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(Download PDF) Colloquial Serbian The Complete Course For Beginners 1St Edition Celia Hawkesworth Ebook Online Full Chapter
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Colloquial
Serbian
THE COLLOQUIAL SERIES
Series Adviser: Gary King
Serbian
Typeset in Times by
Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon
Contents
Acknowledgements
Map of Serbia
Introduction
Table of pronunciation and alphabets
1 Upoznavanje
Meeting
2 Putnici idu u hotel
The travellers go to the hotel
3 Dolazak u hotel
Arrival at the hotel
4 Odlazak u grad
Going into the city
5 U Beogradu
In Belgrade
6 Razgovor o stanu
Conversation about a flat
7 U pošti
At the post office
8 U restoranu
In the restaurant
9 U turističkoj agenciji
At the tourist agent’s
10 Putovanje autobusom
Bus journey
11 Porodični odnosi
Family relationships
12 Seoski život
Village life
13 Muzika
Music
14 Pakovanje
Packing
15 Polazak
Departure
16 U kvaru
Breakdown
17 U kupovini
Shopping
18 Dolazak u Kotor
Arrival in Kotor
19 U Kotoru
In Kotor
20 Kraj
The end
Grammar summary
Key to exercises
Translations of main texts
Serbian–English glossary
English–Serbian glossary
Subject index
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the friends and colleagues who have helped
with the various stages of the evolution of this book, which has
grown out of the earlier volume Colloquial Croatian and Serbian.
Nada Šoljan, Damir Kalogjera, Ljiljana Gjurgjan, Višnja Josipović and
Vesna Domany-Hardy all generously advised on its various different
drafts. The present work is the result of a most enjoyable
collaboration with Jelena Ćalić. Her advice and help on many aspects
of life in Serbia and Montenegro, in addition to her skills as a teacher
of the Serbian language, as seen in the exercises she has devised,
have been invaluable. She has also provided the numerous
illustrative photographs which enhance the text. I shall always be
grateful to her for her hard work, patience and cheerfulness
throughout the production of the book.
Introduction
Learning Serbian
Serbian, and its close relations, Bosnian and Croatian, belongs to the
South Slavonic group of languages, along with Bulgarian,
Macedonian and Slovene. Of all the Slavonic languages, the
Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian linguistic complex is the easiest for English
speakers to master, and it is considered one of the easiest of all the
European languages for English speakers to pronounce. There is just
one small hazard for those who have difficulty in producing a rolled
‘r’. In some words ‘r’ has the value of a vowel and carries the stress.
Innocent students should be prepared to be exposed to a series of
tongue-twisters, such as Navrh brda vrba mrda ‘On top of the hill
a willow sways’, or words such as Grk ‘Greek’, or the onomatopoeic
cvrčci ‘cicadas’ (pronounced ‘tsvrchtsi’ with the stress on the ‘r’).
The alphabet consists of thirty phonemes: one letter for each
sound. The pronunciation of these letters is constant, not varying
with its position in a word. Each letter is pronounced, e.g.pauk
‘spider’ consists of two separate syllables. Notice the spelling of
Srbija: without the j there would have to be a break between the
two final vowels i-a. Also, the spelling is phonetic. That is to say,
words are written just as they are spoken. In other words, the
learner could gain full marks in dictation from the very beginning.
Dialects
Serbian has two main dialects, defined by the pronunciation of the
letter ‘e’ in certain situations. As each written letter is pronounced,
this difference in sound is reproduced also in writing. Thus, for
example, the word for ‘milk’ is pronounced and written mleko in
Ekavian and mlijeko in Ijekavian. The Ekavian dialect is used in the
greater part of Serbia, while Ijekavian is used in some parts of
Serbia, in Montenegro and by Serbs living in Bosnia-Herzegovina and
Croatia. This book uses Ekavian throughout, but the two Bosnian
characters who appear in the Dialogue ‘Ekipa’ speak Ijekavian.
Alphabets
The historical division of the South Slav lands between the Orthodox
and Catholic spheres of influence has meant that the Serbian
language may be written in either the Cyrillic or the Latin script.
Both have been modified for the language’s phonetic system, and
transliteration letter for letter is possible from one to the other.
Stress
There is no absolute rule for the position of the stressed syllable in a
word, except that it is never the final syllable. In a polysyllabic word
it is generally the pre-penultimate syllable – which in practice
generally means the first syllable. This is a fairly safe principle for
you to adopt. Listen carefully for words in which there is a long
syllable in addition to the stressed syllable: it can sometimes sound
as though there are in fact two stresses on a word, see the section
on tone below. In certain words, the stress may shift from singular
to plural or from one case to another, e.g. vreme ‘time, weather’
has genitive singular vremena and nominative plural vremena.
This is something to listen for in the more advanced stages of
learning the language. In this book the stress is marked by
underlining in the new vocabulary as it is introduced and throughout
some of the reading passages so that you do not have to think
about it too much as you read. In a word of two syllables the stress
is not marked, as it will always fall on the first.
Tone
The Serbian language has a system of tonal stress, which, on the
one hand, is quite complex and, on the other, more marked among
the speakers from some areas than others. This question may be
largely ignored in the early stages except for one or two situations
indicated below. Nevertheless, the student should be encouraged
from the outset to listen carefully to examples of the spoken
language and observe the variations in tone. Traditional textbooks
identify four tones to indicate the rising or falling of the voice on (a)
short and (b) long stressed syllables:
1 short rising ‵ gospòdin (Mr)
2 short falling ‵‵ gȍspoda (Mrs)
3 long rising ′ vίno (wine)
4 long falling ˆ dân (day)
Naturally, these variations are more noticeable on long syllables.
Occasionally they indicate a difference in meaning:
grâd town grȁd hail
pâs belt pȁs dog
lûk arch lȕk onion
One particularly obvious example is when unstressed verbal sam
‘am’ is used in conjunction with the adjective sam ‘alone’. The
statement sam sam ‘I am alone’ consists of two quite distinct
sounds.
The recordings which accompany this book enable the learner to
hear the language spoken by native Serbian speakers. Dialogues and
other sections of text for which there are recordings are marked with
the icon .
Note: When writing Serbian, pay particular attention to the diacritic
marks: c, č and ć are all different letters and to omit the diacritic will
result in misunderstandings (as in English, if ‘t’ is not crossed it can
be read as ‘l’). Also, when using dictionaries, be aware that d, đ, l, lj
and n, nj are all separate letters: i.e. ljiljan ‘lily’ will not be found
under l but under lj.
Dictionaries
Ignjatović, Zdravko etal., ESSE English-Serbian Serbian-English Dictionary, The
Institute for Foreign Languages, Belgrade, 2002
Benson, Morton, Standard English-Serbo-Croatian, Serbo-Croatian-English
Dictionary, Cambridge University Press, 1998
Hlebec, Boris, Osnovni englesko-srpski, srpsko-engleski rečnik, Zavod za udžbenike
i nastavna sredstva, Belgrade,2003
Internet sources
General, tourism
www.mfa
.gov .yu Ministry of Foreign Affairs
http://www.serbia-tourism.org
/ tourist info on Serbia
http://www.visit- montenegro
.cg.yu tourist info on Montenegro
http://www.beogra
d.org
.yu tourist info on Belgrade
http://www.beogra
d.com/ links to general sites
Culture
http://www.msub.org
.yu/main.htm Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade
http://www.naro
dnopozo
riste.co.yu/ National Theatre, Beograd
http://www.jdp.co.yu/ Jugoslovensko dramsko Pozoriste,
Beograd
http://www.kinoteka.org
.yu/ National Film Archive
Media
http://www.mediacenter.org
.yu links to media sites
http://www.politika.co.yu Politika newspaper
http://www.b92.net Radio B92
http://www.setimes.com South East European Times
Pronunciation and alphabets
(Audio 1: 1)
1 Upoznavanje
Meeting
Vocabulary
a and/but dan day
dobar (m.) good dobro došli welcome
drago mi je pleased to meet ja I
you (lit. ‘it is je is
dear moj my (m.)
to me’)
muž husband ovo his (n.)
sam am u to, into
(B) Cyrillic
Vocabulary
da yes Englez an English person
mi we smo are (1st pers. pl.)
Srbin a Serb (pl. Srbi) ste are (2nd pers. pl.)
vi you (2nd pers. pl.) zar ne? aren’t you?
(isn’t it? etc.)
Language points 1
Greetings
Dobar dan ‘good day’ is used as the basic greeting for most of the
day. The phrase for ‘good morning’ – dobro jutro – is used only up
to about 10 a.m., and that for ‘good evening’ – dobro veče – after
about 6 p.m. Informal greetings are: zdravo, ćao.
Personal pronouns
Singular Plural
1st ja I mi we
2nd ti you (familiar) vi you (formal, polite)
3rd on he oni they (m. or mixed
gender)
ona she one they (f.)
ono it ona they (n.)
Notice the two different words for ‘you’. Ti is the familiar singular
form, used for family, contemporaries, close friends, colleagues,
children and animals. Vi is used for more than one person and also
as a more formal way of addressing one person to show distance
and respect for age or social status. Like nouns and adjectives, the
pronouns have different forms depending on their function in a
sentence. You will learn these later.
Because the verb endings in Serbian clearly denote the person of
the subject, personal pronouns are not used when they are the
subject (in what is called the nominative case), except for emphasis.
Compare:
Kako se zovete? (no personal pronoun)
What are you called?
Zovem se Milan. Kako se vi zovete?
I’m called Milan. What are you called?
Ne razumeju engleski. Da li on govori srpski?
They don’t understand English. Does he speak Serbian?
Dialogue 2 (Audio 1: 4)
Questions
(A) – Zdravo Anđela, kako si?
– Dobro, hvala, a kako si ti?
– I ja sam dobro, hvala.
(B) – Govorite li srpski?
– Nažalost, još ne. Ali učimo!
– Bravo!
Vocabulary
kako si? how are you? dobro well
hvala thank you govoriti to speak
srpski Serbian nažalost unfortunately
još ne not yet ali but
učimo we are learning
Vocabulary building
Nationalities 1
Read this list of nationalities and try to work out what they are. Once
you are confident that you recognize all the Latin script names,
cover them up and try to read them in Cyrillic:
Srbin Hrvat Bosanac
Englez Irac Škotlanđanin
Velšanin Francuz Amerikanac
Note: These nouns all have feminine forms as well. Try to read them
in Cyrillic:
Language points 2
The verb biti ‘I am’
This is the first verb you must learn. It has two forms: a long
stressed form and a short unstressed (enclitic) form. The short form
is the more common, while the stressed form is used in certain
specific situations.
In Serbian there are several short forms of the kind known as
‘enclitics’. These are words which carry no stress and are
pronounced as though they were part of the preceding word.
Consequently, they cannot be placed first in a sentence or clause.
Exercise 1†
(a) Fill in the gaps with the appropriate form of biti:
1 Ja ____ Engleskinja. Moj muž ____ Škotlanđanin.
2 Oni ____ Amerikanci, a mi ____ Englezi.
3 Vesna i Neda ____ Hrvatice. One ____ studentkinje.
4 Vi ____ Bosanac?
5 Oni ____ dobro.
(b) Choose the correct pronoun:
1 ____ ne govorimo srpski.
2 ____ si Francuz.
3 ____ ste studenti?
4 Anđela i Džon su muž i žena. ____ su Englezi.
5 Zovem se Milan. ____ sam iz Beograda.
Language points 3