So I now have the Serbian Sweethearts, Aleks and Zorana, pushing me to go to Serbia with them over the summer. Not only do they adore me, but I'd love it there, we'd have a great time, I'd get to learn the culture and the language, et cetera, et al, as if they really have to try hard to convince me.
My issue? Language barriers. I've been trying off-and-on to learn a little Serbian for the past year and a half or so, and it's slow going, seeing as I'm taking Arabic courses whilst trying to teach myself Serbian. But I'll probably speed up on the Serbian next semester since I'm probably going to break from Arabic for a while.
Anyway, always one to get a jump on things I want to do (... all right, everybody at the same time: HA ...) I downloaded a Serbian-English dictionary, picked up my "Teach Yourself: Serbian" book and CDs, and went looking for poetry and insults. Why? Because they're really fun ways to learn a language, in my opinion. Also, there's the romantic appeal that learning a language through poetry means you'll speak poetically. Supposedly.
But the poetry thing is just my interest. Everybody loves insults. And they have some nice ones. For example ... ("Da Bog ..." is translated as "May ..." though it's literally something like "That God ...")
"Da Bog da ti zena rodila stonogu pa ceo zivot radio za cipele."
Translation: May your wife give birth to a centipede so you have to work for shoes all your life.
"Da Bog da ti kuca bila na CNN-u."
Translation: May your house be live on CNN. (Basically saying through implication, "I hope your house gets bombed by NATO.")
"Ko te shisha."
Translation: (supposedly) What's wrong with you? Literally, "who cuts your hair?" I say supposedly because the dictionary I'm using didn't have shisha or any variant of it.
Class, gotta run.
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1 comment:
Seams like you're having lot of fun with Serbian :)
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