Learning Serbian /Croatian/Bosnian

Neat. And now that I think about it simpler than Hungarian. (Hungarian has 9 active locative cases and 1 that's not used very much anymore.) Basically three cases that correspond to the blue locative elipse (in, on, near). Three cases that correspond to that accusative (into, onto, to near), Three cases that correspond to that genitive (out of, off of, away from). And the other is just used for a few town names now. And on top of that there's accusative, genitive, dative, instrumental, distributive... *thinks* well, i can't list them all with their official names but i know them and i can use all of them.

Thank you very much all for the explanations. That helps even more! =)

If I have any more questions, I'll definitely be sure to ask. =)

Baskarukebaskanoge,

I understand all the cases, but to be honest, I wouldn't have a clue how to explain it to someone... Fair play to you!!!!

Originally Posted by pthalo

Cases can be difficult, especially coming from English where we don't really have them. I learned Hungarian seven years ago, which has 25 cases and so I was prepared to handle them in Serbian, but coming from just English it's difficult.

Gee, I can't believe it! Hungarian is my second mother tongue, but I swear I haven't noticed there are 25 cases! I guess I didn't know it because I've never learnt Hungarian as a foreign language.

It depends on what counts as cases and some people say that it's not really meaningful to speak of cases in an agglutinative language, but rather that they should be called something else, but you have:
ház, házat, háznak, házzal, házért, házzá, házig, házként, házul, házban, házon, háznál, házba, házra, házhoz, házból, házról, háztól, házképp, házonként, házostul. Also there's a locative case that isn't used very often but you can still see it on Győrött, Pécsett, etc. and a few cases that only work with numbers: hatkor, naponta. And háznak is both genitive and dative = 25.

there are unique question words for most of them, and most of them can be conjugated on their own:

mi, mit, minek, mivel, miért, mivé, meddig, miként, (házul = hogyan), miben, min, minél, mibe, mire, mihez, miből, miről, mitől, miképp(en), (nothing i can think of for "házonként, házostul), mikor, nothing for naponta (I'd say "milyen rendszeresen" but that's not good enough for this.)

and then "I" conjugated:
én, engem, nekem, velem, értem, (nothing for -vá, -ig, -ként, -ul), bennem, rajtam, nálam, belém, rám, hozzám, belőlem, rólam, tőlem, (nothing for -képp, -ként, -ostul, -kor, -onta). But the ones that can't be conjugated wouldn't make sense if they could be.

*pthalo uči srpsku ručnu azbuku*

http://www.gogb.org.yu/Jugoslovenska...uka%202002.jpg

Malo mi je teško zato što je toliko različit od američke ručne azbuke:

http://www.suite101.com/files/topics.../files/asl.jpg

Ali ide, mislim da sam je zapamtila, samo govorim sporije nego na engleskom.

Tvoj srpsko-hrvatski je odlican - your serbian-croatian is great.

dodji nam opet - ?? us again - is dodji return or something like that?

Hvala ti sto si zalila moj vrt...Dobar dan i tebi - thank you why are ??? my garden. what is zalila? is it watering or visiting?

)

dodji nam opet - come by us again
dodji - come


Hvala ti sto si zalila moj vrt...Dobar dan i tebi

hmm zalila, I think it's to water, to cover from zaliti

so it would be "thank that you were watering my garden... good day to you too"

hvala ti puno Velvet_Sky!! I almost had it!!

You're welcome

Can sb tell me what cocek means? It may be Romani, then ignore this question

i was thinking of some basic words i don't know or remember... I came up with this ones. Whats the croatian/serbian for...

to Try
to Help
to Obtain
to Ask for something

to feel
to hurt
to cure

to smell

to cancel
to sign

To build
to demolish
to eliminate
to fill up something

to imagine
to forget

ill stop right there because otherwise i will not be able to rembember then

question: in spanish there are to words for the english "to know". One is to know how to do sth or about sth that happened (saber), and the other one is to know a person or a place (conocer). I think that happens in SC also am i right?

thanks in advance

i'm still learning so someone might need to correct my mistakes if i make them, but:

yeah, to know something is "znati", to know somebody is "poznati".

i'll give them in infinitive and first person singular (from those two forms you can work out the rest of the conjugation easily)

to Try - probati, pokušati. (probam, pokušavam)
to Help - pomoći (pomognem)
to Obtain - dobiti (dobijem)
to Ask for something - moliti (molim) ?

to feel - osećati (to feel a feeling) - osećam, dodirati (to touch, to finger, to feel) - dodirem.
to hurt - boleti (boli me glava -- my head hurts me) - povrediti (to hurt somebody) - povredim
to cure - isceliti - iscelim

to smell - omirisati (to smell something), mirisiti na nečemu (to smell like something)

to cancel - povući
to sign - potpisati se (to sign your name - write your signature)

To build - zgraditi
to demolish - rušiti
to eliminate - izbaciti (to cast off, remove) izbacim, isključiti (to exclude), isključem, uništiti (to destroy), uništim
to fill up something - potpuniti, potpunim

to imagine - zamišljati (zamišljam) izmišljati (izmišljam)
to forget - zaboraviti, zaboravim

pthalo, you must be very talented or really hard working if you know Serbian that good, after only 5 months of learning it!

Just a few things:

to ask for something- it can also be "pitati (za nesto)"

to smell like something= mirisati na nešto (accusative)
to build= graditi

eliminate can also be eliminisati
to fill up something= NApuniti

izmišljati is more like "to make up"... it can also mean to invent... so to imagine=zamišljati

And about verbs meaning "to know".. there are a few...
poznavati is, as pthalo said, to know somebody. You can say that for place. And (pre)poznati can also mean "to recognize"...
umeti is used for skills... I can play guitar= Umem da sviram gitaru.
And "znati" is simply "to know"; it can be used instead of "poznavati" and "umeti".

A good site I go to if I don't know an individual word is:
http://www.krstarica.com/recnik/

Or just whip out the rečnik I got over in Crna Gora.

Originally Posted by pthalo

It depends on what counts as cases and some people say that it's not really meaningful to speak of cases in an agglutinative language, but rather that they should be called something else, but you have:
ház, házat, háznak, házzal, házért, házzá, házig, házként, házul, házban, házon, háznál, házba, házra, házhoz, házból, házról, háztól, házképp, házonként, házostul. Also there's a locative case that isn't used very often but you can still see it on Győrött, Pécsett, etc. and a few cases that only work with numbers: hatkor, naponta. And háznak is both genitive and dative = 25.

there are unique question words for most of them, and most of them can be conjugated on their own:

mi, mit, minek, mivel, miért, mivé, meddig, miként, (házul = hogyan), miben, min, minél, mibe, mire, mihez, miből, miről, mitől, miképp(en), (nothing i can think of for "házonként, házostul), mikor, nothing for naponta (I'd say "milyen rendszeresen" but that's not good enough for this.)

and then "I" conjugated:
én, engem, nekem, velem, értem, (nothing for -vá, -ig, -ként, -ul), bennem, rajtam, nálam, belém, rám, hozzám, belőlem, rólam, tőlem, (nothing for -képp, -ként, -ostul, -kor, -onta). But the ones that can't be conjugated wouldn't make sense if they could be.

Now I see what you ment!!! Well done!
*Emelem kalapom!*
It's nice to have a talk about Hungarian language...I think it might be essential to open a new thread on this.

Thanks a lot for all the explanation! ***

baska:

thanks! I'm learning every day, listening to music all the time, hanging out on forums online. I've got a little notebook where I work on it offline, too. On September 10, it'll be 6 months. Učim svim srcem. Even my cat has learned some Serbian: http://pics.livejournal.com/pthalogr...5/s640x480.jpg

(larger version if some of that was too small: http://pics.livejournal.com/pthalogr...c/000eb9q5.jpg)

(Fejlica is a Serbianized version of the name "pthalo" given to me by someone on a different forum)

Thanks for the corrections and explanations.

I've heard "znam" also used for skills, like "znam engleski". How does that fit in to it exactly?

@Acrylic:
Another good dictionary I use is: http://www.asusilc.net/finalpro1.htm
Sometimes it's good to combine dictionaries

@Nene
Yeah, I like talking about Hungarian too. We could make a learn Hungarian thread, but I'm not sure where it would go, not in Slavic languages for sure.

great. i have to memorize that, that's the only way :P

thanks a lot

and yes there's some very good dictionaries online but the problem is that for example i search for common words like "try" and 1928391823098 translations appear, that's why im asking the simplest words

yeah, that's the problem with the simple words, and you have no real way of knowing which is the correct version, or what the differences between the different Serbian answers are. like you look up "wood" and you get drvo and šuma, because wood can mean stuff from trees (drvo) or forest (šuma). but it gets easier with time.