Radioclare's 2017 log (Croatian/Russian)

[NIKOLIĆ]

Cowboy Jimmy
iz guzice mu dimi...

In my local lingo cara [kara] means "shlong" which puts an interesting turn of meaning on expressions like "qué cara tienes" or "mia cara".

I think I have always tried to experience the target language directly and I could never find these comparisons very funny.

Assimil Spanish Lesson 1:
Que tal estas?
Bien. Tu, en cambio, tienes mala cara.
Si. Estoy un poco preocupado.

[Radioclare]

In my local lingo cara [kara] means "shlong" which puts an interesting turn of meaning on expressions like "qué cara tienes", "un cara duro", "cara a cara" and "mia cara".

When I read this earlier I had to google "shlong" to find out what it meant and it turns out it wasn't a great thing to google on my work computer

I find myself thinking of The Jam, The Pretenders, and Blondie at different moments. Something late 70s early 80s.

EDIT
I think The Undertones My Perfect Cousin is there somewhere too.

Yes! I agree with these, and you've just introduced me to a bonus new song in English too

[Daniel N.]

In my local lingo cara [kara] means "shlong" which puts an interesting turn of meaning on expressions like "qué cara tienes", "un cara duro", "cara a cara" and "mia cara".

I think I have always tried to experience the target language directly and I could never find these comparisons very funny.

That Croatian slang word, kara, very likely comes from Albanian, like klopati and few others.

[Radioclare]

Time for another update! I've unexpectedly been away from home (and from my computer) for the weekend, so I feel like I'm not having quite as productive a start to the 6WC (or to rdearman's study) as I had hoped.

Croatian
I had great plans for starting a huge novel in Croatian this weekend, and they fell through because of my trip away; the book was just too heavy to carry. So no reading has been done since last week. I have, however, watched five more episodes of 'Zora Dubrovačka' and the storyline is starting to deal with some really interesting themes. I have been doing some Memrise with Croatian most days too, if only because doing Croatian Memrise is a way of procrastinating doing Russian Memrise.

Russian
I finished the third disk of Michel Thomas Foundation this week and am around halfway through the fourth. I had some pretty long commutes to Crewe on a couple of days which helped with this, although I do still find that if I listen to audio on the train for too long then I'm liable to fall asleep. I've been halfheartedly strengthening some of my Russian tree on Duolingo, but only on days when I feel particularly virtuous, because it just seems so boring.

I've done a few more lessons of Assimil and I really like it. It's the best course I've seen so far for explaining pronunciation in a way which is useful and makes sense. I was trying to get into the habit of doing a lesson every day, but life got in the way this week. I found a course of Memrise which has the vocab from the Russian Assimil course though and so have been spending a bit of time on that most days, which is better than nothing.

I had a long train journey yesterday and so I spent an hour of it with my Colloquial Russian textbook. I was lucky that I was sitting in a fairly empty carriage of the train and no one came to sit next to me, so I was able to spread out and take notes. My Russian handwriting is not very good at the best of times, so you will just have to try and imagine how bad it is on a moving train Bizarrely I felt like I was able to concentrate and focus on the text a hundred million times better when I was sitting on the train than I would have been when I was sitting at home. I think it's partly because on the train I was "trapped" and I didn't have any other distractions. The countryside I was travelling through was so rural that I couldn't even get a signal on my phone to distract myself with that. Whereas at home I would have had the distraction of my computer and the internet. It reminded me that when I was still using textbooks to learn Croatian, I sometimes used to go and sit in a cafe at the weekend to study (or on occasions when I was travelling away somewhere with my boyfriend, in a pub).

I spent the rest of the journey reading 'Doctor Zhivago' in English. I'm only partway through but I now understand why I can't understand the TV series because I can barely understand the book The plot seems to move at a pace which is too fast for my brain to follow. When I have finished reading it, I feel like I might need to buy another book to tell me what it was about.

I am just about remembering to track what I do in the spreadsheet for the study. Luckily I almost always remember to tweet for the 6WC, so if I forget the spreadsheet I can catch it up at the end of the day. But I'm conscious that I need to develop a more consistent habit of using the spreadsheet straightaway before the 6WC is over.

[Radioclare]

I have a question for people with better Croatian than me

I was practising some vocab on Memrise this morning and it was about family members. I find this insanely difficult in Croatian at the best of times and after five years I think I am only just on the verge of remembering the difference between stric, ujak and tetak.

Today my mind has been blown by trying to get my head round what in English we call the "in-law" relationships. The Memrise course explained the following:

svekar - father-in-law (father of husband)
svekrva - mother-in-law (mother of husband)
tast - father-in-law (father of wife)
tašta - mother-in-law (mother of wife)

I am still wrestling with trying to memorise those but my question is: what is a punica? I'm sure I've seen the word punica used in several novels I've read this year and I've always assumed it meant mother-in-law. If I had to come down on one side or another, from context I would say I thought it meant mother-in-law in the sense of the wife's mother. I have no recollection of reading the word tašta anywhere. Are the two terms interchangeable? Is there any difference in meaning? Have I completely misunderstood what punica means in my books???

[Theodisce]

My Croatian is pretty weak, but I've found that:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbo-Croatian_kinship

Those are the same words we use in Polish (świekr/świekra, teść/teściowa) except that the first pair went out of use and the second is used to talk about both husband's and wife's in-laws.

I believe ujak to be etymologically speaking the same as English uncle.

[Radioclare]

Thank you Theodisce - that is an amazingly comprehensive table you have found

Judging by the 'C' and 'S' signs, it looks like the answer to my question might be that tašta is a more common word in Serbian and punica more common in Croatian.

[Chung]

For what it's worth, there are quite a few such lists on Wikipedia when you look in the articles for kinship and kinship terminology sorted by language of the text. As it pertains to you, Radioclare, the Croatian version of the article for "kinship terminology" and the Russian version of the article for "kinship" have extensive sets of terms. It might be useful to compare the link in Theodisce's post with the Croatian version of "kinship terminology".

I see that in the Croatian article of "kinship terminology" punac and tast are shown as terms for the wife's father but just punica as the term for the wife's mother. It's a bit of a contrast from the English article "Serbo-Croatian kinship" where tast is marked as the Serbian(-only?) counterpart of Croatian punac for "wife's father"

[reineke]

Punica is the butt of many jokes in English and other languages. You will find it often in subtitled shows. Snaha and svekrva are common words.

If I were to use punac in a conversation I miight start laughing. People living around Zagreb might use some specific words and people in Dalmatia other words. In Dubrovnik dundo (<lat dominus) may mean " uncle" or "gentleman". The trend seems to be that a speaker may prefer to use specific vocabulary only for closest relations.

A discussion on this subject:
http://www.forum.hr/showthread.php?t=217490

The meaning of many of these words is fuzzy even to native speakers.

" Hoćemo li ikada naučiti: Što mi dođe žena brata moga muža i ostali rodbinski odnosi"

http://sibenskiportal.rtl.hr/2016/01/04 ... ki-odnosi/

Serbian version with a similar title

HOĆEMO LI IKAD NAUČITI: Šta mi dođe jetrva, a šta zaova?

https://www.srbijadanas.com/clanak/hocu ... 08-04-2015

If you were to ask me about "jetrva" out of the blue, I'd tell you: sure, let's throw it on the barbie, maybe it tastes good.

"Molim pomoc: Kako se zove muz od sestricne ?
nikako...najcesce sam dodje bez poziva...
on ti nije u rodu pa niti nema nekog naziva"

Wikipedia :
"otac moje žene --- punac, tast; majka moje žene --- punica; brat moje žene --- šupak"

[Daniel N.]

It's also covered here

http://www.easy-croatian.com/2014/11/75.html

Tašta fell out of use, because if has another, negative meaning. There are many other terms (jetrva, zaova) which are not used in most cities anymore.