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Croatian links? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
 magister Pro Member United States Joined 6384 days ago 346 posts - 421 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Turkish, Irish Personal Language Map | Message 1 of 10 14 March 2007 at 3:42pm | IP Logged |
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I just found out that I'm being sent to Croatia for 8 or 9 days. Naturally, as a language enthusiast, I intend to learn as much as I can before I go. However, I only have a mere 3 weeks. I do have a bit of a head start since I know Czech well, and I have some basic Russian.
I picked up a used copy of the inadequate "Teach Yourself Serbo-Croat" by David Norris. But I need to hear some audio, especially because the stress in Croatian is mobile, and the book does not address this. So far the only site I've found is here, which is good for only a few phrases. Anyone know of a site that's more substantial? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6937 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 2 of 10 14 March 2007 at 5:09pm | IP Logged |
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This is the link to the DLI's info. A little skimpy, but better than nothing
This is a link to a French site. Again a little skimpy and only useful if your knowledge of French is decent: This is a site created by a teacher for his courses in BCS. It's a little bit of a hodgepodge and meant for intermediate students, but there are some online exercises on the lower half of the page along with links to some his handouts (charts of declension, lists of required vocabulary etc.) This is another site created by a teacher. It has some exercises and a colourful webpage. It's too bad that the old Teach Yourself SC book isn't of much use to you. The funny thing is that the Croatian successor (i.e. Teach Yourself Croatian) is a bit skimpier than the Serbian successor (i.e. Teach Yourself Serbian). I finished TY Croatian last year before going to Croatia and it wasn't bad, but when I compared it to TY Serbian, I was puzzled and a little disappointed that the Croatian version was about 30% thinner even though the lessons were designed very similarly and both courses were written by Norris. The Serbian course went a little further than the Croatian one. Unfortunately, Norris doesn't bother to indicate stress or pitch in his courses. I don't know why this is since knowing the pitch and accent is important if you want to speak properly. (N.B. A lot of Serbs and Croats in colloquial speech nowadays make distinctions only in stress placement. The distinctions in pitch and sometimes even in length haved faded considerably. In Bosnia, however, the pitch and stress distinctions per the textbooks are still used very often even in colloquial speech.) If you can (but don't feel like spending $80 for the entire package) try to find in a library the new course by Ronelle Alexander, "Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian". She created a textbook with recordings on CDs and a grammar book with some sociolinguistic commentary. Perhaps you could do the first few chapters of the textbook but skip getting the grammar book just to give yourself a quick introduction and some practice in Croatian before leaving. (Her course is excellent and I wish that I had used it as my primary resource instead of the combination of TY Croatian and Magner's "Introduction to the Croatian and Serbian Language.") Both of her books show the stress and pitch patterns on all of the words, and also point every time which word or structure is accepted (or most frequently-used) by speakers in Bosnia, Croatia or Serbia respectively. Edited by Chung on 14 March 2007 at 8:32pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tspier2 Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6265 days ago 38 posts - 38 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, Macedonian, Afrikaans | Message 3 of 10 14 March 2007 at 6:54pm | IP Logged |
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ielanguages.com/croatian.html
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| Eriol Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6647 days ago 118 posts - 130 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Portuguese | Message 4 of 10 16 March 2007 at 3:05am | IP Logged |
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GLOSS has quite a lot of Croatian audio with scripts and translations. None of it is really beginner material though, but it might work for you anyway since you have a solid background in other slavic languages.
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| magister Pro Member United States Joined 6384 days ago 346 posts - 421 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Turkish, Irish Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 10 20 March 2007 at 2:14pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks to all of you for your input. I appreciate it!
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| magister Pro Member United States Joined 6384 days ago 346 posts - 421 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Turkish, Irish Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 10 23 March 2007 at 8:36am | IP Logged |
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Chung,
Some elementary Croatian questions: 1. Where is the stress in infinitives? On the penultimate syllable? E.g., dolaziti? 2. Where is the stress in the first and second person plural forms of the present tense? E.g., imate or imate? 3. Do final voiced consonants become voiceless, as in Czech and other Slavic languages? I.e., is izlaz pronounced as if it were izlas? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6937 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 7 of 10 23 March 2007 at 9:23am | IP Logged |
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Unfortunately, I know of no easy way to predict the position of the stress for you. All that I know for certain is that in standard Bosnian / Croatian / Serbian, stress cannot fall on the last syllable. In some dialects, this rule doesn't hold.
If I recall correctly, I don't remember hearing Serbs or Croats pronouncing final voiced consonants as voiceless (as you would hear it in Czech, Slovak or Polish). I'll check on this in my books on Slavonic linguistics later today. I'll also check my books to see if I can find out the position of the stress and pitch-accent for those words. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| daristani Senior Member United States Joined 6925 days ago 752 posts - 1661 votes Studies: Uzbek | Message 8 of 10 23 March 2007 at 11:42am | IP Logged |
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I don't know whether it will be helpful to you or not, but here's an on-line reference handbook to Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian:
http://www.seelrc.org:8080/grammar/mainframe.jsp?nLanguageID =1 1 person has voted this message useful |
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