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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Ferreris Newbie Hungary Joined 5372 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes | Message 1 of 5 14 March 2010 at 11:04pm | IP Logged |
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Dear all,
I'm having some confusion regarding BSC numbers, especially with the number 100. Now, as I know, there are two words for 100: sto and stotina. The latter of which is a feminime noun. My question is that when to use each and which case to use with the following nouns. For example: sto hiljada or stotina hiljada petsto grada or pet stotina grada etc.. Also I have a confusion about when to use hiljadu and the gen. sing/pl. of hiljada. As far as I know, hiljadu is only used on its own, is that correct? Edited by Ferreris on 14 March 2010 at 11:05pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Fazla Hexaglot Senior Member Italy Joined 6265 days ago 166 posts - 255 votes  Speaks: Italian, Serbo-Croatian*, English, Russian, Portuguese, French Studies: Arabic (classical), German, Turkish, Mandarin | Message 2 of 5 15 March 2010 at 12:36am | IP Logged |
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[joking] I speak Bosnian, I hope I can help though [/joking]
No, there is only one word for 100: sto. Stotina, I'm trying to think if there's something like that in English for the number 100... and I think the answer is no the only good example with numbers that comes to my mind is with the number 12. In English you have the number 12 and that is written, twelve. But you can also say, in some context, "dozen". Which also means 12, but it means 12 of something. If you speak Italian, it's the very same thing with the words "cento" and "un centinaio"... speakers of Italian know what I mean. In English it's all in one word... hundred. But in BCS you can't make the plural of "sto"... it's just a number. But you can make the plural of stotina, which is "stotine". Which more or less means "hundreds". I think what I am saying is only clear to me :P . MORE OR LESS it's like this literally: "Ja sam posjetio sto hiljada gradova" = I have visited 100000 cities "Ja sam posjetio stotinu hiljada gradova" = I have visited 1000 hundreds of cities. It's really hard to explain... but in BCS the latter is perfectly usable and makes sense. Just use "sto" and you should be fine. Hiljada and Hiljadu is the same. Hiljadu is 1000 as "twelve" or as "sto" and Hiljada is as "a dozen" or "stotina". You will never use the real gen. sing. of Hiljada, which technically should be "Hiljade" but in practice you say " od hiljadu ljudi bla bla" (out of 1000 people, bla bla...) A plural genitive should be Hiljada too, just with a long bolded a. I mean like Hiljaaaaada as opposed to Hiljada. Edited by Fazla on 15 March 2010 at 12:39am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Delodephius Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Yugoslavia Joined 5406 days ago 342 posts - 501 votes Speaks: Slovak*, Serbo-Croatian*, EnglishC1, Czech Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 3 of 5 15 March 2010 at 12:53pm | IP Logged |
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Stotina is mostly used to mean hundredth, as in one hundredth i.e. 1/100 jedna stotina. You have tretina, četvrtina, petina, šestina, etc. However since the word for hundreds is stotine people sometimes also use stotina as well as sto, although stotina is mostly used only for emphasis since it is a longer word than sto (at least to me it sounds a bit more biblical). :-)
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| Ferreris Newbie Hungary Joined 5372 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes | Message 4 of 5 17 March 2010 at 9:27pm | IP Logged |
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Thank you both for the explanations! :) I'm now trying to digest it.
And this 'stotina' can be conjugated? So, for example: Sa stotinom gradova - With hundreds of cities? -- By the way, is there a rule about when to use 'sa' and 's' to mean with (or from)? I didn't really find anything useful about it in my grammar books. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Delodephius Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Yugoslavia Joined 5406 days ago 342 posts - 501 votes Speaks: Slovak*, Serbo-Croatian*, EnglishC1, Czech Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 5 of 5 17 March 2010 at 10:34pm | IP Logged |
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You use 's' when in front of most consonants, except s, z, c. Use 'sa' in front of vowels and for emphasis, for example "Sa kime?!" (WITH who?!), although in fast everyday conversation you'll almost always use just 's'. Trust me it's not a big deal even I don't use them consistently. You can do a test with all sounds in the Serbian language and see in front of which it feels better to say just 's' and in front of which it is also best to put an 'a', for example it is easier to say "sam sa sobom" than "sam s sobom".
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