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Tags: Serbo-Croatian | Croatian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Iva Diglot Newbie Croatia Joined 6654 days ago 5 posts - 5 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English Studies: German | Message 1 of 4 04 September 2006 at 4:34pm | IP Logged |
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There's something you must know. There is no language such as serbo-croatian. It just doesn't exist. I have seen that there are lots of people who are talking about serbo-croatian or Yugoslavic. Serbo-croatian existed in 1940's when Croatia and Serbia were united, something like USA. Croatian ans Serbian are very similar but not same. There are lots of differences, such as in accents, pronounciation and verbs. Croatian can understand most of serbian word but every single verb, especially younger people. To show you the differences, I wrote some examples:
Milk: in Croatian we say mlijeko; Serbians say mleko White: Croatian: bijelo; ; Serbi an: belo Salt: Croatian: sol; Serbian: so Carrot: Croatian: mrkva; Serbian: sargarepa Pepper: Croatian: papar; Serbian: biber Or the sentence "I'm going to learn tomorrow" In Croatian: "Sutra cu uciti." In Serbian: "Sutra cu da ucim." See, those are two different languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7154 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes  20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 2 of 4 04 September 2006 at 5:48pm | IP Logged |
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I agree that Serbian and Croatian are not identical and that Serbo-Croatian came about for political reasons. HOWEVER, they're close enough that often you can treat them in the same way, and there usually aren't problems. I.e. you know that an American can speak Standard American English in Britain and not have a problem 95% of the time and vice-versa. This is no different from a Serb who goes to Croatia and speaks standard Serbian and vice-versa. Some people seem to get carried away by these kinds of debates and many of the problems arise from usages that bring up memories of political and historical events rather than cause genuine linguistic misunderstandings.
By the way, would you consider "English" in all of its varieties to be different languages? I'm not sure if it's really helpful to always split things up. I for one don't really care one way or the other and I definitely don't get defensive about people who say that we all speak English even though everyone from native speakers to beginners in English know that there are differences in vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation between the varieties that DON'T often hinder understanding between us. (Much like Croatian and Serbian...) Ex. British English || American English aluminium || aluminum (one fewer "i") corn || wheat (psenica) maize || corn (kukuruz) colour || color petrol || gasoline speciality || specialty (one fewer "i") mad || crazy, insane angry || mad, angry Some verbs in British English are "weak", while the American counterpart is "strong" "I dived into the pool" vs. "I dove into the pool" "I sneaked home" vs. "I snuck home" A stronger tendency in American English to use nouns as verbs and use of dative without "to" but with different word order. I lend the money to her. = I loan her the money. (verb) I have a loan from him. = I have a loan from him.(noun) As you know, English has a lot of dialects in addition to standards in Australia, India, Canada, New Zealand, Britain and USA where the pronunciation is very different. The stress is on different syllables (just like with Croatian and Serbian counterparts) or vowels are pronounced differently for example. - Moscow (sounds like Moskeo in British English) - Moscow (sounds like Moskau in American English) - garage (sounds like ger-ridge with stress on first syllable in British English) - garage (sounds like garazh with stress on last syllable in American English) Sometimes, there are differences how to use the plural: - fracas vs. many fracas (plural looks the same as the singular but pronounced differently in British English) - fracas vs. many fracases (plural looks different from the singular in American English) - The government (i.e. a group of politicians) decide to wage war (Collective nouns that appear to be singular are treated as plural in British English) - Manchester United (i.e. a team of football players) are playing well. (Collective nouns that appear to be singular are treated as plural in British English.) - The government decides to wage war (collective nouns that appear to be singular are treated as singular in American English) - Green Bay (i.e. a team of football players) is playing well. (collective nouns that appear to be singular are treated as singular in American English.) Other times, there are differences which prepositions follow the same verb - It's mating season and the cat is on heat (British) - It's mating season and the cat is in heat (American) After all this, I certainly don't think that it's helpful to argue one way or the other. The main point is that we understand each other and get more concerned about things that are bigger than linguistic policy. Edited by Chung on 04 September 2006 at 5:53pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Darobat Diglot Senior Member Joined 7186 days ago 754 posts - 770 votes Speaks: English*, Russian Studies: Latin | Message 3 of 4 04 September 2006 at 9:41pm | IP Logged |
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I have to agree that the languages aren't the same. Another rather major difference is that Serbian is written with both the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets, whereas Croatian is only written with the Latin alphabet. I have a feeling that these languages are only going to grow apart.
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| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6766 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 4 of 4 04 September 2006 at 10:19pm | IP Logged |
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Having minor differences of lexicon and idiom does not mean two speeches are different languages — nor does using a different script. It's simply a characteristic of multi-polar languages with more than one standard.
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