🚀 go-pugleaf

|> >
|> >That's interesting - I wasn't previously aware of a language called Serbian.
|> >I had been told it was called Serbo-Croat.
|> 
|> Yeah, but some picky-nasty people (mostly of a croatian background) said
                        ~~~~~~~~~~~~
Why do they automatically have to be nasty if they disagree with you.

|> that they have their own language - i.e. Croatian. they argued that
|> Serbo-Croatian does not exist and any attempt to convince them that Croatian
|> is actually Serbo-Croatian, they welcomed with the preaching
|> 'you-wanna-tell-me-I-speak-non-existant-language' and etc.
|> 
|> Hence now we have Serbian and Croatian language.
|> 
|> Anyway, we all know those two are soooo different... like Australian and
|> American versions of English... but if those young democracies wish to
|> exercise their right to develop new language, make artificial 52-letter
|> words, let them have it, no biggie... at least I don't care [no more...]
|> 
|> Nik
|> --

The only reason Serbs and Croats understand each other is because they grew up 
together and hear both languages spoken all the time.  There exist many 
differences between Serbian and Croatian.  Coratian has lots of Germanic
influences, while Serbian has lots of Turkish words.  The letters are different. 
Gerund formation is used diferently.  And finally it sounds quite different. 
Coratian uses ije and je where Serbs use long and short e in some words.  Croats
typically don't distinguish hard and soft ch, and hard and soft dj as much as
Serbs do.

I thought that the languages weren't all that different untill I met my Serbian
friend that grew up in Germany.  He knew Serbian because it was spoken in his
house.  But he never learned Croatian, because his parents would speak Serbian
only.  So when I tried talking to him, he wouldn't understand more than half the
words I was saying sometimes.  So I had to force myself to speak Serbian in
order for him to understand me.  Forexample, the following sentence would sound 
like a foreign languane to him:

	"On je nosio hlace i dolcevitu kad je bio u ducanu."

The Serbian equivalent is:

	"On je nosio pantalone i ??? dok je bio u prodavaoni."

??? = turtleneck.  I don't know how to say it in Serbian.

Another problem is that while there was Serbo-Croatian, you would always
learn Serbian, not Croatian, if you took the course in an educational
institution.  Croatian was treated as a less important version of Serbian.  
That is not right however similar the languages might be.  Croatian is a
beautiful language, and it has the right to its autheniticity.

And I'd like to see some Serbs try to understand Croatian with all the
new-old words that were reintroduced into Croatian after the seccession.

				Regards,
				--- Davor