Overscore's log: srpski

[overscore]

Švicarska.jpg

I was in Novi Sad a month ago, for a week, and very, very few stores or restaurants have names in Cyrillic. Their main shopping center is called "BIG Shopping Center" and there's not a single store in it with its name in Cyrillic. There were some public signs in Cyrillic, of course, but even in street names, Latin was as at least present as Cyrillic. Most graffiti were in Latin. Almost all improvised notes (apartment for sale, I'll be back in 10 minutes, closed for holidays, lock the front door...) were in Latin. Of course, it's probably a bit different further south.

Okay I did not want to get too involved in this topic, but it seems I've been living in a different country entirely from what you guys say. For what it's worth, the majority (though not all) of graffiti around here is in Cyrillic. Likewise all the books and magazines I own are in cyrillic.
There's a giant Novorossiya mural in cyrillic on the building nearby. (not saying that's what I support, just describing)
a lot of the shops have their names in cyrillic.

It's true Vojvodina is almost like a different country in many regards, it was for a long time.

I think it's a continuum, if you go far enough to the south you end up in Makedonia, and over there they write entirely in the Cyrillic script.

[overscore]

SRP

штитити
штетити

.... really?? one means "to protect" and the other "to harm".

GRK

I've been reading a ton about ancient greek things, and somewhat naively I though there would be significant overlap between the Ancient Greek languages and the Modern Greek language, but that doesn't appear to be the case, at all. There doesn't seem to be any significant intelligibility between the two, unlike the slavic languages where conversation is possible among the modern forms.

Going further, I thought previously that OCS was the proto slavic tongue, but that turned out to be false. OCS is on the southern slav branch, and is pretty much entirely intelligible with serbian. At least the snippets I've read were really close to it.

[Daniel N.]

Going further, I thought previously that OCS was the proto slavic tongue, but that turned out to be false. OCS is on the southern slav branch, and is pretty much entirely intelligible with serbian. At least the snippets I've read were really close to it.

OCS has more complex morphology, and there are some OCS words which have been lost in Serbia but preserved in e.g. Croatia or Slovenia. Overall, OCS is closest to Macedonian & Bulgarian. There are many words from OCS in Russian, e.g. they have a native word for "city" and another borrowed from OCS, e.g. -grad in Stalingrad is from OCS.

[Iversen]

I've been reading a ton about ancient greek things, and somewhat naively I though there would be significant overlap between the Ancient Greek languages and the Modern Greek language, but that doesn't appear to be the case, at all. There doesn't seem to be any significant intelligibility between the two(...)

That's also my conclusion - although seen from the perspective of a naive learner of Modern Greek. I have read that some Greeks claim that reading Ancient Greek is piece of cake for them since it is the same language, but seeing the two stages together doesn't seem to bear that out. It would be nice with a real test of how much Modern Greeks real would be able to understand of a text by Aristotle or Omiros. Modern Danes can't understand the sagas in Old Norse without studying the language of the ancestors so I would be very surprised if the Greeks could understand texts that are twice as old.

[overscore]

Going further, I thought previously that OCS was the proto slavic tongue, but that turned out to be false. OCS is on the southern slav branch, and is pretty much entirely intelligible with serbian. At least the snippets I've read were really close to it.

OCS has more complex morphology, and there are some OCS words which have been lost in Serbia but preserved in e.g. Croatia or Slovenia. Overall, OCS is closest to Macedonian & Bulgarian. There are many words from OCS in Russian, e.g. they have a native word for "city" and another borrowed from OCS, e.g. -grad in Stalingrad is from OCS.

Afaik the words "gorod" and "grad" are two different outcomes of the same original term, meaning something like "fortification, border walls".

I think it's a bit silly to say OCS is closer to Bulgarian, when that later has lost all its case system... But maybe there's something I don't know.

[vonPeterhof]

Afaik the words "gorod" and "grad" are two different outcomes of the same original term, meaning something like "fortification, border walls".

It's two different reflexes of the Proto-Slavic sound combination *-orС, in this case *gord. In South Slavic it turned into grad, while in East Slavic into gorod/horod: Bel. горад (with the spelling reflecting vowel reduction, unlike in Russian), Ukr. город (largely supplanted in the meaning of "city" by the Polish-influenced місто). Older Russian borrowed a lot of South Slavic vocabulary from OCS, largely using it as a higher register of speech, so there are a lot of doublets with the more formal/poetic/archaic word being South Slavic (град, врата, глава, etc.) and the more colloquial and everyday words being East Slavic (город, ворота, голова, etc.). Град in particular isn't really used much on its own in modern Russian outside of historical fiction, but it is sort of productive as a suffix in both proper names of cities and certain terms for types of towns (e.g. наукоград, "science town"). Город is the usual word for "city" or "town", having largely lost the connotations of "fortification".

I think it's a bit silly to say OCS is closer to Bulgarian, when that later has lost all its case system... But maybe there's something I don't know.

In terms of descent, Bulgarian and Macedonian descend from the dialects closest to OCS (believed to be based on Slavic dialects from the vicinity of Thessaloniki), and they retain a lot in common with it in both vocabulary and the verb conjugation system, aside from notably getting rid of the infinitive; all other Slavic languages simplified their verb conjugations while preserving the noun declensions a bit better.

[Daniel N.]

Afaik the words "gorod" and "grad" are two different outcomes of the same original term, meaning something like "fortification, border walls".

I think it's a bit silly to say OCS is closer to Bulgarian, when that later has lost all its case system... But maybe there's something I don't know.

True, goród is a native East Slavic (i.e. Russian) word, while grad comes from the same Proto-Slavic word (*gordu) but it's loaned from South Slavic. A comparison would be English skirt and shirt, shirt is native, skirt is borrowed, both ultimately from the same Proto-Germanic word.

Some scholars call OCS "Old Bulgarian".

[vonPeterhof]

True, goród is a native East Slavic (i.e. Russian) word

Unless you mean something other than stress by that acute accent, it should be górod. Goród doesn't exist in Russian, but horód is Ukrainian for "vegetable garden" (ogoród in Russian).

[overscore]

True, goród is a native East Slavic (i.e. Russian) word

Unless you mean something other than stress by that acute accent, it should be górod. Goród doesn't exist in Russian, but horód is Ukrainian for "vegetable garden" (ogoród in Russian).

I enjoyed reading all this. In Russian you can see the native word is 'gorod' in newly coined names like 'Akademgorodok'.
It appears OCS does descend from the Thessaloniki dialect at the time, with possibly some normalization for print.
In modern Bulgarian it is known simply as Old Bulgarian.

[Daniel N.]

Unless you mean something other than stress by that acute accent, it should be górod. Goród doesn't exist in Russian, but horód is Ukrainian for "vegetable garden" (ogoród in Russian).

You are right, I've mixed up languages and words