Talk:Serbo-Croatian/Archive 2
Is it not true that Serbian is written in a Cyrillic alphabet and Croatian is written in a Latin alphabet? -- Zoe
- Yes it is absolutely. Here we have a little bit of ambiguity for one who doesn't know somehow both languages, which are in fact very close connected. But they are written in different alphabets because of the historical events. Serbs sometimes write in Latin too. But first they learn Cyrillic at school. Other Slavic languages written in Cyrillic are more different than these ones. For example Russian and Belarusian or Ukrainian. (But I am not an expert in the last threes, except of a Russian) -- XJamRastafire 20:12 Jul 29, 2002 (PDT)
- I put in a (so far ugly) table showing the two alphabets and their correspondences. Someone who actually knows about this stuff should probably check it over. --Brion VIBBER
- In practice, would one use a simple computer program to transcribe a text from one of these scripts to the other? Juuitchan
- Well, that sounds a lot easier than doing it by hand. Here's a set of fonts where the glyphs match up and you can switch alphabets just be changing from the Croatian to the Serbian font: http://www.linguistsoftware.com/lsrb-cro.htm
--Brion VIBBER
- Well, that sounds a lot easier than doing it by hand. Here's a set of fonts where the glyphs match up and you can switch alphabets just be changing from the Croatian to the Serbian font: http://www.linguistsoftware.com/lsrb-cro.htm
That's cool! But for the love of-- they have the nerve to HIJACK DIGITS and use them as letters?!! What if the text contains numerals?? Juuitchan
I'll put this text from an article to clearify a bit more the differences between the two languages:
It should be noted that difference between Croatian and Serbian language is same as, for example, difference between Norwegian and Swedish language. Common mistake is saying they are almost the same, because Croats and Serbs lived for long time in same country, and everybody (Croats and Serbs, but also other nations in Yugoslavia) learned each other languages. Since dissipation of Yugoslavia it can be noted that younger generations do not understand each other so well, and the difference between those two languages is more obvious. [213.202.124.153]
- Yes I wonder how exact are these differences. Let me write some languages in a list:
- -- XJamRastafire 13:19 Aug 19, 2002 (PDT)
First of all, are we talking about written or spoken languages? There are number of Serbian dialects, some of them closer to Croatian dialects than to Serbian written language. This is similar to Low German dialects, they are closer to Dutch than to High German, but considered German dialects anyway. In written Serbian and Croatian there are grammatical differences as well as lexical one. But these differences are approximately of same magnitude as between British English and American English.
Talking about written language I would put the pairs of languages like this (starting from closer languages, ending with more different):
- Yes of course. Nice to know. My list was random for shure. I am not an expert of any of above languages, except I've learned English for 10 years, Russian for 2 years in secondary school and Serbo-Croatian for 3 years in primary and secondary schools, from the strips and spoken one from my vacations at Croatian coast. I meant more a written ones. (I do believe that in a written language a spoken one is mirrored...) Oh, I see also a connection between a German and a Dutch languages. We probably can give a scale of these connections like a hardness or an earthquake scales are. Interesting indeed. -- XJamRastafire 13:50 Aug 19, 2002 (PDT)