sama_el Diglot Newbie Croatia Joined 5325 days ago 37 posts - 39 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English Studies: German, Latin, Modern Hebrew
| Message 9 of 17 30 April 2010 at 1:00pm | IP Logged |
In Croatian "što" can be a relative or interrogative pronoun like in English. "Šta" in Croatian is the everyday form. While it is true that it can mean "why?" like in the phrase: "A što?" ( A better translation than "why" would be "what happened?" ) this is not part of standard Croatian.
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sama_el Diglot Newbie Croatia Joined 5325 days ago 37 posts - 39 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English Studies: German, Latin, Modern Hebrew
| Message 10 of 17 30 April 2010 at 1:01pm | IP Logged |
sama_el wrote:
( A better translation than "why" would be "what happened?" ) |
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Apologies, it can mean both depending on the context.
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Danac Diglot Senior Member Denmark Joined 5348 days ago 162 posts - 257 votes Speaks: Danish*, English Studies: German, Serbo-Croatian, French, Russian, Esperanto
| Message 11 of 17 30 April 2010 at 2:30pm | IP Logged |
sama_el wrote:
In Croatian "što" can be a relative or interrogative pronoun like in English. "Šta" in Croatian is the everyday form. While it is true that it can mean "why?" like in the phrase: "A što?" ( A better translation than "why" would be "what happened?" ) this is not part of standard Croatian. |
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It's quite exciting to me that people would also use što instead of šta in the meaning of "what", since I would have thought that would be incorrect usage in Croatia. So much for learning language from books only...
I was gradually getting more and more unsure about whether or not što might ever mean why, but I'd like to quote from Anić's "Rječnik Hrvatskoga Jezika" (This is just a short quote, the entry on "Što" goes on and on)
Što (Pril.)Odnosna zamjenica uzrok i cilj u zn. zašto (Što tako postupaš?)
Što (Adverb) Relative pronoun of cause and aim in the meaning of "zašto" (why)
(Why are you acting like this?)
The translation might be a bit off, but you're welcome to provide a more accurate translation. :)
To me, this is standard Croatian at work. It might not be very colloquial, but if it's in 2 seperate dictionaries listed with the possible meaning of "why", I'd gradually stop questioning it.
Edited by Danac on 30 April 2010 at 2:30pm
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sama_el Diglot Newbie Croatia Joined 5325 days ago 37 posts - 39 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English Studies: German, Latin, Modern Hebrew
| Message 12 of 17 30 April 2010 at 6:36pm | IP Logged |
You should also remember that the dialectal pronouns "kaj" and "ča" can have the same meaning. The rest is settled...
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Danac Diglot Senior Member Denmark Joined 5348 days ago 162 posts - 257 votes Speaks: Danish*, English Studies: German, Serbo-Croatian, French, Russian, Esperanto
| Message 13 of 17 30 April 2010 at 7:03pm | IP Logged |
sama_el wrote:
You should also remember that the dialectal pronouns "kaj" and "ča" can have the same meaning. The rest is settled... |
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Oh, of course, they probably would, but I've not really been taught a lot about it. I do know that people use them in certain areas of Croatia, but apart from that I wouldn't know too much about it.
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Delodephius Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Yugoslavia Joined 5403 days ago 342 posts - 501 votes Speaks: Slovak*, Serbo-Croatian*, EnglishC1, Czech Studies: Russian, Japanese
| Message 14 of 17 30 April 2010 at 9:54pm | IP Logged |
Don't they mostly use 'kaj' in Zagreb?
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sama_el Diglot Newbie Croatia Joined 5325 days ago 37 posts - 39 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English Studies: German, Latin, Modern Hebrew
| Message 15 of 17 01 May 2010 at 8:08am | IP Logged |
http://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datoteka:Croatian_shto_dialects _in_Cro_and_BiH.PNG
This map isn't too detailed but it's still useful.
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Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7156 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish
| Message 16 of 17 01 May 2010 at 5:27pm | IP Logged |
This map may be a bit more detailed:
www.unc.edu/~rdgreenb/dialectmap.gif
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