🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Jul21.194129.15557@athena.mit.edu> dmatic@athena.mit.edu (Davor Matic) writes:
>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.
>

It is true that Croats generally use "ije" and "je" (ijekavica),
whereas Serbs use "e" (ekavica) but that is not a difference in
the language, but a difference in dialect. I speak English as
fluently as Serbian/Croatian but have a very hard time understanding
somebody from south London (Cockney accent), the languages are
undoubtably the same, though. The same applies to the Australian
dialect.
Also, Serbs in Bosnia and Croatia speak the "ijekavica" dialect
as well. I grew up in Sarajevo and people there speak the
"ijekavica" dialect even though "most" of the vocabulary is from
the "Serbian" version (hiljada as opposed to tisuca etc...).
At the same time, we also use a lot of words from the "Croatian"
version (zrak as opposed to vazduh...).
It is therefore difficult to define the language there as "Serbian"
or "Croatian". Personally, I always called it "Serbo-Croatian".
( I don't mind :-).

>    Regards,
>    --- Davor

G.B.