Pustolovina: adventure in Serbian

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

new words

It has been pointed out to me that I am generally negative about my language classes on this blog. I am sorry to have given such an impression. I like going to classes almost always. I guess it’s just easier to write about the one bad teacher than the two good ones.

My classmates are all really interesting. It feels like a mini-UN with an Uzbek, Moroccan, Belgian, Kenyan, Ukrainian, a Chinese girl, a Japanese man and me. (Why is it that writing ‘a Moroccan’ is correct, but ‘a Chinese’ isn’t?) So, in addition to learning Serbian, I get to learn about life in Taskent/Casablanca/Mombassa/etc. Today, after reading a story about a bohemian who vowed to stop drinking and then rewarded himself for keeping his promise with a drink, the Japanese man spoke about how Japanese people generally have firmer characters, showing off our newest vowel-free vocabulary word, cvrst (firm). He continued on to say that this not always good and tried to explain that some Japanese students kill themselves if they don’t get good grades. It was a valiant effort, but he didn’t have the vocabulary to pull it off.

But now he does; we all do. We spent about 20 minutes going over different words for ‘to die.’ Serbian uses different words depending on the cause of death, one for old age and illness and one for war and injury. We also learned how to say ‘to kill,’ ‘to kill oneself’ and ‘to commit suicide.’

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Completely unrelatedly, not even in my language class, I learned the word for ‘to slit someone’s throat’ yesterday. It was in a press release that I was translating & wasn’t in my dictionary. A coworker mimed it for me.

Good times.

9 Comments:

  • At 7:43 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Hey Rachel, maybe you shoud try and write one entry in your blog in Serbian!
    btw, 'cvrst' is not exactly vowel-free word, 'r' in 'cvrst' is vocoid, it acts like a vowel

     
  • At 8:52 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Hi Rachel,

    Ever since you've introduced you "tracing" thing on the blog, I feel weird if a click on it more often than once a day. The truth is, I'm sometimes bored with my work, and I'd like to check up on my favourite blogs, but no one likes to feel "watched".
    By the way, your complaints about one of your teachers seem legitimate and you shouldn't worry about sounding "negative." By the way, Serbs love negative (it gives us a positive reinforcment).
    I'd like to know what is a word for a "to slit one's throat"? I can only think of one thing --"prerezati grkljan" but that's too long and cumbersome.
    My favourite word in the dying cathegory (there's no adequate translation in English) is "crkni" or in the infinitive form "crknuti,"
    basically meaning "drop dead" or dying in misery.

    Gotta go, I think I'm burning my dinner...

    Milica

     
  • At 10:56 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Milica,

    It's probably "zaklati", though that translates to any sharp object killing, as well as animal killing (even kosher).

    Why the hell am I talking about that anyway?

    P.S. By the tzarist decreet of 1852, all Serbian vowels were expatriated for pro Turkish activities. Thus the lack of them today.

     
  • At 2:58 PM, Blogger rachel said…

    Marta-

    I've been told before that 'r' is vowel-esque in Serbian & I understand that. Still, when I see a word sans 'a,' 'e,' 'i,' 'u,' or sometimes 'y,' it remains vowel-less in my book.

    Milica-

    Really the only thing that I check on the stat counter is the weird searches that lead me to my site. 'places to buy a seahawk shower curtain' and 'how to say friend in Hindi' are my recent favorites. There are a troubling high number of searches for 'Serbian racist jokes' (although I did spent a coffee earlier today sharing some, so I shouldn't be too judgemental).

    Milica/Serbian Mess-

    The word that I translated as 'to slit someone's throat' is koljiti (or something similar if it is irregular. It was 'koljuci' in the text. It worries me that you don't know it. Did I make a mistake?

     
  • At 7:31 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    So, the word is 'koljući' :)

    This sounds as (I forgot proper term) gramatical construct when it is used as auxillary verb to some other happening -- like walking or talking. For example, in English you would have: "He was talking to me calmly, while slitting piglet's throat." (teribble, isn't it? :)).

    Infinitive: klati.
    Present tense: Ja koljem, ti kolješ, on kolje, oni kolju.
    Past tense: Ja sam klao, Oni su klali.
    Past tense:

     
  • At 9:07 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Well,

    I don't find it very funny,
    "klati" actually refers to slaughtering animals, not people. "Slaughtering" both in English, as well as in Serbian, if you'd like to define the word "descriptively" implies slitting of the the throat. Of course, it acquired a more poignant use in order to describe what had been done to the Jews and the Serbs in Jasenovac.
    I'm rather puzzled by the book you're all refering to here (I've got to read it) since it seems to imply a connection between the language and Serbian "blood-mindedness".
    It reminds me of those XIX century theories that claimed that a "criminal character" as well as a one's personality could be predicted by studying the features of a person's skull. In my opinion the "bloody language" speculation has as much merit. Experience comes first the language to describe the experience follows, not the other way around.

    best,

    Milica

    Milica

     
  • At 7:18 AM, Blogger Brad said…

    Greek has a verb for "to suicide."
    But there's also a verb for "to be hungry" and "to be sorry."

     
  • At 2:29 PM, Blogger rachel said…

    silly irregular verbs... they'll make an esperantist of me yet.

     
  • At 4:48 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    You've got me thinking here...

    there are some rather strong and savage verbs in English:
    to behead, to dismember, to disembowel, to incinerate, to impale, to bridle (as a method of torture, not in connection with horses) to bludgeon, to name just a few, none of which can easily be translated in Serbian -- you'd need several words to transalte these.
    By contrast, there's no Serbian word for "racism," "shunning" or "discrimination" -- foreign words are used insted.

    My top of the "monster list" of words is German "schadenfreude" meaning "to take pleasure in someone else's pain."

    greetings,

    Milica

     

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