Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

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Radioclare
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Sun Jan 22, 2017 11:18 pm

My post wasn't supposed to be America-slamming; I just thought it was a funny story, with the butt of the joke being my colleague.

I'm sure Spanish is a very useful language to learn for all sorts of reasons. Certainly a lot more useful than Croatian :lol:

My mystery destination for the weekend was Paris (yay!) and I didn't take my computer so haven't read any news this weekend, but certainly over the past few months there have been quite positive things written about Donald Trump in some of the Balkan press (Serbian press, at least).

Also I'm sure I read an article on a Croatian website about how the Slovenes were hoping this would be a big boost for their tourist industry, with lots more Americans now wanting to visit Slovenia :)
Last edited by Radioclare on Mon Jan 23, 2017 12:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby DaveBee » Mon Jan 23, 2017 12:53 am

Radioclare wrote:Also I'm sure I read an article on a Croatian website about how the Slovenes were hoping this would be a big boost for their tourist industry, with lots more Americans now wanting to visit Slovenia :)
They're already getting selfless journalists, going the extra mile for yet another angle on the US election :-)

One of the UK news programmes (I forget which) sent a team to Mrs Trump's home town, did a little voxpop with the locals (including cake shop where they had a super nice looking white chocolate torte, which was somehow linked to Mrs Trump) and even had a few minutes with the local mayor.
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Radioclare
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Mon Jan 23, 2017 12:12 pm

I seem to have managed to post the same thing twice last night and now I can't delete either post. Oops :oops:
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Daniel N. » Tue Jan 24, 2017 10:28 am

Serpent wrote:Yeah Croatian sat is exactly why I found the Turkish word mindblowing :P

Croatian has thousands of Turkish words :) Even some functional words, like čak even, bar at least, a lot of food e.g. burek, ćevap, even words like alat tool, torba bag, jastuk pillow... (many of these words alternate with Slavic ones, e.g. rubac vs marama).

Serpent wrote:Note that the word толмач is archaic and only used in a historical context. (it's related to Dolmetscher :D and wait I think Finnish tulkki too) The normal word is переводчик, which per se doesn't imply written or oral translation (usually переводчик текстов or устный переводчик respectively).

Do you know any differences with the case usage? I never bothered to pay attention so far :oops:

Dolmetscher is one of very few words German took from Slavic, and Slavic tъlmač is borrowed from Turkic. Croatian also has prevoditelj and prevodilac, tumač is also a bit old-fashioned.

I know that Russian likes instrumental a lot, much more than e.g. Croatian. For example (from Wikipedia, I don't know are they used in the real life), you can say:

Книга написана Марком Твеном.

It's completely impossible in Croatian, actually I think in whole South Slavic. Mark Twain must be the subject, we don't have a real passive. We can say "the book is written", but not "the book is written by..."

We also use often nominative instead of instrumental:

умереть героем - this is also impossible, we say umrijeti kao heroj
я хочу быть врачом - we use nominative here, e.g. želim/hoću biti doktor

Also, we have the verb imati have:

У нее есть собака - we say Ona ima psa = she has a dog.

We can say like Russian pas je kod nje, but it means she temporarily has the dog, it's with her at the moment (note: in Dalmatia people often use u + G, like in Russian, instead of more common kod + G).
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Serpent » Tue Jan 24, 2017 10:08 pm

Thanks :D
I knew imati of course but didn't think of it as being part of a larger pattern :D Polish loves the instrumental even more btw, and uses it with the copula too, unlike Russian.

torba also exists in Russian and Polish (often torebka), but in Russian it's kinda colloquial. it's the nickname of the footballer Dmitry Torbinsky :D
My Belarusian grandma colloquially uses it to mean ass :oops:
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Theodisce » Tue Jan 24, 2017 10:33 pm

Daniel N. wrote:
Serpent wrote:Yeah Croatian sat is exactly why I found the Turkish word mindblowing :P


умереть героем - this is also impossible, we say umrijeti kao heroj
я хочу быть врачом - we use nominative here, e.g. želim/hoću biti doktor



The only example of the first construction I record having seen in Polish is "Umrzesz niewolnikiem"- you will die as a slave (actually a title of a reggae album) and it sounds strange to me. The second construction requires the instrumental- chcę zostać lekarzem. Is the sentence "Hoću da budem doktor" correct in Croatian? Google gives some results but they seem to come from the Bosnian part of the internet. In Polish you cannot use this with the first person.
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Wed Jan 25, 2017 8:33 pm

Wow, so many interesting posts in my log :)

I think you could say "Hoću da budem doktor" in Croatian but some people would complain it sounds Serbian, since officially Croatian prefers to use the infinitive and Serbian prefers constructions with da.

One of my favourite bands has a song which uses a similar construction - "Hoću da budem svoj" - and they are definitely from Croatia, so I think it must be acceptable :)

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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby NIKOLIĆ » Wed Jan 25, 2017 9:36 pm

Radioclare wrote:Wow, so many interesting posts in my log :)

I think you could say "Hoću da budem doktor" in Croatian but some people would complain it sounds Serbian, since officially Croatian prefers to use the infinitive and Serbian prefers constructions with da.

One of my favourite bands has a song which uses a similar construction - "Hoću da budem svoj" - and they are definitely from Croatia, so I think it must be acceptable :)


The "infinitive" and "da + present tense" constructions aren't always mutually exclusive in Serbian, and as far as I can see from your example, in Croatian. I often say "moram ići ..." instead of "moram da idem", although there are some constructions where I would never use the infinitive, such as: treba(m) kupiti, etc...

The problem is that some people are just so hell-bent on pointing out the differences, and immediately claim that a certain word or grammar point exists or is used only in the "other" language, when in fact that is often not true.A friend of mine will often not know or understand a word, and then say that it's just a Bosnian or just a Croatian word and that's why he doesn't understand it, when in fact that's not true.

We just have to be nicer to each other, like Žika and Milan:

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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby reineke » Thu Jan 26, 2017 6:33 pm

http://m.srednja.hr/Matura/Vijesti/Gram ... -na-maturi

http://www.prevoditelj-teksta.com/2014/ ... kanje.html

Do­šli su "da vi­de da li mo­gu da pri­do­bi­ju lju­de da poč­nu da gra­de put".
http://www.politika.rs/sr/clanak/338447 ... -u-naviku..

"u nekim dijelovima BiH (Zvornik, Bijeljina, Bratunac ...) pojedino stanovništvo guta "da" (hoću jedem, hoću pijem vode ...). Ima jedna anegdota koja se prepričava u ovim krajevima. Na jednoj svadbi, nakon što je djever "kupio" mladu, stari svat (vođa svatova) ustaje, uzima mikrofon i najavljuje običaj "kićenja svatova" na sljedeći način:"

"Ustajte svatovi, hoće žene kite".
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Re: Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

Postby Radioclare » Sat Jan 28, 2017 7:31 pm

This has been a bit of a non-typical week for me, as I ended up going out with people from work on both Thursday and Friday night. Some parts of this were more fun than others, but the main downside was that I forgot to do Duolingo two days in a row and have now lost my streak :( I guess it had to happen at some point! I feel a bit demotivated with Duolingo now as I am spending so much time strengthening things that I don't have time/energy to learn anything new, but I know that even though it is highly imperfect it has taught me *something* so I ought to persevere with it. Perhaps the 6WC will give me a new boost of energy (if the bot works!).

My main progress this week has been with Michel Thomas Russian. On Thursday I got to the station at 07.25 to find that my train was delayed because of a lorry striking a railway bridge somewhere a bit further up the track. I had to stand outside in the cold until a train finally managed to get through an hour later, and then stand all the way to work because there were so many people trying to get on that train. But the positive of this was that I had lots of time to listen to Michel Thomas, and so I not only finished disk 4 (which was mainly about the agreement of adjective endings) but finished disk 5 as well (which introduced the past tense). Michel Thomas is not without its frustrations but I am definitely benefiting from the repeated and slow pronunciations :)

I haven't done much in Croatian recently. I'm 146 pages into a book called 'O, Jerzualeme', a translation of a novel by Laurie King which is part of a Sherlock Holmes series I love in English. I mainly read those pages last weekend while travelling to/from Paris.

However I do have some good news - I am going to Croatia/Montenegro for a week in June :) I'm taking my parents (it will be their first time there) so I definitely have some pressure now to be able to speak Croatian well when I get there. This does mean that the potential St Petersburg trip is delayed by another year though, so I have gained some breathing space to learn Russian :)
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