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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7158 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes  20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 305 of 541 27 March 2013 at 8:46pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
The most that I've done with this course so far is listen to a few of the dialogues to train my ear. It was a little entertaining for me since the male voice reminds me slightly of a middle-aged Serbian acquaintance. As I scan a few of the chapters of the FSI course, it's rather interesting and using it may inadvertently leave you with a somewhat Bosnian touch without the new-fangled Orientalisms that became prominent in the 1990s (by new-fangled Orientalisms I'm thinking of what I read in one of the essays in this book when a Bosnian radio program (or was it a TV show?) began regularly opening with Es-selamu alejkum rather than the decidedly non-Islamic Zdravo or Dobar dan). What jumps out for me in FSI's course is that it stereotypes the Croatian variant by using the Latinic script and (i)jekavian reflexes (e.g. mlijeko). The Serbian variant is presented in Cyrillic and ekavian reflexes (e.g. млеко). As you probably know, Serbian has been codified in Cyrillic and Latinic scripts, as well as (i)jekavian and ekavian reflexes of the ě that existed a few hundred years ago. Much of the "Croatian" or "Central Serbo-Croatian" in the book aligns seamlessly with "Bosnian" or even (I)jekavian "Serbian" (i.e. what's used by Serbs in Bosnia, Croatia and Montenegro). Nevertheless the Croatian variant in the book has quite a few items which while neither ungrammatical nor blatant "Serbianisms" may still be perceived otherwise by some Croats. A couple of examples can be found on page 36 in Da li je ambasada daleko odavde? ("Is the embassy far from here?"). A Croatian prescriptivist would stop cringing if Da li je... and ambasada were replaced by Je li... and veleposlanstvo respectively. Da li je... is grammatical but rather colloquial for a Croat and would almost certainly be replaced by Je li... in any situation that's more formal while ambasada isn't prescribed wholeheartedly partially because it coexists with a "purer" or more Slavonic counterpart in veleposlanstvo. Nevertheless ambasada is listed in the monolingual Croatian dictionary without marking for register or ethnic association as a synonym for veleposlanstvo. Another example that might raise Croatian hackles is on page 302 in the description of collective numerals. The textbook spells them in the way that is usual for a Bosnian or a Serb (i.e. četvoro, petoro etc.). A Croat usually spells them slightly differently (i.e. četvero, petero etc.) even though the "non-Croatian" spelling is listed as an alternative in the descriptive dictionary of standard Croatian without a clear sign of its "non-Croatianess" (e.g. četvero (četvoro), petero (petoro)) Finally, I see that the notes and drills don't generally show many Croatian codifications. For example on page 361, one of the answers to a drill's cue is Ko putuje u Zagreb? ("Who is travelling to Zagreb?") while two others are Šta traži vaš brat? ("What is your brother looking for?") and Kuda putuje vaš brat? ("Where is your brother travelling to?") . As noted here and here in my log, ko and šta are not standard (tko and što respectively are) but turn up anyway as Croatian colloquialisms, in addition to being standard for Bosnians and Serbs. Meanwhile kuda as standard for a Bosnian or Serb corresponds to the Croat's standard/default of kamo (indeed I couldn't find any instance of kamo in Vol. 1 of the course) and moreover kuda is a false friend to a Croat as I've noted here. Therefore most of the FSI course aligns closely to Serbian (and by extension Bosnian) prescriptions with only occasional insertions of the relatively few items perceived by most native speakers as (arch)typical of Croatian. Again, this may not be a bad thing for you since you've mentioned being open to Bosnian.
Your background in Russian will be definitely to your advantage. Acquiring vocabulary (false friends notwithstanding) and getting a handle on grammar won't be as onerous since the concepts (and even some of the inflectional endings) as applied in Russian are often similar. By the time I got around to BCMS/SC I had already studied some Czech, Polish and Slovak and so it was the pitch accent and mobile stress that were novel. In general the divergence within Slavonic is remniscent of what you'd find within either Romance or Germanic. As to a few comments and examples of what I think that you can look forward to, check out the following: - Balto-Slavonic Profile - Mutual Intelligibility in Slavic language (especially this post on "rules of thumb" and this one showing how Slovak can surprise some people by being more similar to BCMS/SC than one would think. This second is probably of tangential interest to you but it could be indirect useful to you anyway since you can think of Russian examples that fit in the comparison of Slovak with BCMS/SC) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4709 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 306 of 541 27 March 2013 at 9:40pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
The only person I regularly talk to that knows this language is a Bosnian girl. So by extension I would hear a lot of Bosnianisms, although she lives fairly close to the Croatian border.
Leaving loanwords and linguistic tidbits aside (and I already see many parallels with Russian anyway), I'm inclined to think that most of these differences are basically akin to color/colour, or pavement/sidewalk kind of differences. How bad is it (to a Croatian ear) if I use a decided Serbianism or Bosnianism? If it doesn't matter, then I'll just use the words as I pick them up, whatever that makes me sound like. I tend to think language use (and vocabulary choice) isn't so much a matter of standard as it is one of context. And in some languages, like French, I'm prone to using Belgianisms for that very reason (because, tada, I spent 2 years travelling back and forth to Belgium!)
Yeah, sounding Bosnian is fine to me. I tend to just go along with what my counterparts use. In this case I anticipate to speak to Bosnians so sounding like them is fine with me.
I recall reading somewhere that Slavic languages diverge somewhat less. But I do not remember where I read that or how much truth there is to that statement. As for mobile stress, Russian is the king of mobile stress. Pitch accent is something I have encountered before - I have studied Swedish, after all, and that language definitely has pitch accent - but I don't know how well I use the pitch accent in Swedish and whether that system is anything close to that of BCMS.
I had already read most of this before you linked me, but thanks for the effort anyway. One last question, although you may not know the answer: how do Montenegrins fit into this equation? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7158 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 307 of 541 28 March 2013 at 12:03am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
My experience is that many differences are of the nature that you describe and these include differences that involve transitivity (e.g. lagati "to tell a lie" governs accusative in a Serb's eyes but dative in a Croat's eyes (cf. British "He provides me with the data" vs. American "He provides me the data" ("with" is optional here)) or prepositions (e.g. Croatian: Idem kod tebe / Idem k tebi vs. Bosnian, Serbian: Idem kod tebe "I'm going to your place/house" (cf. British "Ring me on 123-456-789" vs. American "Call me at 123-456-789")). My general feeling is that as a foreigner you have little to worry about if you just go ahead and use what you know. Let the native speaker figure out on his/her own which variant you're using or learning. However you may provoke a little bit more of a reaction if you had quietly set a certain expectation by signalling that you're specifically trying to use or learn one variant, and then used something that is closely associated with or unique to another variant anyway. For example, it could come off as a little weird (unless it were a bit of an inside joke) if you said to a Serbian acquaintance Bok! Gdje si ti? Čekam te na glavnom kolodvoru. rather than Ćao! Gde/Gdje si ti? Čekam te na glavnoj stanici. after having made it clear to this Serb that you've been learning Serbian. You can get a bit of an inkling here about a foreigner using a variant that's different from what the native speaker uses.
From what little I know, Montenegrins have been native speakers effectively of the (I)jekavian Serbian variant or an Old Shtokavian dialect that is not standard but still (i)jekavian. Some Montenegrins identify themselves as Serbs, and applying the equation of ethnicity with language, thus consider their language to be ((i)jekavian) Serbian. As a corollary, other Montenegrins identify themselves as Montenegrins, and applying the same equation, thus consider their language to be Montenegrin. Since the declaration of Monetenegrin independence there's growing but sometimes grudging acceptance of a Montenegrin variant. An obvious distinction of Montenegrins' speech is that it has what are sometimes classifiable as "hyper-ijekavianisms" and in general they use a lot of /j/ compared to the Bosnians, Croats and Serbs (e.g. ovijeg for ovog "this" (genitive singular)). Not surprisingly, nationalism doesn't always give good science, and the main scholar behind the standardization of Montenegrin, Vojislav Nikčević, put out a few whoppers to elevate Montenegrin's distinctiveness and so boost justification for standardization because the speech community's unique speech somehow needs it. One gem that sticks in my mind is when Nikčević stated that the extinct western Slavonic language of Polabian (!) is the prototype for Montenegrin (in contrast to Serbian which is somehow more closely related to the eastern Slavonic language of Belorussian). In general, I wouldn't expect the reaction of Montenegrins toward your efforts to be any different from that of the Bosnians, Croats or Serbs. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4709 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 308 of 541 28 March 2013 at 10:18am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Sounds like I just need to go to town on this and make it work then. Sounds good.
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| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7158 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 309 of 541 28 March 2013 at 8:00pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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I gather that you want to keep this a low-budget affair and if somehow FSI Serbo-Croatian doesn't work out as it did with FSI Swedish, the profile for BCMS/SC has some links to material available for free (e.g. modules from DLI's GLOSS and videos with accompanying transcripts from Five Colleges).
If you don't mind spending a bit of money for more stuff in hard copy, I'd recommend checking out "Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian: A Textbook with Exercises and Basic Grammar", "Spoken World: Croatian", "Beginner's Croatian", Langenscheidt Taschenwörterbuch Kroatisch and "Standard English-SerboCroatian, SerboCroatian-English Dictionary: A Dictionary of Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian Standards" (this last dictionary isn't loaded with words specific with "Bosnian" despite the title. In any case it's a decent and easily obtainable medium dictionary between English and BCMS/SC. I think that a larger one wouldn't be necessary unless you plan to study the language more intensely for a longer period). You can usually find the full inflection and accentual markings of an unfamiliar word by consulting Wiktionary (the entries are classified under "Serbo-Croatian" - the entries listed under "Bosnian", "Croatian" or "Serbian" usually aren't as detailed) or the descriptive dictionary of standard Croatian (click on "IZVEDENI OBLICI" on the left of the screen after having looked up an entry). Sretno! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5168 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 310 of 541 28 March 2013 at 8:30pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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There's always serbianschool.com which is fairly complete. I used it alongside with
Assimil during my first attempt to learn BCMS. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5168 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 311 of 541 28 March 2013 at 9:52pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Chung, I'm waiting for the day I'll have either Spoken World Croatian or Beginner's
Croatian. You think it's worth putting in some money on either of them or should I get around with what's already available? I already have Bosnian Croatian Serbian A Textbook and the old Assimil serbocroate. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4709 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 312 of 541 29 March 2013 at 11:37am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Thanks again for the advice, Chung. In general, one textbook (or two if it's not related to anything I know, or if I run into trouble) suffices for me. I usually get a grammar and dictionary somewhere along the way as well, but fortunately Dutch- SerboCroatian dictionaries exist and are not overly expensive so I might buy one of those. A grammar will probably come in handy as well. I am not against spending money per se, but if I can get my materials locally here then of course I will check that first :) Thanks again for all the help! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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