LL-L: "Language varieties" 06.JUL.2000 (01) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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From: Pepijn Hendriks [pepijnh at bigfoot.com]
Subject: LL-L: "Language varieties" 05.JUL.2000 (01) [E]

Criostoir,

>I think this is largely an orthographical contention.
>For example the verb 'selle' in Old English has its
>cognate 'selja' in Old Norse, a phonetic difference of
>little real consequence. Indeed, to return for a
>moment to Slavic language examples, this semi-vowel
>distinction marks the differences between Serbian and
>Croatian - where 'bread' is 'hljeb' (cf: hlaf in Old
>English) in Serian but Croatian 'hleb'; Serb. 'mljeko'
>('milk') but Croat. 'mleko' - but by no means makes a
>speaker of the Serbian variant of Serbo-Croat
>unintelligible to a speaker of Croatian. Indeed,
>Serbo-Croat speakers have three variants which on the
>surface appear vastly different but which are
>nonetheless easily understood. In the Stokavski
>variant, 'what?' is 'sto?'; in Kajkavski it is 'kaj?'
>and in cakavski it is 'ca?'. Rarely does this cause
>problems.

So far I've refrained from jumping into this discussion. But allow me
as a Slavist -- although not an expert on Serbo-Croat -- to make
some comments:

The Proto-Slavonic word for 'bread' was _*xle^bu^_ (hacek over
the _e_, breve over the _u_). This is related to Gothic _*hlaifs-_
and present day English _loaf_ and German _Laib_.

Incidentally, the Croatians use _kruh_ for 'bread', not _hljeb_.
Serbians do use the pan-Slavonic _hleb_. For milk, Croats mostly
have _mlijeko_, Serbians _mleko_.

The differences between _je/ije_ on one hand and _e_ on the other
have to do with the different reflexes of Proto-Slavonic _e^_. The
Serbo-Croat linguistic area are can be divided in ijekavian, ekavian
and ikavian areas.

The standard of Serbo-Croat used in Croatia is ijekavian, the
standard of Serbo-Croat used in Serbia ekavian. The Montenegrins
write the language in its ijekavian variant, thereby using almost
exclusively the cyrillic alphabet. (Contrary to popular belief, the
Serbians use both the cyrillic *and* the Latin alphabet. The Croats
only the Latin one.)

Last thing I wanted to point out is that the different words for the
interrogative/relative 'what' in the s^tokavian, kajkavian and
c^akavian areas is dialectal. As far as I know, the standard
uniformly uses _s^to_ (or _s^ta_).

You are right, though, in saying that these differences do not cause
large problems in mutual intellegibility, as they are structural
differences, which are easily picked up.

What occasianally does cause some problems are the lexical
differences, especially when speakers of Croat and Serbian are not
exposed to eachother's varieties as much as they used to be.

But this is valid as well for the differences between the Dutch
spoken in the Netherlands and the Dutch spoken in Flanders.

>I should make clear that I have a number of Bosnian
>friends and although I could not speak Serbo-Croat
>when I first met them, I was able to make myself
>understood using the small amount of Russian I then
>knew. Similarly, I have no difficulty reading any
>Slavic language because I know a little Russian and
>Serbo-Croat; further, I once spoke Serbo-Croat to a
>Slovenian and she presumed I was speaking Slovene, so
>great was the degree of mutual comprehension between
>the two languages.

Although I have seen not recent data, one can safely assume that
mutual comprehension between speakers of Slovene, Serbo-Croat
and Macedonian will diminish during the next years, or has even
diminished already. The same goes for speakers of Czech and Slovak
after the break-up of the country in 1993.

A professor of English from Novi Sad, currently in Leiden, who is
Macedonian, said that younger people couldn't understand Serbo-
Croat as well as used to be the case. This I found confirmed when a
student, half-Macedonian, half-Dutch, who grew up in the
Netherlands, said that she couldn't understand Serbo-Croat.

>For example, the Sorbian cognate of the Russian word for 'prince' -
>I forget it exactly - had been downgraded to mean 'Mister' so that
>to a Russian speaker 'Mister X' became 'Prince X'. The diplomat was
>astounded: "In Mother Russia I am only 'comrade' but here I am a
>prince!"

He should have visited Prague. He would have been a priest there!
(Russian _knjaz'_ 'prince' ~ Czech _kne^z_ 'Priest')

-Pepijn

--
 pepijnh at bigfoot.com -- http://www.bigfoot.com/~pepijnh -- ICQ - 6033220

----------

From: R. F. Hahn [sassisch at yahoo.com]
Subject: Language varieties

Pepijn:

> (Russian _knjaz'_ 'prince' ~ Czech _kne^z_ 'Priest')

Lower Sorbian (Lusatian): kne^z
Upper Sorbian (Lusatian): knjez (form of address also _knjez^e_ 'sir', 'Mr.
...')

(^ = hachek on preceding letter)

Both denote 'gentleman', 'sir' or 'Mr.'

< Old Saxon or Old High German _kneht_ (Old English _cniht_)?

'Prince' is _princ_ (< German _Prinz_) in both standard varieties of
Sorbian.

Regards,

Reinhard/Ron

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