Google Translator treatment of Bulgarian and Macedonian
Harlan Messinger
following text:
Пред многу векови, кога човекот започнувал да учи како да живее во
заедница со другите луѓе, постоеле поединци кои со својата мудрост и
знаење ги воделе другите. Најчесто тоа биле најстарите членови на
заедницата или оние кои во дадена област веќе се докажале, го стекнале
потребното искуство за да можат да дадат објективно мислење на
конкретната тема. Оваа појава продолжила и во наредните векови. Зависно
од времето некогаш овие поединци кои ја имале довербата на народот биле
црковни старешини, некогаш кралеви, војсководци, мудреци, учители.
Заедничко им било тоа што имале доволно кредибилитет за своето мислење
да го наметнат на дел од народот. Во денешно време личностите кои се
истакнати во областа во која работат или кои успеале на друг начин да се
стекнат со доверба кај широката јавност, често пати пишуваат колумни. Во
литературата колумната претставува публицистички стил на искажување на
мислење на конкретна тема. Притоа, битно е да се спомене дека текстот не
е новинарски, нема за цел да презентира релевантни факти, ниту пак има
за цел да го повика читателот да направи нешто. Според најтесното
гледање на колумната, таа претставува искажување на мислење презентирано
низ печатените медиуми.
I went to the Google Translator to see if I could find out which
Cyrillic-using language this was. If I test Bulgarian, the tool returns
Многу centuries before, when chovekot zapochnuval Kako to learn to live
st zaednitsa pm луѓе other, which postoele poedintsi pm својата mudrost
знаење them vodele and others. SG & Најчесто bile најстарите zaednitsata
or members of st onie which is an area веќе dokazhale him steknale
needful artificial able to give објективно мислење specific theme. [snip]
If I test Macedonian, it becomes almost perfectly clear:
Many centuries ago, when man was beginning to learn how to live in
community with others, there were individuals with their wisdom and
knowledge to lead others. Often they were the oldest members of the
community or those in an area already proven, he gained the necessary
experience to be able to give an objective opinion on the specific
topic. [snip]
If Bulgarian and Macedonian were virtually the same language, wouldn't a
Bulgarian-English translator and a Macedonian-English translator come
out with more or less the same thing?
Dušan Vukotić
Many centuries, when čovekot započnuval to learn how to live in
community with other luǵe, individuals who existed with their wisdom
and meaning gi lead others. Najčesto it was the oldest Members of the
community or those in a given area is already proven Go potrebnoto
acquired experience to možat to give an objective opinion on the issue
konkretnata. This phenomenon prodolžila and in the following
centuries. Depending on the time nekogas these individuals that I have
confidence in the people were church base turned head, nekogas wanted
vojskovodci, mudreci, učiteli Zaedničko them was that they had
sufficient credibility to his opinion to impose on the part of the
people. In today's time figures which are set out in the area in which
work or who managed in some other way that gained in confidence
širokata public, often suffers pišuvaat column In literature kolumnata
is a journalistic style to iskažuvanje opinion on specific topics.
Therefore, it is important to mention that the text not journalists,
for no purpose to present relevant facts, nor aims to cried čitatelot
to do something According najtesnoto viewing on kolumnata, it is a
iskažuvanje the opinion presented a series pečatenite media.
Above is the Serbian - English machine translation. I told before that
the "Macedonian" is on the half way between Serbian and Bulgarian. But
according to MT it seems to be a little bit closer to Serbian. The
fact is, I can understand "Macedonian" without any difficulties, while
in Bulgarian, here and there, there are some words whose meaning is
not completely clear to me.
DV
Dušan Vukotić
Of course, here we must take in account the differences among the
three Cyrillic alphabets (Bulgarian, Macedonian and Serbian; they are
not 100% compatible).
DV
Trond Engen
> Someone created a now-deleted article on English Wikipedia with the
> following text:
>
> Пред многу векови, кога човекот започнувал да учи како да живее во
> заедница со другите луѓе, постоеле поединци кои со својата мудрост и
> знаење ги воделе другите. Најчесто тоа биле најстарите членови на
> заедницата или оние кои во дадена област веќе се докажале, го
> стекнале потребното искуство за да можат да дадат објективно мислење
> на конкретната тема. [...]
>
> I went to the Google Translator to see if I could find out which
> Cyrillic-using language this was. If I test Bulgarian, the tool
> returns
>
> Многу centuries before, when chovekot zapochnuval Kako to learn to
> live st zaednitsa pm луѓе other, which postoele poedintsi pm својата
> mudrost знаење them vodele and others. SG & Најчесто bile најстарите
> zaednitsata or members of st onie which is an area веќе dokazhale him
> steknale needful artificial able to give објективно мислење specific
> theme. [snip]
>
> If I test Macedonian, it becomes almost perfectly clear:
>
> Many centuries ago, when man was beginning to learn how to live in
> community with others, there were individuals with their wisdom and
> knowledge to lead others. Often they were the oldest members of the
> community or those in an area already proven, he gained the necessary
> experience to be able to give an objective opinion on the specific
> topic. [snip]
>
> If Bulgarian and Macedonian were virtually the same language,
> wouldn't a Bulgarian-English translator and a Macedonian-English
> translator come out with more or less the same thing?
Two features of language. Both are true of Norwegian and Swedish:
- There may be important ortographical differences even if the spoken
languages are close. It wouldn't trick a human translator, but the
machine is helpless.
- Different specialized lexicon due to different history.
Two possible features of the test:
- These translators learn from user input, and the amount of
translations and qualified feedback might be much higher in Macedonian.
ISTM that the Macedonian exile communities in English speaking countries
are far larger than the Bulgarian.
- The test can have been designed to highlight differences, e.g. using
specialized lexicon or dialectal forms or usages in one language or the
other.
--
Trond Engen
Athel Cornish-Bowden
<hmessinger...@comcast.net> said:
> Someone created a now-deleted article on English Wikipedia with the
> following text:
>
> Пред многу векови, кога човекот започнувал ...
>
> I went to the Google Translator to see if I could find out which
> Cyrillic-using language this was. If I test Bulgarian, the tool returns
>
> Многу centuries before, when chovekot ...
> If I test Macedonian, it becomes almost perfectly clear:
>
> Many centuries ago, when man was beginning to learn...
>
> If Bulgarian and Macedonian were virtually the same language, wouldn't
> a Bulgarian-English translator and a Macedonian-English translator come
> out with more or less the same thing?
I think this tells us more about the limitations of machine translation
and the skills of Google's programmers than it does about Bulgarian and
Macedonian. I did a similar experiment with languages that are more
familiar (to me). Taking the following text (also from Wikipedia):
José Sócrates estudou nas escolas básicas e na Escola Secundária Frei
Heitor Pinto, situadas na Covilhã, cidade onde viveu na sua juventude.
Ingressou em 1975 no recém-criado Instituto Superior de Engenharia de
Coimbra (ISEC), em Coimbra, tendo obtido, em 1979, um diploma de
bacharelato como engenheiro técnico civil.
Any human who knows Spanish can tell immediately that this is not
Spanish, and can understand it virtually without fault. However, when
asked to translate it from Spanish to English, Google Translator gives
José Sócrates estudou basic nas escolas e na Escola Secundária Frei
Heitor Pinto, located Covilhã na, na sua cidade onde viveu juventude.
Ingressou recém-em 1975 no Instituto Superior de Engenharia servant of
Coimbra (ISEC), em Coimbra, tendo Obtido, em 1979, um bacharelato
diploma as civil technical engenheiro.
To be honest, I didn't expect the result to be quite as bad as it is; I
expected it to be more akin to your Bulgarian-Macedonian example. I
think the point is that Google Translator doesn't try to guess the
language, and gives correct translations only for words (básicas,
técnico) that are absolutely identical in Portuguese and Spanish, and
not necessarily even then: I was surprised it couldn't cope with
"Instituto".
--
athel
Ekkehard Dengler
> On 2009-09-30 04:33:42 +0200, Harlan Messinger
> <hmessinger...@comcast.net> said:
>
>> Someone created a now-deleted article on English Wikipedia with the
>> following text:
>>
>>
>> I went to the Google Translator to see if I could find out which
>> Cyrillic-using language this was. If I test Bulgarian, the tool
>> returns
>>
>
>> If I test Macedonian, it becomes almost perfectly clear:
>>
>> Many centuries ago, when man was beginning to learn...
>>
>> If Bulgarian and Macedonian were virtually the same language,
>> wouldn't a Bulgarian-English translator and a Macedonian-English
>> translator come out with more or less the same thing?
>
> I think this tells us more about the limitations of machine
> translation and the skills of Google's programmers than it does about
> Bulgarian and Macedonian. I did a similar experiment with languages
> that are more familiar (to me). Taking the following text (also from
> Wikipedia):
>
> Heitor Pinto, situadas na Covilh�, cidade onde viveu na sua juventude.
> Ingressou em 1975 no rec�m-criado Instituto Superior de Engenharia de
> Coimbra (ISEC), em Coimbra, tendo obtido, em 1979, um diploma de
>
> Any human who knows Spanish can tell immediately that this is not
> Spanish, and can understand it virtually without fault. However, when
> asked to translate it from Spanish to English, Google Translator gives
>
> Heitor Pinto, located Covilh� na, na sua cidade onde viveu juventude.
> Ingressou rec�m-em 1975 no Instituto Superior de Engenharia servant of
> Coimbra (ISEC), em Coimbra, tendo Obtido, em 1979, um bacharelato
> diploma as civil technical engenheiro.
>
> To be honest, I didn't expect the result to be quite as bad as it is;
> I expected it to be more akin to your Bulgarian-Macedonian example. I
> think the point is that Google Translator doesn't try to guess the
> t�cnico) that are absolutely identical in Portuguese and Spanish, and
> not necessarily even then: I was surprised it couldn't cope with
> "Instituto".
A human translator might have left "Instituto Superior de Engenharia"
untranslated as well, because it's the actual name of the institute.
Regards,
Ekkehard
Panu
<hmessinger.removet...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
>
> If Bulgarian and Macedonian were virtually the same language, wouldn't a
> Bulgarian-English translator and a Macedonian-English translator come
> out with more or less the same thing?
Well, for starters, Macedonian Cyrillic is much more akin to Serbian
Cyrillic. For instance, they use J as a Cyrillic letter.
Athel Cornish-Bowden
True, and the fact that it didn't translate the "de" in the name would
seem to confirm your point.
--
athel
Harlan Messinger
been told of how alike they are, that their writing systems aren't quite
the same.
Christian Weisgerber
> Someone created a now-deleted article on English Wikipedia with the
> following text:
>
> Пред многу векови, кога човекот
> започнувал да учи како да живее во
> заедница со другите луѓе, постоеле
> поединци кои со својата мудрост и
> знаење ги воделе другите. Најчесто тоа
> биле најстарите членови на
> заедницата или оние кои во дадена
> област веќе се докажале, го стекнале
[...]
> I went to the Google Translator to see if I could find out which
> Cyrillic-using language this was.
Macedonian. Ѓ and Ќ are a dead giveaway.
> If Bulgarian and Macedonian were virtually the same language, wouldn't a
> Bulgarian-English translator and a Macedonian-English translator come
> out with more or less the same thing?
Translation machines have no comprehension of the text. As a result,
they are thrown off even by minor typos and misspellings that many
human readers barely notice. If a hypothetical machine translator
only knew American spelling, it might try to connect a "tyre change"
to the city in Lebanon.
Human readers have no trouble with this sentence that once appeared
in the French Wikipedia:
L'ancien président polonais Lech Wałęsa à pour sa part déclarer
que la démocratie et les transformations qu'elle occasionne ne
peuvent se faire "d'un seul coup" et que "l'important est que les
ukrainiens ne commettent pas trop d'erreurs".
Machine translators struggle with an ungrammatical infinitive
construction without ever realizing that it's simply a misspelled
passé composé.
Even if they are "virtually the same language", two separate language
standards are likely to have a lot of small differences on this
scale. As for Bulgarian and Macedonian, their respective alphabets
are already quite different.
--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber na...@mips.inka.de
Dušan Vukotić
No, in this case, the letter J is in fact an obstacle for a MT. Almost
wherever the Serbs are using sound j that sound is missing in
"Macedonian" (jedinka edinka 'entity', jedar edar 'firm', jesen esen
'autumn' etc.); on the other hand, the "Macedonian" sound j is mainly
a substitution for Serbian "lj" (zemlja zemja, divljak divjak 'savage'
etc.).
DV
Athel Cornish-Bowden
> [ ... ]
> Human readers have no trouble with this sentence that once appeared
> in the French Wikipedia:
>
> L'ancien président polonais Lech Wałęsa à pour sa part déclarer
> que la démocratie et les transformations qu'elle occasionne ne
> peuvent se faire "d'un seul coup" et que "l'important est que les
> ukrainiens ne commettent pas trop d'erreurs".
Nonetheless, there was endless discussion 15 years or so about whether
one could attribute the similar grammatical error in a message
allegedly written by a murder victim in her own blood saying "Omar m'a
tuer" constituted evidence as to who had written it.
--
athel
António Marques
> If Bulgarian and Macedonian were virtually the same language, wouldn't a
> Bulgarian-English translator and a Macedonian-English translator come
> out with more or less the same thing?
Err... no. Automatic translators don't see pat orthography, and
orthography is usually the first thing to suffer in such circumstances
as Macedonian and Bulgarian's.
Otoh, an en-bg translator and an en-ma translator might come up with
similar output (because here you're the one judging the data, and you
can make the orthographic conversions). Then again, they might not -
they may well not be of comparable quality. Also, different expressions
may be favoured by each one, with no real reflex in reality.
That said, of course BG and MA aren't virtually the same language. MA is
a peripherial dialect of BG, and not the one standard BG is based on.
That's different from being virtually the same.
António Marques
> D'oh! I guess it didn't occur to me, perhaps because of how much I'd
> been told of how alike they are, that their writing systems aren't
> quite the same.
The first thing someone does when trying to split languages is to split
spellings.
António Marques
Because the inscription was quite firmly written and the victim an
educated person. The matter of fact is that it was quite possible that
it had been written by the killer (someone else) in order to incriminate
Omar. What's to stop a killer from doing that? To me, it looks like a
victim able to write so clearly
(http://www.affaires-criminelles.com/lexique_18.php) should have been
able to seek help.
António Marques
> That said, of course BG and MA aren't virtually the same language. MA is
> a peripherial dialect of BG, and not the one standard BG is based on.
> That's different from being virtually the same.
And of course the are of contact between bulgarian and yugoslavian has
transitional elements, and when all's said and done all slavic languages
are quite close.
Christian Weisgerber
> Well, for starters, Macedonian Cyrillic is much more akin to Serbian
> Cyrillic. For instance, they use J as a Cyrillic letter.
Here's a side-by-side comparison:
bg А Б В Г Д Е Ж З И Й К Л М Н О П Р С Т У Ф Х Ц Ч Ш Щ Ъ Ь Ю Я
mk А Б В Г Д Ѓ Е Ж З Ѕ И Ј К Л Љ М Н Њ О П Р С Т Ќ У Ф Х Ц Ч Џ Ш
António Marques
> Panu <craoibhi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Well, for starters, Macedonian Cyrillic is much more akin to Serbian
> > Cyrillic. For instance, they use J as a Cyrillic letter.
>
> Here's a side-by-side comparison:
>
> bg А Б В Г Д Е Ж З И Й К Л М Н О П Р С Т У Ф Х Ц Ч Ш Щ Ъ Ь Ю Я
> mk А Б В Г Д Ѓ Е Ж З Ѕ И Ј К Л Љ М Н Њ О П Р С Т Ќ У Ф Х Ц Ч Џ Ш
This really reminds me of something someone on the intarwebs once
wrote:
Ja nenavižu kirilliçu. Ja dumaju čto vse dolžny pisat' russkij jazyk
na latiniçe kak bol'šinstvo drugih slavjanskih jazykov. Kiriliça - êto
sovsem ustarelaja pis'mennaja sistema, vdabavok russkie bukvy očen'
urodlivye. Tol'ko smotret' na nih vredit zreniju, a s drugoj storony,
net ničego na svete krasivee latinskih bukv.
garabik-ne...@kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk
> This really reminds me of something someone on the intarwebs once
> wrote:
>
> Ja nenavižu kirilliçu. Ja dumaju čto vse dolžny pisat' russkij jazyk
> na latiniçe kak bol'šinstvo drugih slavjanskih jazykov. Kiriliça - êto
> sovsem ustarelaja pis'mennaja sistema, vdabavok russkie bukvy očen'
> urodlivye. Tol'ko smotret' na nih vredit zreniju, a s drugoj storony,
> net ničego na svete krasivee latinskih bukv.
>
Nice :-)
I'd like to know what led him to use ç instead of c, though.
And personally, I'd use a real character instead for soft sign (j or
even ь), so that it does not clash with ukrainian, and an ' for the hard
sign. And 'ia' instead of 'ja' after consonants (and then you do not
need the hard sign...)
--
-----------------------------------------------------------
| Radovan Garabík http://kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk/~garabik/ |
| __..--^^^--..__ garabik @ kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk |
-----------------------------------------------------------
Antivirus alert: file .signature infected by signature virus.
Hi! I'm a signature virus! Copy me into your signature file to help me spread!
Dušan Vukotić
Reminds you of what? This is a chauvinistic pamphlet against
Cyrillic.
DV
PaulJK
> António Marques <ent...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> This really reminds me of something someone on the intarwebs once
>> wrote:
>>
>> Ja nenavižu kirilliçu. Ja dumaju čto vse dolžny pisat' russkij jazyk
>> na latiniçe kak bol'šinstvo drugih slavjanskih jazykov. Kiriliça - êto
>> sovsem ustarelaja pis'mennaja sistema, vdabavok russkie bukvy očen'
>> urodlivye. Tol'ko smotret' na nih vredit zreniju, a s drugoj storony,
>> net ničego na svete krasivee latinskih bukv.
>>
>
> Nice :-)
> I'd like to know what led him to use ç instead of c, though.
> And personally, I'd use a real character instead for soft sign (j or
> even ь), so that it does not clash with ukrainian, and an ' for the hard
> sign. And 'ia' instead of 'ja' after consonants (and then you do not
> need the hard sign...)
I'd agree with these suggestions.
BTW, I don't get one word. What's "vredit", in "vredit zreniju"?
pjk
Dušan Vukotić
> garabik-news-2005...@kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk wrote:
[...Even looking at it (Cyrillic letters) is harmful for your
vision...]
I cannot understand what Antonio was trying to achieve by posting this
hateful paragraph?
DV
Panu
I wouldn't say that it is bad for the eyes, and I don't think Latin
letters are particularly good for calligraphy. However, I get the
point of the poster. Myself, I have never become as good at Russian as
at Polish, and the reason is that I read Cyrillic so badly that I
can't read a Russian book for fun - it is already work.
garabik-ne...@kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk
> BTW, I don't get one word. What's "vredit", in "vredit zreniju"?
škodí ('makes harm', damages, is bad for...)
A nice example of a chained false friend -
ru vred=sk škoda
sk vred=ru jazva
sk jazva=ru šram
sk šrám=ru carapina
garabik-ne...@kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk
...
> I wouldn't say that it is bad for the eyes, and I don't think Latin
> letters are particularly good for calligraphy. However, I get the
> point of the poster. Myself, I have never become as good at Russian as
> at Polish, and the reason is that I read Cyrillic so badly that I
> can't read a Russian book for fun - it is already work.
Yes - I am reasonably fluent in Russian, more than in Italian. Yet,
reading a good book in Italian feels easier than in Russian. It is
especially visible on a computer screen, at low DPI or using suboptimal
typefaces - the cyrillic letters, and consequently the words, are just
too similar in their shape and I have to strain my eyes more. In
Italian, I can skim the page to get a gist of the paragraphs; not so
well in Russian.
Dušan Vukotić
wrote:
> Panu <craoibhi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> ...
>
> > I wouldn't say that it is bad for the eyes, and I don't think Latin
> > letters are particularly good for calligraphy. However, I get the
> > point of the poster. Myself, I have never become as good at Russian as
> > at Polish, and the reason is that I read Cyrillic so badly that I
> > can't read a Russian book for fun - it is already work.
>
> Yes - I am reasonably fluent in Russian, more than in Italian. Yet,
> reading a good book in Italian feels easier than in Russian. It is
> especially visible on a computer screen, at low DPI or using suboptimal
> typefaces - the cyrillic letters, and consequently the words, are just
> too similar in their shape and I have to strain my eyes more. In
> Italian, I can skim the page to get a gist of the paragraphs; not so
> well in Russian.
Are you really so stupid? Anyone who has learned some alphabet in his
older age needs more energy to read that "new" letters than those he
used ti read from his childhood. Personally, I see no difference in
readability between Latin and Cyrillic script. Even I wouldn't be able
to say what script the book I read a minute ago was originally written
in.
DV
Peter T. Daniels
Assuming that like any good Yugoslav, you were raised a perfect
biscriptal, have you ever taken a reading-speed test designed to
discover whether you read more quickly or more accurately in one
script or the other? Presumably psycholinguists have undertaken such
studies. Can you tell us where their findings have been published?
It's simply a fact that the Cyrillic letters are less distinctive from
each other than the Roman letters, so the null hypothesis is that
reading Cyrillic is (at least slightly) less efficient than reading
exactly the same text in Roman.
Joachim Pense
>
>
> Are you really so stupid? Anyone who has learned some alphabet in his
> older age needs more energy to read that "new" letters than those he
> used ti read from his childhood. Personally, I see no difference in
> readability between Latin and Cyrillic script. Even I wouldn't be able
> to say what script the book I read a minute ago was originally written
> in.
Cyrillic letters have few ascenders and descenders, giving the eye less
overall orientation. It is often stated that this reduces readability.
Joachim
Dušan Vukotić
For the people who learned both Latin and Cyrillic scripts lately it
may be the truth. But for those who were acquainted with both
alphabets in their kindergarten age (prior to elementary school) such
an "orientation" would be absolutely irrelevant.
DV
garabik-ne...@kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk
> On Oct 3, 11:48 am, Dušan Vukotić <dusan.vuko...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Are you really so stupid?
Хвала, Душане!
>> Anyone who has learned some alphabet in his
>> older age needs more energy to read that "new" letters than those he
>> used ti read from his childhood. Personally, I see no difference in
>> readability between Latin and Cyrillic script. Even I wouldn't be able
>> to say what script the book I read a minute ago was originally written
>> in.
Just set your computer screen to ~30 dpi (quite common just a decade ago)
and try to read extensive blobs of cyrillic and latin texts. Even with
a good modern antialiasing and hinting, the difference will be obvious.
...
>
> It's simply a fact that the Cyrillic letters are less distinctive from
> each other than the Roman letters, so the null hypothesis is that
> reading Cyrillic is (at least slightly) less efficient than reading
> exactly the same text in Roman.
Yes - just take an OCRed page of cyrillic. Mistakes between ц/и/н, п/л,
ш/щ, з/э are very common (pardon my Russocentrism) - similarly the
mistakes in latin script between rn/m, In/h, ri/n. However, one would
say that percentage of one letter cyrillic combinations is bigger than
that of two letter latin ones.
Dušan Vukotić
wrote:
> Peter T. Daniels <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > On Oct 3, 11:48 am, Dušan Vukotić <dusan.vuko...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Are you really so stupid?
>
> Хвала, Душане!
My apology, I didn't mean to insult you. I was angry a little.
> >> Anyone who has learned some alphabet in his
> >> older age needs more energy to read that "new" letters than those he
> >> used ti read from his childhood. Personally, I see no difference in
> >> readability between Latin and Cyrillic script. Even I wouldn't be able
> >> to say what script the book I read a minute ago was originally written
> >> in.
>
> Just set your computer screen to ~30 dpi (quite common just a decade ago)
> and try to read extensive blobs of cyrillic and latin texts. Even with
> a good modern antialiasing and hinting, the difference will be obvious.
> > It's simply a fact that the Cyrillic letters are less distinctive from
> > each other than the Roman letters, so the null hypothesis is that
> > reading Cyrillic is (at least slightly) less efficient than reading
> > exactly the same text in Roman.
>
> Yes - just take an OCRed page of cyrillic. Mistakes between ц/и/н, п/л,
> ш/щ, з/э are very common (pardon my Russocentrism) - similarly the
> mistakes in latin script between rn/m, In/h, ri/n. However, one would
> say that percentage of one letter cyrillic combinations is bigger than
> that of two letter latin ones.
ц/и/н are different well enough, and I do not see how they can be
problematic to anyone. з and э are close in appearance just at first
sight, but after a few days of extensive "learning" that "closeness"
will disappear. As a matter of fact, only п and л will stay as a
constant "threat" for the reader's "vision functions".
DV
Dušan Vukotić
I do not believe that any one has ever undertaken similar studies.
However, who knows, I will try to find something in the city library,
and if I find I'll let you know.
> It's simply a fact that the Cyrillic letters are less distinctive from
> each other than the Roman letters,
For those who didn't learn both scripts at young age it is quite
possible, but, if so, it wouldn't be because of weaker readability of
the Cyr alphabet itself. For instance, I learned Hebrew script many
years ago; neverthless, even today, I have slight problems in
distinguishing a few of their characters.
DV
Panu
Well, what about ш/щ? Besides, in italics and handwriting, т can also
be confused with those two.
I admit that most of the examples I can think of apply to Russian, not
Serbian. On the other hand, I would say Ђ/Ћ and ц/џ are other possible
sources of confusion.
garabik-ne...@kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk
> On Oct 3, 6:57 pm, garabik-news-2005...@kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk
> wrote:
>> Peter T. Daniels <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>
>> > On Oct 3, 11:48 am, Dušan Vukotić <dusan.vuko...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> Are you really so stupid?
>>
>> Хвала, Душане!
>
> My apology, I didn't mean to insult you. I was angry a little.
>
Do not worry, I did not get offended - I just wanted to show off myself
a bit, to demonstrate I can assemble a simple Serbian sentence without
actually speaking the language at all:-)
> ц/и/н are different well enough, and I do not see how they can be
> problematic to anyone. з and э are close in appearance just at first
> sight, but after a few days of extensive "learning" that "closeness"
> will disappear. As a matter of fact, only п and л will stay as a
> constant "threat" for the reader's "vision functions".
I was talking about OCR... ц/и/н are really a problem, just a slightly
blurred scan or yellowish paper, or a slanted text and the recognizer is
thrown away... I dealt with some scanned Russian texts, and these
mistakes were ubiquitous.
Besides, when reading fluently, one is perceiving general shape of
words, not just letters. With cyrillic, the contour is often just a
straight rectangle (more with Russian than, let's say, Bulgarian -
Bulgarian в and к are different, and sufficiently frequent to make the
reading more precise - just my impression, though, not speaking any
Bulgarian; Serbian is probably better than Russian, too, with ј and
њ and љ and ћ and ђ. Russian cursive is also much better than the
regular typeface).
Yusuf B Gursey
: On Oct 3, 6:34??pm, Joachim Pense <s...@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:
:> Du??an Vukoti?? (in sci.lang):
I personally find the availablitity in Cyrillic of "hard sign" and "soft
sign" an asset for Turkic languages, but not the use of pre-iotized
vowels. this would be an almost taboo view in Turkey though.
: DV
Peter T. Daniels
No, I'm not talking about subjective readability assessments (of the
sort that can easily be tested by psycholinguists, and which you'll
probably find in the library), but rather the physical shapes of
letters. The Russian alphabet is more self-similar than the English
alphabet. The Serbian alphabet is more self-similar than the Croatian
alphabet.
Peter T. Daniels
You need to read some basic references on readability / legibility /
the reading process.
Words are recognized at first by their general outline, and words in a
script where hardly any ascenders and descenders are available are
necessarily less distinct in their outlines than those in scripts with
varied silhouettes.
António Marques
> My apology, I didn't mean to insult you. I was angry a little.
Sorry, Duscian, I didn't mean to make you angry. I don't think there
is any inherent problem with cyrillic, but I also think there is an
accidental one. The latin alphabet has had a much more natural
evolution over the centuries and has attained an optimal legibility.
By contrast, cyrillic has been regulated by committees with very
little respect for natural development. This has led to a large number
of inadequate letters (I'm thinking of all the minuscules that look
just like small caps) and little exploring of all the graphical
possibilities (reuse of elements, maximization of contrasts, make
contrasts not dependent on curliness - your L/P example). When I look
at cyrillic I'm immediately reminded of the early latin alphabet. Now
latin evolved in a good direction before being standardised; whereas
cyrillic has been standardised before havign evolved the way it
should.
As to the text I quoted, I was reminded of it by the erratic way each
country standardises its cyrillic; and I don't think you can call it
chauvinist, since for all I know whoever wrote it is fond of their
language and was cyrillic-born.
PaulJK
> PaulJK <paul....@paradise.net.nz> wrote:
>
>> BTW, I don't get one word. What's "vredit", in "vredit zreniju"?
>
> škodí ('makes harm', damages, is bad for...)
> A nice example of a chained false friend -
> ru vred=sk škoda
> sk vred=ru jazva
> sk jazva=ru šram
> sk šrám=ru carapina
Oh, okay.
So the Ru verb "vredit" is a cognate of Cz noun "vřed"
(ulcer, sore).
pjk
Christian Weisgerber
> Cyrillic letters have few ascenders and descenders, giving the eye less
> overall orientation. It is often stated that this reduces readability.
Surely if this were perceived as a problem, somebody would have
taken it upon themselves to fix it, no?
Quite seriously, this looks like a matter of typography to me.
You'd imagine that after a few centuries, Cyrillic typographers
must have arrived at typefaces as legible as Latin ones. And if
there are too few ascenders/descenders, well, let's add a few.
Joachim Pense
As you can see by Dushan's comments, the disadvantage doesn't seem to be
that severe as to make changing the typefaces necessary.
Joachim
Peter T. Daniels
The Soviet script reform actually _removed_ a couple of letters with
ascenders.
IIRC Peter the Great's reform only affected non-extender letters.
benl...@ihug.co.nz
Even Russian script has more -- ascender on v, descender on z, and d
can go either way. But this still only 7 letters in all, compared with
12 in English, by my reckoning.
Ross Clark
Harlan Messinger
Cyrillic cursive seems even more confusing to me. As difficult to parse
as a string of i's, m's, n's, u's and/or w's can be in English cursive
(the word "minim", for example), Russian cursive has г, и, й, л, м, п,
т, ш, and щ that all consist primarily of one or two x-height humps and
troughs. I don't know how commonly it's used, but to aid recognition a
horizontal bar may be placed across the п and the т.
Dušan Vukotić
You are talking about Croatian alphabet again and again! Your
ignorance is infinite. There are two scripts in Serbia: Serbian Latin
and Serbian Cyrillic and both of this alphabets are equally treated in
school. In fact, the South-Slavic Latin alphabet was adjusted for the
Serbian language, simple because Croatian language didn't exist in
those times http://www.rastko.rs/filologija/vuk/bukvar/002.jpg
Once again, Latin letters were adapted for the Serbian/Illyrian
language (later called Serbo-Croatian language; the genuine Croatian
language was Kajkavian, similar to the modern Slovenian) and it was
done by Vuk Karadžić, Ljudevit Gaj and Đura Daničić (two of them, Vuk
and Đura, were the Serbian linguists).
DV
Dušan Vukotić
You are right about the cursive. See this
http://i467.photobucket.com/albums/rr39/vukotic/Texts/Cyr_Serb_Cursive.gif
Serb. pitati 'ask' and štetiti 'harm' :-)
DV
Peter T. Daniels
>
> Once again, Latin letters were adapted for the Serbian/Illyrian
> language (later called Serbo-Croatian language; the genuine Croatian
> language was Kajkavian, similar to the modern Slovenian) and it was
> done by Vuk Karadžić, Ljudevit Gaj and Đura Daničić (two of them, Vuk
> and Đura, were the Serbian linguists).
We are really getting sick of your hypernationalist, hyperchauvinist
Serb paranoia.
Croatian is written with a form of the Roman alphabet, namely the
Croatian alphabet.
Just as English is written with a form of the Roman alphabet, namely
the English alphabet.
Harlan Messinger
or perhaps used in languages other than Russian, but to me they are
upside-down. In the Russian cursive I learned, п looks like English
cursive "n" and т looks like English cursive "m", with humps instead of
troughs. In fact, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_cursive.
André Keshave
...
> Cyrillic letters have few ascenders and descenders, giving the eye less
> overall orientation. It is often stated that this reduces readability.
>
> Joachim
Would that also apply to Latin script in capital letters?
Harlan Messinger
Definitely. One is advised never to use all-caps except for short bits
of emphasis, like a heading.
Andrew Woode
> It's simply a fact that the Cyrillic letters are less distinctive from
> each other than the Roman letters, so the null hypothesis is that
> reading Cyrillic is (at least slightly) less efficient than reading
> exactly the same text in Roman.
It seems highly plausible that the basic Roman letters (as e.g. used
in English) are
more distinctive than the Cyrillic ones (as e.g. in Russian). But
quite a lot of Roman
Slavonic orthographies make heavy use of diacritics, often quite
small and
easy to miss or confuse; to express the /s/ vs /S/ distinction,
Cyrillic <с ш>
seems more distinctive than <s š> (as e.g in Czech or Croatian).
Dušan Vukotić
Just as Serbian is written with a form of Roman alphabet.
The historical facts have nothing to do with chauvinism.
I am far less a nationalist than, for instance, an average
(brainwashed!) American citizen who is obliged to keep his hand on his
bosom (close to the heart), while the US anthem is played.
DV
Dušan Vukotić
<hmessinger.removet...@comcast.net> wrote:
> Dušan Vukotić wrote:
> > On Oct 5, 1:22 am, Harlan Messinger
> > <hmessinger.removet...@comcast.net> wrote:
> >> Christian Weisgerber wrote:
> >>> Joachim Pense <s...@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:
> >>>> Cyrillic letters have few ascenders and descenders, giving the eye less
> >>>> overall orientation. It is often stated that this reduces readability.
> >>> Surely if this were perceived as a problem, somebody would have
> >>> taken it upon themselves to fix it, no?
> >>> Quite seriously, this looks like a matter of typography to me.
> >>> You'd imagine that after a few centuries, Cyrillic typographers
> >>> must have arrived at typefaces as legible as Latin ones. And if
> >>> there are too few ascenders/descenders, well, let's add a few.
> >> Cyrillic cursive seems even more confusing to me. As difficult to parse
> >> as a string of i's, m's, n's, u's and/or w's can be in English cursive
> >> (the word "minim", for example), Russian cursive has г, и, й, л, м, п,
> >> т, ш, and щ that all consist primarily of one or two x-height humps and
> >> troughs. I don't know how commonly it's used, but to aid recognition a
> >> horizontal bar may be placed across the п and the т.
>
> > You are right about the cursive. See this
> > Serb. pitati 'ask' and štetiti 'harm' :-)
>
> I don't know whether the forms you used for п and т are also recognized,
> or perhaps used in languages other than Russian, but to me they are
> upside-down. In the Russian cursive I learned, п looks like English
> cursive "n" and т looks like English cursive "m", with humps instead of
> troughs. In fact, seehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_cursive.
You are right. This is Serbian cursive, slightly different than
Russian, although there is a Serbian variant in which п and т are
written with "humps", just as in Russian.
DV
Harlan Messinger
Diabolical. It's almost as though it were designed with the intent to
discourage literacy.
Odysseus
Harlan Messinger <hmessinger...@comcast.net> wrote:
<snip>
>
> Cyrillic cursive seems even more confusing to me. As difficult to parse
> as a string of i's, m's, n's, u's and/or w's can be in English cursive
> (the word "minim", for example), Russian cursive has г, и, й, л, м, п,
> т, ш, and щ that all consist primarily of one or two x-height humps and
> troughs. I don't know how commonly it's used, but to aid recognition a
> horizontal bar may be placed across the п and the т.
There are also quite a few _faux amis_ with cursive Latin letters. My
brother still occasionally addresses me as /d&bVg/, a habit he adopted
on seeing me write my name in Cyrillic when we were children.
--
Odysseus
Nikolaj
> On Oct 2, 7:57 pm, na...@mips.inka.de (Christian Weisgerber) wrote:
>> Panu <craoibhi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Well, for starters, Macedonian Cyrillic is much more akin to Serbian
>>> Cyrillic. For instance, they use J as a Cyrillic letter.
>> Here's a side-by-side comparison:
>>
>> bg А Б В Г Д Е Ж З И Й К Л М Н О П Р С Т У Ф Х Ц Ч Ш Щ Ъ Ь Ю Я
>> mk А Б В Г Д Ѓ Е Ж З Ѕ И Ј К Л Љ М Н Њ О П Р С Т Ќ У Ф Х Ц Ч Џ Ш
>
> This really reminds me of something someone on the intarwebs once
> wrote:
>
> Ja nenavižu kirilliçu. Ja dumaju čto vse dolžny pisat' russkij jazyk
> na latiniçe kak bol'šinstvo drugih slavjanskih jazykov. Kiriliça - êto
> sovsem ustarelaja pis'mennaja sistema, vdabavok russkie bukvy očen'
> urodlivye. Tol'ko smotret' na nih vredit zreniju, a s drugoj storony,
> net ničego na svete krasivee latinskih bukv.
Nonsense. Whoever wrote that has some serious prejudices.
Nikolaj
> Assuming that like any good Yugoslav, you were raised a perfect
> biscriptal, have you ever taken a reading-speed test designed to
> discover whether you read more quickly or more accurately in one
> script or the other? Presumably psycholinguists have undertaken such
> studies. Can you tell us where their findings have been published?
It wasn't so throughout Yugoslavia. Slovenes rarely know/knew to read
cyrillic. I myself have learned it three times before I finally
remembered it permanently, and that only printed letters, not cursive.
> It's simply a fact that the Cyrillic letters are less distinctive from
> each other than the Roman letters, so the null hypothesis is that
> reading Cyrillic is (at least slightly) less efficient than reading
> exactly the same text in Roman.
That doesn't really matter if one really knows the language and it's
script. But it's a problem if one just reads some text here and there
and with long breaks when he doesn't have any contact with that script.
Peter T. Daniels
If you don't know any script but Cyrillic, of course it doesn't
matter! You have no alternative.
Panu
That is not nationalism, but patriotism, which is an entirely
different thing, as George Orwell pointed out in his "Notes on
Nationalism". But I grant you one thing: every textbook on Serbo-
Croatian, or as I prefer to say, cultured Shtokavian, will point out
that Serbian standard language is ekavian and shows certain lexical
preferences that differ from Croatian. It is perfectly possible to
write a distinctly Serbian form of literary Shtokavian in Latin
letters. Moreover, there is no technical or linguistic reason why we
couldn't write Croatian - i.e. ijekavian with a Croatian lexicon - in
Cyrillic. The reason why it is not done is political or social, not
linguistical.
Yusuf B Gursey
: On Oct 5, 10:36??pm, Du??an Vukoti?? <dusan.vuko...@gmail.com> wrote:
:> > > Once again, Latin letters were adapted for the Serbian/Illyrian
:> > > language (later called Serbo-Croatian language; the genuine Croatian
:> > > language was Kajkavian, similar to the modern Slovenian) and it was
:> > > done by Vuk Karad??i??, Ljudevit Gaj and ??ura Dani??i?? (two of them, Vuk
:> > > and ??ura, were the Serbian linguists).
:>
:> > We are really getting sick of your hypernationalist, hyperchauvinist
:> > Serb paranoia.
:>
:> > Croatian is written with a form of the Roman alphabet, namely the
:> > Croatian alphabet.
:>
:> > Just as English is written with a form of the Roman alphabet, namely
:> > the English alphabet.
:>
:> Just as Serbian is written with a form of Roman alphabet.
:>
:> The historical facts have nothing to do with chauvinism.
:>
:> I am far less a nationalist than, for instance, an average
:> (brainwashed!) American citizen who is obliged to keep his hand on his
:> bosom (close to the heart), while the US anthem is played.
: That is not nationalism, but patriotism, which is an entirely
not only that, but as Dus^an says when one is "obliged" it's simply
nothing. it only indicates that the individual invovled does not want
to get into trouble (as a student in school, for example).
: different thing, as George Orwell pointed out in his "Notes on
Dušan Vukotić
> In sci.lang Panu <craoibhi...@gmail.com> wrote in <5fbb7e46-2995-4e4e-8d87-96c3a318a...@g31g2000yqc.googlegroups.com>:
> : On Oct 5, 10:36??pm, Du??an Vukoti?? <dusan.vuko...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> :> > > Once again, Latin letters were adapted for the Serbian/Illyrian
> :> > > language (later called Serbo-Croatian language; the genuine Croatian
> :> > > language was Kajkavian, similar to the modern Slovenian) and it was
> :> > > done by Vuk Karad??i??, Ljudevit Gaj and ??ura Dani??i?? (two of them, Vuk
> :> > > and ??ura, were the Serbian linguists).
> :>
> :> > We are really getting sick of your hypernationalist, hyperchauvinist
> :> > Serb paranoia.
> :>
> :> > Croatian is written with a form of the Roman alphabet, namely the
> :> > Croatian alphabet.
> :>
> :> > Just as English is written with a form of the Roman alphabet, namely
> :> > the English alphabet.
> :>
> :> Just as Serbian is written with a form of Roman alphabet.
> :>
> :> The historical facts have nothing to do with chauvinism.
> :>
> :> I am far less a nationalist than, for instance, an average
> :> (brainwashed!) American citizen who is obliged to keep his hand on his
> :> bosom (close to the heart), while the US anthem is played.
>
> : That is not nationalism, but patriotism, which is an entirely
>
> not only that, but as Dus^an says when one is "obliged" it's simply
> nothing. it only indicates that the individual invovled does not want
> to get into trouble (as a student in school, for example).
This is an excellent remark!; so I have nothing to add here.
Thanks Yusuf.
Dušan Vukotić
For the truth's sake:
Both Shtokavian variants (Ekavian and Ijekavian) are Serbian. Vuk
Stefanivić Karadžić wrote the Serbian Dictionary using its Ijekavian
variant.
In 1818, when Vuk published the Serbian Dictionary, there were in use
two scripts for Serbian language, Latin and Cyrillic (graec.) see
below
www.skolalukicevo.com/images/alph_vuk.jpg
Croatian alphabet here was the one used by the Kaikavian Croates
(before their name was accepted among the Serbs Catholics), those
Slavs whose language was quite different than Serbian and much closer
to the modern Slovenian.
Nevertheless, Serbs accepted the proposition that Croats (a fresh-
composed ethnos) could name their language ― the language they have
previously borrowed from Serbs and called Illyrian ― Serbo-Croatian
and that name should stay unchanged in the future, and the new-
invented "languages", Bosnian and Montenegrin should be banned by the
international law, because those two have stolen and renamed Serbo-
Croatian according to their thief--political and quasi-scientific
reasons.
DV
Panu
Well, I grant you that the Ekavian vs. Ijekavian opposition is not as
important as lexicon, usage of tenses, and Balkan syntax. For
instance, if I remember correctly, Montenegrin is Ijekavian, but in
its vocabulary and syntax it is more akin to Serbian, i.e. it is
basically Ijekavian Serbian.
Dušan Vukotić
> Well, I grant you that the Ekavian vs. Ijekavian opposition is not as
> important as lexicon, usage of tenses, and Balkan syntax. For
> instance, if I remember correctly, Montenegrin is Ijekavian, but in
> its vocabulary and syntax it is more akin to Serbian, i.e. it is
> basically Ijekavian Serbian.
There is no difference in the vocabulary. For instance, the Croatian
word for thousand is tisuća, and tisuća is, in fact, an obsolete
medieval Serbian word. The similar is with the names of months and
pronouns tko 'who' (modern Serb. ko), netko (neko) 'somebody', nitko
(niko) 'nobody' etc. Almost all the words the Croats are using today
as "their own" specifficum are mentioned (written down) by Vuk
Karadžić in his Serbian Dictionary.
Of course, I admit that there is a slight difference (more frequent
usage of infinitive in Croatia, for instance) in syntax between
Serbian and Croatian variants of Serbo-Croatian, but it is, at the
same time, a difference between the Eastern and the Western Serbian
way of formation of sentences.
Suma sumarum, Neo-Shtokavian has been called Serbian or Slovinski
(Slavonic) through the centuries, Serbo-Croatian for more than a
century, and now the Bosniaks (not Bosnians) and Montenegrin are
trying to steal that language and rename it in accordance with their
new-coined national names and their rotten political goals.
DV
Peter T. Daniels
> Suma sumarum, Neo-Shtokavian has been called Serbian or Slovinski
> (Slavonic) through the centuries, Serbo-Croatian for more than a
> century, and now the Bosniaks (not Bosnians) and Montenegrin are
> trying to steal that language and rename it in accordance with their
> new-coined national names and their rotten political goals.
How do you "steal" a language?
You are _not_ doing anything at all to improve Serbs' lousy public
image.
Your continual spouting of HATE is disgusting.
Dušan Vukotić
What a stupid dick you are Denials!
You are the one whose hate against the Serbs is uncontrollable (I do
not know why? are you married?).
If I were a "hate monger" I wouldn't speak in favour of the Serbo-
Croatian language, because the Serbs and Croats are considered as the
most fierce enemies.
In fact, I am not interested in any national(istic) affairs; I am just
a truth-lover.
DV
Cluster User
Tough. Linguistic law says that "A language is a dialect with an army
and a navy". But don't worry, there is some flexibility, Serbian is
still a language even though Serbia doesn't now have a navy!
>
> DV
Dušan Vukotić
> On Oct 11, 9:20 am, Du¹an Vukotiæ <dusan.vuko...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Oct 11, 2:35 pm, Panu <craoibhi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > Well, I grant you that the Ekavian vs. Ijekavian opposition is not as
> > > important as lexicon, usage of tenses, and Balkan syntax. For
> > > instance, if I remember correctly, Montenegrin is Ijekavian, but in
> > > its vocabulary and syntax it is more akin to Serbian, i.e. it is
> > > basically Ijekavian Serbian.
>
> > There is no difference in the vocabulary. For instance, the Croatian
> > medieval Serbian word. The similar is with the names of months and
> > pronouns tko 'who' (modern Serb. ko), netko (neko) 'somebody', nitko
> > (niko) 'nobody' etc. Almost all the words the Croats are using today
> > as "their own" specifficum are mentioned (written down) by Vuk
>
> > Of course, I admit that there is a slight difference (more frequent
> > usage of infinitive in Croatia, for instance) in syntax between
> > Serbian and Croatian variants of Serbo-Croatian, but it is, at the
> > same time, a difference between the Eastern and the Western Serbian
> > way of formation of sentences.
>
> > Suma sumarum, Neo-Shtokavian has been called Serbian or Slovinski
> > (Slavonic) through the centuries, Serbo-Croatian for more than a
> > century, and now the Bosniaks (not Bosnians) and Montenegrin are
> > trying to steal that language and rename it in accordance with their
> > new-coined national names and their rotten political goals.
>
> Tough. Linguistic law says that "A language is a dialect with an army
> and a navy". But don't worry, there is some flexibility, Serbian is
> still a language even though Serbia doesn't now have a navy!
>
>
>
> > DV
Do we take a fishing river-flotilla into account? :-)
DV
Cluster User
OK. That is good enough. :-)
>
> DV
PaulJK
> On Oct 11, 9:20 am, Du�an Vukoti� <dusan.vuko...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Oct 11, 2:35 pm, Panu <craoibhi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Well, I grant you that the Ekavian vs. Ijekavian opposition is not as
>>> important as lexicon, usage of tenses, and Balkan syntax. For
>>> instance, if I remember correctly, Montenegrin is Ijekavian, but in
>>> its vocabulary and syntax it is more akin to Serbian, i.e. it is
>>> basically Ijekavian Serbian.
>>
>> There is no difference in the vocabulary. For instance, the Croatian
>> medieval Serbian word. The similar is with the names of months and
>> pronouns tko 'who' (modern Serb. ko), netko (neko) 'somebody', nitko
>> (niko) 'nobody' etc. Almost all the words the Croats are using today
>> as "their own" specifficum are mentioned (written down) by Vuk
>>
>> Of course, I admit that there is a slight difference (more frequent
>> usage of infinitive in Croatia, for instance) in syntax between
>> Serbian and Croatian variants of Serbo-Croatian, but it is, at the
>> same time, a difference between the Eastern and the Western Serbian
>> way of formation of sentences.
>>
>> Suma sumarum, Neo-Shtokavian has been called Serbian or Slovinski
>> (Slavonic) through the centuries, Serbo-Croatian for more than a
>> century, and now the Bosniaks (not Bosnians) and Montenegrin are
>> trying to steal that language and rename it in accordance with their
>> new-coined national names and their rotten political goals.
>
> Tough. Linguistic law says that "A language is a dialect with an army
> and a navy".
A linguistic law what is a language?
Where did you get that nonsense?
Every linguist I come across declare they don't do any
definitions what is or isn't a language.
pjk
Dušan Vukotić
> >> On Oct 11, 2:35 pm, Panu <craoibhi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >>> Well, I grant you that the Ekavian vs. Ijekavian opposition is not as
> >>> important as lexicon, usage of tenses, and Balkan syntax. For
> >>> instance, if I remember correctly, Montenegrin is Ijekavian, but in
> >>> its vocabulary and syntax it is more akin to Serbian, i.e. it is
> >>> basically Ijekavian Serbian.
>
> >> There is no difference in the vocabulary. For instance, the Croatian
> >> medieval Serbian word. The similar is with the names of months and
> >> pronouns tko 'who' (modern Serb. ko), netko (neko) 'somebody', nitko
> >> (niko) 'nobody' etc. Almost all the words the Croats are using today
> >> as "their own" specifficum are mentioned (written down) by Vuk
>
> >> Of course, I admit that there is a slight difference (more frequent
> >> usage of infinitive in Croatia, for instance) in syntax between
> >> Serbian and Croatian variants of Serbo-Croatian, but it is, at the
> >> same time, a difference between the Eastern and the Western Serbian
> >> way of formation of sentences.
>
> >> Suma sumarum, Neo-Shtokavian has been called Serbian or Slovinski
> >> (Slavonic) through the centuries, Serbo-Croatian for more than a
> >> century, and now the Bosniaks (not Bosnians) and Montenegrin are
> >> trying to steal that language and rename it in accordance with their
> >> new-coined national names and their rotten political goals.
>
> > Tough. Linguistic law says that "A language is a dialect with an army
> > and a navy".
>
> A linguistic law what is a language?
> Where did you get that nonsense?
> Every linguist I come across declare they don't do any
> definitions what is or isn't a language.
> pjk
You are retarded, aren't you?
Cluster User
> >> On Oct 11, 2:35 pm, Panu <craoibhi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >>> Well, I grant you that the Ekavian vs. Ijekavian opposition is not as
> >>> important as lexicon, usage of tenses, and Balkan syntax. For
> >>> instance, if I remember correctly, Montenegrin is Ijekavian, but in
> >>> its vocabulary and syntax it is more akin to Serbian, i.e. it is
> >>> basically Ijekavian Serbian.
>
> >> There is no difference in the vocabulary. For instance, the Croatian
> >> medieval Serbian word. The similar is with the names of months and
> >> pronouns tko 'who' (modern Serb. ko), netko (neko) 'somebody', nitko
> >> (niko) 'nobody' etc. Almost all the words the Croats are using today
> >> as "their own" specifficum are mentioned (written down) by Vuk
>
> >> Of course, I admit that there is a slight difference (more frequent
> >> usage of infinitive in Croatia, for instance) in syntax between
> >> Serbian and Croatian variants of Serbo-Croatian, but it is, at the
> >> same time, a difference between the Eastern and the Western Serbian
> >> way of formation of sentences.
>
> >> Suma sumarum, Neo-Shtokavian has been called Serbian or Slovinski
> >> (Slavonic) through the centuries, Serbo-Croatian for more than a
> >> century, and now the Bosniaks (not Bosnians) and Montenegrin are
> >> trying to steal that language and rename it in accordance with their
> >> new-coined national names and their rotten political goals.
>
> > Tough. Linguistic law says that "A language is a dialect with an army
> > and a navy".
>
> A linguistic law what is a language?
> Where did you get that nonsense?
> Every linguist I come across declare they don't do any
> definitions what is or isn't a language.
That's the whole point of the saying. What is a language
and what isn't is more of a social defintion, so linguists
generally differ to the social definitions in their work.
Nikolaj
>> That doesn't really matter if one really knows the language and it's
>> script. But it's a problem if one just reads some text here and there
>> and with long breaks when he doesn't have any contact with that script.
>
> If you don't know any script but Cyrillic, of course it doesn't
> matter! You have no alternative.
Yes, but your reading skills of reading Cyrillic is perfect. As you say
then reading might be slightly less efficient, but that isn't
significant (unless the script in question gives significantly different
results).
I was thinking of other situations (as mentioned above) where reading
skill of one script is at maximum and of some other script is not so
perfect. In such situation it is important how readable second script
is, but that should be amended by perfecting the reading for the second
script.
PaulJK
> On Oct 12, 4:01 am, "PaulJK" <paul.kr...@paradise.net.nz> wrote:
>> Cluster User wrote:
>>>> On Oct 11, 2:35 pm, Panu <craoibhi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>>> Well, I grant you that the Ekavian vs. Ijekavian opposition is not as
>>>>> important as lexicon, usage of tenses, and Balkan syntax. For
>>>>> instance, if I remember correctly, Montenegrin is Ijekavian, but in
>>>>> its vocabulary and syntax it is more akin to Serbian, i.e. it is
>>>>> basically Ijekavian Serbian.
>>
>>>> There is no difference in the vocabulary. For instance, the Croatian
>>>> medieval Serbian word. The similar is with the names of months and
>>>> pronouns tko 'who' (modern Serb. ko), netko (neko) 'somebody', nitko
>>>> (niko) 'nobody' etc. Almost all the words the Croats are using today
>>>> as "their own" specifficum are mentioned (written down) by Vuk
>>
>>>> Of course, I admit that there is a slight difference (more frequent
>>>> usage of infinitive in Croatia, for instance) in syntax between
>>>> Serbian and Croatian variants of Serbo-Croatian, but it is, at the
>>>> same time, a difference between the Eastern and the Western Serbian
>>>> way of formation of sentences.
>>
>>>> Suma sumarum, Neo-Shtokavian has been called Serbian or Slovinski
>>>> (Slavonic) through the centuries, Serbo-Croatian for more than a
>>>> century, and now the Bosniaks (not Bosnians) and Montenegrin are
>>>> trying to steal that language and rename it in accordance with their
>>>> new-coined national names and their rotten political goals.
>>
>>> Tough. Linguistic law says that "A language is a dialect with an army
>>> and a navy".
>>
>> A linguistic law what is a language?
>> Where did you get that nonsense?
>> Every linguist I come across declare they don't do any
>> definitions what is or isn't a language.
>
> That's the whole point of the saying. What is a language
> and what isn't is more of a social defintion, so linguists
> generally differ to the social definitions in their work.
You misunderstand the comment I made.
I am not arguing whether that particular catchy saying has
or doesn't have a point. What I am saying is that it is *not*
anything one can refer to as a *linguistic law*. Linguists
do not *define* what is a language, as opposed to e.g.
dialect, idiolect, jargon, etc.
Regarding the actual point of the saying, it's quite wrong
too. There are many languages that are clearly not
supported by any armies or navies. There are also many
armies that support no specific unique language.
PaulJK
> On Oct 12, 10:01 am, "PaulJK" <paul.kr...@paradise.net.nz> wrote:
>> Cluster User wrote:
>>> On Oct 11, 9:20 am, Du¹an Vukotiæ <dusan.vuko...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Tough. Linguistic law says that "A language is a dialect with an army
>>> and a navy".
>>
>> A linguistic law what is a language?
>> Where did you get that nonsense?
>> Every linguist I come across declare they don't do any
>> definitions what is or isn't a language.
>> pjk
>
> You are retarded, aren't you?
Умукни Душан !
António Marques
> On Oct 11, 2:35 pm, Panu<craoibhi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Well, I grant you that the Ekavian vs. Ijekavian opposition is not as
>> important as lexicon, usage of tenses, and Balkan syntax. For
>> instance, if I remember correctly, Montenegrin is Ijekavian, but in
>> its vocabulary and syntax it is more akin to Serbian, i.e. it is
>> basically Ijekavian Serbian.
>
> There is no difference in the vocabulary. For instance, the Croatian
> word for thousand is tisuća, and tisuća is, in fact, an obsolete
> medieval Serbian word. The similar is with the names of months and
> pronouns tko 'who' (modern Serb. ko), netko (neko) 'somebody', nitko
> (niko) 'nobody' etc. Almost all the words the Croats are using today
> as "their own" specifficum are mentioned (written down) by Vuk
> Karadžić in his Serbian Dictionary.
Yes, but what matters are their relative frequency and specific
connotations. Of course all of yugoslavian is only one language. But it
has more than one standard, and in each some forms are favoured over others.
> Of course, I admit that there is a slight difference (more frequent
> usage of infinitive in Croatia, for instance) in syntax between
> Serbian and Croatian variants of Serbo-Croatian, but it is, at the
> same time, a difference between the Eastern and the Western Serbian
> way of formation of sentences.
>
> Suma sumarum, Neo-Shtokavian has been called Serbian or Slovinski
> (Slavonic) through the centuries, Serbo-Croatian for more than a
> century, and now the Bosniaks (not Bosnians) and Montenegrin are
> trying to steal that language and rename it in accordance with their
> new-coined national names and their rotten political goals.
What you still haven't realised is that 'Serbian', as you call it
including all of yugoslav, is not any more the serbs' property than it
is the montenegrins. If the montenegrins want to call their standard
language 'Montenegrin', that's their business. Why should they call it
'Serbian'? It's not like the serbs taught it to them. You seem to think
that on the one hand the language of the montenegrins is the same as
that of the serbs (granted), and on the other hand the language of the
serbs is serbian in nature (granted). But you can't combine the two and
say that the language of the montenegrins is serbian in nature. You
can't have it both ways. If you want people to recognise that all of
yugoslav is only one language, then you must be prepared to accept that
that language isn't any more property of the serbs that it is of the
montenegrins or croats.
Dušan Vukotić
You didn't read what I wrote earlier.
I was talking about the Serbo-Croatian not about the Serbian.
If your logic were correct we would have a hundreds of different
"languages" instead of German, Spanish and English.
DV
António Marques
You keep saying that the montenegrins have invented a 'montenegrin'
language, when in reality their language is Serb(o-Croatian). And that
croats are just catholic serbs and so on. I'm saying that you can't have
it both ways. IF you consider croats to have been serbs and the
montenegrin language to have been serb(o-croatian), THEN you must admit
that 'serb' used to be a more inclusive term before, and not what it is
today. In pictures:
+--------------------> Croats
Serbs1 -------+----Serbs2----+-----> Serbs3
+-----> Montenegrins
It's reasonable to call serbs1 and serbs2 'serbs', but you have to keep
in mind that they're not the same as serbs3, which has been the common
meaning of 'serbs' for a century now. Put otherwise, the tree really is
+--------------------> Croats
1 -------+-------2------+-----> Serbs
+-----> Montenegrins
and whatever you call 1 or 2 is more or less arbitrary, as they existed
before the modern concept of nationalism. The only thing that makes you
think C and M were 'S' at one time is that you choose to call 1 and 2
'S', but that is a mere terminological illusion. You keep talking of he
montenegrins 'stealing' a language, as if it hadn't always been their
language! They just decided they wouldn't go on calling it by a name
that didn't take them into account from the start.
> If your logic were correct we would have a hundreds of different
> "languages" instead of German, Spanish and English.
The luxemburgians decided they don't speak german anymore, and it's not
like the germans could do anything about it.
Dušan Vukotić
Luxemburgian is an old German(ic) dialect, pretty different than the
standard German language. There is more difference between
Luxemburgian and German than between Serbian and Bulgarian.
Nevertheless, do you understand the consequences of your "libertarian"
thinking if you have allowed any German dialect to be recognized as a
separate language?
Historically, Montenegrin and Bosniac ethnicity never existed in the
past before the end of the WWII. They appeared out of the blue, like
mad "mushrooms" after the flood of wild communism/nationalism
(Bosniacs adopted that name after the last Bosnian war (1991-95), and
earlier they were called Muslims (!) by the schizophrenic-atheistic
Communists). Both Montenegrins and Bosniacs took over the standard
Serbo-Croatian language and renamed it according to their new-coined/
invented national names. Of course, I do not deny that people have the
right to call themselves as they like, but they have no right to steal
someone else's language. In a normal society they wouldn't be allowed
to even call their "languages" either Bosniac Srbo-Croatian or
Montenegrin Serbo-Croatian (in comparison to American/Australian or
some other English), because they have nothing what can be classified
as their own distinct linguistic characteristic (neither in sense of
vocabulary nor grammar, syntax or whatever).
DV
António Marques
> In 1818, when Vuk published the Serbian Dictionary, there were in use
> two scripts for Serbian language, Latin and Cyrillic (graec.) see
> below www.skolalukicevo.com/images/alph_vuk.jpg
Was it common to call cyrillic greek ('graec')? I had no idea.
Dušan Vukotić
> On Oct 11, 11:40 am, Du¹an Vukotiæ <dusan.vuko...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > In 1818, when Vuk published the Serbian Dictionary, there were in use
> > two scripts for Serbian language, Latin and Cyrillic (graec.) see
> > belowwww.skolalukicevo.com/images/alph_vuk.jpg
>
> Was it common to call cyrillic greek ('graec')? I had no idea.
Vuk probably thought about two Serbian scripts born in different
European environments/cultures (Greek and Latin; hence graec.
graecor?); Cyrillic is supposed to be an "imitation" of Greek
letters.
DV
Ruud Harmsen
<dusan....@gmail.com>: in sci.lang:
>> The luxemburgians decided they don't speak german anymore, and it's not
>> like the germans could do anything about it.
>
>Luxemburgian is an old German(ic) dialect, pretty different than the
>standard German language. There is more difference between
>Luxemburgian and German than between Serbian and Bulgarian.
True. I'm fluent in Dutch, German and English, but I find Luxemburgian
pretty hard to understand. I can though, if I really try hard and
concentrate.
--
Ruud Harmsen, http://rudhar.com
Christopher Culver
> In a normal society they wouldn't be allowed to even call their
> "languages" either Bosniac Srbo-Croatian or Montenegrin
> Serbo-Croatian (in comparison to American/Australian or some other
> English), because they have nothing what can be classified as their
> own distinct linguistic characteristic (neither in sense of
> vocabulary nor grammar, syntax or whatever).
Kusturica's film "Zivot je čudo" has several moments where a Serb
living in Bosnia observes the differences in the speech of the Muslims
resident there. Clearly there are "some distinct language
characteristics", at least in the sense of vocabulary.
Yusuf B Gursey
<crcul...@christopherculver.com> wrote:
is that the one translated as "While my Father was Away on
Bussiness"? I noticed the turkish loanwords as sounding
unfamiliar to a Serb.
António Marques
And you keep missing the point: the language is no more yours than it is
theirs. They have every right to call their language what they want.
Saying there are no specific bosnian/montenegrin linguistic traits is
the same as saying there are no specific serbian linguistic traits. In
fact, IF there specific serbian linguistic traits that don't belong in
the standard, THEN that means the standard is closer to the bosnian
variety, and it's the serbians who have been 'stealing' their langage,
as you put it, all along (I say serbians as opposed to serbs, since
there are bosnian serbs, even if their dialect isn't the same as that of
central Bosnia).
António Marques
Ok. Just out of curiosity, where was latin serbian used? In Serbia
proper or only in lands where the 'official' languages were latin-based?
Does Gaj's alphabet derive from latin serbian or was it created anew?
Helmut Wollmersdorfer
> Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:55:27 -0700 (PDT): Du�an Vukoti?
> <dusan....@gmail.com>: in sci.lang:
>>> The luxemburgians decided they don't speak german anymore, and it's not
>>> like the germans could do anything about it.
Luxemburgian is a 'language by law' - the official language of this country.
>> Luxemburgian is an old German(ic) dialect, pretty different than the
>> standard German language. There is more difference between
>> Luxemburgian and German than between Serbian and Bulgarian.
> True. I'm fluent in Dutch, German and English, but I find Luxemburgian
> pretty hard to understand. I can though, if I really try hard and
> concentrate.
Many German dialects are more different than Luxemburgian compared to
Standard German. Maybe more different than D(e)ut(s)ch. For many people
in the German speaking area Standard German is still like a second language.
Even the nearest dialects can be very different. E.g my father grew up
in Styria in a rural region. Decades later - after retirement - he
settled down in a region with Hoanzn (Heanzn, Hianzn) dialect
(http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hianzisch,
http://www.hianzenverein.at/hianzisch_2.htm), which has Styrian as
closest relative. It took him months to understand the people.
As another example: In my youth I didn't recognize Yiddish as a
different language, when I bought Jeans in a Yewish shop. I just thought
'Hmm, what a strange dialect.' Later, a few years ago, I heard an
interview with a person from Bucharest (Romania) in Yiddish and I
understood ~80 %. Maybe it would be easier for me to learn Yiddish,
Dutch, Flams, or Danish than Hoanzn or other strange German dialects.
Helmut Wollmersdorfer
Dušan Vukotić
Once again, I said Serbo-Croatian not Serbian (how many times I have
to repeat it?) and it has nothing to do with the ethnicity because the
Serbo-Croatian is the name of a language as it is English, German,
Italian, French etc. Any ethnicity (fresh or old, invented or not) in
the Balkan is free to use that language as anyone is free to use
English language, at least as long as he doesn't try to alter its
original name.
Following your unusual logic, the Bosnian Muslims might have taken the
English language as their own and they could have called it the
Bosniac language. Why then the American English isn't called just
American? Americans also haven't been taught English by Englishmen,
have they?
DV
Dušan Vukotić
<crcul...@christopherculver.com> wrote:
I do not know what is it exactly that you understand under the phrase
"some distinct language
characteristics"? Of course, there are some linguistically irrelevant
(minor) differences among the speakers of Serbo_Croatian all over the
Bosnia (similar "differences" may be found across the street), but it
is impossible to conclude that someone is Moslem or Serb or Croat in
accordance to the way they speak or vocabulary they use.
DV
Dušan Vukotić
First, you must know that the majority of population in Serbia in the
first half of the XIX century was illiterate (there were no schools).
Those who were seriously educated used the both alphabets equally,
just as the Serbs are doing it nowadays.
Look at this link again www.skolalukicevo.com/images/alph_vuk.jpg
There you can see the differences between Serbian Latin and Croatian
Latin (croat.) and you can compare them both with the modern Serbo-
Croatian Latin.
DV
Dušan Vukotić
>there were no schools).
In fact, there was one school in those times (the Small Serbo-Slavic
School in Belgrade)
DV
Dušan Vukotić
No Yusuf,
It is "Life is a Miracle" (Život je čudo).
> I noticed the turkish loanwords as sounding
> unfamiliar to a Serb.
Which one? All Bosnian Serbs, Croats and Muslims are equally
acquainted with the Turkish loanwords. However, you cannot change the
name of the language by using more or less loanwords; loanwords are
loanwords and nothing more than that.
Finally, Abdulah Škaljić recorded all the Turkish loanwords in Serbo-
Croatian (not in the Bosniak or Montenegrin). Abdulah Skaljic (1985).
Turcizmi u srpskohrvatskom-hrvatskosrpskom jeziku, Sarajevo/The
Turkish Loanwords in Serbo-Croatian.
DV
Peter T. Daniels
(a) Why may he not "try to alter its original name"?
(b) What is that "original name"? Here you're using English forms. Is
"Serbo-Croatian" its original name?
> Following your unusual logic, the Bosnian Muslims might have taken the
> English language as their own and they could have called it the
> Bosniac language.
How would several million Bosnians have learned English? Why shouldn't
they call a language that developed from English in Bosnia "Bosnian"?
("-ac" isn't used for languages in English.) Anyway if they were going
to (somehow) perform such a massive language shift, it might have been
to Arabic, and for Arabic there's no tradition of renaming the local
varieties (except for Maltese): their language, likely to be barely
understandable in Egypt or Syria, would presumably be called Bosnian
Arabic.
> Why then the American English isn't called just
> American? Americans also haven't been taught English by Englishmen,
> have they?
Do you really know _that_ little about history? North America was
settled primarily by English-, French-, and Spanish-speakers, and
those are the languages that still prevail in the areas where each one
had the primary influence. Except in a few minimal regions where
Native languages are still viable.
Peter T. Daniels
There are "differences," however minor. These differences most
certainly are "linguistically significant."
Why do you equate the religion "Moslem" with the nationalities "Serb"
and "Croat"?
Peter T. Daniels
You can change the name of the language whenever you fucking want.
Gaining independence often provides the opportunity to do so.
Harlan Messinger
> Following your unusual logic, the Bosnian Muslims might have taken the
> English language as their own and they could have called it the
> Bosniac language. Why then the American English isn't called just
> American?
What makes you think it won't be at some time in the future? At some
point various groups of people in Eastern Europe started calling their
languages Polish and Czech and Russian and Bulgarian instead of Polish
Slavic and Czech Slavic and Russian Slavic and Bulgarian Slavic, right?
And there aren't any modern languages that have been referred to as
Catalonian Latin or Romanian Latin or Italian Latin in at least a few
centuries, right?
Yusuf B Gursey
> On Oct 29, 9:05 am, Du¹an Vukotiæ <dusan.vuko...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Oct 29, 9:06 am, Christopher Culver
>
> > <crcul...@christopherculver.com> wrote:
> > > > In a normal society they wouldn't be allowed to even call their
> > > > "languages" either Bosniac Srbo-Croatian or Montenegrin
> > > > Serbo-Croatian (in comparison to American/Australian or some other
> > > > English), because they have nothing what can be classified as their
> > > > own distinct linguistic characteristic (neither in sense of
> > > > vocabulary nor grammar, syntax or whatever).
>
> > > living in Bosnia observes the differences in the speech of the Muslims
> > > resident there. Clearly there are "some distinct language
> > > characteristics", at least in the sense of vocabulary.
>
> > I do not know what is it exactly that you understand under the phrase
> > "some distinct language
> > characteristics"? Of course, there are some linguistically irrelevant
> > (minor) differences among the speakers of Serbo_Croatian all over the
> > Bosnia (similar "differences" may be found across the street), but it
> > is impossible to conclude that someone is Moslem or Serb or Croat in
> > accordance to the way they speak or vocabulary they use.
>
> There are "differences," however minor. These differences most
> certainly are "linguistically significant."
>
> Why do you equate the religion "Moslem" with the nationalities "Serb"
> and "Croat"?
Dus^an is right at this point. "Moslem" is (was) a "nationality" for
slavic
speaking Muslims in Yugoslavia (excluding Albanians and the Turks
still living there). the moslem population of Bosnia and Herzogovina
adopted the term "Bosniac" after the independence of the region.
Helmut Wollmersdorfer
> On Oct 29, 8:38 am, Du�an Vukoti� <dusan.vuko...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Once again, I said Serbo-Croatian not Serbian (how many times I have
>> to repeat it?) and it has nothing to do with the ethnicity because the
>> Serbo-Croatian is the name of a language as it is English, German,
>> Italian, French etc. Any ethnicity (fresh or old, invented or not) in
>> the Balkan is free to use that language as anyone is free to use
>> English language, at least as long as he doesn't try to alter its
>> original name.
> (a) Why may he not "try to alter its original name"?
Because it's against the nationalistic "Kindergarten"-rules of the
Balkan. They are far away from understanding, accepting and living the
spirit of "Libert�, �galit�, Fraternit�" etc.
Helmut Wollmersdorfer
Yusuf B Gursey
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Oct 29, 4:06 am, Christopher Culver
>
> > <crcul...@christopherculver.com> wrote:
> > > Dušan Vukotić <dusan.vuko...@gmail.com> writes:
> > > > In a normal society they wouldn't be allowed to even call their
> > > > "languages" either Bosniac Srbo-Croatian or Montenegrin
> > > > Serbo-Croatian (in comparison to American/Australian or some other
> > > > English), because they have nothing what can be classified as their
> > > > own distinct linguistic characteristic (neither in sense of
> > > > vocabulary nor grammar, syntax or whatever).
>
> > > Kusturica's film "Zivot je čudo" has several moments where a Serb
> > > living in Bosnia observes the differences in the speech of the Muslims
> > > resident there. Clearly there are "some distinct language
> > > characteristics", at least in the sense of vocabulary.
>
> > is that the one translated as "While my Father was Away on
> > Bussiness"?
>
> No Yusuf,
> It is "Life is a Miracle" (Život je čudo).
OK. but in the film I mentioned (by Kusturica as well) there was also
reference to turkish loanwords in the Muslim or Bosnian Muslim
as well. maybe the title was changed in translation, the plot
was the reminencesof a film about a man whose father was
exiled for political reasons (he was a communist who made a
passing comment that Tito's anti-Stalinism had gone too far),
but as a child he was told that "his father was away on bussiness".
>
> > I noticed the turkish loanwords as sounding
>
> > unfamiliar to a Serb.
>
> Which one? All Bosnian Serbs, Croats and Muslims are equally
I remember amudža meaning "(paternal?) uncle", from turkish
amca (pronounced am*dj*a) "paternal uncle", from arabic
3amm + the dimunitive ending -ca . incidentally without that
ending it would have sounded in turkish like am , refering to the
external female genitalia!
> acquainted with the Turkish loanwords. However, you cannot change the
> name of the language by using more or less loanwords; loanwords are
> loanwords and nothing more than that.
well, the difference between "dialect" and "language" is frequently
political or social. there is the example of Hindi and Urdu which
differ in loanwords and script, but for everyday conversation are
mutually intelligible. the common name is Hindustani, or as some
Hindus prefer Hindusthani (-stha:n is the inidc cognate of iranian
-sta:n), which refers to the everyday speach free from the
deliberately
persifying policy of Pakistan and the deliberatley sanskritizing
policy of India.
again, I personally prefer that people find what is in common,
rather than what differentiates them.
> Finally, Abdulah Škaljić recorded all the Turkish loanwords in Serbo-
> Croatian (not in the Bosniak or Montenegrin). Abdulah Skaljic (1985).
> Turcizmi u srpskohrvatskom-hrvatskosrpskom jeziku, Sarajevo/The
> Turkish Loanwords in Serbo-Croatian.
yes, I saw that work referenced elsewhere. but it is not unreasonable
that there more of them in the dialect of Muslims, particularly
Bosnian
ones.
>
> DV