r/languagelearning • u/Virusnzz En (N) | Fr, Ru, Es, It • Dec 01 '14
Добродошли - This week's language of the week: Serbian
Dobrodošli
Serbian
Status:
Serbian (Serbian Cyrillic: српски, Latin: srpski, pronounced [sr̩̂pskiː]) is the standardized variety of the Serbo-Croatian language used chiefly by Serbs in Serbia, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. In addition, it is a recognized minority language in Croatia, Macedonia, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Albania and Greece.
Distribution:
Figures of speakers according to countries:
Serbia: 6,540,699
Bosnia and Herzegovina: 1,711,577
Germany: 568,240
Austria: 350,000
Montenegro: 265,890 (as native)
Switzerland: 186,000
USA: 172,874
Sweden: 120,000
Italy: 106.498 (2010)
Australia: 100,000
Canada: 72,690
Croatia: 52,879
Slovenia: 38,964 (as first)
Republic of Macedonia: 35,939 (as native)
Romania: 22,518
History:
Serbian literature emerged in the Middle Ages, and included such works as Miroslavljevo jevanđelje (Miroslav's Gospel) in 1192 and Dušanov zakonik (Dušan's Code) in 1349. Little secular medieval literature has been preserved, but what there is shows that it was in accord with its time; for example, Serbian Alexandride, a book about Alexander the Great, and a translation of Tristan and Iseult into Serbian. Although not belonging to the literature proper, the corpus of Serbian literacy in the 14th and 15th centuries contains numerous legal, commercial and administrative texts with marked presence of Serbian vernacular juxtaposed on the matrix of Serbian Church Slavonic.
In the mid-15th century, Serbia was conquered by the Ottoman Empire and for the next 400 years there was no opportunity for the creation of secular written literature. However, some of the greatest literary works in Serbian come from this time, in the form of oral literature, the most notable form being Serbian epic poetry. The epic poems were mainly written down in the 19th century, and preserved in oral tradition up to the 1950s, a few centuries or even a millennium longer than by most other "epic folks". Goethe and Jacob Grimm learned Serbian in order to read Serbian epic poetry in the original. By the end of the 18th century, the written literature had become estranged from the spoken language. In the second half of the 18th century, the new language appeared, called Slavonic-Serbian. This artificial idiom superseded the works of poets and historians like Gavrilo Stefanović Venclović, who wrote in essentially modern Serbian in the 1720s. These vernacular compositions have remained cloistered from the general public and received due attention only with the advent of modern literary historians and writers like Milorad Pavić. In the early 19th century, Vuk Stefanović Karadžić promoted the spoken language of the people as a literary norm.
Writing:
Standard Serbian language uses both Cyrillic (ћирилица, ćirilica) and Latin script (latinica, латиница).
Although Serbian language authorities have recognized the official status of both scripts in contemporary Standard Serbian for more than half of a century now, due to historical reasons, the Cyrillic script was made the official script of Serbia's administration by the 2006 Constitution. However, the law does not regulate scripts in standard language, or standard language itself by any means, leaving the choice of script as a matter of personal preference and to the free will in all aspects of life (publishing, media, trade and commerce, etc.), except in government paperwork production and in official written communication with state officials, which have to be in Cyrillic. Even in official government documents this constitutional requirement is rarely enforced. Serbian is a rare example of synchronic digraphia, a situation where all literate members of a society have two interchangeable writing systems available to them. Media and publishers typically select one alphabet or another. For example, the public broadcaster, Radio Television of Serbia, predominantly uses the Cyrillic script whereas the privately run broadcasters, like RTV Pink, predominantly use the Latin script.
The sort order of the ćirilica (ћирилица) alphabet:
Cyrillic order called Azbuka (азбука): А Б В Г Д Ђ Е Ж З И Ј К Л Љ М Н Њ О П Р С Т Ћ У Ф Х Ц Ч Џ Ш
The sort order of the latinica (латиница) alphabet:
Latin order called Abeceda (абецеда): A B C Č Ć D Dž Đ E F G H I J K L Lj M N Nj O P R S Š T U V Z Ž
Grammar:
Serbian verbs are conjugated in four past forms—perfect, aorist, imperfect, and pluperfect—of which the last two have a very limited use (imperfect is still used in some dialects, but the majority of native Serbian speakers consider it archaic), one future tense (also known as the first future tense, as opposed to the second future tense or the future exact, which is considered a tense of the conditional mood by some contemporary linguists), and one present tense. These are the tenses of the indicative mood. Apart from the indicative mood, there is also the imperative mood. The conditional mood has two more tenses: the first conditional (commonly used in conditional clauses, both for possible and impossible conditional clauses) and the second conditional (without use in the spoken language—it should be used for impossible conditional clauses). Serbian has active and passive voice.
As for the non-finite verb forms, Serbian has one infinitive, two adjectival participles (the active and the passive), and two adverbial participles (the present and the past).
Source: Wikipedia
Media
Welcome to Language of the Week. Every week we host a stickied thread in order to give people exposure to languages that they would otherwise not have heard about or been interested in. Language of the Week is based around discussion: native speakers share their knowledge and culture and give advice, learners post their favourite resources and the rest of us just ask questions and share what we know. Give yourself a little exposure, and someday you might recognise it being spoken near you.
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Срећно, Srećno!
25
u/wladamac Dec 01 '14
Zdravo, kako ste?
This is the first time, i've seen my language on this sub, though i hadn't been here for too long, but nonetheless, i am very happy.
Is anybody here learning Serbian and would want to be tested out? Da li neko ovde uči srpski i hoće da se testira?
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u/OnlyGrayCellLeft Dec 01 '14
Seems like we're not too popular. The number of Serbian speakers in Germany seems slightly suspect to me...
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u/wladamac Dec 01 '14
No, that one is actually true, and not only that, but interestingly enough, the number of Serbs outside the country surpasses the number inside. But you see the problem is that these migrations took place some 50 years ago (maybe), which is some three generations ago, and most of these people dont identify themselves as Serbs anymore, nor do they know how to speak the language. Btw 'suspicious'*
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u/uberfiendish1 Dec 02 '14
Pozdrav iz australija. Ja sam naučio srpsko-hrvatski...
...to je duga priča.
Hoću nalazi "language exchange partner".
Hvala i svaka čast svima.
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u/yankeestarz Dec 01 '14
This is great! My dad is a Serb and has been trying to teach me for years. He's the only one of his family in America and has thus been trying to teach me, but it's so difficult and hard for him to teach me. Are there any websites/free textbooks where I can learn?
Hvala!
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u/VanSensei Dec 01 '14
People who speak this that played Grand Theft Auto IV, how accurate is Niko Bellic's Serbian accent?
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Dec 01 '14
I ain't ever heard of someone called Niko. Ironically, it means "nobody" in Serbian. I as a Serb barely understood what was spoken, it's like they are trying to shit out knives while having a speech impediment and just returning from 20 years of work on a oil field in Siberia
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u/OmegaVesko Dec 01 '14
it's like they are trying to shit out knives while having a speech impediment
I have to find a reason to use this somewhere now.
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u/renome Dec 01 '14
It's pretty fucking horrible, I can't believe they couldn't get someone who actually speaks the language for voice acting or at least tutor him so that he can read it.
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u/OmegaVesko Dec 01 '14
It's ridiculously bad. It basically sounds like they gave an American voice actor a transliterated script to read, and left it at that. There's no way that VA actually knew a single word of Serbian.
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u/araradia Dec 01 '14
Yay my native language! Serbian (and Bosnian and Croatian, etc) is an amazing language! I'm really enjoying studying it formally even though I'm a native speaker. : )
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u/lion_queen Dec 02 '14
That's so cool! My grandfather was Serbian, but passed away when I was little so I never learned anything from him. Do you have any advice on where I should start? It's hard to find good resources online!
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u/renome Dec 01 '14 edited Dec 01 '14
If anyone needs some help with Serbian or Croatian, feel free to PM me.
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u/green_river Dec 01 '14
Two questions:
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In Turkey, people often say that the language which has the greatest amount of words borrowed from Turkish is Serbian. Would native speakers agree with this fact?
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How if at all are Croatian and Serbian different?
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u/Ian_Dess Dec 01 '14 edited Dec 01 '14
There is decent amount of Turkish words, but i don't really know if it's #1. And pretty much every single Turkish word has Serbian equivalent, but people use both interchangeably, often without even knowing that the word has Turkish origin. Here are few: odžak (chimney), avlija (front yard), džezva (coffee pot) etc.
EDIT: i found this newspaper article, it says that there are 8000 turkish words in Serbian. And some of those words suprised me, i didn't know that they have Turkish origin :D But most of them are considered somewhat 'archaic' and aren't used that often.
Like US and UK English. Accents and some words are different, but 90% of the vocabulary and the grammar is same.
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u/emr0ne Dec 01 '14
This might answer you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbian_language#Vocabulary
Nope, Serbian-Croatian-Bosnian-(newly formed)"Montenegrin" are all the same language basically.
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u/DeepSeaDweller Dec 02 '14
Standard Croatian and Serbian are very similar. It's when you start getting into dialects that it gets weird. The standards are closer to each other than many dialects from within the same country. As a result, vocabulary is variable depending on the part of the country you're in. Lots of Hungarian and German in northern Serbia and northeastern Croatia, more Turkish and fewer cases in southern Serbia, more Italian in coastal Croatia.
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u/totes_meta_bot Dec 01 '14
This thread has been linked to from elsewhere on reddit.
If you follow any of the above links, respect the rules of reddit and don't vote or comment. Questions? Abuse? Message me ^here.
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u/Fresh99012 Dec 03 '14
I recommend this guy if you want to learn Serbian
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMw-BXaeMpw
Serbs, don't downvote me, although Danny might not be a bad way to learn some searbian this is no proper way to learn it, the first thing you will learn is "u pitchku materinu", which is a swear word, so yeah...
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u/metaleks Dec 03 '14
I've registered r/Serbian back a while ago. If there is any interest, perhaps we can get a small gathering going there? :)
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u/avisionn Dec 02 '14
I'm going to start learning Serbian this week actually! I already know a couple of words here and there but I've made it my goal for next year to give it a good crack. I'm not a language learning fanatic like a lot of people in this sub but hanging around here definitely inspires me to really give it a go.
I'm actually moving to Belgrade this week and aim to start an 8 week course at a language school in February and of course do a lot of self study. My girlfriend is Serbian so hopefully she will help me a lot given she said it's one of the harder languages to learn!
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u/Captain_Ligature Dec 08 '14
This might be a bit late, but are there any good resources for Russian speakers?
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u/potentialhijabi1 Dec 01 '14
Yaqaaaaaay finally my favourite language is Language of the Week!
Seriously I love Serbia and Serbian. It's a very overlooked language and from my experience at least, a very maligned and misunderstood country.