Pustolovina: adventure in Serbian

Thursday, February 23, 2006

Nisam pocetnica.

(That means “I am not a beginner.”)

I am no longer a beginner at the Serbian language. I passed my written test yesterday & my oral test today with ‘very good’ marks – the highest.

It’s good that my Serbian is improving because my other language abilities are atrophying. I am putting together the ‘About the Authors’ page for a reader ZuC is publishing, which means I get to google people. The first target of my online stalking was the Argentinean coordinator of Catholics for a Free Choice. Unsurprisingly, much of the info was in Spanish. I stared at articles, thinking ‘I know I used to know that word, but now I have no idea what it means’ and being thankful for online Spanish-English dictionaries.

And it’s not only my Spanish that’s regressing. I am losing some English. I couldn’t define ‘overzealous’ yesterday. I also couldn’t come up with the word for a trail that a lot of people have walked on. Well-trodden, right? And I still don’t know if I should refer to the test I took this morning as an oral test, spoken test, or verbal test.

Terrible.

7 Comments:

  • At 12:29 PM, Blogger Belgrade Daily Photo said…

    Cestitam! (I still haven't figured out how to do the proper Serbian characters with my keyboard).

    How often do you go to classes? Are you going to the Jovanova school? I've been plugging along on my own all this time and would like to enroll somewhere for regular classes. Ali to nije jeftino. :/

     
  • At 1:07 PM, Blogger rachel said…

    I do go to ISJ on Jovanova. It's not great, but it's the best that I have found. I was going five days a week, but am switching to a less intensive schedule for the next course.

    It isn't cheap, though. Happily for me, my sending organization covers class costs.

     
  • At 5:12 PM, Blogger Belgrade Daily Photo said…

    Yeah, I've inquired at that school and it IS pretty costly (it seems most Serbian for foreigners courses are). What happened was I saw their flier for French, English, Italian classes etc...and the cost for was about $30 a month. So I called them to inquire about Serbian and found out for that it's more like $250 per month. Yay!

    I've heard good things about ISJ though. I may just have to bite the bullet.

     
  • At 3:20 PM, Blogger Daniel said…

    Sounds like another instance of the old foreigner tax.

     
  • At 12:35 PM, Blogger Belgrade Daily Photo said…

    Ha! That picture's great. Nice of them to charge English speakers less than Germans, at least from my vantage point. ;)

     
  • At 8:22 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Heh heh I left that earlier comment about the teacher Ranko who works at Jovanova.

    Seems like we all been there sometime.

    I do know a local guy who is good and not particularly expensive if anon expat or rachel want to contact me.

    Anon expat Im the guy who mailed you about the One Flew Over a Cukoos Nest play in Belgrade so you can contact me there if you are unhappy with Jovanova.

     
  • At 7:22 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    why don't you get set up with a Serb who is eager to learn English and start tandem learning?

     

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