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| 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 345 of 541 22 July 2013 at 12:54am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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BCMS/SC
I finished working through Chapter 12 of “Beginner’s Serbian” and Chapter 7 of “Spoken World: Croatian”. The dialogue in the former contained was between the protagonists as they were visiting Budva, Montenegro and introduced vocabulary pertinent to landmarks while seeing the sights (e.g. bazilika “basilica”, zidine “city walls”). The grammatical topics introduced included passive forms, impersonal constructions, verbal nouns and verbal adverbs. The material in the latter focused on using the phone including etiquette and making appointments while the notes on grammar summarized full declension of adjectives and personal pronouns, telling the time, and numbers from 11 to 24 (useful for telling time in official situations). 
(From Qolombo) 1) “Santa Maria? – Yes?” 2) “Do you also think that my nose is too big? – Well, no.” 3) “Maybe it’s just that your head is too small!” Convention for vocabulary in the comic strip that's unfamiliar to me (i.e. needed to consult a dictionary) (this will be put in both scripts partially to accommodate those unused to Serbian Cyrillic and also so that I get at least a little bit of practice using the keyboard layout for Serbian Cyrillic). NOUNS & ADJECTIVES: nominative singular (genitive singular) VERBS (where applicable using convention of imperfective > perfective): infinitive (1st person singular present tense [imperfective verb] / future tense [perfective verb], 3rd person plural present tense [imperfective verb] / future tense [perfective verb]) ADVERBS & INTERJECTIONS: no extra information given See here for the rationale of the excursus devoted to comparing Croatian and Serbian using the dialogues of “Beginner’s Croatian” and “Beginner’s Serbian” published by Hippocrene Books. Resources include descriptive dictionary of standard Croatian based on the work of Anić et al., Benson’s SerboCroatian-English Dictionary, Alexander’s Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, a Grammar: With Sociolinguistic Commentary and discussions on usage in BCMS/SC from Unilang and WordReference. Chapter 13 1) Cr: trenutak | Sr: momenat “moment” Both words are valid to all native speakers, but the use in the respective courses follows the tendency of the internationalism being less likely to be used by Croats than Serbs whenever a set of synonyms consisting of at least one of each of an internationalism and Slavonic root. 2) Cr: hlače | Sr: pantalone “trousers” This pair is a common example used to demonstrate the difference between Croatian and Serbian. For Croats, pantalone or pantole are specialized terms for a kind of long trousers that came into fashion in the late 18th century. However nowadays, pantalone when referring to ordinary trousers is a marked Serbianism while hlače is a Croatianism meaning the same. Hlače is not codified in standard Serbian as far as I can tell. 3) Cr: auto | Sr: kola “automobile, car” Both words are used in all variants of BCMS/SC with the difference being that kola is a somewhat colloquial variant. For whatever reason, “Beginner’s Serbian” often uses kola where “Beginner’s Croatian” uses auto despite my not finding any ethnic delineation in using either word. 4) Cr: točno | Sr: tačno “exactly” This pair is a common example used to demonstrate the difference between Croatian and Serbian, minor as the spelling difference is (cf. Cr: kava, Sr: kafa) 5) Cr: rezervirati | Sr: rezervisati “to reserve” This difference is similar to the one explored in the entry comparing the supposedly regular and predictable correspondance of the derivational suffix -irati in Croatian with -ovati in Serbian. As a rule of thumb, verbs that are loanwords often have the derivational infinitive suffix of -irati in standard Croatian whereas the counterpart in Serbian ends in -isati or -ovati. This approximation has been sometimes generalized as a cardinal difference between Croatian and Serbian by some textbook authors and teachers (not to mention some linguists) for lack of examination of descriptive dictionaries. As I noted in my previous entry which began with a comparison of “Croatian” organizirati versus “Serbian” organizovati, -irati is also productive in standard Serbian. A more accurate conclusion then is that such “international” verbs often end in -irati and infrequently in -ovati in Croatian whereas the Serbian counterparts can end in -irati, -isati or -ovati with the perception that -irati is somehow “less Serbian” than -isati or -ovati whenever a Serb faces a choice beween using the variant ending with -irati on one hand and -isati or -ovati on the other. Expanding on the five sub-sections brought on by the initial comparison of -irati and -ovati, here are comparisons that show the use of -isati in Serbian variants of “international” verbs in BCMS/SC. vi) Example of a Croatian loanword that ends in –irati whereas the Serbian counterpart ends in –isati “to define” Cr: definirati Sr: definisati vii) Examples of a Croatian loanword that ends in –irati whereas the Serbian counterpart allows for variants ending in –irati and –isati “to concentrate”, “to motivate”, “to operate”, “to regulate”, “to reserve” Cr: koncentrirati, motivirati, operirati, regulirati, rezervirati Sr: koncentrirati / koncentrisati, motivirati / motivisati, operirati / operisati, regulirati / regulisati, rezervirati / rezervisati In this instance, rezervirati is valid in standard Serbian and coexists with the “non-Croatianism” of rezervisati. After reviewing all of these suffixes, I’m further convinced that using the distribution of -irati, -isati and -ovati as evidence for justifying the existence of separate Croatian, Serbian (and Bosnian and Montenegrin) languages is spurious. While there is a detectable tendency for -irati to occur most often among Croats, and -isati or -ovati among non-Croats, the presence of so many doublets in Serbian of -irati / -isati or -irati / -ovati contradict the idea of -irati being exclusive to Croatian and a distinguishing aspect from the other variants. It was indeed difficult for me to find pairs of verbs where a Croatian form ending in -irati corresponded to a Serbian counterpart ending only in -isati (i.e. definirati / definisati) or -ovati (e.g. modernizirati / modernizovati). It was however surprisingly easy for me to find variants ending in -irati in the Serbian dictionary. What I’ve also detected when researching the distribution of -irati and -isati / -ovati is that it conveniently fits some Croats’ perception (snobbery?) that they are Western and non-Balkan while Serbs are Eastern and Balkan. A German (i.e. Western) derivational suffix is the source of -irati while a Greek (i.e. Eastern / Balkan) derivational one is the source of -isati (-ovati as noted earlier is of Slavonic origin but is not productive in standard Croatian when it comes to adapting loanwords despite Croatian language purism generally emphasizing a Slavonic connection). Without getting into the tangled non-linguistic aspects, the fact that -irati is productive and common in standard Serbian should be enough to dissuade anyone from differentiating Croatian from Serbian by unblinkingly mapping -irati to either -isati or -ovati. 6) Cr: užitak | Sr: uživanje “pleasure” Digging into the implied difference of these words was interesting for me. On one hand, Benson’s Serbo-Croatian > English dictionary marks užitak as a Croatianism and refers the user to uživanje. On the other hand, uživanje is a regular derivative of uživati “to enjoy” and is grammatical to all speakers of BCMS/SC. The descriptive dictionary of standard Croatian has an entry only for užitak but in the definition includes uživanje. The idea that uživanje is unsuitable or improper for a Croat (apart from perhaps a highly nationalist one) is shot down when I see Croatian media use the term (e.g. “Seks poze kao stvorene za uživanje” [Sex positions made for pleasure], “Ulovite najbolje cijene proizvoda za ljetno uživanje” [Get the best prices on products for summer enjoyment], “Uživanje u praktičnosti” [Pleasure in practicality]). When it comes to užitak for Serbs, the entry is missing in vokabular.org, but a combined online Serbian descriptive dictionary* (free registration required) lists the following for the word.
The first definition matches užitak with uživanje and zadovoljstvo with the former meaning “enjoyment” and the latter “satisfaction”. The second definition defines užitak as “right to enjoyment or use”. The rest of the entry comprises attestations in what I gather is the dictionary from Matica srpska [PMC – Речник Матице Српске] * Речник српског језика Највећи српски речник књижевног и народног језика – преко 307.000 одредница. Користи се искључиво преко нашег сајта. Речник српског језика, 307.000 речи и преко 11.000.000 облика речи, урађен је на основу 18 томова Речника Српске академије наука и уметности и 3 последња тома Речника Матице српске. (From the description on the website. Translation: “Dictionary of the Serbian language. The largest Serbian dictionary of the literary and vernacular language – over 307,000 entries and used exclusively on our website. The Dictionary of the Serbian Language has 307,000 words and over 11,000,000 word forms, and is based on the 18-volume dictionary of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences and the last 3 volumes from the dictionary of Matica srpska.”) [N.B. Matica srpska is an institution that aims to promote and preserve Serbian culture] *** FINNISH I’ve done the comprehension exercises for Unit 5 in FSI’s textbook and been reading the unit’s notes on grammar. I’ll start doing the workbook’s exercises soon. 
(From Musta hevonen –sarjakuva » Blog Archive » Autokorrektia käytöstä via Musta hevonen –sarjakuva) 1) “Oh Heikki… We automatically complement each other.” Convention for unfamiliar vocabulary in the comic strip (i.e. needed to consult a dictionary) NOUNS & ADJECTIVES: nominative singular (genitive singular, partitive singular, partitive plural) VERBS: 1st infinitive (1st person singular present tense, 3rd person singular past simple tense, active past participle) ADVERBS & INTERJECTIONS: no extra information given *** NORTHERN SAAMI I finished Unit 6 of Davvin 3 which introduced the simple past affirmative of “contracting” verbs in plural. (See here and here for information on simple past affirmative of these verbs in singular), ordinal numbers to 10, and concordance for nouns referring to a group or in plural. Here is my understanding of the chapter’s “new” main points (any misunderstandings of the material are mine alone). 1) Simple past tense of “contracting” verbs in plural. For the 1st and 2nd persons plural, the affirmative conjugation is made by removing the final –t of the infinitive and adding -imet for 1st person plural and -idet for 2nd person plural. The final –e and –o of the stem changes to -i and -u respectively under the influence of the initial i- in the simple past tense’s suffix. For the 3rd person plural, the affirmative conjugation is made by taking the stem ending in -j and adding -edje. E.g. - fuobmát (fuobmáj-) “to notice” ~ fuobmáimet “we noticed”, fuobmáidet “you noticed”, fuobmájedje “they noticed” - riŋget (riŋgej-) “to telephone” ~ riŋgiimet “we telephoned”, riŋgiidet “you telephoned”, riŋgejedje “they telephoned” - duddjot (duddjoj-) “to make handicrafts” ~ duddjuimet “we made handicrafts”, duddjuidet “you made handicrafts”, duddjojedje “they made handicrafts” 2) Ordinal numbers from 1 to 10 - vuosttaš, nubbi, goalmmát, njealját, viđat, guđat, čihččet, gávccát, ovccát, logát 3) When one thinks of a multitude of items has part of a group, that multitude is put in singular and the relevant verb is also conjugated in singular E.g. Odne lei olu čuoika. “Today there were a lot of mosquitoes” (literally: “Today there was a lot of mosquito”) Skuvllas lei olu mánná. “There were many children in the school.” (literally: “There was a lot of child in the school.”) Vocabulary of Unit 6 báhkka (attr.) báhkas (pred.) – “hot” bávččas (attr. and pred.), – “aching, sore” biegga – “wind” čoaggit – “to collect, gather, pick” čoaska (attr.) čoaskkis (pred.) – “cold” čuoika – “mosquito” dálki – “weather” davvin – “in the north” dolla – “fire” galbmot – “to freeze” gázzi – “[group of] people, company” (cf. Márjja-gázzi… “Márja and friends/company…”) jávkat – “to clear, fade, pass” jeaggi – “swamp” johtit – “to go, pass, run, travel” lihtti – “bin, container” luomi – “cloudberry” ollet – “to arrive, reach” (ol'let) sevdnjes (attr.) seavdnjat (pred.) – “dark” *** POLISH I finished Chapter 21 of "Polish in 4 Weeks - II". The dialogue consisted of Waldek and his mother talking about who’s coming for dinner on Christmas Eve. The main topics for grammar were the masculine animate nominative plural suffix –owie, dative plural, prepositions governing locative, and people’s age as expressed by compounds ending in –letni. None of the material was new to me, but it wasn’t a waste of my time to review it in the exercises. 
(From Hagar (5) – Joe Monster via Hagar Horrendalny – Joe Monster) 1) “Shhh, don’t talk about our plan of conquering England. – Why not?” 2) “It’s possible that their king planted a spy in our crew.” Convention for vocabulary in the comic strip that's unfamiliar to me (i.e. needed to consult a dictionary) NOUNS & ADJECTIVES: nominative singular (nominative plural, genitive singular) VERBS (where applicable using convention of imperfective > perfective): infinitive (1st person singular present tense [imperfective verb] / future tense [perfective verb], 2nd person singular present tense [imperfective verb] / future tense [perfective verb]) ADVERBS & INTERJECTIONS: no extra information given *** SLOVAK I did the exercises on pgs. 34-36 in the textbook for “Hovorme spolu po slovensky! B - Slovenčina ako cudzí jazyk”. These were about the accusative plural and verbal prefixes. I had a bit of trouble with the verbal prefixes since the exercises required me to put down the appropriate prefixed verbs but I’m not always sure about what is the correct prefix that makes the distinction in aspect or direction. Because the textbook lacks an answer key, I’m putting down my answers to the exercises that gave the most trouble here in the hope that a Slovak (wyctory, where are you?) can check my answers.
(From S H O O T Y - …som Grogy) 1) “Good evening.” 2) “Hi Grogy! – Hi!” 3) “How are ya? – Ah, not bad.” 4) “Hm.” 5) “What do you recommend to me?” 6) “Run quickly. He’ll be talking to you all night about his ex.” Convention for vocabulary in the comic strip that's unfamiliar to me (i.e. needed to consult a dictionary) - miznúť > zmiznúť (mizne, miznú > zmizne, zmiznú) “to disappear, vanish; leave” (Cf. zmizni(te)! “Get lost! Screw off!”) NOUNS & ADJECTIVES: nominative singular (genitive singular) VERBS (where applicable using convention of imperfective > perfective): infinitive (3rd person singular present tense [imperfective verb] / future tense [perfective verb], 3rd person plural present tense [imperfective verb] / future tense [perfective verb]) ADVERBS & INTERJECTIONS: no extra information given *** UKRAINIAN I’ve done the exercises for Chapter 7 on pgs. 118-120 in “Modern Ukrainian”. The exercises were substitution and transformation drills for the locative singular and conditional. 
(From Лайно via Огірок – переклади коміксів україньскою) 1) “Hi, sweetie! How about a sweet kiss on the lips, eh?” 2) “Go eat şћïŧ!” 4) “And now?” - солоденький (солоденького) “sweet” (diminutive with intensified undertone) - щодо [+ genitive] “as far as, concerning” Convention for vocabulary in the comic strip that's unfamiliar to me (i.e. needed to consult a dictionary) NOUNS & ADJECTIVES: nominative singular (genitive singular) VERBS (where applicable using convention of imperfective > perfective): infinitive (1st person singular present tense [imperfective verb] / future tense [perfective verb], 3rd person plural present tense [imperfective verb] / future tense [perfective verb]) ADVERBS & INTERJECTIONS: no extra information given *** OTHER LANGUAGES I got some clarification on the comparative and superlative in Northern Saami and will add it to the guide on Uralic languages. ______  Edited by Chung on 22 July 2013 at 2:28am 4 persons have 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 346 of 541 28 July 2013 at 11:16pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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BCMS/SC
I’ve finished working through Chapter 13 in each of “Beginner’s Serbian” and “Teach Yourself Serbian”. The dialogue in the former contained was between the protagonists as they were visiting central Serbia and introduced vocabulary pertinent to accommodation and clothing (for packing on trips). The grammatical topics introduced included conditional and the comparative and superlative degrees. The material in the latter focused on word order of enclitics, exact future, impersonal constructions expressed with reflexive verbs and forming adverbs as presented in narratives recounting past events or daily routines as well as plans for the future. 
(From Hogar | Politikin Zabavnik via Politikin Zabavnik) 1) “Wun*, two, three, four. – Poor Hägar.” 2) “That’s all that he knows of the numbers.” 3) “Do you remember that English king who lost his horse in battle? – I remember.” 4) “He in fact never said ‘[I give] My kingdom for a horse!’” 5) “And what did he say?” 6) “[I give] My kingdom for an umbrella!” [*Sign on the left of this panel reads London] - јадан (јадног) “miserable, poor, wretched” (jadan (jadnog)) - *јен [misspelling and mispronunciation of standard једен “one”] (*jen ~ jeden) Convention for vocabulary in the comic strip that's unfamiliar to me (i.e. needed to consult a dictionary) (this will be put in both scripts partially to accommodate those unused to Serbian Cyrillic and also so that I get at least a little bit of practice using the keyboard layout for Serbian Cyrillic). NOUNS & ADJECTIVES: nominative singular (genitive singular) VERBS (where applicable using convention of imperfective > perfective): infinitive (1st person singular present tense [imperfective verb] / future tense [perfective verb], 3rd person plural present tense [imperfective verb] / future tense [perfective verb]) ADVERBS & INTERJECTIONS: no extra information given See here for the rationale of the excursus devoted to comparing Croatian and Serbian using the dialogues of “Beginner’s Croatian” and “Beginner’s Serbian” published by Hippocrene Books. Resources include descriptive dictionary of standard Croatian based on the work of Anić et al., Benson’s SerboCroatian-English Dictionary, Alexander’s Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, a Grammar: With Sociolinguistic Commentary and discussions on usage in BCMS/SC from Unilang and WordReference. Chapter 14 1) Cr: tečaj | Sr: kurs “exchange rate” Both words are valid to all native speakers, but there is a difference in register. When referring to the exchange rate, kurs is a colloquial version of tečaj for a Croat. When the term refers to a course for learning, it is perceived by Croats as a colloquialism and Serbianism. On the other hand, tečaj is listed in the Serbian descriptive dictionary (registration required) as meaning “course” or “exchange rate” among other concepts. My conclusion then is that tečaj is suitable for all registers to all native speakers of BCMS/SC when talking about an exchange rate or course for learning. On the other hand, kurs is also valid for all native speakers but at least for Croats is a colloquial and occasional “Serbianized” alternative to tečaj. 2) Cr: skupiti | Sr: sakupiti “to collect, gather” According to the glossary in Ronelle Alexander’s textbook “Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian. A Textbook with Exercises and Basic Grammar”, this pair is divisible along ethnic lines with the prefix sa- being used more frequently by Bosnians and Serbs than Croats. Nevertheless, skupiti is valid to all native speakers of BCMS/SC, and is not exclusive to Croats as the textbooks suggest. The descriptive dictionary of standard Croatian redirects the user from sakupiti to skupiti without mentioning anything about the former being a Serbianism thus making me question Alexander’s ethnic delineation for the word. As to guidance for using the preposition/prefix s- versus sa-, see here (comparison of razgovara s nekim with razgovara sa nekim in the subsection for BCMS/SC). *** FINNISH I’ve done a little over half of the workbook’s exercises for Unit 5 in “FSI Conversational Finnish” and so far have been reacquainting myself with the conditional and adverb formation. 
(From Viivi ja Wagner – Helsingin Sanomat and loaded to imgur for posting on the forum.) 1) “Wow, what a chick! I’ll probably just blurt out something nice to her.” 2) “Now she’s coming closer. She’s not at all as sexy as I thought.” 3) “I’ll probably just keep my mouth shut.” - tokaista (tokaisen, tokaisi, tokaissut) “to blurt out” [colloquial] Convention for unfamiliar vocabulary in the comic strip (i.e. needed to consult a dictionary) NOUNS & ADJECTIVES: nominative singular (genitive singular, partitive singular, partitive plural) VERBS: 1st infinitive (1st person singular present tense, 3rd person singular past simple tense, active past participle) ADVERBS & INTERJECTIONS: no extra information given *** HUNGARIAN I finished Selection 8 of “FSI Hungarian Graded Reader”. The text was an interview with a child from a mountainous area, whose point I didn’t grasp but the language used was not overly difficult to follow. It was accompanied by transformation exercises with imperative and negation, some of which involved practice with the attendant changes in word order. To my annoyance the link to e-magyarul 2 is now and I’m thinking of ways to supplement my Hungarian studies. Suggestions are welcome. 
(From Fútó via Vicces Képregények) 2. “Hey!” 3. “Are you that guy who’s always running and never stops?” 4. “Why?” 5. “If I weren’t running, then my heart would st…” Convention for vocabulary in the comic strip that’s unfamiliar to me (i.e. needed to consult a dictionary) NOUNS & ADJECTIVES: nominative singular (nouns only: nominative possessive for 3rd person singular) VERBS: 3rd person singular present tense (infinitive) ADVERBS & INTERJECTIONS: no extra information given *** POLISH I finished Chapter 22 of "Polish in 4 Weeks - II". The dialogue consisted of Alice and Waldek talking about going to Szczecin for business and pleasure. The main topics for grammar were the declension of the indefinite pronoun jakiś, the reflexive pronoun się, review of the compound future, and comparative forms of adverbs. None of the material was new to me, but it wasn’t a waste of my time to review it in the exercises. 
(From Tori Komix » Komix #638 – 07/03/2013) 1) “How’s your search for a girlfriend going? Do you need help? I can introduce you to a friend.” 2) “Help? What’re you talking about? I’m doing fine. I’ll demonstrate to you one of my best pickup lines.” 3) “Hi sweetie! I’m a guy without a girl but you’re my type of girl!”* 4) “You know what, why don’t I give some number to you anyway? I know several suitably dumb chicks.” *The lame pun works in Polish because of the use of typ “type; bloke, guy [colloquial]” Convention for vocabulary in the comic strip that's unfamiliar to me (i.e. needed to consult a dictionary) NOUNS & ADJECTIVES: nominative singular (nominative plural, genitive singular) VERBS (where applicable using convention of imperfective > perfective): infinitive (1st person singular present tense [imperfective verb] / future tense [perfective verb], 2nd person singular present tense [imperfective verb] / future tense [perfective verb]) ADVERBS & INTERJECTIONS: no extra information given *** UKRAINIAN I’ve done the exercises for Chapter 7 on pgs. 120-122 in “Modern Ukrainian”. The exercises were more substitution and transformation drills for the locative singular and conditional. On p. 122, a set of exercises reviewing grammar from previous chapters begins. 
(From Зай та Друзі. Ювілейний 10 випуск | COMXua: Справжні комікси | Колекція українських коміксів та мальованих історій) 1) “Zay, do you know that today we have our first little milestone? The tenth installment of our comic strip!” 2) “Yes, I know. But why are you so happy? Did you plan something?” - задумувати > задумати (задумую, задумують > задумaю, задумaють) “to conceive, plan” - Зай (Зая) “Zay” (proper name – cf. заєць (зацья “hare”) - юбілей (юбілею) “anniversary, jubilee” Convention for vocabulary in the comic strip that's unfamiliar to me (i.e. needed to consult a dictionary) NOUNS & ADJECTIVES: nominative singular (genitive singular) VERBS (where applicable using convention of imperfective > perfective): infinitive (1st person singular present tense [imperfective verb] / future tense [perfective verb], 3rd person plural present tense [imperfective verb] / future tense [perfective verb]) ADVERBS & INTERJECTIONS: no extra information given *** OTHER LANGUAGES Unit 7 in Davvin 3 beckons. I also burnt up an inordinate amount of time adding a section in the BCMS/SC collaborative profile on intra-Slavonic intelligibility from the point of view of someone familiar with just BCMS/SC. Coming up with consistent examples to illustrate my points was harder than I thought. ______
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| 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 347 of 541 04 August 2013 at 6:47pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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BCMS/SC
I’ve finished working through Chapter 14 in each of “Beginner’s Serbian” and “Teach Yourself Serbian”. The dialogue in the former contained was between the protagonists as they were wandering around Belgrade and introduced vocabulary pertinent to being a tourist in the city (e.g. foreign exchange offices, souvenir shops). The grammatical topics introduced included imperative, modal verbs, verbs of bodily position and movement (e.g. “sit” vs. “lie” vs. “stand”), and a few comments on collective nouns and neuter nouns. The material in the latter focused on conditional, indefinite pronouns and the comparative and superlative degrees as presented in the chapter’s dialogues. 
(From Strip Vesti – internet nedeljnik - Cane) 1) “Have you consumed alcohol?” 3) “No.” Convention for vocabulary in the comic strip that's unfamiliar to me (i.e. needed to consult a dictionary) (this will be put in both scripts partially to accommodate those unused to Serbian Cyrillic and also so that I get at least a little bit of practice using the keyboard layout for Serbian Cyrillic). NOUNS & ADJECTIVES: nominative singular (genitive singular) VERBS (where applicable using convention of imperfective > perfective): infinitive (1st person singular present tense [imperfective verb] / future tense [perfective verb], 3rd person plural present tense [imperfective verb] / future tense [perfective verb]) ADVERBS & INTERJECTIONS: no extra information given See here for the rationale of the excursus devoted to comparing Croatian and Serbian using the dialogues of “Beginner’s Croatian” and “Beginner’s Serbian” published by Hippocrene Books. Resources include descriptive dictionary of standard Croatian based on the work of Anić et al., Benson’s SerboCroatian-English Dictionary, Alexander’s Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, a Grammar: With Sociolinguistic Commentary and discussions on usage in BCMS/SC from Unilang and WordReference. Chapter 15 1) Cr: prtljaga | Sr: prtljag “baggage, luggage” This pair reminds me of what I dealt with when I compared “Croatian” užitak and “Serbian” uživanje in this entry. Benson’s Serbo-Croatian > English dictionary marks prtljaga as a Croatianism and refers the user to prtljag. On the other hand, the descriptive dictionary of standard Croatian has an entry for each of prtljaga and prtljag with the latter not being a Serbianism as suggested by the comparison of the textbooks’ dialogues. In fact the descriptive dictionary’s entry for prtljag lists prtljaga as the first meaning. On prtljaga and its supposed “Croatianess”, the word is missing in vokabular.org, but the combined online Serbian descriptive dictionary* (free registration required) lists the following for prtljag.
There is the equating of prtljag with prtljaga (with prosodic markings) as well as an attested example of usage of prtljaga in the dictionary of Matica srpska (PMC) as Не кријуђи своју пртљагу они су пред нама отварали и показивали шта су све од куће донијели* with своју пртљагу being the accusative of the nominative својa пртљагa (if it had been prtljag instead of prtljaga, then the passage would have been Не кријуђи свој пртљаг они су пред нама отварали и показивали шта су све од куће донијели. The main point for me is that excepting prescriptivism (or perhaps nationalist wishful thinking), prtljag and prtljaga are usable by all native speakers of BCMS/SC although I’m left to guess that the association or marking of one form over another to an ethnic group may arise from a matter of frequency. That is, prtljaga being presumably more frequent among Croats leads it to being generalized as a Croatianism, while the presumably higher frequency of prtljag leads to a generalization of the word as a Serbianism. *Translation: “Not hiding their luggage, they opened [it] in front of us and showed all of what they brought from home.” 2) Cr: zračna luka | Sr: aerodrom “airport” This pair is another common example used to demonstrate the difference between Croatian and Serbian. However, the descriptive dictionary of standard Croatian does not mark aerodrom as a Serbianism despite the implication in the textbooks’ usage. Nevertheless, zračna luka is a non-Serbianism since zrak (the source of zračna) is generally understood by Serbs to mean “beam” or “light” and the calque would be thus interpreted as “luminous port” rather than “airport”. Zrak as understood to mean “air” is found among Bosnians and Croats but this meaning seems virtually obsolete among Serbs today even though it is attested with this meaning in the descriptive dictionary of Serbian.
The reader is referred to ваздух "air" for a secondary meaning of zrak per the Serbian dictionary. Moreover there are attestations of this usage in the online entry which for brevity I have not included in the quoted section. 3) Cr: dočekati / počekati | Sr: sačekati “to wait” [perfective] These words have a high degree of semantic overlap and are understood and used by all speakers of BCMS/SC. There are however slight differences in meaning despite all being translatable as “to wait” yet these still elude a neat assignment to only one of Bosnians, Croats, Montenegrins and Serbs. Dočekati implies a sense of waiting for someone for the purpose of receiving or welcoming while počekati implies a sense of waiting for someone for a specific period of time. Therefore sačekati is more netural than the preceding verbs but as noted earlier, any of these verbs can be used to translate “to wait” in a perfective sense. I suspect that the authors of the books used different verbs for variety’s sake rather than to imply that each set of terms is associated with or mutually exclusive among the ethnic groups. 4) Cr: sjedalo | Sr: sedište “seat” These are synonyms and are used and understood by all speakers of BCMS/SC. The only mentionable difference is that for those standards that adhere to ijekavian (i.e. Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and one of the Serbian sub-variants), the terms would be sjedalo and sjedište. For the ekavian Serbian sub-variant (i.e. the other Serbian sub-variant and which is used by most Serbs), then the terms would be sedalo and sedište. Again I suspect that the authors of the books used different nouns for variety’s sake rather than to imply that each term is associated with or mutually exclusive among the ethnic groups. --- This is my last set of comparisons involving the dialogues of “Beginner’s Croatian” and “Beginner’s Serbian”. Here is all of the analysis of each chapter's transcripts taken from these textbooks. — Chapter 1 — Chapter 2 — Chapter 3 — Chapter 4 — Chapter 5 — Chapter 6 — Chapter 7 — Chapter 8 — Chapter 9 — Chapter 10 — Chapter 11 — Chapter 12 — Chapter 13 — Chapter 14 — Chapter 15 and conclusion As mentioned in an earlier entry, I’ll also add commentary somewhere in my log (perhaps in my next entry?) about a corpus analysis done in 2008 of Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian versions of the English-language newspaper “Southeast European Times”. To put it bluntly, I find that monograph’s exploration of the differences between the three entities as found in the newspaper’s corpus to be facile, at some points misleading and at others even intellectually dishonest. However these flaws would be undetected by at least some of the monograph’s intended readership in the Anglosphere since putting its findings in perspective or in some cases refuting them requires at minimum substantial structural knowledge of BCMS/SC if not fluency in it. As it relates to learning BCMS/SC, my hope is that these 15 sets of comparisons demonstrate that the internal divisions are not as clear or neatly aligned to ethnicity as often suggested in language courses that we use. Much of what is presented (or arguably simplified or stereotyped) as proper for only one variant is often valid for the other variants. When in doubt about apparent or supposed “Serbianisms” or “Croatianisms” (or other forms held up as emblematic of any other ethnic group) appearing in course materials, consulting descriptive dictionaries or other reference material (or even forums devoted to language usage) can go a long way to sorting things out. At the same time I do not wish to gloss over the differences which can legitimately reduce intelligibility among native speakers or are ungrammatical to one group but grammatical to another. For example, it would be mildly jarring to translate “who?” as tko? when intending to express oneself per standard Serbian which has ko? instead. Using features that are not found at all in a given norm, excepting perhaps in attempts at humour, is typically frowned upon by native speakers regardless of their views on the intrarelationship of BCMS/SC. Consistency takes precedence with mutual intelligibility and their prior exposure taking care of the rest to help them understand what is being expressed. *** FINNISH I’ve finished the workbook’s exercises for Unit 5 in “FSI Conversational Finnish” and had a bit of trouble with the exercises on the particles -kin, -ka/-kä and -kaan/-kään since I’ve never really studied these too closely before. As I progress through FSI’s course, I’m starting to hanker for a bit of variety in my studies since its being my only “serious” material is getting to be a bit of a drag. I do give myself small doses of “fun” stuff by watching short clips of Pasila and reading comic strips. Perhaps it’s time to get back to resuming use of Aaltio’s “Finnish for Foreigners” or another course to supplement FSI as my “serious” stuff for learning. 
(From Supermukula » Blog Archive » Hygenia) 1) “Hurry!” 2) “Ahhh! I just made it to the potty!” 3) “You’re supposed to take off your pants before sitting on the potty! – Oh?”* 4) “Mom is so strict in these matters of hygiene.” * My translation is fairly idiomatic. A translation that’s closer to the original is “The pants are supposed to be taken off before going onto the potty!” - tarkka (tarkan, tarkkaa, tarkkoja) “exact, particular, strict” Convention for unfamiliar vocabulary in the comic strip (i.e. needed to consult a dictionary) NOUNS & ADJECTIVES: nominative singular (genitive singular, partitive singular, partitive plural) VERBS: 1st infinitive (1st person singular present tense, 3rd person singular past simple tense, active past participle) ADVERBS & INTERJECTIONS: no extra information given *** NORTHERN SAAMI I finished Unit 7 of Davvin 3 which introduced the simple past affirmative of “contracting” verbs in dual (see here and here for information on simple past affirmative of these verbs in singular, here for information on the tense in plural), and plural-only nouns that refer to natural phenomena. Here is my understanding of the chapter’s “new” main points (any misunderstandings of the material are mine alone). 1) Simple past tense of “contracting” verbs in dual. For the dual subjects, the affirmative conjugation is made by removing the final –t of the infinitive and adding -ime for 1st person dual, -ide for 2nd person dual and -iga for 3rd person dual. The final –e and –o of the stem changes to -i and -u respectively under the influence of the initial i- in the simple past tense’s suffix. E.g. - fuobmát (fuobmáj-) “to notice” ~ fuobmáime “we noticed”, fuobmáide “you noticed”, fuobmáiga “they noticed” - riŋget (riŋgej-) “to telephone” ~ riŋgiime “we telephoned”, riŋgiide “you telephoned”, riŋgiiga “they telephoned” - duddjot (duddjoj-) “to make handicrafts” ~ duddjuime “we made handicrafts”, duddjuide “you made handicrafts”, duddjuiga “they made handicrafts” 2) Certain terms for natural phenomena that are prolonged are grammatically plural E.g. fasttes dálkkit “bad weather” (literally: “bad weathers”) Vocabulary of Unit 7 bisánit – “to pause, stop” čeahpes (attr.) čeahppi (pred.) – “capable, experienced, skillful” čoarvebaste – “spoon made of an animal’s horn” čujuhit – “to indicate, point to, show” duollji – “hide, skin” fasttes (attr.) fasti (pred.) – “bad, poor” mannan vahkus – “last week” muhtumin – “sometimes” muhtun beaivve – “one day”, “the other day, recently” olles (attr.) ollis (pred.) – “entire; full, whole” *** SLOVAK I did the exercises on pgs. 37-39 in the textbook for “Hovorme spolu po slovensky! B - Slovenčina ako cudzí jazyk”. These were about the accusative plural and verbal prefixes as in the preceding pages, as well as some fill-in-the-blank exercises for using derivatives of verbs of motion (e.g. jazdiť “to drive, ride” ~ jazda “journey, ride”) 
(From S H O O T Y - …som Grogy) 2) “No one writes letters anymore. – It’s the end of romance.” 3) “Love letters have been replaced by text messages and e-mails.”* 4) “What’s left? – I happened to write a letter to you once. – …Nothing… – …You still haven’t written back to me. – That box!” 5) “All papers that don’t look like bills go from the box straight into the garbage bin!” 6) “Wait.” * My translation is rather idiomatic. A translation that’s closer to the original is “Love correspondence has become restricted to SMSes and e-mails.” Convention for vocabulary in the comic strip that's unfamiliar to me (i.e. needed to consult a dictionary) NOUNS & ADJECTIVES: nominative singular (genitive singular) VERBS (where applicable using convention of imperfective > perfective): infinitive (3rd person singular present tense [imperfective verb] / future tense [perfective verb], 3rd person plural present tense [imperfective verb] / future tense [perfective verb]) ADVERBS & INTERJECTIONS: no extra information given *** UKRAINIAN I’ve done the exercises for Chapter 7 on pgs. 122-124 in “Modern Ukrainian”. The exercises were more substitution and transformation drills for material from previous chapters as well as some reading comprehension questions. 
(From Молочне via Це Прекрасно!) 1) “Darling, why are you crying?” 2) “I’m fat!” Convention for vocabulary in the comic strip that's unfamiliar to me (i.e. needed to consult a dictionary) NOUNS & ADJECTIVES: nominative singular (genitive singular) VERBS (where applicable using convention of imperfective > perfective): infinitive (1st person singular present tense [imperfective verb] / future tense [perfective verb], 3rd person plural present tense [imperfective verb] / future tense [perfective verb]) ADVERBS & INTERJECTIONS: no extra information given *** OTHER LANGUAGES I feel as if I should decide soon on what to do with Turkish. It's been awhile since I've last looked at it, and my copy of Öztopçu's course "Elementary Turkish" seems to be begging me to start working with it. ______ Edited by Chung on 30 December 2014 at 4:25am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| stelingo Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5830 days ago 722 posts - 1076 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Czech, Polish, Greek, Mandarin | Message 348 of 541 04 August 2013 at 11:05pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Chung, I was under the impression that Slovak did not have separate verbs of motion for travelling on foot and by vehicle. Is jazdit' for example an archaic form?
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| 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 349 of 541 05 August 2013 at 1:17am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
That's often valid (and I know that I've said such a thing often in previous psots), however jazdiť contradicts what I've expressed and it isn't archaic either. The first time I saw it in use was when I was travelling in Slovakia and saw buses like the one below. 
(Source) In this sense, jazdiť na (+ acc.) means "to run/function using sg (e.g. a certain type of fuel)". As far as I can tell, jazdiť is for motion by means other than feet, and it seems to be a Slovak parallel of Czech jezdit by having some sense of repeated or routine movement by vehicle. In Slovak it's grammatical to say the following (especially if the action happens once): idem autom, idem na bicykli ...but if the motion is repeated and involves a vehicle, then jazdiť occurs. jazdím na aute, jazdím na bicykli. Jazdiť (sa) also occurs when describing a routine or regular flow of vehicular traffic. e.g. V Anglicku sa jazdia vľavo. A native Slovak could be helpful here too for an explanation. 2 persons have 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 350 of 541 11 August 2013 at 11:44pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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BCMS/SC
I’ve finished working through Chapter 15 in each of “Beginner’s Serbian” and “Teach Yourself Serbian”. The dialogue in the former contained was between the protagonists at the airport with Gordana going back to the USA and saying goodbye to her hosts. The grammatical topics introduced included imperative, constructions with jedan drugi “each other”, exact future (“future perfect”, “future II”) and conditional. The material in the latter focused on reported speech, indirect questions, conditional after da (comparable to “if only you had been there, then…”), and koji as a relative conjunctions as presented in the chapter’s dialogues and narratives. I have now reached a certain milestone in my studies with BCMS/SC by having finished "Beginner's Serbian" and think that this is a logical point for me to reduce my effort with BCMS/SC and start to spend more time on the other languages. However since I have only 5 more chapters in "TY Serbian", I'll probably work on that to completion irregularly with an eye to finishing it by the fall. On the other hand I'll probably set aside "Spoken World: Croatian" seeing that I'm not even halfway done with its material. In general I'm quite satisfied with what I have reviewed in light of my trip to Serbia and my befriending of a few Serbs who inspired me to continue studying after the trip's end. 
(From A Star is Unborn) 1) “I went to the Dom Sportova!*” 2) “What did you do to yourself?” 3) “I painted myself to support the players…” 4) “…but my two favourite players play against each other and I couldn’t decide whom to cheer for.”** *Dom sportova is an indoor arena in Zagreb, Croatia. ** My translation is rather idiomatic and something closer to the original would have been “…but my two dearest players are opponents and I couldn’t decide whom to cheer for.” - navijati > naviti (navijam, navijaju > navijem, naviju) “to wind up; cheer for, support” (latter meanings apply when used with preposition za (+ acc.)) (навијати > навити (навијам, навијају > навијем, навију)** Convention for vocabulary in the comic strip that's unfamiliar to me (i.e. needed to consult a dictionary) (this will be put in both scripts partially to accommodate those unused to Serbian Cyrillic and also so that I get at least a little bit of practice using the keyboard layout for Serbian Cyrillic). NOUNS & ADJECTIVES: nominative singular (genitive singular) VERBS (where applicable using convention of imperfective > perfective): infinitive (1st person singular present tense [imperfective verb] / future tense [perfective verb], 3rd person plural present tense [imperfective verb] / future tense [perfective verb]) ADVERBS & INTERJECTIONS: no extra information given As mentioned in the preceding entry, I will analyze and make comments on this comparison of the Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian versions of the “Southeast European Times” done in 2008 by the Croatian academics Božo Bekavac, Sanja Seljan, and Ivana Simeon who among other things are involved with computational linguistics. See here for the rationale of the excursus devoted to comparing Croatian and Serbian using the dialogues of “Beginner’s Croatian” and “Beginner’s Serbian” published by Hippocrene Books. Resources include descriptive dictionary of standard Croatian based on the work of Anić et al., Benson’s SerboCroatian-English Dictionary, Alexander’s Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, a Grammar: With Sociolinguistic Commentary and discussions on usage in BCMS/SC from Unilang and WordReference. To keep the entry from getting overly long, I will analyze this research paper's content in a few parts and include only relevant sections of the text including its abstract. My comments are in green. The first part of my analysis will deal with the abstract and the phonological differences mentioned by the authors. Successive parts will accompany any progress reports with "TY Serbian" that I'll make for BCMS/SC in the coming weeks. The full paper is freely available here through the Croatian Scientific Bibliography.
The paper takes as its starting point that Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian are languages (i.e. presumably more than merely different Neo-Shtokavian standards) and although the section above is only the abstract, it mentions “a huge portion of differences” which strikes me as jarringly causal / imprecise for an academic paper (i.e. what is “huge”?).
On one hand, this is unsurprising since the translations of the original articles align to what is prescribed in the respective codifications. Namely Bosnian and Croatian are (i)jekavian while the most frequently-used subvariant of Serbian is ekavian. On the other hand, this difference would likely go unmentioned by these academics, if for whatever reason, the Serbian version of the articles were in the (i)jekavian subvariant which is equally valid to Serbs and is usual in the native speech of Serbs who live in Bosnia, Croatia, Montenegro and southwestern Serbia. Bekavac et al. merely repeat a variation of the factoid that Serbs today always use ekavian while Bosnian and Croats always use (i)jekavian.
As I’ve noted here, this statement is more misleading than it appears. In brief, Croatian -eu- versus non-Croatian -ev- is dubiously typical since -eu- is not native in any Slavonic phonological inventory to begin with, and instead turns up in Greco-Latinate loanwords. Moreover the only example of the contrast listed in the paper is Croatian europski versus non-Croatian evropski (“European”) and trying to find a systematic contrast suitable for machine translation involving -eu- with -ev- fails when considering even a handful of other relevant loanwords. E.g. “Europe, European, eugenics, euphemism, euphoria, eunuch, euthanasia, eutrofication Cr: Europa, Europski, eugenika, eufemizam, euforija, еunuh, eutanazija, eutrofikacija Bs, Sr: Evropa, Evropski, eugenika, eufemizam, euforija, еvnuh, eutanazija, eutrofikacija In my small sample then, only Evropa (and derivatives) and evnuh have -ev- instead of -eu-. The matching of the other Bosnian and Serbian terms with the Croatian ones weaken the claim of the difference being typical. If I may be so bold, it would have been helpful for Bekavac et al. to have consulted relevant descriptivist dictionaries before making such a statement.
This is true in many instances but the link with -ch- (Greek χ) being adapted in Croatian with -k- while Serbian shows -h- (and Bosnian shows both) is again not as systematic as the authors believe or let on. E.g. “character”, “chiropractic”, “cholera”, “choreography”, “chromosome”, “chronology”, “chrysanthemum”, “melancholia” Cr: karakter, kiropraktika*, kolera, koreografija, kromosomi, kronologija, krizantema, melankolia Bs, Sr: karakter, kiropraktika*, kolera, koreografija, hromosomi, hronologija, hrizantema, melanholija *This is rather interesting since kiropraktika and hiropraktika appear with domains .hr, .ba and .sr on a Google search suggesting that some native speakers are unsure what is the correct term. This small sample seems to indicate the authors’ unawareness of the original Greek forms since they all contain -ch- (χ) but elude the simplification of -h- being the only codified adaptation of the Greek phoneme in Serbian. *** OTHER LANGUAGES I still haven't figured out what to do with Turkish, but as noted above am looking forward to getting back into the swing of things with other languages after having put BCMS/SC on the back-burner. ______
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| maxval Pentaglot Senior Member Bulgaria maxval.co.nr Joined 5071 days ago 852 posts - 1577 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, Bulgarian, English, Spanish, Russian Studies: Latin, Modern Hebrew | Message 351 of 541 12 August 2013 at 1:29pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
I have here a little addition, however this is not fully on the topic. In Bulgarian this problem caused a long discussion with the European Union about how to write the name of Euro in Bulgarian. From the EU they wanted ЕУРО, but Bulgaria insisted it should be ЕВРО. After years of discussion the EU decided EURO is obligatory only for languages that use Latin script, so from this year on the new Euro banknotes the text is ЕВРО. 
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| 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 352 of 541 13 August 2013 at 5:38pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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If Serbia were in the EU and using the Euro, what would the bureaucrats in Brussels do with Serbian which is biscriptal?
Only half-jokingly I think that Mongolian should be the only official language of the EU to put everyone in his or her place. None of this nonsense with 20+ official languages and the attendant costs for translation, interpretation or redundant publication. Let 'em all learn to read and write top to bottom in the classical Mongolian script like this:  .
Oh, what could have been if the Mongols had not turned back practically at the gates of Vienna and the shores of the Adriatic because of Ögedei Khan's premature death after going on a bender. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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