[Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian] Discussion Group

langmon
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How to start learning BCS tonality?

Postby langmon » 2018-11-10, 10:17

How to start learning BCS tonality?
Any possibility of making a direct mental link between it and the tonality of Mandarin/Yoruba/etc. ?
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Re: Is there something like a common (shared) BCS subset?

Postby Saim » 2018-12-08, 22:58

SomehowGeekyPolyglot wrote:What if someone would like to be able to talk to anyone in BCMS, but only was able to learn one single language/one single variant?
Is there any way to learn something close to a "BCMS common (shared) language subset"?


Uopšte ne razumem ovo pitanje.
I don't understand this question at all.

SomehowGeekyPolyglot wrote:How to start learning BCS tonality?
Any possibility of making a direct mental link between it and the tonality of Mandarin/Yoruba/etc. ?


Pa verovatno kad bi znao mandarinski ili joruba jezik mogao bi nekako uporediti tonske sisteme. Ali po tvom profilu ne znaš nijedan od tih jezika.
I guess if you knew Mandarin or Yoruba you could compare the tonal systems. But according to your profile you don't know any of these languages.

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Re: Is there something like a common (shared) BCS subset?

Postby langmon » 2018-12-09, 2:59

Saim wrote:
SomehowGeekyPolyglot wrote:What if someone would like to be able to talk to anyone in BCMS, but only was able to learn one single language/one single variant?
Is there any way to learn something close to a "BCMS common (shared) language subset"?
Uopšte ne razumem ovo pitanje.
I don't understand this question at all.


What I meant is... someone could learn Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrian and Serbian. This means learning four different languages/variants.

Is there any possibility to learn it a single time only, but still being able to (fully) speak to everyone in the BCMS countries? Like restricting one's learning process to words that are the same in all three (BCS) / four?

SomehowGeekyPolyglot wrote:How to start learning BCS tonality?
Any possibility of making a direct mental link between it and the tonality of Mandarin/Yoruba/etc. ?

Pa verovatno kad bi znao mandarinski ili joruba jezik mogao bi nekako uporediti tonske sisteme. Ali po tvom profilu ne znaš nijedan od tih jezika.
I guess if you knew Mandarin or Yoruba you could compare the tonal systems. But according to your profile you don't know any of these languages.
Yes, it is true that I don't know Mandarin and Yoruba. However, I am still familiar enough with their tones :). So if anyone knows something on how to compare Mandarin or Yoruba tones to those of BCSM...
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Re: Is there something like a common (shared) BCS subset?

Postby Saim » 2018-12-09, 8:57

SomehowGeekyPolyglot wrote:What I meant is... someone could learn Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrian and Serbian. This means learning four different languages/variants.

Is there any possibility to learn it a single time only, but still being able to (fully) speak to everyone in the BCMS countries? Like restricting one's learning process to words that are the same in all three (BCS) / four?


Yes, that's how pretty much all foreigners do it. I'm not aware of anyone learning to actively use all four standards as they're almost identical. I've heard lots of anecdotes of people getting complemented on their 'Montenegrin' or 'Bosnian' after having learned 'Serbian'. The structural differences (morphology, syntax) are almost negligible; the main differences are in prosody and pitch accent, certain technical terms and loanwords, certain regional differences when referring to things like food, household items, etc. (and even that varies just as much or more by region as by nation-state/ethnoreligious group).

In Croatia there may be a bit of resistance towards forms perceived as 'Serbian' among nationalists but that's far from universal and I think even they'll generally make allowances for people who are obviously not native speakers. I've been to Dubrovnik and Zagreb and met loads of Croatians in other parts of Europe and have never had any trouble communicating with them, although we had some fun realising that some of the words for everyday household objects are different (like frying pan - tiganj - tava), that's not any different to if I were to say dooner, thongs or goon to an uninitiated American. Furthermore, that can even happen within different regions of Serbia or Croatia, although less and less due to the influence of the "prestige dialect" speech of the capital cities as well as the respective standards.

Standard Croatian can sometimes have quite different technical terms to Standard Serbian (depending on the field), so if your goal is to eventually professionally translate legal texts it might make sense to treat them as separate languages. In any other context, however, it'll be enough to learn one variety and pick up the tiny differences as you go along.

Yes, it is true that I don't know Mandarin and Yoruba. However, I am still familiar enough with their tones :). So if anyone knows something on how to compare Mandarin or Yoruba tones to those of BCSM...


Here someone compares Mandarin tones and BCHS pitch accent (one poster seems to think that Mandarin is a "monosyllabic language" but other than that it might help you out):
https://forum.wordreference.com/threads ... t.1941776/

Here I ask how to learn/perfect pitch accent:
https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... php?t=8551

In general it's more important to know correct word stress, and vowel quality and length than the exact pitch accent. In Croatia plenty of people, including people from Zagreb, don't use any pitch accent system at all.

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Re: Is there something like a common (shared) BCS subset?

Postby langmon » 2018-12-09, 9:34

Saim wrote:
SomehowGeekyPolyglot wrote:What I meant is... someone could learn Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrian and Serbian. This means learning four different languages/variants.[...]

Yes, that's how pretty much all foreigners do it. I'm not aware of anyone learning to actively use all four standards as they're almost identical. [...]

Your post really did cover more aspects than I expected ;).

(In a situation like this one, generally speaking, I could sometimes even PM the member for a big thank you. But I wouldn't feel like publicly making it a big deal for more than one reason).

And I do need to revise several of these BCSM topics that have been mentioned. Sort of a spaced repetition, but about the languages' structures and so on.

Also, I personally didn't really realize up to now that it seems that links to another language forum would be possible. But you are more experienced than me. As for the other way around (linking from the other forum to this one), I am not entirely sure whether it is possible. Even if I am parallel-posting rather often, but without any linking. (This is about my logs. Many times, there was double input even :). And as for the one about botany, it is UniLang only, at least for now).


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Re: Is there something like a common (shared) BCS subset?

Postby vijayjohn » 2019-05-31, 6:41

Saim wrote:I'm not aware of anyone learning to actively use all four standards as they're almost identical.

Well...I did (try to?) learn to actively use both Croatian and Serbian (have I not mentioned this before?? I thought I had!), and my main resource teaches both alongside Bosnian (I guess it teaches Montenegrin, too, but it doesn't really consider that a separate language on the same level as B, C, and S). I started out learning Croatian because one of my cousins got married in Croatia, then focused on Serbian instead because another cousin got married to a Serbian American.
although we had some fun realising that some of the words for everyday household objects are different (like frying pan - tiganj - tava), that's not any different to if I were to say dooner, thongs or goon to an uninitiated American.

Thongs and goon mean something in American English, but I don't think they mean the same things in Australian English (I'm really just going off of vague memory here, though). Are there similar false friends between Serbian and Croatian, too? (If there are, I probably should have known them, in which case hopefully I'll be like "oh yeah, that!" :P).

I just used the wrong language didn't I

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Re: Is there something like a common (shared) BCS subset?

Postby Saim » 2019-05-31, 8:13

vijayjohn wrote:
Saim wrote:I'm not aware of anyone learning to actively use all four standards as they're almost identical.

Well...I did (try to?) learn to actively use both Croatian and Serbian (have I not mentioned this before?? I thought I had!), and my main resource teaches both alongside Bosnian (I guess it teaches Montenegrin, too, but it doesn't really consider that a separate language on the same level as B, C, and S). I started out learning Croatian because one of my cousins got married in Croatia, then focused on Serbian instead because another cousin got married to a Serbian American.


Do you actively try to keep them separate as different codes or did you just adapt your language to new speakers? I started learning (and speaking!) Mexican Spanish and then switched over to Spain Spanish for obvious reasons but wouldn't say I "actively learned" both.

Are there similar false friends between Serbian and Croatian, too? (If there are, I probably should have known them, in which case hopefully I'll be like "oh yeah, that!" :P).


Thw only thing that comes to mind is mrzi me da...

This is a real conversation I had with a Croatian friend:

-Mrzi me da idem.
-Šta? Ko te mrzi?

There are probably more but I can't really think of any. Of course there are vocab differences but they're not "false friends".

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Re: Is there something like a common (shared) BCS subset?

Postby vijayjohn » 2019-05-31, 16:38

Saim wrote:Do you actively try to keep them separate as different codes or did you just adapt your language to new speakers? I started learning (and speaking!) Mexican Spanish and then switched over to Spain Spanish for obvious reasons but wouldn't say I "actively learned" both.

I actively try to keep them separate. Some people in my experience seem sensitive to small differences.
vijayjohn wrote:Are there similar false friends between Serbian and Croatian, too? (If there are, I probably should have known them, in which case hopefully I'll be like "oh yeah, that!" :P).


Thw only thing that comes to mind is mrzi me da...

This is a real conversation I had with a Croatian friend:

-Mrzi me da idem.
-Šta? Ko te mrzi?

I looked it up, and Ronelle Alexander says mrzi me da is the Serbian equivalent of Bosnian and Croatian ne da mi se, but aren't šta and ko also both more common in Serbia? So I can't tell which quote is from you and which is from the Croatian friend. :hmm:

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Re: Is there something like a common (shared) BCS subset?

Postby Saim » 2019-05-31, 19:04

vijayjohn wrote:I looked it up, and Ronelle Alexander says mrzi me da is the Serbian equivalent of Bosnian and Croatian ne da mi se, but aren't šta and ko also both more common in Serbia? So I can't tell which quote is from you and which is from the Croatian friend. :hmm:


Šta and ko are non-standard in Croatia but they are quite common in the colloquial language. :)

For example, here's how the Tram 11 (a Zagreb hip hop group) song Hrvatski velikani starts:

Da se predstavim: ko sam, / što sam došao i šta radim

Note that here što means zašto as it generally does in Serbia, and not šta.

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Re: Is there something like a common (shared) BCS subset?

Postby vijayjohn » 2019-06-01, 6:13

Saim wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:I looked it up, and Ronelle Alexander says mrzi me da is the Serbian equivalent of Bosnian and Croatian ne da mi se, but aren't šta and ko also both more common in Serbia? So I can't tell which quote is from you and which is from the Croatian friend. :hmm:


Šta and ko are non-standard in Croatia but they are quite common in the colloquial language. :)

Oh OK. I wasn't sure how many other things that book was wrong about. :silly:

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Re: Is there something like a common (shared) BCS subset?

Postby voron » 2019-06-01, 10:49

Saim wrote:-Mrzi me da idem.
-Šta? Ko te mrzi?

Lol really, there are Croats who don't understand "mrzi me"? Given that it's such a common expression, how isolated from the Serbian culture they should be.

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Re: Is there something like a common (shared) BCS subset?

Postby Saim » 2019-06-02, 10:10

voron wrote:
Saim wrote:-Mrzi me da idem.
-Šta? Ko te mrzi?

Lol really, there are Croats who don't understand "mrzi me"? Given that it's such a common expression, how isolated from the Serbian culture they should be.


Pa već se dvaput desilo da me ne razumeju, jednom sa onom drugaricom iz Slavonije i jednom sa Zagrebčankom. :lol:

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Re: [Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian] Discussion Group

Postby vijayjohn » 2019-06-02, 15:41

Pa Hrvati ne razumiju izraz "mrzi me da" i Srbi ne poznaju izraz "hvala/fala l((i)j)epa." :P

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Re: [Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian] Discussion Group

Postby Saim » 2019-06-02, 20:22

vijayjohn wrote:Pa Hrvati ne razumiju izraz "mrzi me da" i Srbi ne poznaju izraz "hvala/fala l((i)j)epa." :P


Mislim, to će svako razumeti po kontekstu, moguće da će nekim Srbima čudno zvučiti, nego baš bi me čudilo kad bi se neko zbunio zbog tog izraza. Čini mi se da bi većina Srba čak i znala da je to hrvatski izraz, ali ko će ga znati, možda lupetam.

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Re: [Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian] Discussion Group

Postby Versus » 2019-08-15, 19:47

Razumeju i Srbi Hrvate i Hrvati Srbe odlično.

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Re: [Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian] Discussion Group

Postby Saim » 2019-08-29, 13:58

Versus wrote:Razumeju i Srbi Hrvate i Hrvati Srbe odlično.


Da da, naravno, ipak jeste isti jezik uprkos razlici u nazivu. Nego postoji mogućnost da bi neki regionalni izrazi mogli da zbune govornike iz drugih krajeva (kao u slučaju pretežno srbijanskog/vojvođanskog izraza mrzi me da...). Nije to posebnost BCHS govornog područja: neće me ni prosečan Amerikanac razumeti kad zovem japanke "thongs", jer je "thong" kod njih tangica, a japanke su "flip-flops".

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Re: [Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian] Discussion Group

Postby cHr0mChIk » 2019-08-31, 21:46

vijayjohn wrote:Pa Hrvati ne razumiju izraz "mrzi me da" i Srbi ne poznaju izraz "hvala/fala l((i)j)epa." :P


I don't know what you mean by that... We use "hvala lepo" in Serbia all the time :hmm: :hmm: it's a standard, common expression.
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Re: Is there something like a common (shared) BCS subset?

Postby cHr0mChIk » 2019-09-02, 18:38

vijayjohn wrote:-Mrzi me da idem.
-Šta? Ko te mrzi?


Hmm.. I wonder what would be the Croat equivalent of that phrase :hmm: :hmm:
Probably "mrsko mi je"... We use that as well.
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Re: Is there something like a common (shared) BCS subset?

Postby Saim » 2019-09-03, 8:48

cHr0mChIk wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:-Mrzi me da idem.
-Šta? Ko te mrzi?


Hmm.. I wonder what would be the Croat equivalent of that phrase :hmm: :hmm:
Probably "mrsko mi je"... We use that as well.


Mislim da je najbliži ekvivalent ne da mi se ići.

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Re: Is there something like a common (shared) BCS subset?

Postby cHr0mChIk » 2019-09-04, 19:36

Saim wrote:
cHr0mChIk wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:-Mrzi me da idem.
-Šta? Ko te mrzi?


Hmm.. I wonder what would be the Croat equivalent of that phrase :hmm: :hmm:
Probably "mrsko mi je"... We use that as well.


Mislim da je najbliži ekvivalent ne da mi se ići.


It seems to me that in here all 3 ways of saying it could be commonly heard... Although "mrzi" is more common than "mrsko"... even though I have some friends which rather say "mrsko", but they are mostly "izbeglice" from Bosnia...
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