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Radioclare’s TAC log 2014 (*jäŋe/*ledús) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6951 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes  20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 153 of 522 27 April 2014 at 5:11am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
My main references for this exercise are Anić et al.’s Rječnik hrvatskoga jezika (a descriptive dictionary), the online Речник српског језика based on the sets of monolingual dictionaries issued by the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences and Matica Srpska and relevant entries in my log starting here. If you want to look up an entry in the large set of Serbian dictionaries or verify my comments on Serbian entries that refer to these dictionaries, you need to register (it’s free) at srpskijezik.com, click on “Речници - опциjе” and then search for an entry after having checked off “Речник српског језика” on the left. The online Serbian dictionary is a gold mine like Anić et al.’s dictionary but it isn’t set up so that you can link to or copy and paste an individual entry (to display the information outside that website, I'd need to type the dictionary's entry in the post - a bit of a pain). This explains why I haven’t usually linked Serbian entries in my comments below like I have for the Croatian ones. - Cr: abecedni | Sr: azbučni “alphabetical” Both terms indeed mean “alphabetical” but the former implies following a sequence in a Latin-based convention while the latter implies doing the same in a non-Latinic script (almost always a Cyrillic one). The trickiness is that Serbian is biscriptal and strictly speaking it would be weird to use the latter when one is referring to organizing words per the sequence in the Latinic script. - Cr: Australac | Sr: Australijanac “Australian (male)” According to Anić et al., Australijanac is an uncommon variant of Australac. No mention though of one being exclusive to Croatian and the other to Serbian, although the article on Croatian Wikipedia about the Pravopis hrvatskoga jezika marks Australijanac is incorrect. The Serbian dictionary cross-references Australac to Australijanac leaving it up to the user to decide whether this is sufficient to replace the former with the latter. - Cr: baka | Sr: baba “grandmother” This struck me a bit even though you’ve noted that Alexander lists baka as common to BCS (The moment I saw the word I remembered how one of my former classmates who was a Serb consistently referred to her grandmother as baka). Anić et al. mark baba as a regionalism among other things but not “un-Croatian”. - Cr: bilježnica | Sr: sveska “notebook” The Serbian dictionary lists beležnica and its ijekavian variant bilježnica to mean the same as sveska. Although Alexander simplifies the analysis a bit by stereotyping ekavian variants as Serbian and ijekavian ones as Bosnian or Croatian, bilježnica would ultimately be acceptable in Serbian (and be “natural” for that quarter of the Serbian population who are native speakers of Neoštokavian Ijekavian). Sveska strikes me as a feminine counterpart (and a Serbian development) of svezak meaning “volume” (in a series of books) which is used by all variants. Kids from the former Yugoslavia regardless of their ethnicity may also refer colloquially to their bilježnica, beležnica or sveska using the common teka. - Cr: blagajna | Sr: kasa “cash register” Anić et al. mark kasa for “cash register” as a colloquial alternative to standard blagajna although again it’s not marked as “un-Croatian”. When blagajna refers to a safe, a ticket office or a fund (e.g. bratinska blagajna “fraternal aid society”) it’s used in all variants. It seems that blagajna to mean “cash register” is a Croatianism. - Cr: blagovaonica | Sr: trpezarija “dining room” Anić et al. mark trpezarija as a regionalism and Serbianism. On the other hand, the Serbian monolingual dictionary includes blagovaonica to mean “dining room” without any indication of being incorrect or deprecated compared to trpezarija. - Cr: bok | Sr: zdravo “hi, bye” Zdravo is acceptable among Croats too judging by its inclusion by Anić et al. without usage markings as “un-Croatian” (not to mention its use as Zdravo, Marijo! in prayer). On the other hand, bok is a marked Croatianism and would endear yourself to Croats, even though many wouldn’t think less of you if you were to open with zdravo. - Cr: bombon | Sr: bombona “candy” Bombon is also acceptable to a Serb based on my discovering its inclusion alongside bombona in the large monolingual Serbian dictionary.
- Cr: brijač | Sr: berberin “barber” The meaning of brijač as “barber” is a Croatianism although when it means “razor blade”, that is common to all variants. Using berber(in) among Croats might surprise a few of them since it’s viewed as a regionalism or Serbianism. - Cr: događati se | Sr: dešavati se “to happen” See my comments in this post under “1) Cr: dogoditi se | Sr: desiti se”. Basically the difference seems to me to be an example of how nationalism can affect language use. - Cr: dojam | Sr: utisak “impression” See my comments in this post under “4) Cr: dojam | Sr: utisak”. Basically the demarcation seems less clear given the information from Anić et al. - Cr: doma | Sr: kući “toward home” Anić et al. mark doma as a colloquialism meaning “at home” (kod kuće) or “(toward) home” (kući). I’m left to think that if the name of the game here is to amplify Croatian distinctiveness, then use doma remembering though that it’s a colloquialism. In my case, I learned kući first (being standard makes it more appropriate when teaching foreigners) and only learned of doma when hearing a few of my Croatian friends use it among themselves. - Cr: držak | Sr: drška “handle” The difference is weaker than it appears. The entry for drška in Anić et al. shows držak to be a synonym and without any marking of being regional archaic or Serbian. The Serbian dictionary includes držak and makes a cross-reference to drška. - Cr: Europa | Sr: Evropa “Europe” See my comments in this post where I analyze the insinuated high predictability of -eu- in Greco-Latin loanwords found in Croatian matching initial -ev- in the same loanwords found in the other variants. - Cr: gluh, kuhati, etc. | Sr: gluv, kuvati, etc. “deaf”, “to cook” etc. See my comments in this post under “5) Cr: kuhati | Sr: kuvati”. This is a valid distinction under certain conditions but I recall a Croat telling me that I could generalize that -h at the end of a syllable in a Croatian word corresponds to -v at the end of the Serbian counterpart. A little bit of digging later made me conclude otherwise. - Cr: gol | Sr: go “bare, naked” See my comments in this post under “9) Cr: stol | Sr: sto”. As with gluh, kuhati ~ gluv, kuvati this a valid distinction under certain conditions but I recall a Croat telling me that I could generalize that -l at the end of a syllable in a Croatian word corresponds to -o at the end of the Serbian counterpart. Yet again, a little bit of digging later made me conclude otherwise. - Cr: grupirati, identificirati etc. | Sr: grupisati, identifikovati etc. “to group”, “to identify” etc. See my comments in this post under “9) Cr: organizirati | Sr: organizovati” and here under “5) Cr: rezervirati | Sr: rezervisati”. Be careful of generalizing a correspondence between -irati in Croatian and -isati or -ovati in the other variants since -irati is also productive in those other variants. - Cr: hlače | Sr: pantalone “trousers” See my comments in this post under “2) Cr: hlače | Sr: pantalone”. - Cr: juha | Sr: supa “soup” See my comments in this post under “3) Cr: juha | Sr: supa”. Despite supa being marked as a regionalism and Serbianism, there’s a recipe for istarska supa (not juha) which Croats recognize as emblematic of Istrian cuisine. - Cr: kamo | Sr: kuda “to where” See my comments in this post under “2) Cr: kamo | Sr: kuda”. - Cr: kemija, kronika etc. | Sr: hemija, hronika etc. “chemistry”, “chronicle” etc. See my comments in this post where I analyze the insinuated high predictability of initial k- in Greco-Latin loanwords found in Croatian matching initial h- in the same loanwords found in the other variants. - Cr: kolodvor | Sr: stanica “railway station” See my comments in this post under “3) Cr: kolodvor | Sr: stanica”. Any “station” other than one for buses or trains is translated by stanica in all variants. - Cr: kompjutor | Sr: kompjuter “computer” What I find interesting about this pair is that not only Anić et al. includes kompjuter under the presumably preferred kompjutor but the article for računalo in Croatian Wikipedia has a Croatian source for kompjuter as one of the alternative names. Medulin’s comment in this thread also supports the case for kompjuter being acceptable among Croats. The Serbian dictionary entry for kompjutor refers to kompjuter. On a related note, see also here for comments on računalo compared to računar. - Cr: konverzacijski | Sr: konverzacioni “conversational” See my comments here for related analysis on the insinuated contrast between Croatian -ij- and Serbian -io-. - Cr: loš | Sr: rđav “bad” I remember this word vividly because of what my Croatian friend said about it when she was correcting my answers to one of the exercises in “Introduction to Croatian and Serbian Language”. I learned and then used initally the “Serbian” term in an exercise to which she insisted that I use loš instead adding that no one in Croatia uses rđav in this way. In line with my preference to use common words in BCMS/SC, using loš is my default when translating “bad” but I would counter that the word is indeed a valid (and pejorative) way to mean “bad” among Croats as indicated by Anić et al.. - Cr: mesar | Sr: kasapin “butcher” When referring to a butcher in a neutral way, this difference holds as far as I can tell. However Anić et al. marks kasapin as a Serbianism or rarely-heard regionalism for mesar in addition to being a pejorative term for a cruel and bloody-minded person (cf. Saddam Hussein’s nickname “the Butcher of Baghdad”). The Serbian dictionary includes mesar and refers the user to kasapin as well as providing a definition and attestations in Serbian literature. - Cr: navečer | Sr: uveče “in the evening” See my comments in this post under “3) Cr: navečer | Sr: uveče”. The difference is not quite as clean as it seems. - Cr: obitelj | Sr: porodica “family” See my comments in this post under “1) Cr: obitelj | Sr: porodica”. Basically obitelj is the standard Croatian term for a sociological family, while porodica represents the concept in other areas. - Cr: ovisan | Sr: zavisan “dependent” As far as I can tell, these words are synonyms without national marking. See Anić et al. for zavisan while the large Serbian dictionary begins the entry for ovisan as follows:
- Cr: pješice | Sr: peške “on foot” See my comments in this post under “5) Cr: pješke | Sr: p(j)ešice”. It’s interesting that Alexander arranges the pair in the opposite “direction” from what I found in Hippocrene’s pair of textbooks. The only national marking (conditional as it is) that I could deduce lies in whether one is using the ekavian (Serbian only) or ijekavian (any BCMS/SC) version of these adverbs. See also here at Croatian Wiktionary for acceptability of pješke and pješice. - Cr: ples | Sr: igra “dance” See my comments in this post. This difference applies only when referring to dance. Otherwise igra etc. is what you’d use when referring to play regardless of variant. - Cr: ponovno | Sr: ponovo “again” Anić et al. lists both adverbs without marking ponovo as Serbian. Abyssus at Croatian Wiktionary states also that both adverbs are acceptable although ponovno is more logical if one takes the adjective ponovan as a starting point for forming the adverb. The Serbian dictionary also suggests that both forms are acceptable per the definition of ponovno below.
It seems that there are at least a few native speakers who insist that ponovno is “more correct” in Croatian and ponovno is “more correct” in Bosnian and Serbian.. - Cr: posude | Sr: sudovi “dishes” According to Anić et al., sud is a regional variant of posuda. The Serbian dictionary includes posuda with its first meaning being the same as that listed in Anić et al. I didn’t realize that posuđe was distinct but I found out in Benson’s Serbo-Croatian - English dictionary that it’s a colloquial variant (in plural only) of posuda. - Cr: pretraga | Sr: ispitivanje “medical examination” I dug into this pair since I learned of a medical exam or checkup as liječnički pregled when travelling in Croatia and then lekarski pregled in Serbia. On the Croatian side, ispitivanje is either a gerund of ispitivati or an interrogation. Pretraga is either a detailed search of anything in general or shorthand for a medical check-up (liječnička pretraga to remove ambiguity). On the other hand, pretraga is defined in the Serbian dictionary with virtually the same meanings as in Anić et al.
I find the use of ispitivanje to mean medical exam a little strange since I’ve come to associate the term with testing (cf. ispit) or experimentation by trial and error (cf. Zavod za ispitivanje kvalitete d.o.o., Institut za ispitivanje materijala a.d.-Institut IMS). - Cr: prijatelj | Sr: drug “friend” As far as I know this is messier than an ethnically-based distinction suggests. Anić et al. defines drug as someone who is connected to someone else in friendship, solidarity or a collegial way. It also acted as the translation for “comrade” in communist Yugoslavia. Based on the preceding, it would be acceptable to translate “friend” as drug among Croats although the political baggage of the term would probably make it less popular than prijatelj among at least some of them. It’s believable to me that a “friend” could be called prijatelj rather than drug by a Bosnian or Croat despite Anić et al. making no such ethnic labelling in their dictionary. On the other hand, I learned that prijatelj typically implies a closer relationship and corresponds to someone in English whom we would call a “good friend” or a “close friend” rather than just a “friend”. This definition is not restricted to one variant with both Anić et al. and the Serbian dictionary corroborating what I learned.
See prijatelj, drug i poznanink and Drug, prijatelj for the lack of consensus among natives on what the terms signify before even getting into the ethnic associations. - Cr: skladatelj | Sr: kompozitor “composer” I got a hunch that this difference was at least a bit forced by Alexander since I know that muzika coexists with purist glazba in standard Croatian. Would the term for “composer” be any different? Anić et al. confirmed my hunch and list kompozitor without any marking for being a Serbianism. - Cr: slastica | Sr: poslastica “dessert” This jumped out a bit since I had learned to use desert (I gladly learned the phrase ...i palačinke sa sladoledom za desert, molim vas! early on in my first trip to Croatia). After checking with the Croatian and Serbian dictionaries, there’s a reason I never used (po)slastica for desert. In fact neither word means “dessert” in either variant although the foods that each word can refer to would be served as dessert or as treats in general. According to Anić et al, slastica is translateble as cake, confection or pastry while poslastica refers to any flavourful dish that is noted for its quality and method of preparation (i.e. a culinary specialty) or a treat in a figurative sense (i.e. something that brings much delight or pleasure). The Serbian dictionary defines slastica practically the same as what’s listed for the same term in the Croatian dictionary while poslastica is translateable as “confection” in addition to a culinary speciality or a figurative treat. - Cr: sretan | Sr: srećan “happy” See my comments in this post under “11) Cr: sretan | Sr: srećan”. Sretan wouldn’t be automatically out of place when used by a Serb. - Cr: strop | Sr: plafon “ceiling” Plafon is a colloquial variant of strop in addition to being the standard way to refer to an upper limit or figurative ceiling (e.g. plafon plaća “wage ceiling”). Strop is conversely in the Serbian monolingual dictionary with the same meaning of “ceiling” and is implied to be synonymous with plafon. - Cr: susjed | Sr: komšija “neighbour” Anić et al. list komšija as a regional and Serbian form of susjed. On the other hand, susjed and sused are valid in Serbian’s ijekavian and ekavian subvariants respectively, and so the former is not exclusive to standard Croatian considering that it’s merely the ijekavian reflex of the Proto-Slavonic *sǫsědъ “neighbour” and so would be codified for Bosnian and Montenegrin in addition to Croatian and ijekavian Serbian. - Cr: šalica | Sr: šolja “cup” Šolja is marked as a regionalism and Serbianism by Anić et al. and also refers to a toilet bowl. Šalica is defined in the Serbian dictionary as a dimunutive of šala “joke”. - Cr: šport | Sr: sport “sport” Both words are found in standard Croatian (see Anić et al.) while the entry for šport in the set of monolingual Serbian dictionaries refers the reader to sport but not without a couple of attestations from Matica Srpska.
Medulin’s comment in this thread succintly mentions the ideological tension with the choice between šport and sport in Croatia. - Cr: štednjak | Sr: šporet “stove” The implied difference between the terms isn’t as stark as it’s made out to be. Štednjak is a valid alternative to šporet for Serbs after checking the Serbian dictionary which defines štednjak as a kitchen stove and Serbian Wikipedia whose article for “Stove” bears Štednjak as the title. Furthermore, šporet is not quite the Serbianism as suggested since Anić et al.’s entry for the term redirects to šparhet which is a colloquial variant of štednjak in addition to an obsolete way to refer to a kind of fireplace. - Cr: što | Sr: šta “what” See my comments in this post under “1) Cr: što | Sr: šta”. - Cr: tjedan | Sr: nedelja “week” See my comments in this post under “1) Cr: tjedan | Sr: ned(j)elja”. The difference is strongest for the concept of “week” but gets hazier otherwise. - Cr: trenutak | Sr: momenat “moment” See my comments in this post under “1) Cr: trenutak | Sr: momenat”. Moment (and momenat and moment) is included in Anić et al. without “un-Croatian” marking/labels (I’ve underlined the syllable which bears the stress to illustrate that the variation is not confined to spelling alone). - Cr: unajmiti | Sr: iznajmiti “to rent” On the meaning alone, this is a little tricky to analyze since the meaning depends on the counterparty. Anić et al. define iznajmiti from the lessor’s point of view[/url] and so he/she would be giving access to his/her asset to someone else for a fee or similar (e.g. “We’re renting the flat to them”). On the other hand, unajmiti refers either to hiring someone who will perform a task or complete a job per a contract (“They hired me and my contract expires next year.”) or getting access to something for a limited time after having paid a fee (e.g. “We’re renting the flat from them.”) Both words turn up in the monolingual Serbian dictionary again with their meanings dependent on whose point of view is assumed.
What’s interesting to me is that the Croatian definition of iznajmiti matches the second meaning found in the corresponding Serbian entry. Moreover, the first two meanings of unajmiti in the Serbian dictionary match what’s listed in the Croatian dictionary. The bottom line then is that unajmiti is valid to both Croats and Serbs when talking about renting or hiring from the point of view of the person who paid to use someone else’s assets (including hiring mercenaries for their martial talents) for a limited time. Iznajmiti for a Serb can look at renting or hiring from either counterparty’s point of view (i.e. it might assume the meaning of unajmiti) whereas to a Croat the meaning is limited to the point of view of someone “renting” his/her asset to someone else for a limited time. - Cr: vani | Sr: napolju “outside” See my comments in this post under “2) Cr: van | Sr: napolje”. I haven’t found any ethnic exclusiveness in these words and on a related note found napolju in Anić et al. and vani in the Serbian monolingual dictionary. - Cr: večer | Sr: veče “evening” See my comments in this post under “6) Cr: Dobra večer! | Sr: Dobro veče!”. The proscription of veče by the Institute of Croatian Language and Linguistics seems off when consulting Anić et al.’s entry. - Cr: vrt | Sr: bašta “garden” See my comments in this post under “5) Cr: vrt | Sr: bašta”. Vrt is acceptable to Serbs. - Cr: vlak | Sr: voz “train” See my comments in this post under “2) Cr: vlak | Sr: voz”. The above represents only the words for which I felt strongly enough to interject (and most of which I usually could readily retrieve commentary from my log). Please don’t take this as a personal criticism of how you’ve arranged your list since it takes time to consult dictionaries and occasionally scour online forums on language use, and is secondary to what you’re trying to acheive (namely learning how to use a foreign language). On the other hand, the very nature of these kinds of lists makes it easy to start thinking that a given word in one variant corresponds neatly to a distinct form in another variant and not necessarily accounts for the fact that rather often at least one of the words is grammatical in all variants. Using an example from your list, when I saw Croatian vrt matched with Serbian bašta I couldn’t help but jump in because I know that vrt is valid in standard Serbian while bašta is a Croatian regionalism. When it comes to using BCMS/SC while negotiating the differences, my approach coincides often with a “Bosnian” (without the Orientalisms) or a “Yugonostalgic Croatian” outcome. I’ve focused on building an active vocabulary that wherever possible consists of words that are valid in all standards despite purist shrieking (for example, I’d use items such as kući, loš, muzika, stanarina and štednjak instead of doma, rđav, glazba, kirija and šporet respectively) but when it comes to pronunciation (and spelling where applicable), I use ijekavian reflexes while in grammar (and again spelling where applicable) I restrain my use of da (e.g. I’d use phrases such as Jesi li...? or Moram ići instead of Da li si...? or Moram da idem), don’t follow the Serbian spelling convention for future I (e.g. bit ću instead of biću), but eschew both the slavishly literal placing of clitics (~ unstressed elements) in the second position of any sentence (e.g. Josip Broz je bio... instead of Josip je Broz bio...) and the regular differentiation of the locative and dative adjectival endings in masculine/neuter singular (e.g. I’ve learned to use for example na velikom zidu and po davnom zakonu instead of na velikome zidu and po davnomu zidu respectively). These last two traits occur most often in formal texts from Croatia or nationalist Croatian tracts (the latter holds because these traits don’t occur often among Serbs and so their use can act by Croats can serve as an extra way to impart ethnic distinctiveness via language use). 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Radioclare Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom timeofftakeoff.com Joined 4378 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian | Message 154 of 522 27 April 2014 at 1:24pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Thank you Chung for taking so much time to write all this. I do really appreciate it and I am learning a lot from
it.
Interestingly, although I didn't include it in my spreadsheet, the textbook does include the word 'teka', but labels it as being exclusively Bosnian!
My Croatian teacher at the class I attend told me off for saying 'zdravo' once in a role play and implied that Croatians were not likely to be impressed by it as a conversational opening. Her view was that Croatians perceive the word to be too linked to the Yugoslavian past and therefore too 'Serbian'. She said that there was a proposal to remove 'zdravo' from the Croatian language, but eventually they decided they couldn't do due to it being a pretty fundamental part of a Catholic prayer, as you mention. I don't know whether she is correct about this, as the general level of her teaching is quite low and I try not to place too much reliance on what she says.
I had another look in the textbook to see if I could find the context in which 'ispitivanje' is used, but unfortunately it crops up towards the end of the book in relation to a text which is written only in Croatian. So the text includes the line 'Poslat će ga na sve moguće pretrage, i to hitno, još òvo poslijepòdne.' and then the vocabulary box above simply says 'pretraga [B,C] - medical test' and 'ispitivanje [B,S] - medical test'. When I 'ispitivanje' up in the glossary at the end of the book, however, the definition is 'ispitìvanje n [B,S] examination [e.g. medical], testing', so perhaps an admission there that the word doesn't solely relate to testing in a medical context.
I certainly haven't taken offence and am very grateful for the guidance. Without doubt I have learned more from this and your log than from attending two terms of Croatian lessons ;) My intention in compiling the list certainly wasn't to imply that the distinctions between words are black and white, but just to familiarise myself with the alternative words in existence. When I originally started learning Croatian two years ago, my aim was just to learn enough tourist Croatian to get by during a fortnight's holiday. It probably sounds ignorant, but when I started I don't think that I was even aware of the close relationship between Croatian and Serbian, and for various reasons I didn't have any desire to learn Serbian or visit Serbia. Unexpectedly I fell in love with both the language and the country and have since developed a real interest in the history and culture of the wider region. With the benefit of hindsight, I can admit that I have had a quite short-sighted approach in my learning until this year, focussing so exclusively on learning only words labelled as 'Croatian-only' that until about a month ago I don't think I would have had absolutely no idea about the meaning of relatively simple words such as 'porodica' or 'rđav' if I encountered them in a book. Your 'Yugonostalgic Croatian' approach is probably a healthier one to have taken, although on the other hand it has been helpful for me personally as a beginner to limit the vocabulary I have to learn to one word for one concept initially. Now I'm at a stage where I think it's useful and desirable for me to expand my existing vocabulary by learning at least to recognise the alternative word possibilities. With that in mind I am still going to finish inputting my list to Memrise but I will leave it as a private course there, because I wouldn't want to mislead any other learners who may not be aware of all these subtleties into thinking that one set of words is exclusively Croatian while the other set is exclusively Serbian. Many thanks again for your help! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Radioclare Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom timeofftakeoff.com Joined 4378 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian | Message 155 of 522 27 April 2014 at 8:48pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Today seems like the appropriate day to add 'Serbian' as a language I am studying in
my profile. Today my aim was to finish chapter 14 of the BCS textbook. I started with exercise C1 in the textbook which gave a list of over 100 verbs and asked for their translation into English, whether they were perfective or imperfective, their verb type, either their present verbal adverb or past verbal adverb depending on aspect and their passive participle. I had a go at the first 50 or so and then I kind of lost the will to live and gave up. I have formed far more verbal adverbs today than I intended to do in my whole life. I marked the ones I completed and noted the following mistakes: držati - I thought this was a perfective verb, but actually it's imperfective. nepasti - the correct past verbal adverb is napadavši I felt a bit tired after that so didn't do the rest of the exercises. Instead I decided to do an experiment and listen to this week's episode of Evropuls on DW Srpski followed by this week's episode of Euroboxx on DW Hrvatski to see how much I understood of each and whether I noticed any differences in in vocabulary. I listened to the Serbian version first on purpose so as not to be influenced by prior knowledge of what had been said in the Croatian version. The themes covered included the problems of Moldova being caught between Russia and the EU, Romanians and Bulgarians in Germany (this seems to be a very popular theme at the moment!), the popularity of denim in the UK and paparazzi in France. When I started watching the Croatian version, I was really surprised to find that the themes were almost completely different this week; in Croatian there was another item on Ukraine and Nato, the same item on Moldova, a piece about two thirty-somethings from the UK who had recreated their baby photos as a present for their mother and something about playing games in German schools. I could only really compare the parts on Moldova but the main differences in vocabulary I noted were pasoš vs putovnica, istorija vs povijest and hiljada vs tisuća, plus perhaps a few more da's than my brain could process in the Serbian version. Overall it seemed like a waste of money for them to pay two different people to read out an almost identical text. I can't necessarily say that I understood less of the Serbian programme than the Croatian one as I generally only about 70% of the audio on these things anyway. The Croatian one felt slightly easier to me, but possibly only because I'd already listened to 25 minutes of Serbian audio at this point and so was more in the swing of things. It would be interesting to see how I'd get one without knowing which language was which. In other news I spoke to my boyfriend about our calendar and established that I am indeed free on 24 May, so I have booked tickets to go to Nottingham and see the play 'The Seagull' in Serbo-Croatian. I've never been to the theatre on my own before, but I guess there isn't a law against it. I've downloaded the English-language text of 'The Seagull' on my Kindle and am hoping to read it on the train this week to get familiar with the story line (ideally before Thursday so that I don't waste time reading English when I could be reading Croatian!) Edited by Radioclare on 21 December 2014 at 11:37pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6951 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 156 of 522 28 April 2014 at 1:12am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Nema ma čemu. Drago mi je da je koristan post. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4961 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 157 of 522 28 April 2014 at 7:45pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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I feel I'm really spoiled for not learning Croatian/Serbian now :/
Hope you guys are still around when I make my move. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Radioclare Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom timeofftakeoff.com Joined 4378 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian | Message 158 of 522 28 April 2014 at 11:28pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Today I had to go to my Croatian lesson. I hadn't been for a few weeks because we had a
fortnight off for Easter and I missed a couple before that because of work. It actually turned out to be more interesting than I was expecting because we had another teacher sitting in on the lesson to assess her performance! We started with a warm-up where she wanted us to ask and respond to the following questions about what we'd done over Easter: Gdje ste bili za Uskrs? Koliko dugo? Kod koga? Kada ste se vratili? This would have been a nice idea if people had previously been taught the past tense. As they hadn't, it resulted in mass confusion. We then had a lesson plan which said we were going to revise three chapters of Teach Yourself Croatian. We started (and indeed never got past!) chapter 5, where she wanted us to answer the exercises at the end of the chapter around the class. The first exercise was to practise dative clitic pronouns. It was a very good exercise - if you had previously been taught those pronouns - which we hadn't. The look on the assessor's face was a picture. I felt sorry for the teacher in the end and started calling out the answers. The good news is that there are only five more lessons until the end of term! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Radioclare Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom timeofftakeoff.com Joined 4378 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian | Message 159 of 522 29 April 2014 at 10:40pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Today's good news is that the nice people at CroVoc are going to send me my free mug even though I'm in
England. I was really lazy on the train this morning and for the first time during my commutes so far this year, I read something in English which had no relation to Croatia or Croatian grammar. It felt a bit like I was skipping school! I have made up for it this evening and as well as catching up on my watering, I have added all my Croatian vs Serbian vocabulary to a private Memrise course. I have discovered the wonders of "bulk add" (why did no one tell me about this before?!) and so it didn't take me as long as I was expecting. I am making a list of the Croatian phrases of the day from croatiaweek.com for ease of reference, because I think they're really useful and I would like to learn them but I keep having issues using their website and losing the one I want to read. I'll put them in a separate post so that they don't get lost in my rambling. I have finished reading chapter 6 of the BCS grammar book. The remaining pages mainly dealt with the dative case. The most useful thing was a list of example verbs which take dative objects: pripadati, smijati se, odgovarati, pomagati, vjerovati, smetati, javljati se. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Radioclare Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom timeofftakeoff.com Joined 4378 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian | Message 160 of 522 29 April 2014 at 10:49pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Links to Croatian phrases of the day (I have mainly just put the literal English translations next to each one, but the website has a proper
explanation of what they actually mean with examples) Mi o vuku, a vuk na vrata. While we are talking about the wolf, the wolf is on the doorstep. Tko vino večera, vodu doručkuje. Who has wine for dinner has water for breakfast. Da padne na leđa, razbio bi nos. If he fell onto his back, he'd break his nose. Tko prvi, njegova djevojka. Who is first gets the girl. Ne zna ni ko pije ni ko plaća. You don't know who is drinking or who is paying. Svako svoga konja hvali. Everyone praises his own horse. Neka visi Pedro. Let Pedro be hung. Ispeci pa reci. Bake it, then say it. Galeb. Seagull (womaniser). Pomalo. A little bit. Da je baba muško, zvala bi se Duško. If Grandma was a man, she would be called Duško. Prodavati muda pod bubrege. To sell testicles as kidneys. Kititi se tuđim perjem. Decorate with someone else's feathers. S konja na magarca. From a horse to a donkey. Ni luk jeo, ni luk mirisao. I haven't eaten the onion, nor smelled it. Lako je s tuđim po koprivi mlatit’. It is easy with other people's to thrash the nettle. Tresla se brda, rodio se miš. Hills were shaking, a mouse was born. U laži su kratke noge. Lies have short legs. Starom vuku mlado janje treba. An old wolf needs a young lamb. živi kao bubreg u loju. Live like a kidney in lard. Prošla baba s kolačima. The old lady has passed by already with the cakes. Bog je prvo sebi bradu stvorio. God first created his own beard. Svakog gosta tri dana dosta. Three days is enough for a guest to stay. Pamet u glavu. Keep your wits about you. Malo sutra. In your dreams. Ja u kupe, a ti u špade…. I am playing clubs and you are playing spades. Di si bija kad je grmilo…. Where were you when the lightning struck? Bogu iza nogu…. Behind God's legs. Stara koka, dobra juha. Old hen, good soup. Da ga nema trebalo bi ga izmisliti. If he didn't exist, you would have to invent him. Nit’ smrdi, nit’ miriše. To neither stink, nor smell good. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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