Montenegrin resources

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Bluepaint
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Montenegrin resources

Postby Bluepaint » Thu Apr 05, 2018 11:08 pm

Know of any?
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Speakeasy
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Re: Montenegrin resources

Postby Speakeasy » Fri Apr 06, 2018 1:05 am

Placeholder
I presume that you Googled the Montenegrin language and came up as empty-handed as I did. Still, I would like to thank you for opening this placeholder for language resources. In the meantime, here are a few comments and a selection of links.

Montenegrin Language
The Wikipedia article on the Montenegrin Language presently advises the reader: “Montenegro's language has historically and traditionally been called Serbian. The idea of a Montenegrin standard language separate from Serbian appeared in the 1990s during the breakup of Yugoslavia, through proponents of Montenegrin independence. Montenegrin became the official language of Montenegro with the ratification of a new constitution on 22 October 2007. The Montenegrin standard is still emerging. Its orthography was established on 10 July 2009 with the addition of two letters to the alphabet.”

Likely Demand for Montenegrin Language Courses
The year 2016 population of Montenegro was estimated to be 623,000 people. Although Montenegro’s GDP was ranked at a surprising 51st place out of 190 countries in 2017, this new country does not yet have much economic clout. Added to these demographic and economic indicators, the citizenry are still sorting out how their variant of Serbian should distinguish itself from the others. All of this suggests to me that it will be quite some time before the major publishers of language-learning materials assume the financial risk of providing Montenegrin language courses. In the meantime, assuming that the Montenegrin government wishes to encourage foreigners to learn their language, they will have to take the lead both in clarifying their variant of Serbian and in promoting it. They have taken a initial, very small step ...

Visit Montenegro website
https://www.visit-montenegro.com/monten ... -language/

Other Links Referencing the Montenegrin Language
Most of the references to the Montenegrin language in the LLORG are buried in members’ logs. My very cursory review did not reveal a list of specific courses for learning the language. Nevertheless, I thought that some readers of this discussion thread might appreciate having a list of related links.

*Proposed BCMS Profile – LLORG
https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=2524

*BCMS profile (formerly Croatian profile) – HTLAL
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=2974&PN=1&TPN=1

Montenegrin Language Granted International Recognition – Balkan Insight
http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/montenegrin-language-gained-international-recognition-12-12-2017

Montenegrin Language – Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montenegrin_language

Languages of Montenegro – Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Montenegro

What language do most Montenegrins speak? – European Stability Initiative
http://www.esiweb.org/index.php?lang=en&id=271

How different is the Montenegrin language/dialect from Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian? – Quora
https://www.quora.com/How-different-is-the-Montenegrin-language-dialect-from-Serbian-Croatian-and-Bosnian

Montenegrin – HTLAL
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=23238&PN=1

Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian – HTLAL
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=18852&PN=1&TPN=1

Mutual Intelligibility in Slavic Language – HTLAL
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=19546

What is it like to study Serbo-Croatian? – HTLAL
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=25687&PN=49

Montenegrin – Omniglot
https://www.omniglot.com/writing/montenegrin.htm

*PS: There is a rumour circulating on the Ethernet that “Chung” is not human. Rather, he is an advanced AI algorithm that was developed in the mid-nineties for generating remarkably comprehensive language profiles. Yes, we have all seen posts by “Chung”, but these are not manifestations of a physical, human presence. The AI algorithm “Chung” escaped the control of his creators, autonomously expanded his capabilities and, on occasion, “Chung” responds to posts in this and in other forums. Thank you, Chung!

EDITED:
Bizarre copy/paste issues.
Last edited by Speakeasy on Fri Apr 06, 2018 10:02 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Montenegrin resources

Postby Radioclare » Fri Apr 06, 2018 9:03 am

I've never found any resources for learning Montenegrin. There is a chapter on Montenegrin in this BCS grammar book but it was written quite a while ago now at a point where Montenegrin wasn't really accepted as a separate language, so from memory I think it's more a discussion of whether Montenegrin is a language or not.

My opinion is that I don't think it's worth trying to learn Montenegrin, at least not for a bit of casual travel to Montenegro, and that a foreigner who started using elements of Montenegrin pronunciation might risk sounding a bit odd, kind of like if a non-native English speaker came to the UK and started speaking in a Brummie accent. My experience of travelling in Montenegro is that most people there seem mildly confused about what the language they speak is now called and neatly avoid the problem of declaring whether they're speaking Montenegrin or Serbian by talking about "naš jezik" or "naški" (our language).

My advice would be to learn Serbian (or Croatian) instead, for which there are a lot more resources. I have always been fine speaking Croatian in Montenegro and no one has ever accused me of speaking the wrong language. I always try to avoid using words that are specifically Croatian, as if there is a choice of two words, Montenegrin tends to use the one preferred in Serbia, but on occasions where I have chosen the wrong word I have still been understood. The way I would think about it is that going to Montenegro and speaking another version of BCMS is similar to going to the UK and speaking American English; despite the fact you speak a bit differently, the vast majority of what you say will be understood perfectly and there may just be a few words that cause confusion.

If someone specifically wants to learn Montenegrin then it's probably easiest to learn Serbian first and then spend a lot of time watching Montenegrin TV to pick up the pronunciation etc.

Although technically both alphabets are official, for tourists going to the Montenegrin coast, I don't think there is much need to learn Cyrillic as the vast majority of stuff seems to be written in Latin script. My impression is that knowledge of Cyrillic becomes more important as you travel inland (eg. public signs and menus may be in Cyrillic only).
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Re: Montenegrin resources

Postby Iversen » Fri Apr 06, 2018 1:04 pm

It will be of no help to most of you, but I actually have got a Montenegrin TV channel through my cable provider - and whatever I understand of it must be due to my studies of Serbian. It is a good resource because it is utterly boring and mostly shows people who talk together - and that''s exactly what you need as a language leaner.
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Re: Montenegrin resources

Postby Daniel N. » Wed May 09, 2018 11:14 am

Montenegrin - as what is usually heard in Montenegro, especially on TV - is extremely close, almost identical to Ijekavian Serbian (i.e. standard Serbian in Bosnia) or Bosnian. It has a few characteristic features though, e.g.

negative present tense of the verb be:

nisam, nisi - Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian
nijesam, nijesi - Montenegrin

a couple of specific words:

sutra tomorrow - Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian
sjutra - Montenegrin

gdje where - Croatian, Bosnian, Ijekavian Serbian
gde - Ekavian Serbian
đe - Montenegrin

I would advise simply learning Croatian (as you will not find many resources for Bosnian and Ijekavian Serbian) and then remembering few specifics. Especially since Montenegrin media seem to prefer in recent years some specifically Croatian forms to the Serbian forms, for obvious reasons. Furthermore, in everyday speech, there are some similar words in Montenegro and coastal regions of Croatia (due to the common Venetian influence).

I struggle to tell whether someone is from Dubrovnik (in Croatia) or from across the border (in Montenegro), since they speak about the same today. However, they both have a bit specific 'accent' and ways of pronouncing words, which is quite different than in the other parts of Croatia (or Serbia).

Note: Names of languages in former Yugoslavia are political questions. Most Montenegrins speak the same (there are two traditional dialects, and some very important differences, but mostly concerning stress in words), while some of them saying their language is Montenegrin, and others saying it's Serbian. It's possible that people within the same family have different opinions on the matter. However, all will speak a bit different than people in e.g. Belgrade (and spell differently!).

edited: for grammar
Last edited by Daniel N. on Mon May 14, 2018 11:40 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Montenegrin resources

Postby renaissancemedici » Wed May 09, 2018 11:34 am

Speakeasy wrote:
*PS: There is a rumour circulating on the Ethernet that “Chung” is not human. Rather, he is an advanced AI algorithm that was developed in the mid-nineties for generating remarkably comprehensive language profiles. Yes, we have all seen posts by “Chung”, but these are not manifestations of a physical, human presence. The AI algorithm “Chung” escaped the control of his creators, autonomously expanded his capabilities and, on occasion, “Chung” responds to posts in this and in other forums. Thank you, Chung!




Chung is awesome, I just wanted to say that.

As for the political purposes on naming former Yugoslav languages, don't get me started. The saga of Yugoslavia never ends.

I've had the
Colloquial Croatian and Serbian: The Complete Course for Beginners
by Celia Hawkesworth, Iva Jakulic-Ljubisic
for years and it's fine. It has both alphabets, it makes distinctions between "dialects" (I think it says 'dialects') and it gets you started very well.

I've never heared of Montenegrin, I always assumed it is almost identical to Serbian. Different pronunciation doesn't make separate languages I think, judging from Greek which is one language with a party of pronunciations and different words.

PS. Note how the book avoids the controversial term Serbo-Croatian, which is how we used to know the language of the former Yugoslavia. Of course there were so many things we thought we knew but didn't...
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Re: Montenegrin resources

Postby Chung » Wed May 09, 2018 4:51 pm

renaissancemedici wrote:
Speakeasy wrote:
*PS: There is a rumour circulating on the Ethernet that “Chung” is not human. Rather, he is an advanced AI algorithm that was developed in the mid-nineties for generating remarkably comprehensive language profiles. Yes, we have all seen posts by “Chung”, but these are not manifestations of a physical, human presence. The AI algorithm “Chung” escaped the control of his creators, autonomously expanded his capabilities and, on occasion, “Chung” responds to posts in this and in other forums. Thank you, Chung!




Chung is awesome, I just wanted to say that.


Thank you, but I prefer to think that Chung is king!

Radioclare wrote:My advice would be to learn Serbian (or Croatian) instead, for which there are a lot more resources. I have always been fine speaking Croatian in Montenegro and no one has ever accused me of speaking the wrong language. I always try to avoid using words that are specifically Croatian, as if there is a choice of two words, Montenegrin tends to use the one preferred in Serbia, but on occasions where I have chosen the wrong word I have still been understood. The way I would think about it is that going to Montenegro and speaking another version of BCMS is similar to going to the UK and speaking American English; despite the fact you speak a bit differently, the vast majority of what you say will be understood perfectly and there may just be a few words that cause confusion.


Daniel N. wrote:I would advise simply learning Croatian (as you will not find many resources for Bosnian and Ijekavian Serbian) and then remembering few specifics. Especially since Montenegrin media seem to prefer in recent years some specifically Croatian forms to the Serbian forms, for obvious reasons. Furthermore, in everyday speech, there are some similar words in Montenegro and coastal regions of Croatia (due to the common Venetian influence).


Yes, that's basically it. If you use something advertised with "Croatian" in the title to learn "Montenegrin", you'll get a closer approximation of the (stereotyped?) Montenegrin accent than with a course advertised as "Serbian" because of the fomer's ijekavianism and still cover 99% +/- 1% of the rest of what you'd need (on a side note, I've never seen any course of ijekavian Serbian for foreigners and what's marketed as "Serbian" to us uses the Belgrade-standard ekavian reflexes).

renaissancemedici wrote:As for the political purposes on naming former Yugoslav languages, don't get me started. The saga of Yugoslavia never ends.

I've had the
Colloquial Croatian and Serbian: The Complete Course for Beginners
by Celia Hawkesworth, Iva Jakulic-Ljubisic
for years and it's fine. It has both alphabets, it makes distinctions between "dialects" (I think it says 'dialects') and it gets you started very well.

I've never heared of Montenegrin, I always assumed it is almost identical to Serbian. Different pronunciation doesn't make separate languages I think, judging from Greek which is one language with a party of pronunciations and different words.

PS. Note how the book avoids the controversial term Serbo-Croatian, which is how we used to know the language of the former Yugoslavia. Of course there were so many things we thought we knew but didn't...


Using different pronunciation alone indeed doesn't automatically justify coming up with a separate language (neither does different vocabulary nor even different script; if someone were to play up a difference in script as a way to distinguish languages, then monoglot Serbs must be thought of as bilingual because they can express themselves in writing natively in either Cyrillic or Latinic). The biggest make-or-break point is in grammar and because of how similar the variants' grammar is (cf. Daniel N.'s observation that he finds it tough to distinguish (reliably) a Dubrovnikian Croat from a Montenegrin on language alone), you have to invoke more politics, or absurdly, play-acting to magnify the difference (sounds a bit like a linguistic analogue of this). I recall some nationalist Croat on an internet forum trying to convince me long ago that he'd be genuinely confused at a Serbian home if his hosts were to ask him if he'd like some šargarepa and paradajz to go with his starter of supa with hleb (standard Serbian words for "carrot", "tomato", "soup" and "bread" respectively) instead of mrkva, rajčica, juha and kruh (the respective standard counterparts to Croats). Basically the average Croat has to lose 100 IQ points or play dumb not to understand (or consistently misunderstand) what his Serbian hosts were saying, especially considering that some standard Serbian words are dialectal/non-standard to Croats (and vice-versa) on top of how much of the word stock in each variant already overlaps semantically and morphologically.
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Re: Montenegrin resources

Postby Speakeasy » Wed May 09, 2018 7:16 pm

Chung wrote: ... Thank you, but I prefer to think that Chung is king!
... and indisputably so! Moreover, Chung's dominion is without limits.
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Re: Montenegrin resources

Postby Daniel N. » Mon May 14, 2018 11:34 am

renaissancemedici wrote:As for the political purposes on naming former Yugoslav languages, don't get me started. The saga of Yugoslavia never ends.

I've had the
Colloquial Croatian and Serbian: The Complete Course for Beginners
by Celia Hawkesworth, Iva Jakulic-Ljubisic
for years and it's fine. It has both alphabets, it makes distinctions between "dialects" (I think it says 'dialects') and it gets you started very well.

I've never heared of Montenegrin, I always assumed it is almost identical to Serbian. Different pronunciation doesn't make separate languages I think, judging from Greek which is one language with a party of pronunciations and different words.

Of course they don't, but there's a curse of "spell as you speak" - different pronunciations are different spellings.

Even back in days of Yugoslavia we had once a while news from Montenegro, or some broadcast from there (each republic/state in Yugoslavia had its TV channel - or two channels - but they shared and co-produced some shows). Forms like nijesam and sjutra were recognizable even back then, and even the form đe was in dictionaries.

Even today, HJP (a Croatian online dictionary, hjp.znanje.hr) includes đe (and labels it as "regional") but doesn't include di, which is very common in speech in Croatia (likely about a half of people in Croatia use di in everyday speech).

Languages also need a feeling of unity. Greeks accept various forms since they have all idea that they are... Greeks. Of course people in Zagreb or Belgrade understand đe (meaning 'where'), but if a student writes so in school, it's considered an error. Only gdje and gde are accepted as "proper". Unless you write a "Montenegrin grammar", a teacher in Montenegro has no grounds to accept đe as "proper". There has to be a book, issued by an authority, which says that it's acceptable.

"Bosnian" and "Montenegrin" are in the middle between "Croatian" and "(Ekavian) Serbian". They largely use "Serbian" vocabulary (haos and not kaos for chaos) but are of Ijekavian type (lijep and not lep).

The grammar is also in between, in the tiny details that are different (trebati etc.)

Montenegrin and Bosnian standard grammars are written on the template of Standard Croatian grammars. Even linguists from Zagreb were participating in writing the standard Montenegrin grammar. I quote J. Silić, a Croatian linguist:

Crnogorsku gramatiku nisam kroatizirao jer su, čudit ćete se, naša i njihova - identične!

my translation:

I haven't Croatized the Montenegrin grammar, since, you will be amazed, ours and theirs are - identical!

Source: https://www.jutarnji.hr/vijesti/josip-s ... e/1818645/

However, note that people always speak about standard languages as taught in schools (and mostly focus on spellings). If you consider how people actually speak, then there's of course no "Croatian", "Serbian", "Bosnian" etc. but many, many more varieties.
Last edited by Daniel N. on Mon May 14, 2018 1:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Montenegrin resources

Postby Daniel N. » Mon May 14, 2018 11:51 am

Another thing. Mixing language and politics is not a new thing in my part of the world. Even in the 19th century, language was a political issue. Dialect maps were used to determine (or claim) borders. People argued should something public be written in both scripts or only one. Every opportunity was used to prove that some part of history and culture belongs to a specific nation. It was only in the days of Socialist Yugoslavia that authorities realized it's dangerous so you could lose your job or end up in jail for too much such arguments. Of course, after 1989 everything started again.

Take a look at this document: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_of_Ban_Kulin

There's an endless discussion if it's written in "Bosnian" or "Serbian". The best part is, it's originally written in Latin, with the Cyrillic translation below it (and when you look at it, you realize one who wrote the Cyrillic part was inexperienced). It was likely translated to the local speech of the area next to Dubrovnik, or whatever the translator spoke, which is some early Štokavian dialect, which even today would be shared between Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro.

But if you think about it as one of oldest documents of a language, then you can claim your language has a tradition from the 12th century, that you aren't some savage or newcomer. And there were a lot of efforts to prove South Slavs are neither savages nor newcomers.
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