Learning Serbian /Croatian/Bosnian

Wow, you know the handwriting letters too! Svaka cast! Skidam ti kapu! I remember when i was a kid, i used to say i would never learn it cause it's too hard, hehe... Anyway, you are really really good at Serbian...
Misti is beautiful! I adore cats! But there are some mistakes there too... But those mistakes are usual for foreigners.
Volim da sednem na FejlicinU beležnicU. (verb SESTI; accusative)
or
Volim da SEDIM na Fejlicinoj beležnici. (verb SEDETI; locative)

Both "sesti" and "sedeti" mean to sit, but there is a difference... You noticed that Serbian language doesn't have continuous tenses. We don't need them because there is a difference between verbs which, translated to English, have the same meaning, and that difference is duration.
Sesti means to sit down. "pthalo's notebook" is the aim of that motion. That's why we need accusative.
Sedeti means to be sitting. Locative is used. Sitting is not a motion, it's position now.
It sounds really complicated, I'm sure , but for native speakers it's normal...
And i think it would be "FejliČinu/FejliČinoj"... but it's not that important.

You wrote "dvanaest godine", and it's logical... but we say "dvanaest godinA". There are two plural forms when you mention number of things.

1 godinA (singular)
2 godinE (plural)
3 godinE
4 godinE
5 godinA (plural- genitive)
6 godinA
...
11 godinA (plural- genitive)
12 godinA
13 godinA
14 godinA
15 godinA
...
21 godinA (singular)
22 godinE (plural)
23 godinE
24 godinE
25 godinA (plural- genitive)
26 godinA
...

As you see... 5 is an important number... it's a barrier between normal plural and its genitive form. And i find using singular for numbers 21, 31, 41, 101, 201, 1001... very interesting. We say "1001 noć", "101 dalmatinac" hehe.. and so on

It's reč, not reć... but i'm sure it's just lapsus calami.

And about your question... Many native speakers don't see difference between "umeti" and "znati"... "Znati" usually means to know something completely, but people say "Znam engleski" although they don't know it (completely). People usually say "Znam engleski" instead of "Govorim engleski", although the difference between those two could be huge. Anyway, everybody accepts that "Znati jezik" version. You can express different degrees of knowledge using different verbs.. (I'll try to remember some examples).

I always go into details... I don't know if it's good or bad.
Anyway I hope these information will be useful.

Hvala što si objasnila razlike između sesti i sediti. Znala sam da je jedan svršeni i drugi nesvršeni ali zaboravila sam koji je. Onda sesti je nesvršeni i sediti je svršeni.

Množina je složena. A mislim da kontam sad.

I always go into details... I don't know if it's good or bad.
Anyway I hope these information will be useful.

Yes, it's good I vrlo koristan, hvala

Hi guys!
Here's a link to a 'free' Serbian to English/English to Serbian dictionary.
http://rapidshare.com/files/97454893/Benson_recnik.rar
Happy translating

Hei!
my name is Alceu Brito from Brasil.
I am interested in serbian language because i felt in love with your music stile. I knew some Bregovic´s records and Kusturica´s movies. Thanks to internet, every day i take contact with many other musicians from balcans. There´s something familiar to me in many things from your land.
I hope you can help me to understand a little bit of our culture.
Thank you,
Alceu.

Please, can someone answer some questions i have?
Serbian, croatian, bosnian and montenegro are related languages, is easy to someone who spoke one undestand easily other language, like portuguise can understand spanish?
Muito obrigado!

Yes. They're very much alike. Infact I think It's like saying Portuguese from Brazil and Portuguese from Portugal

http://pthalogreen.livejournal.com/607106.html

pravila sam audioblog jer previše pišem i retko vežbam da i govorim na srpskom jeziku.

I can finally catch up with my serbian/croatian learning again!! my work has been interfering greatly with my language studies the last few months .. sigh .. don't they know I have a life? .. hahahaha .. Baska thanks for the great examples I am now going to print everything out, then read it .. highlight it .. write it .. say it .. and try doing some verbs with the correct endings .. hehe .. wish me luck! ..

Nur Demir, you won't need luck ... I'm sure you'll do it right!

Originally Posted by pthalo

Onda sesti je nesvršeni i sediti je svršeni.

Hehe.. zapravo... sesti je svršen, sedeti je nesvršen.

oh, right. of course. :glupa: thanks

Originally Posted by MayGoLoco

Hi guys!
Here's a link to a 'free' Serbian to English/English to Serbian dictionary.
http://rapidshare.com/files/97454893/Benson_recnik.rar
Happy translating

I tried it and it seems much better than those you can find on the net. Thanks for sharing!

Originally Posted by Zlatana

I tried it and it seems much better than those you can find on the net. Thanks for sharing!

You're welcome

Originally Posted by Zlatana

I tried it and it seems much better than those you can find on the net. Thanks for sharing!

Thank you for sharing this! Are there are programs I could put on a cellphone (env2) to translate Serb to English and English to Serb?

I only found this link for you, but it costs 299Dinars.
http://www.alphadict.com/
I have no idea if it's a good programme, maybe someone else knows a mobile-translator

Hiii ))
I have one question
Do you know some program which can provide me the infinitive of words
I mean I have words and I don't know what are their infinitive and It can't be translated by my dictionary like that :S

I doubt there's such thing.
I mean, a program like that would have to be very, very smart ...

But you can always ask us here, we'll always help you.

hehe ok, I just wanted to ask if there is such a program
but anyway, thanks for the answer I will ask here ))

Originally Posted by pthalo

Hvala što si objasnila razlike između sesti i sediti. Znala sam da je jedan svršeni i drugi nesvršeni ali zaboravila sam koji je. Onda sesti je nesvršeni i sediti je svršeni.

Pthalo, just to get this right, do you think I can compare the difference between "sesti" and "sedeti" to "leulni" and "ulni" in Hungarian? Well, I'm not sure if I'm making any sense to you, but I thought it's worth to try...

yeah, I think so, because leülni is the act of sitting down, leültem a székre, and you use the -re case with it, and ülni is just sitting, ültem a széken. So yeah, it's exactly the same thing as in Serbian. Thanks, that helped me understand sesti and sedeti a little better too.

could someone give me the 1st person singular and 3rd person plural of following verbs? :

nastupati, odgađati, veseliti se, krenuti, poručinati/naručinati, zakasniti, zvati, nazvati

hvala.