Serbo-Croatian
This thread was deleted but here it is again.
Ive read that the language is being evolved by nationalists in different new republics like Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia etc. Is that really true? Why is that happening? Are there standards for a unified, literature language?
What is the #1 foreign language?
Actually, if anyone KNOWS SCB, I've love to hear from them. How is the word eyeglasses pronounced? What does the symbol '' mean? Thanks.
What is a separate 'language' and what is a 'dialect' of the same language anyway? This is most often a cultural and political question. The splitting of serbocroatian illustrates this point better than anything else. There was one nation yugoslavia and they had one major language. Later it split into several states and so did the language. The same situation is with scandinavian languages: swedish, danish, norvegian. They are also like dialects of the same language...
Vytenis, please forgive me, but what you say is stupid.
It took centuries for Scandinavian languages to evolve. Cerbo Croatian was the same 10 years ago. Why would they try to support regional differences? That makes communication harder and the language less useful.
<<Cerbo Croatian was the same 10 years ago<<
Actually, there was never a single language, not in a known history. Linguistically it is certainly same language; S,C and B (and Montenegro) being a dialects, but politically this dialects have allways been separated. The history of the region is available on the net (search: Otoman empire, Austria-Hungary, Yugoslavia...) and I don't have time for that, but trust me: Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian people have lived in separate poltical entities for a long, long time before forming Yugoslavia in 1918. Even within Yugoslavia, nations and dialects remained parted since they had their own political and economical entities - republics. During the Yu era there were attempts to form a unified language but they have failed. There was some natural progress towards unification, due to intensive cultural and economical (etc.) ties, but this has never been really important. Since the destruction of Yu and splitting, SCB dialects basically rediscovered their historical differences and drifted further away, helped by nationalism and bloody war.
The languages are still mutually intelligible, but it is very politically incorrect to talk about them as a single language.
The #1 foreign language is definitively English
<<How is the word eyeglasses pronounced?<<
Do you mean naočale/naočare? I'm not a linguist and I cannot use x-sampa but I'd say: nao-cha-leh.
<<What does the symbol '' mean?<<
I have no idea what are you talking about.
For Guest
So that illustrates my point. It all depends on an attitude: during the times of Yugoslavia there was a tendency to call it one language and after it break up it became "politically incorrect" and now everybody talks in Croatian, Serbian etc. I have just returned from Croatia and did not notice the term "serbocroatian" used there...
The term Serbocroatian was used during the Yu period for Serbian variant, while Croatian variant was called Croatoserbian. And yes, you're right. It's all about politics.
facts:
Croatian has 3 dialects: kajkavski, cakavski, stokavski
Kajkavski is close to Slovenian, Stokavski is close to Serbian and Cakavski is uniquely Croatian. Serbian people understand stokavski only, not kajkavski (spoken in Northwest of Croatia) and cakavski (spoken in the West)...
nevertheless, basic vocabulary is different between Croatian stokavski and Serbian stokavski (serbian also have many dialects, some of them are close to Bulgarian, like dialects of east and south of Serbia) much more different than USvsUK English and BrazilianvsContinentalPOrtuguese
I don't think vocabulary is that much different, what is your source?
And Serbians understand all Croatian dialects, some better then others, but they do.
''And Serbians understand all Croatian dialects''
This is not true.
it's like saying Spanish understand all Portuguese dialects.
Croatian and Serbian are like Dutch and German - different languages, but some dialects are shared (a Dutch speaker from Maastricht can understand Northern German dialects like Hamburgese dialect very well, less so a Hochdeutsch dialect from the neighboring city Aachen in Germany)
even phonetics is pretty different, Croatian has 5 vowels (+ alveolarR-colored shwa) which are pronounced as in Spanish...
Serbian has 7 vowel qualities, O and E can be both open and closed, like in French, Italian and Portuguese, although the difference is not phonologic (similar to some French and Italian dialects that have open and closed realizations of O and E but the differences are not phonologic)...It's the most striking feature of Serbian...some vowels are very open, some are very closed...
try here:
Pronunce straniere dell'italiano (in Italian)
http://venus.unive.it/canipa/pdf/03_4_exIugoslavia.pdf
Compare vowels realizations of Serbian and Croatian, pretty different...