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Advancing in Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| gdoyle1990 Groupie United States Joined 5416 days ago 52 posts - 60 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Serbian, Estonian | Message 1 of 3 23 September 2010 at 2:38am | IP Logged |
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I'm currently studying Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian and I'm having trouble advancing further than a high beginner. I feel that I've gotten past the point where I benefit from "Teach Yourself" and similar courses but I am not advanced enough to begin reading novels. I'm having trouble finding any material for my level of these languages, I can't even find a decent dictionary.
I do have the advantage of a few native speakers, and I have recently ordered Ronelle Alexander's "Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian: A Textbook" in hopes that it will have more advanced material. I guess my question would be: What should I do know? Does anyone know of a decent, reasonably priced dictionary? *I'm living on a college student's salary...$0 =\* Should I just dive into a novel with the help of my friends? HELP! Thank you! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6952 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 2 of 3 24 September 2010 at 12:43pm | IP Logged |
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Alexander's course is quite good and don't forget to go the website for the answer keys.
www.bcsgrammarandtextbook.org/Keys/info.shtml Mastery of the entire course will leave you more or less at an intermediate level. Advanced course material may lie in using the later units of the old Serbo-Croatian courses from DLI or FSI. Ohio State University also sells a set of old but comprehensive material (i.e. from beginning to advanced students) by Biljana Sljivic-Simsic under the title of "Serbo-Croatian". Run a search of "Serbo-Croatian" at flpubs.osu.edu/. Your university's library may also lend copies of the course to students. Unless you're a purist, don't be afraid of using older material with the title "Serbo-Croatian" since little has changed in how the language or grammar has been used since the fragmentation of Yugoslavia. There are unforutnately no decent AND resonably-priced dictionaries in hard copy for English-speakers learning BCMS/Serbo-Croatian. The best one that I know of (although its price can vary on Amazon and you may even be lucky in getting a cheap copy (say under $25) on Amazon Marketplace) is Morton Benson's dictionary in 2 volumes "English-Serbo-Croatian Dictionary" & "Serbo-Croatian-English Dictionary". There's a smaller version of this set in one volume called "Standard English-Serbo-Croatian, Serbo-Croatian-English Dictionary: A Dictionary of Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian Standards". Benson's dictionaries are sometimes criticized by purists for being Serbocentric or too old, but what is worse is that to date there is no up-to-date dictionary of English to BCMS (and vice-versa) that gives as much coverage combined with inflectional/prosodic hints for BCMS words as Benson's work does. For example, Benson's large dictionaries often indicate the aspectual counterpart of a verb, while pitch-accent is marked for all headwords. It seems that dictionary publishers from the former Yugoslavia (who are supposed to be the "experts" on the matter) are more interested in releasing prescriptive dictionaries that magnify the differences between BCMS rather than to provide useful dictionaries for foreigners who want to learn how to use words properly as opposed to just being shown a compendium of politically-correct/"proper" lexical choices. If you're just looking for a dictionary that gives some inflectional and prosodic (i.e. pitch-accent) information for words and aren't too bothered by something entirely in BCMS then try hjp.srce.hr/. This is the online explanatory dictionary for Croatian. The biggest downside is that the aspectual counterparts for the verbs are not explicitly shown (for example "čitati" is indicated as an imperfective verb with hints about endings in the present tense and gerund, but there's no indication about what are the potential perfective counterparts (e.g. dočitati, pročitati). A smaller downside is that it adheres to what is prescribed for modern standard Croatian and thus may exclude some words which are prescribed only in at least one of the other three variants. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| gdoyle1990 Groupie United States Joined 5416 days ago 52 posts - 60 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Serbian, Estonian | Message 3 of 3 26 September 2010 at 4:15am | IP Logged |
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Thank you for your very thorough response! I will have to check my university library for the Ohio State University courses and Benson's dictionaries. I have recently discovered that my university has a rather wide selection of texts about Slavic languages, but I haven't had a chance to look through it yet.
I received Alexander's book today so I will definitely have a look through it and report my progress after using it. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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