[Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian] Discussion Group

[TeneReef]

bojati se is a pronominal verb (but it's not a reflexive verb).
bojati (or bojiti) means to color

lagati (to lie, to tell lies) is difficult

lažem (I lie, I am lying)
lažem si (I lie to myself) (Croatian) /dative reflexive/
lažem se (I lie to myself) (Serbian) /accusative reflexive/

Političari nam lažu (Cro) - političari nas lažu (Ser)
Politicians lie to us

In Kajkavian Croatian pronominal verbs are extremely common:
se (v)učím I am studying (for učim)
si sedni! Sit down! (for sjedni!)
daj si nekaj pojedi (do) eat something (for daj pojedi nešto)


Bojati se is like temerse in Spanish
bojim se da si u pravu - me temo que tienes razón
I'm afraid you're right

With brinuti you can use both brinuti or brinuti se
Ne brini! or Ne brini se!
for No te preocupes (Spanish) - Não se preocupe (Portuguese) ~ Non ti preoccupare (Italian)
Don't worry!
You can ''sense'' the reflexivity in the passive voice: Don't get preoccupied!.

(u)plašiti - to scare
(u)plašiti se - to get scared

[Unknown]

Поздрав свима, мој српскохрватски није много добар, па ћу да објави много постова на овом језику, и ако имам грешкама, молимо, исправите ме. Сврху се то уради је да се побољша моју способност на овом језику, као и да постану течно говори језику.

Pozdrav svima, moj srpskohrvatski nije mnogo dobar, pa ću da objavi mnogo postova na ovom jeziku, i ako imam pogreškama, molimo, ispravite me. Svrhu se to učiniti je poboljšati moju sposobnost na ovom jeziku, kao i da postanu tečno govori jeziku.

Hello everyone, my Serbo-Croatian is not very good, so I am going to post a lot of posts in this language, and if I have mistakes, please correct me. The purpose of doing this is to improve my ability in this language, and to become fluent in the language.

[Saim]

Pozdrav svima, moj srpskohrvatski nije mnogo baš/tako dobar, pa ću da objavi mnogo postova pišem mnogo poruke na ovom jeziku, i ako imam pogreškama progrešim/napravim greške, molimo vas, ispravite me. Svrhu se to učiniti je poboljšati moju sposobnost na ovom jeziku, kao i da postanu tečno govori jeziku. Svrha je da poboljšam jezik tako da bih tečno govorio.

Bolje te ide.

[Midnight]

Здраво, како сте сви? I found this site and there aer differences in vocabulary like f.e. кафа - кава - кахва. Are there some big differences, that one has to know? Like heavy accents or absolutely different words rather than what I've written above?

[Saim]

Pozdrav svima, moj srpskohrvatski nije mnogo baš/tako dobar, pa ću da objavi mnogo postova pišem mnogo poruke 3 na ovom jeziku, i ako imam pogreškama progrešim/napravim greške2, molimo vas, ispravite me. Svrhu se to učiniti je poboljšati moju sposobnost na ovom jeziku, kao i da postanu tečno govori jeziku. Svrha je da poboljšam jezik tako da bih tečno govorio.

Bolje te ide 1 .

Ajde malo sebe da popravim

1. Bolje ti ide, uz dativ.

2. Treba da koristi "grešim" i "pravim greške" u mesto "progrešim" i "napravim greške" jer je ponovljena akcija i dakle mora da ide uz imperfektivni vid. Štaviše, ne bi bilo "progrešim" (besmislen glagol), nego "pogrešim".

3. "Pišem mnogo poruka" u mesto "pišem mnogo poruke". "Mnogo" aktivira genitiv plural, bez obzira na koji aktivira padež "pišem" (odnosno, zato što "mnogo" ide posle "pišem").

Здраво, како сте сви? I found this site and there aer differences in vocabulary like f.e. кафа - кава - кахва. Are there some big differences, that one has to know? Like heavy accents or absolutely different words rather than what I've written above?

To pitanje je nešto generalno... ali mogu da ti kažem da najveća razlika postoji između Štokavski govor i nekoliko drugih neknjiževnih dialekata "srpskog" i "hrvatskog", ne između standardne vrste srpskog, hrvatskog i bosanskog (i sad crnogorskog). Odnosno, ti dijalekti koji se govore u Južnoj Srbiji (Torlak i sve ostalo), i u severozapadnoj (odnosno, Kajkavski, što se liči više na slovenački nego na standardne vrste srpskohrvatskog) i severojužnoj (mislim Čakavaksi, što se nekad govorio [govorilo?] u celoj Dalmaciji ali sada samo u Istriji i nekoliko adriatičkih ostrva) Hrvatskoj.

Što se tiče štokavskih dijalekata, naravno da postoji razlike. U ijekavskom govoru, bismo rekli ovako:

Želim popit' mlijeko/mljeko.

A na ekavskom;

Želim da popijem mleko.

Ali ti si pitao/la o neregularnim razlikama, zar ne? Ne znam toliko o tome, ali možeš da ideš na ovaj sajt i da čitaš:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference ... Vocabulary

[mademoiselle]

U rečenici: Povremeno protkano po kojim osmehom. Da li je protkano glagol?

[kibo]

Najsigurnije je reći da je u tom slučaju protkano pridev.

[Jupiter]

Здраво! Cześć! That's my first post on this forum, but I think I'll be a frequent visitor here

I decided to learn Serbian a few weeks ago because in my opinion Balkans are incredible region with a fascinating history and beautiful, interesting languages (especially Serbian and Croatian).

Of course, I’m beginner in learning Serbian, but I’ve still got some doubts in writing several letters in Cyrillic, e.g. Г, Д, Ђ, Ж, И, Љ, Њ, П, Ћ, Ц, Ч, Џ, Ш – both upper and lower case. So I’ve got a request. Can anybody send me (michi38@op.pl) an example of an ordinary handwritten Serbian text, which contains these letters? I’ll be really grateful

Thanks in advance,
Jupiter

[Saim]

Dobrodošao u Unilang, Jupiteru! Nadam se da ćeš se ovde dobro provesti

Nemam skener, a u svakom slučaju moj rukopis nije baš najbolji, ali evo ti jednog primera pisane ćirilice:

http://www.cirilica.com/cirilica/Strane ... saCir.html

(I don't have a scanner and in any case my handwriting isn't very good, but here's one example of written Cyrillic)

[Jupiter]

I was looking for something like that. Thanks. Hvala Saim

[Saim]

Nema na čemu brate Srećno sa srpskim!

[pauluszk]

Hi all!

I had decided to pick my "Croatian" up again . I had 8 years of study in the elementary school, but didn't succeed. Unfortunately I havent found any croatian language courses or researches I could use,
but a lot of interesting stuff for learning Serbian. (I have yet to check them out, just saw the ammount, which is by far larger than the Croatian.)

My questions:
-Would I get in trouble or confused if I rather start learning Serbian? (I saw that the language exams divide the languages, so you can take an exam both in Serbian and Croatian. Might in the future that would be my aim). I know there are differences in the vocabulary.For example cause of my studies i would use "rijeka" instead of "reka" and know the kitchen as "kuhinja" so on.

-Is it important to learn all the Serbian forms?
-For example what would happen if in a Serbian language exam I wrote "kruh"?

My grammar is on scratch so I think I could get used to the Serbian (which what i have seen so far is exactly the same. ja sam ti si on je etc.)

But with some vocabulary training in Croatian my vocabulary knowledge would be about a B1 I'm sure...
Can it be "transported" to Serbian? : D

And before I forget it:
I have seen the Serbo-Croation expression or "group" and heard it several times.
What is it? Is it a mixture of the languages? All i found on is about religion.

Thx for everybody try to help me.

[Ludwig Whitby]

-You can use ijekavian in Serbian as well. Rijeka and kuhinja are Serbian words as well.

-Kruh isn't a Serbian word. In an exam that would be a mistake. In everyday conversation everyone would understand what you mean, though.

-Basic grammar is the same. There are only a handful of grammatical differences all together.

I see no reason why you can't switch to Serbian, really.

And before I forget it:
I have seen the Serbo-Croation expression or "group" and heard it several times.
What is it? Is it a mixture of the languages? All i found on is about religion.

I don't understand what you mean. Serbo-Croatian is (was) a language with a few variants that in time became languages of their own.

[Saim]

For the purposes of a foreign learner, Serbian is Croatian and Croatian is Serbian. Serbo-Croatian was the official name of the language in the Yugoslavia days. Nowadays, speakers just call it naš jezik (our language). The term Serbo-Croatian is mostly limited to non-Bakan academic literature. I still call it srpski among Serbs, but Serbo-Croatian among non-Balkan people so they don't get confused.

Interestingly enough, the main linguistic differences are within state borders. The Shtokavian dialect of Croatian is nearly identical to (also Shtokavian) Serbian, and this is the native language of a majority of Croats and the basis of the standard language. The traditional dialects from Zagreb northwards (Kaykavian) are closer to Slovene than to Standard Croatian, while those of Istria and parts of Dalmatia (Chakavian) are distinct from both. Finally, in southern Serbia local dialects (Torlak) transition into the Macedonian-Bulgarian linguistic area.

So ultimately, all the standards are very close, and majorities of speakers in all 4 countries are speakers of something close to the standards (Shtokavian dialects).

[pauluszk]

Thx guys the promt-replies. Figured out what i wanted to know. Btw. another question, a frend of mine recommended me a book called "Teach yourself Serbian".Is it a good book?
I had been using one from this serie in Indonesian and found the teaching method pretty informative and useful. Hopin' this one will be close to that Indonesian.

[hemflit]

-Kruh isn't a Serbian word. In an exam that would be a mistake. In everyday conversation everyone would understand what you mean, though.

Are you sure? I know it sounds non-standard enough that it wouldn't be used in Serbian newspapers today, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's not Serbian.
One of my grandmas, a rural* Serbian woman, used it all the time. (She didn't pronounce the H's though, so it was krȕ, krȕva, krȕvu etc.)

* Rural as in grew up in a small mountain village, and not likely to have had her original idiom influenced too much by the sweeping language changes of the 20th century.

I guess a good argument for or against would be to check if it's recognized by a modern Serbian dictionary, but I don't have one.


(Of course, what exactly would happen if Paulusz used it in an exam depends more on the school/teacher than on the actual standardization status of the word. In a way, it's definitely a mistake to use it thinking that it's a plain unmarked word in Serbian.)

[kibo]

Kruh is indeed found in the Dictionary of Matica srpska (and it's the recent one-volume edition from a few years ago). The only time when I would use the word kruh is in the (fixed) expression Ići trbuhom za kruhom, otherwise I would use hleb-

[voron]

Kruh is indeed found in the Dictionary of Matica srpska (and it's the recent one-volume edition from a few years ago). The only time when I would use the word kruh is in the (fixed) expression Ići trbuhom za kruhom, otherwise I would use hleb-

All the Serbian and Croatian dictionaries that I used so far (Matica srpska, SANU, Morton-Benson, Anić, HJP) list both "Serbian" and "Croatian" words.

For example:
SANU: влак м (лок. влаку; мн. влакови, влаци) 1. (претежно у зап. кр.) воз, железничка композиција
Morton-Benson: vlak vlakovi (W) train
HJP: voz 2. srp. vlak

[TeneReef]

In Croatian, there's an expression: hljeb kruha: a loaf of bread.

[pauluszk]

Zdravo!

I have successfully slacked the summer off . I really didnt learn anything...But after relieseing it, i decided to immerse in Serbian again.To my biggest astonishment I noticed that my cyrillic reading skills that I had left undone, improved a lot. I almost always recognize all of them.Ofc. slowlier than the latin script, but its a big progress which I'm proud of:D .So, to come to the fact, i have learned that in serbian if i wanna say "I want to learn serbian" i have got to use ""Hoću da učim srpski"."
insted of the croatian version which is "Hoću učiti srpski".But what if in this case?
I want to learn to speak serbian. Is it the same as in English? Just asking it cuz it looks a bit odd to me :d
Hoću da učim da pričam srpski.

Hvala:)