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Serbo-Croatian - a tonal language? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Martien Heptaglot Senior Member Netherlands martienvanwanrooij.n Joined 6901 days ago 134 posts - 148 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, English, German, Spanish, Turkish, Italian, French Studies: Portuguese, Serbo-Croatian, Latin, Swedish, Arabic (Written) | Message 9 of 14 14 June 2005 at 5:34am | IP Logged | ||
I have read a lot about Swedish, Norwegian and Serbo-Croatian tone patterns and hear them quite often. Theoretical descriptions always say that there is some relationship between the meaning of a word and its tone pattern (this is true for all these languages). As for Swedish, one of the tone patterns, I mean the pattern in words like flicka, titta, sounds for me as if the speaker were a little bit surprised. (In sentences like "I have been here for twenty years.TWENty YEARS! :) )I also have been trying to get familiar with the Serbocroation tone pattern. I didn't check it thoroughly with native speakers but what I tried was thinking about long rising tone syllables as if it were two syllables and put the accent on the second one. An example from my textbook is vrapci, and I tried to pronounce it as vra-Ap-ci, of course without a glottal stop or so :) For a falling long tone like in mala, the pronunciation is more natural for me, but I tested my little trick by pronouncing it like MA-a-la. For me these second-tone words sound as if they are pronounced with some sadness or melancholy in the speaker's voice. Edited by Martien on 14 June 2005 at 5:46am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Marin Triglot Groupie Croatia Joined 6855 days ago 50 posts - 51 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Italian Studies: German, Russian, Persian | Message 10 of 14 28 July 2005 at 10:15am | IP Logged | ||
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Croatian and Serbian are not tonal languages. True, there are (as previously mentioned) some things as '(Ja) sam' being 'I am' and sa-am being 'alone' or pas being dog and pa-as being waist and luk being onion and lu-uk being a bow (a weapon)... Also nobody mentioned the situation with cases. Kuća is 'a house' and ku-uća is plural genitive of the same noun etc. But I don't think that a few cases like that make it a tonal language.
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| Evilquince Diglot Newbie Yugoslavia Joined 6776 days ago 10 posts - 10 votes Speaks: Serbian*, English Studies: German | Message 11 of 14 15 October 2005 at 1:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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But, look at words "sto"(num.100) and "sto" can also mean "table", it depends which accent you put on "o" There are 4 accents, so think again about it... I'm from Serbia and I know what I'm saying
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| Marin Triglot Groupie Croatia Joined 6855 days ago 50 posts - 51 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Italian Studies: German, Russian, Persian | Message 12 of 14 15 October 2005 at 2:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yes, we established the existence of 4 accents, and how some words are different only because of the accent used on their vowels. But do you think that there's so much of them and that they're so important that Serbian/Croatian can be called a tonal languages? I don't think so.
P.S. The table/100 is an example only for Serbian. Croatian word is stol. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Evilquince Diglot Newbie Yugoslavia Joined 6776 days ago 10 posts - 10 votes Speaks: Serbian*, English Studies: German | Message 13 of 14 15 October 2005 at 3:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't know, everyone has an opinion
And, yes it's an example only for Serbian It's on others to decide 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 14 of 14 06 June 2006 at 2:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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From what I have gathered so far from my learning of Croatian, Croatian and Serbian have a tonal aspect (but not quite in the way that you would imagine with Chinese).
It seems that the quantity of the tone (short or long?) or its placement in the word rather than the quality of the tone (rising or falling?) distinguishes words that look the same in Croatian and Serbian. This is different from Chinese where different qualities of tones match differences in characters and meaning. For example, in Mandarin we have ma1, ma2, ma3 and ma4. One of them means horse, another means mother, yet another means hemp and a fourth one means to scold. (I don't know which tone corresponds to which meaning, but each tone of "ma" links to a different meaning.) In normal Croatian spelling, there is no difference between "govorimo" = 'we talk' and "govorimo" = 'let's talk' (imperative). However, in speech there is a difference. The form in the imperative has a short rising tone on the second 'o'. The form in the present tense has a short rising tone on the first 'o'. In certain texts (especially for linguists and beginning students), one would see diacritics on the vowels in order to help someone find out what is the correct pronunciation and placement of the tone. Another example is: "pravda" = 'he/she/it justifies' and "pravda" = justice. In the first "pravda", there is a long falling tone on the first 'a' and relatively long and steady accent on the last 'a'. In the second "pravda", there is a long falling tone on the first 'a' but nothing more with respect to tones or accent. Yet another example is "grad" = 'city' and "grad" = 'hail' In the first "grad", there is a long falling tone on the 'a' In the second "grad" there is a short falling tone on the 'a'. These distinctions of tone in Croatian are applicable for the standard formal language. In colloquial speech, the placement, quality and quantity of tones and accents differs quite a bit. There's an online text on grammar that deals briefly with tones and accents in Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian. I got explanations and a few of the examples from this site. Edited by Chung on 06 June 2006 at 2:56pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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