Another change in our live concerns languages. It seems evident that French is not the main language here, also several of the colleagues, but also the neighbor or the lady that looks after our cat speak French very well and without accent. But German and English are far more frequent. Very often we try some of our Serbian just to warm up in a longer conversation in one of the languages mentioned above, discovering that the person in front of us has been born or lived for several years in America, France, Germany, Austria or else.
Serbian so is another story. Some of you have already heard our problems to distinguish the z, c, č, ć, ž, đ and š which all sound like sch in some way. This comes slowly. To our French friends, we definitely confirm that the “ić“ in a word like „bozić“ does not pronounce “ik”! And, by the way, the “ić“ in a name is used to distinguish if a person is Serb or not. The
mispronunciation of these sounds shows that you are not a Serb (well, no surprise), and may earn you a comment „you are talking like a Croat“ (well, rather encouraging, or?)
 |
Out of Daphne's homework. The teacher allowed her to write Tigger
(also Serbs would not allow for double g). But "Vini Pu" (Winnie the
Pooh) is written correctly.
Mastering the Serbian language happens at different levels in our
family. Daphne learns Serbian in school, and she became quite good in
reading cyrillic. Johannes knows some base phrases that helps him to
find an English speaker to talk to. Christine is the most serious with
languages, this is why she feels the lack of perfection the most. While
her classmates still worry about the correct reading of the Cyrillic
word „bare headed“, she worries already about the exception in the
declination of „legal entity restructuring“. |
Our Serbian friends insist that their language is very easy. Having two alphabets,
Latin and Cyrillic, has nothing complicated per se. Knowing them both helps you for example to compare the map in your hand (in
Latin) with the street signs (in Cyrillic). And the language reform made by Vuk Karadžić in the last century installed two simple rules „write as you speak“ and „read as you write“. This is why in Serbian it spells
„Hajdeker“ or „Valstrit“ (wall street). The German professors responsible for the orthography reform could come and learn something. But they won’t. Karadžić might have been a good friend of Konrad Duden, but he got his ideas of simplifying the orthographic rules while he was still in school ....
Our favorite transcriptions:
| Pežo |
Peugeot |
| Reno |
Renault |
| Pjađo |
Piaggio |
| Mitcubiši |
Mitsubishi |
| Majkrosoft |
Microsoft |
|
| Hajdeker |
Heidecker |
| Valstrit |
Wall street |
| Mulen Ruž |
Moulin Rouge |
| |
|
|
Also see here
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Upd. on
22. feb 2006