Croatian and Serbian - differences

btw. why don't you guys check out this dictionary: www.eudict.com
to make sure whether the words you claim are croatian really exist

Originally Posted by miki444

i corrected what seemed wrong to me, which is like 80% of it

haha, are you kidding me, rikwerts ?

Hey Jonny ehmmm Miki, Your avatar was confusing me

I didn't ment that allways just one word is possible of use! Somtimes just one word is spesific.
For example "ura" iz just in use in croatian, as "cas" only in serbian - but "sat" can be used in both languages. "hartija" only in serbian, zrakoplov only in croatian and so on... sorry for not beeing more clearer.

I don't know exactly but I would still clame that it is "sugnit" (in croatian) and "sagnut" or "sagnuti" in serbian. At least this is how me and my tribe is spelling it out

Rikverts is used in Zagorje, ura is used in Zagorje and Dalmatia if we want to locate it.

Dalmatia have also a lot italian words but that are mostly used in the coast region, but still in croatia (and serbia not).
Here are a few that came to my mind:
pomodore - rajcice
sumagan - rucnik шумаган ручник
kusin - jastuk кушин јастук
skovace - kanta za smece шковаце канта за смеце

I never heard a serb saying "orah" - but It seems You did

Para is turkish origin.

I found a mistake, I ment
stepeni (in croatian) - celzijevih stupnjeva (Grad Celsius) (in serbian)

A new one:
amper (amper is used in some region in Slavonija, maybe somwhere else too) - kanta (used in both)

I agree that rikverts and ura is used in Croatia, my dad always says navi mi uru
But I've never heard of sugnit only sagnuti.

sorry, but rikverts and ura is heavy-dialect, i think we are talking about standard-croatian here

Originally Posted by Zoka

I found a mistake, I ment
stepeni (in croatian) - celzijevih stupnjeva (Grad Celsius) (in serbian)

wrong again, it's stupnjevi in croatian

Ura seems to be standard croatian: (thanks for th elink btw.)
http://www.eudict.com/?lang=croeng&word=ura&go=Search

Okey, so "stupnjevi" is the croatian and "celzijevih stepeni" should be th eserbian word for "degree". I hope its now correct

hmm so hour isn't ura? it's sat like in srb? btw sat comes from the turkish word saat-hour.In mcd the word is even exactly saat.In Bulgarian we don't use that word,we say час.

Originally Posted by Zoka

I never heard a serb saying "orah" - but It seems You did

yeah i did, and that's also what www.recnik.com says
maybe you are confused because "orasi" is the plural

Originally Posted by tedinkyyy

hmm so hour isn't ura? it's sat like in srb? btw sat comes from the turkish word saat-hour.In mcd the word is even exactly saat.In Bulgarian we don't use that word,we say час.

khm, you can use "ura" maybe somewhere, but "sat" is definitely much more common and correct.

over and out for today

Tisuća - hiljada came to my mind

A few more:

vjetar puse - vetar duva вјетар пуше - ветра дува (its related to the allready mentioned "pusit - duvat" what stands for smoking, here it stands for blowing.

vrag - davol (devil) враг - жавол
zavjese - firange (engl. curtains) in Dalmatia "store". I couldn't find the word "firange" in the serbian dictionary but I am almost sure it is used there.

Smaller Kids are using the words "teta" for adults (if they are not near related) if its a woman, for a male is used "ciko" чико (in Serbian), "stricek" стричек (in Croatia, "barba" in Dalmatia).
Maybe "stricek" iz also usable in Serbia but usualy no "ciko" in Croatia.
As "stric" means uncle from fathers side in both languages.

And a 2nd word came to my mind for eng. ladder - "skale" but this is more used in Dalmatia I think. But its present in croatian dictinary.

zivci - nerve живци - нерве.
tlak or pritisak - only pritisak (engl. pressure)

@Miki - You are right, dalekozor and dvogled is usuable in both languages, thanks!

Originally Posted by Zoka

A few more:

vjetar puse - vetar duva вјетар пуше - ветра дува (its related to the allready mentioned "pusit - duvat" what stands for smoking, here it stands for blowing.

vrag - davol (devil) враг - жавол
zavjese - firange (engl. curtains) in Dalmatia "store". I couldn't find the word "firange" in the serbian dictionary but I am almost sure it is used there.

Smaller Kids are using the words "teta" for adults (if they are not near related) if its a woman, for a male is used "ciko" чико (in Serbian), "stricek" стричек (in Croatia, "barba" in Dalmatia).
Maybe "stricek" iz also usable in Serbia but usualy no "ciko" in Croatia.
As "stric" means uncle from fathers side in both languages.

And a 2nd word came to my mind for eng. ladder - "skale" but this is more used in Dalmatia I think. But its present in croatian dictinary.

zivci - nerve живци - нерве.
tlak or pritisak - only pritisak (engl. pressure)

@Miki - You are right, dalekozor and dvogled is usuable in both languages, thanks!

the serbian word for curtain is "zavesa".

btw. what is the sense in comparing all kind of hillbilly-dialects to each other ?
if you do that you will find ten thousands of different words, like"rikverts", it itsn't understood by serbs but also not by 80% of croats,
so why even mentioning stuff like that ? stick to the standard language please !

I have looked it up with using "zavese" but its present with "zavesa", so I didn't found it...

We are here to learn somthing from each other, so its usefull to at least heard these words You callin hillbilly-dialects. People are not only here just to learn the language Some of them maybe planing to go on hollidays there, this means they will come right there where this "hillbilly-dialects" were spoken. As standard Croatian is mainly spoken in Slavonija and Hercegovina, both are not realy tourist aims.
I think You are so smart to solve this thing with easily sayin "please speak standard language as I do not understand your hillbilly-dialects" but maybe some of them won't be able to do so Now You know the sense...

Everyone can still pick out the words that are unique or of use for themself althought a few dialcet words are among - can You imagine that?

But okey, if others has the same opinion, I can remove the non unique words... I am not here to make somone unhappy....

Originally Posted by tedinkyyy

And before Spring makes some note here... I think learning languages in ATL SHOULD be stimulated Having only one thread for all things is too confusing and u should search it all for something u need. I think thus things would be much more orderes.
But well draga Spring if u think such thread shouldn't exist, u may delete it

Spring will not make any such note..
When we had one SR/CR sub-forum (one BG etc.), the intention was to keep the forums clean (put everything in a few threads not to over flood the Lyrics translations with unrelated stuff) but as we already have these sub-subforums now, it's perfectly ok (and normal) to have more threads in them

As for this particular topic - I absolutely LOVE it! And if you haven't opened it, probably I would

Originally Posted by pthalo

i translated something into croatian as misao here and was corrected to use tjera. and i know kužim is slang.

in serbian you can say računar for kompjuter but it sounds old fashioned. tipkovnica = tastatura in serbian.


other major differences are about grammar. they use the infinitive more in Croatian than in Serbian. In Serbian you see a lot more sentences like "nemoj da se vratiš" whereas in Croatian they would say "nemoj se vraćat" and the verb treba is different. Na srpskom se ne menja po ličama (people do it but it's not grammatically correct. But it is grammatically correct in Croatian)

another difference: sretan (croatian) - srećan (serbian)

Racunar is not old fashioned but the correct way of saying it because kompjuter is simply English word
You got me thinking about "trebati" .. but I guess there's something to it... We say:
meni treba, tebi treba, njoj/njemu/nama/njima treba
(ti mi trebas, on mi treba, ona mi treba, ono mi treba, vi mi trebate, oni/one/ona mi trebaju)
and I believe Croatians say
ja trebam (tebe, njega, nju, ono, njih)
ti trebas
ona treba

But of course.. someone please correct me if I'm wrong

Originally Posted by pthalo

another difference: sretan (croatian) - srećan (serbian)

I wouldn't agree on that.. I believe sretan is correct in Croatian but both sretan and srecan are correct in Serbian (here's a discussion that supports the idea - click)

Originally Posted by miki444

we don't transcribe foreign names/locations like serbians do, (i find that hilarious)
"geroge bush" is always "george bush" and not "đorđ buš"

I agree - that is mega stupid but it's not đorđ buš but Džordž Buš hehe
However, there is a good reason for it - there are some letters in English that don't exist in Serbian and also, how would you write George Bush in Cyrillic? Георге Бусх ? And, besides, Vuk Karadzic clearly said "pisi kao sto govoris, citaj kao sto je napisano" and that rule makes our lives quite easier

Originally Posted by tedinkyyy

And what about the ijekavica? I can't understand where is pronounced ije instead of e...is there any rule? I used to think it can be some orientation for me where we in Bulgarian say ja instead of the Serbian e but it isn't always that way so... I really got confused .

I would also realllyyy like to know if there's some kind of rule because I am not always sure if there's "ij" or just a "j" in Croatian words.. Although, I guess it's something I also "feel" cause, like miki, I've never been a rules fan but build my language knowledge on a hunch

Oh my God! LOL

where should I start..
I am not so sure why some of the words are written in Cyrillic twice so I'm just gonna ramble out my comments (in bold) the way I see the entire thing..

cizme - cizme чизме - чижме ? what's with ж ? (it can only be čizme-чизме)
kolodvor - zeljeznicka stanica колодвор - жељезничка станица - (there's no kolodvor in Serbia
zarulja - sialica жаруља - сијалица - sialica is not correct although some ppl say it like that
hlace - pantalone хлаче - панталаоне - it's панталоне and Serbians don't wear hlače
list - hartija - list is list (sheet; leaf) and hartija is hartija (paper) ~ list papira, komad hartije
ulica - drum (ulica is street and drum is another thing - road; mostly country road but we also say put)
prijatelj - drug (both is used in Serbian but the two words can have a slightly different meaning; you can say poslovni prijatelj for a friend in business but you will never say poslovni drug)
vilica - viljuska вилица - виљушка (vilica in serbian is jaw EN fork is viljuka)
zlica - kasiga жлица - кашига (žlica in Serbian is kašika)
dvoriste - avlija (turkish origin) двориште - авлија (dvorište is also dvorište in Serbian and avlija is mostly used in villages/by older ppl)
pas - kuce (pas is dog; kuče is young dog; kuja/kučka is female dog)
stoljnak - carsaf (turkish origin) столјнак - чаршаф (stoljnjak is stoljnjak in Serbian as well, čaršaf is (bed)sheet)
pusit - duvat пушит - дуват (pušiti i duvati also 2 different things - pusiti means to smoke, duvati means to blow)
skare - makaze шкаре - маказе (CR škare - SR makaze)
naocale - dozle/naocare наочале - џозле (SR - naočare; đozle is a slang word)
novac - pare/lova (in both SR and CR novac = money; pare, lova in everyday talk. Also, para is 1/100 of Serbian dinar)
opcina - opstina опчина - општина (opčina doesnt seem right in any language; CR - općina; SR - opština)
putovnica - pasos путобница - пасош (путобница doesn't exist; CR / putovnica; SR - pasoš)
sagnuti - sagnit (sagnit doesn't exist; it's sagnuti in SR as well)
orah - oras (orah is SR but some people incorrectly say oras; perhaps because plural is orasi)
hvala - fala (fala is definitelly not correct although you can hear ppl saying it like that.. same like leba[c] - hleb)
juha - corba (turkish origin) јуха - чорба (actually, in Serbia, there's supa=soup and čorba=thick soup; chowder)
rikwerts - unazad (germanizam) (rikverc is commonly used word for what you do when you drive your car backwards )
ljestvice - lotre (if ljestvice is ladder than SR is lestve and lotre is used in Croatia as far as I know)
stepeni - gradi (SR: stepen; CR - stupanj. English - degree. And grad is a measurement for rakija 1 grad = 2.46 vol%)
petlo - in which language?

And Zoka, now when I've reached the end of the list.. I believe you spelled CR versions in Cyrillic too? That is totally .. not ok! and made a mess in my head.
It would be much less confusing if you wouldn't write the words 4 times .. one for Croatian and one for Serbian is quite enough, especially because I think a great deal of the words you wrote in Cyrillic are just incorrectly spelled (not that I blame you - it's easy to have an issue with the Cyrillic dz; dj etc..)
So.. in general, if you want to make us happy - it would be better to first state which are correct versions in both languages and then maybe add alternative (non official) versions .. Like
rajčica (pomodore) - парадајз = paradajz (paradajka)

or, even better - open a new thread and make a list of "non-standard/slang or whatever unofficial words in both languages because the purpose of this topic is to see the differences between official Croatian and Serbian)

As for pusit and duvat .. seriously!!! We can talk about your lists a lot LOL

vjetar puse - vetar duva вјетар пуше - ветра дува (where does vetra duva? tell me please)

vrag - davol (devil) враг - жавол (what the hell is žavol?)
zavjese - firange (engl. curtains) in Dalmatia "store". I couldn't find the word "firange" in the serbian dictionary but I am almost sure it is used there. (SR: firange is used in villages and by older people.. correct word is zavesa)

there is no čiko in Serbian (sem u onom stripu.. ) but "čika" '- чика
"striček" is also totally Croatian (maybe - strika in Serbian)

zivci - nerve живци - нерве. (I have no idea which language is which in your sequence.. but in Serbian, there is both živci and nervi)

now some real differences,
a serbian girl asked me in a bar once "znas igrati?" - which confused me a lot,
because in croatian "igrati" means "to play" and as i later found out in serbian it also means "to dance"

In Serbian, "igrati" is to dance and "igrati se" is to play

which confused me a little because "igra mi se" is "i feel like dancing" so how do you say "i feel like playing?" "se igra mi se?" lol

It's the same - igra mi se
but .. be careful with using it cause it can have tricky meanings.. same like in English

oces da se igramo? (a kid asks another kid if he wants to play)
oces da se igramo? ocemo se igrati? (a grownup to another one - use your imagination unless if it's clear that the other person is talking about some sort of game)
oces da igramo? (plesemo/jesi za ples?) - do you want (us) to dance?

So.. miki, in Croatian, it's only "plesati" for dancing? or.. something else?