Talk:Comparison of Serbo-Croatian standard varieties/Archive 1

Article title

Don't move this page to "Differences in Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian" or something similar. There are reasons why it is named as it is. Nikola 06:16, 13 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Presumably, the reason is that Nikola feels they are all dialects of Serbo-Croatian language. This page is linked from there as a supplementary explanation. Personally I agree with the saying "language is a dialect with an army and a navy" but this page is useful no matter what the title is. --Shallot 13:01, 29 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Close. Anyway, I think that this is an excellent NPOV term as it is true both if they are dialects or not. Nikola 08:50, 2 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Igor's comment

This whole page is a joke, I am not surprised that Shallot wrote most of it... oh brother... I'll deal with it later. --Igor 10:30, 22 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Yeah, you "deal with it", just one more reason to propose to the administration that they prevent further vandalism. --Shallot 16:42, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Motivation

At the risk of opening a can of worms, would it be worth making a comment on the political motivation of differentiation?

Note that it's already covered in pages Serbo-Croatian language and Croatian language. --Shallot 16:42, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Jakob's comments

According to this page, i adopted from Croatian to pretty good Bosnian during just three months: I started saying organizovati and to use da-constructions, but realizovati still sounds somewhat alien.

Another thing about vocabulary: in my understanding which i built up speaking with people mostly in Osijek and Sarajevo and reading Croatian, some Serbian and little Bosnian, liciti means to look like predominantly in a transferred sense (to lici na njega) while I thought the word sliciti as in to be similar to be universal (slici na brata). And I know slikati or more precisely crtati rather thant liciti for to paint.

"Liciti", if I understand well, doesn't mean to paint artistically but to paint a wall. "Molovati", if you wish (which is an old Slavic word, by the way, though most people doesn't know that). Nikola

So you mean kreciti? Anyway, I would have thought molovati to be a Germanism, which my hr-nj dictionary confirms. But than again, there are many German words that are actually Slavic with most people not knowing (Grenze-granica, Ranzen-ranac,...)Jakob Stevo

Yes, but not only with krec, but with any kind of color. Yes, molovati comes from German "mallen" which in turn comes from Slavic "smolovati" (or was it "smoliti"?) (to cover with raisin). Nikola 14:14, 24 May 2004 (UTC)

I believe "ličiti" is synonymous with "krečiti" and "molovati" in normal use, yes. Colloquially, it's not often used (in favour of "krečiti", "farbati", "piturati"... :), and the form oličiti is also not very popular, but it is used in the common word "ličilac", for the handyman who does such work. (look up soboslikar i ličilac in the .hr phone directory for a sample) --Shallot 14:22, 24 May 2004 (UTC)

And I think it can be said that words like dzada or sargarepa are regionalisms and not actually used by everybody who consideres his/her language as Serbian. And the difference stol/sto is actually more morphology than vocabulary.

That's only partially correct. The words are regionalisms but at least some of them have entered standard language, with slightly changed meaning or entrenched in phrases. As for "sargarepa", it is almost universally used in Serbian. Nikola

More general to morphology: There are certainly missing forms like porez/poreza, minuta/minut, osnova/osnov. As is the h/v stuff (suh/suv, kuhati/kuvati), and the endings -telj/-lac. Jakob Stevo 16:38, 22 May 2004 (UTC)

Add an example or two of them. Nikola 11:04, 24 May 2004 (UTC)

So I will Jakob Stevo 13:15, 24 May 2004 (UTC)

verb sub-phrases

All three languages can form verb sub-phrases in two different ways, with use of infinitive, or with use of the helper word "da" (which could be translated to English as "to"; note that "da" also means "yes").

The sentence "I want to do that" could be translated with any of

"Hoću to da uradim"
"Hoću to uraditi"
Or "Will you do that?", which can be translated with both

"Da li ćeš to da uradiš?"
"Da li ćeš to uraditi?"

In most of Serbia and Bosnia, the first method is preferred in the vernacular, but in written language, the second method is frequently used to mean "will", while the first is used to mean "want to".

I think this part needs rewriting, for several factual errors and/or misguidances to an English-speaker. First, I'd rather call "da" a conjunction in this case rather than "helper word".
Second, the construct is always "da"+present tense.

Not neccesarily. It is possible to say, for example, "Voleo bih da sam to uradio". And you yourself give example in future tense below! Nikola

Third, I'd rather translate "da" in this context as "that" rather than "to": I'd translate "Hoću to da uradim" to English literally as "I want that I do that".

Don't agree. There's no second I in the original. "I want that I do that" would be literall translation of "Hocu da ja to uradim", which is quite different. Nikola

Fourth, since the Serbian distinction of "ću da uradim" vs. "ću uraditi" is similar to English will vs. shall so the meaning is not obvious. I'd replace the above "will" with "shall" (I shall do it is AFAIK still perfectly fine English, although shall disappears esp. from Am.En., but it better disambiguates the translation).

I'm not so certain. Shall would proably be translated as "Trebao bih to da uradim/Trebao bih to uraditi". Perhaps it would be the best to avoid weak will/shall distinction and use some other verb insted (for example "voleo bih to da uradim" - I would like to that). Nikola

Then, few words could also be spared on related construction of future tense :
"Uradit ću to" (Croatian)
"Uradiću to" (Serbian)
"Ja ću to uraditi" (Both, "I shall do that")
"Ja ću to da uradim" (Serbian, "I will/want to do that". Probably occurs in colloquial Cr. although I'd guess It would be treated as "Serbism" in official circles)

Comments?

About that last part -- "Ja ću to da uradim" is rather rarely used in any sort of Croatian. "Ja ću da to napravim" would be more like it (though not more common than "Ja ću to napravit'" which is closer to the norm). --Shallot 16:12, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Ja cu to da uradim is probably an extreme case, but there are examples where, as it says in the article, vernacular would basically use "da"-constructions, while written Croatian requires infinitive. The thing that people probably really would see as a serbism about that sentence maybe isn't even so much the "da" itself, but rather the place where it is ("to da" instead of "da to"). Comment of a non-native speaker, tell me if I'm wrong. Jakob Stevo 16:30, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Like I said, many "da" constructs are used in the vernacular, but at the same time it's not like non-"da" forms aren't used either. (Notice that I was replying to the comment above and not to the article text.) Also, many of those "da" forms that aren't spoken in .hr aren't spoken simply because they don't sound in the spirit of the language spoken in Croatia, hence the people don't feel a pressing need to prefer them over other forms. It's getting a tad frustrating to have to keep elaborating that not everything is result of (conspiracy|language police|self-censorship), sorry about my tone... --Shallot 18:04, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I was not meaning to imply any conspiracy, maybe I should have sad "not in the spirit of the language" instead of "serbism". But then, even in Austria which has not gone through a war and considers her language as German alright, there are a lot of constructions people would see as "Germany-isms", knowing that they are normal in .de but not in .at - and it doesn't have to do with "self-censorship" or "conspiracy", it's just we don't say it (or if you want "they don't sound in the spirit of the language") - but simply knowing that they are alright in Germany they are conceived as coming from there. So, saying "serbism", I wanted to say "a feature that is not common, but known to common in Serbian" rather than "a feature that has to be extinguished as it's anti-Croatian". --Jakob Stevo 23:47, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)