek) = tisuca (Croatian, from Slavic) or pianoforte = klavir (Serbian, from German or French = glasovir (Croatian). Bosnian Stokavian depends on the ethnicity of the speaker. Croats will speak a language closer to Croatian Stokavian, Serbs to Serbian Stokavian (but still ijekavian), and Bosnian Muslims somewhere in between. They, too, have been giving greater prominence to Turkish, Arabic, and Persian roots as opposed to native Slavic roots (as in Croatian Stokavian) or Greek/Latin/Italian/Hungarian/Russian/French/German/English roots (as in Serbian Stokavian) as a means of creating a distinguished "Bosnian" language. My advice is to either learn the Serbian de facto standard, as spoken in Belgrade, which is Stokavian and ekavian and has a fairly decent accent, or the Bosnian literary standard, which is Stokavian and ijekavian and should have all 4 pitch accents and a vocabulary intermediate between Serbian and Croatian. The latter originates from Eastern Herzegovina, in fact. The commonly spoken language of Zagreb and the rest of Croatia is not particularly prestige and often exhibits traces of Kajkavian or Cakavian. Edited by Merv on 03 October 2010 at 8:57pm 9 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7161 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 3 of 53 04 October 2010 at 12:58am | IP Logged | |||||
Merv pretty much sums things up neatly enough. The trouble with Montenegrin is that it hasn't really been standardized yet so looking for any learning material of a consistent "Montenegrin standard" will remain fruitless for a while yet. However it appears that standard Montenegrin will be codified as something almost indistinguishable from Ijekavian Serbian. Gathering up-to-date learning materials with the label "Serbian" would be thus closest to the emerging standard Montenegrin, letter-for-letter (just keep in mind the difference between Ijekavian and Ekavian which is quite predictable anyway with a bit of practice). However using material in "Bosnian", "Croatian" or "Serbo-Croatian" will also do the trick. Outside Montenegrin nationalists, most other Montenegrins will be quite impressed by your effort regardless of whether you learn "Bosnian", "Croatian", "Serbian" or "Serbo-Croatian" and likely think of you as someone who has taken the time to learn something that is nearly identical if not identical to what they learned in school. Keep in mind that Montenegrins from the east and south often speak natively one of the Old Shtokavian sub-dialects and these differ noticeably from the standard languages (i.e. the language that people learn in school). Old Shtokavian sub-dialects differ from New Shtokavian sub-dialects (N.B. one such New Shtokavian sub-dialect, Eastern Herzegovinian is the basis for "Bosnian", "Croatian", "Serbian" and "Serbo-Croatian") most obviously in how they use stress. Stress in Old Shtokavian can fall on any syllable while in New Shtokavian (this includes Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian and Serbo-Croatian) stress can fall on any syllable EXCEPT the last one. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Merv Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5278 days ago 414 posts - 749 votes Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 4 of 53 04 October 2010 at 1:09am | IP Logged | |||||
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This map illustrates best the above points. You can easily see that dialects cross national boundaries. The basis of
the standard literary language is the dialect marked in yellow (which is also spoken in much of Montenegro). Map of Stokavian Edited by Merv on 04 October 2010 at 1:13am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| reineke Senior Member United States https://learnalangua Joined 6452 days ago 851 posts - 1008 votes Studies: German | Message 5 of 53 04 October 2010 at 4:14am | IP Logged | |||||
In what parallel universe are Serbian and Bosnian prestige languages vs. Croatian and how in the world would he run into kajkavian in Canada should he choose standard Croatian? To the original poster, you will be fine with whatever you choose. You will be understood. You will run into Montenegrins who are very proud of their own name, so I would take any talk about language, culture or ethnicity with a grain of salt. "Montenegrin" is a recent term for the language variety spoken there. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Merv Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5278 days ago 414 posts - 749 votes Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 6 of 53 04 October 2010 at 5:05am | IP Logged | |||||
Read carefully what I said. I did not say Serbian and Bosnian were prestige languages and Croatian was not. I said that the literary standard of Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia is the Eastern Herzegovina dialect, which is spoken over much of Bosnia-Herzegovina, western Serbia, and part of Croatia. Unfortunately, the dialect is less natively spoken in Croatia since 1995 than before, because many of those who natively spoke the dialect were expelled. I said specifically that the speech of Zagreb is not the prestige dialect because it is heavily influenced by Kajkavian, which is practically a different language from the Stokavian as spoken in Bosnia, Montenegro, Serbia, and some parts of Croatia. Thus, the language commonly spoken in Bosnia would most closely approximate the literary standard, and some of the most prominent writers in the language, e.g. Mesa Selimovic, Ivo Andric, Aleksa Santic, etc. originated from this area and spoke/wrote the language (although Andric later used the Belgrade ekavian). I also mentioned as an alternative the speech of Belgrade, which although not the literary standard in Serbia or anywhere outside of it, is pretty close to it, is the speech spoken in the largest city of the ex-Yugoslav space, and is the de facto prestige dialect in one of the ex-Yugoslav states. That's no different than suggesting that someone who wants to learn French learn the dialect spoken in Paris rather than the one spoken in Calais. I do not retract my earlier statements at all, nor do I care to engage in historical or political discourses with you on this issue. The disintegration of Yugoslavia was painful for all involved and the artificially engineered fabrication of "radically different" (I place in quotes, because it is based on falsehood) languages as a means to assert cultural identity is just a small piece of the puzzle of the whole tragedy. We can be perfectly OK with people considering themselves whatever they want, but languages and their nature is decided by linguists - not politicians or nationalists. The language spoken in Montenegro is the Serbian language or, if you will, the Serbo-Croatian language. Just as the language spoken in Austria is German and not Austrian, in Argentina is Spanish and not Argentine, in Cyprus is Greek/Turkish and not Cypriot, and in America is English and not American. Nobody denies Montenegrins the right to consider themselves whatever they wish, but nobody can also force me to pay homage to the petty and nationalistic attempts of a bunch of quack linguists to fabricate a language out of thin air for some sort of political agenda. Any Englishman would rightly be insulted by attempts by Americans or Canadians to say that they do not speak English but American/Canadian and perhaps even one day absurdly suggest that English writers actually wrote their works in American/Canadian. But then again, thankfully we Americans (and hopefully the Canadians) also do not suffer from the sort of identity issues and psychological complexes that would drive us to rename the language we speak after ourselves. Edited by Merv on 04 October 2010 at 5:14am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| reineke Senior Member United States https://learnalangua Joined 6452 days ago 851 posts - 1008 votes Studies: German | Message 7 of 53 04 October 2010 at 8:54am | IP Logged | |||||
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Your claim that the mostly rural ethnic Serbs were the ideal to be emulated even apparently for someone attempting to learn Croatian is curious indeed as so is your observation that you can occasionally hear bits of a Croatian dialect in a particular city. Standard Croatian does not overlap with the language or the dialect of a particular region, and there is no special place where a learner can soak it in its purest form. This is all irrelevant to someone learning the language from dry language course materials on another continent, in order to communicate with Montenegrins (?) and especially so for someone trying to learn only a little bit of the language.
No diplomats or foreign students are sent to rural Bosnia and Hercegovina to learn "the real thing" before being sent away to Zagreb, Sarajevo, Belgrade or Montenegro. The most urban place closest to the epicenter of the stokavian dialect is a Croatian city. This is still no argument to recommend one over the other. Edited by reineke on 04 October 2010 at 1:01pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Aineko Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 5453 days ago 238 posts - 442 votes Speaks: Serbian*, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin | Message 8 of 53 04 October 2010 at 10:55am | IP Logged | |||||
just go with the one you can find most resources for and don't worry, you'll understand and be understood (and, yeah, as you can see, don't ask too much about what is same and what is different between Balkan countries - it is still a hot topic for some :/ ).
I got the impression that difference between BCMS languages is comparable to that between Spanish dialects. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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