The languages are colliding in my brain!
Learning Spanish as a second language was difficult because I had not yet trained my brain to associate new sounds with meaning. After years of practice, I have now assigned meanings to the different Spanish words in my head. However, learning a third language has presented a brand new challenge: now the Serbian words are crashing into the Spanish words I've already learned. I have found myself trying to fit different meanings for the same sounds onto one tiny brain cell (insert obvious joke here). This is definitely proving more difficult than I thought it would be. I'll give you some examples:SPANISH......................SERBIAN
mismo = same..............mi smo = we are
viste = you saw.............vi ste = you are
kada = each...................kada = when
malo = bad....................malo = small
jaja = haha.....................jaja = eggs
da = he gives.................da = yes
cena = dinner................cena = price
polako = Polish person....polako = slowly (ok, so maybe this one's not so hard to remember)
So when my Serbian teacher quizzes me and asks the meaning of, "Vi ste iz Amerika," my first thought is, "You saw is America?"
My poor malo brain (that could be taken either way....)
posted by Brooke @ 3:36 PM
5 Comments:
malo and malo is not accidental. Congratulations, you have discovered one of the few indoeuropean roots that are still immediately visible.
Now we are trying to not use so much foul language around Lucy, I've taken to mashing up German, Chinese, a little Thai, and a healthy dose of Spanish in lieu actual swear words. Now I can toss in a dash of Serbian! Thanks!
Hola, desesperada mujer en Serbia,
Bas mi je drago sto pominjes ovu medjujezicnu mesavinu,
I had to live with this problem ever since my birth in Belgrade,
Und mehr dazu, meine Mutter ist Mexikanerin,
lo que hace de todo esto algo muy familiar.
Moja mama je uspela da nauci srpski dosta brzo i cak je i jednu specijalizaciju zavrsila na odontoloskom univerzitetu u Beogradu,
So, it is possible, just give yourself some time.
Ich wohne jetzt in Deutschland,
tako da mozes da zamislis moje probleme!
Los idiomas indoeuropeos sin embargo, parten de la misma estructura gramatical, afortunadamente. En resúmen, podría ser peor,
mogla si da pocnes da ucis recimo, bengali ili arapski.
That would have been an adventure.
Viel Erfolg!
Daniel.
p.s. It's like giving you a welcome to my head. Now, I don't feel alone any more.
Daniel - I know what you mean. I knew a kid in college who would speak to me in mixed French/Italian sentences just because he could.
The only linguistic interference that's really got me so far is this: I saw a sign that said something "je tu," i.e. something is there, and I immediately started reciting French personal pronouns (je, tu, il, etc.)
Meaghan has a problem with zeton, the word for the tokens you get that let you on the platform at the bus station. It's actually a French word, spelled jeton. But because j is pronounced as y in Serbian, she sometimes calls the tokens yeton.
this about "jeton" what wrote Daniel was wrong.
Actually, the pronounciation of the word "jeton" is same in French, and in Serbian.And with the same meaning.It is a French word,ofcourse.
Thenm he wrote wrongly that word in latin letters: its not "zeton" but "zheton" /since you dont have set of Serb latin here on blogger.com
finally, we in Serbia don`t pronounce "j" as "y"
Daniel, where did you hear it? You didnt hear it well, then.
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