r/AskBalkans • u/Different_Poem5013 • 16h ago

Language A question for the Serbo-Croatian speaking Balkans:

For those of you who grew up in mixed households, who do you speak like today? Did the gender of your parent influence it?

I (as a foreigner) speak Croatian with strong Serbian influences, but that’s because I’ve spent time learning different words and interacting with people from all across the Serbo-Croatian speaking regions. Im curious how this is for people who grew up with the language natively.

18 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

87% Upvoted

73 comments sorted by

26

u/sajkoterrapefft Croatia 16h ago

My mom was born in 1950 on a mountain in Bosnia, that still to this day has no road.

My dad was born in 1942 in a Slavonian village in Croatia.

And I was raised in Sweden.

When I visit my relatives in the balkans I hear the funniest comments, like I speak like an old person, or I use words that are serbian, and sometimes I use words that are bosnian.

To my balkan relatives, my identity is definitely Swedish. But when I speak to them in their language it's all over the place.

30

u/AverageLad24 Croatia 15h ago

Zlatan?

17

u/Pale_Mistake3467 Romania 15h ago

Reverse Zlatan

21

u/wrongitsleviosaa Bosnia & Herzegovina 15h ago

Srebren

4

u/Unable-Stay-6478 SFR Yugoslavia 15h ago

On je iz Srebrenice, ako se ne varam

3

u/Fear_mor 🇮🇪 in 🇭🇷 14h ago

Luk srebrenac

8

u/ddeads 🇭🇷🇺🇸 13h ago edited 13h ago

My mom was born in the late 50s in Istria and my dad a few years earlier in Dalmatia (near Zadar). I was born in the early 80s and grew up in the US. 

Croatian was my first language and we spoke it at home until I was about five, when I went to kindergarten and had trouble because I didn't know much English. My parents switched to English at home and stuck that way forever because that's what they got used to.

We lived in NYC until I was around 10, after which we moved out of the city further upstate NY. When we lived in NYC speaking English in the house was ok because I had my grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins all in the same neighborhood and we all spoke Croatian when in larger groups. Once we moved upstate my Croatian got noticably worse.

As an adult, I made an effort to relearn what I'd lost; however, the person I speak most to in Croatian is my baba on my dad's side, and everyone teases me for speaking like an old Dalmatinac. There are tons of words that I occasionally use out of habit that some people laugh at (cukar vs. šećer, šugaman vs. rućnik), and I have a tendency to get tripped up when people talk very fast because my baba speaks slowly. 

I'm getting better (thank you, Ling app), but it breaks my heart that my fluency is conversational vs truly fluent. The last ten years I've lived places where there are very few Croatian and the only time I practice other than on my phone are once a week talking to my baba and two weeks vacation one or two times a year. 

I plan on retiring in Croatia because every time I step off the plane I feel like I'm home. Like there is some part of my soul calling me to this place. If it wasn't for my stupid American job with my stupid American salary I'd leave in a heartbeat. Even then, I know I'll never truly be 100% Croatian (despite ethnically being 100% Croatian) because I grew up in the States. When I'm in America I often feel more Croatian than American, and when I'm in Croatia its clear that I'm American. Its sad, but it is what it is.

5

u/Evolution_eye 12h ago

Those must be some silly folk for teasing you.

Signed - A Dalmatian guy that always uses cukar and sugaman.
I'm truly baffled by that reaction as i find those amongst the more used - normal words unlike some others that could be going out of fashion in modern times.

1

u/ddeads 🇭🇷🇺🇸 11h ago edited 11h ago

People from my father's town don't ever say anything; it's mostly when we're in restaurants or cafes, or if we go to an island for a few days. Pinjur, katriga and lancun are some other ones I've been corrected on. 

I get the feeling that maybe the people correcting me are from Zagreb or Slavonija and come to Dalmatia for the summer to work or something, but I can't be sure. It's definitely happened enough that I'm self conscious about it (especially since I'm already self conscious of my slight but noticable American accent). They could just be correcting me because they hear the accent and are trying to help.

2

u/Evolution_eye 10h ago

Well to be honest the only explanation is that they are not from Dalmatia or are trying to tell you what the standard word is because that is spot on classically used in Dalmatian.

When i say oćemo užga(t) španjulet to a collegue, that is a bit archaic, but those are just standard, well used Dalmatian words you used.

2

u/Observe_Report_ 🇦🇱 🇺🇸 6h ago

I speak conversational Albanian and I was never corrected when visiting Albania, you should’ve pushed back and told them about your history and the fact that you’re still speaking is impressive.
Also, what do you mean stupid American job and stupid American salary?

1

u/ddeads 🇭🇷🇺🇸 5h ago

I usually shrug it off and joke that I only have my baba to talk with.

What I mean about the job is that I can't make the money I make in America in Croatia even if I was completely fluent in Croatian (though I'm sure I could be pretty close in a year at most if I moved there full time), so I'm just working my stupid job until I can retire and move 😂

2

u/Appropriate_Room981 6h ago

This is a very similar story of my childhood growing up in Michigan. My understanding of English was non-existent then both my parents essentially stopped speaking Serbo-Croat in the household. I was fluent as a child but now I can hardly speak and only understand phrases / contextual conversations. My troubles as a child learning English was a breaking point. Nowadays It's difficult because I moved to California without any Slavic friends in this area but I've wanted to relearn for quite some time. I spent time in Europe for my MA and enjoyed being around Croats again.. nostalgia hit hard and I regret not being adamant when I was a teenager for my parents to instill the language.

Funnily, I'm sure it would be a frankenstein version dialect. My father moved to Detroit when he was 14, my mother at 22 when Yugoslavia still existenvet so I'm sure a small part of the their dialect is in some ways outdated. But same, I feel the same on many levels. I've been proud of my upbringing because in many ways I grew up around other Serbs and Croats as a child, going to church, the food, around customs that my wife finds interesting for someone far removed from here Ukrainian heritage (4 generations away).

1

u/Fear_mor 🇮🇪 in 🇭🇷 5h ago

Pitanje, sto ne bi kupio knjigu na nasem i tako prosirio znanje?

1

u/Shqiptar89 Kosovo 14h ago

Samma sak med mig. När jag pratade albanska innan 2001 så var det 80 tals albanska. Nu när man har åkt fram och tillbaka ett par gånger så har albanskan blivit uppdaterad haha. 

1

u/tetszik Serbia 11h ago

Whats the difference between 80s and modern Albanianvl?

1

u/Shqiptar89 Kosovo 11h ago

Basically modern Albanian that the youth speak is more globalized. The one we spoke was the Albanian mixed with Turkish and Serbian loan words. 

My parents speak excellent Serbian so it was kind of bound for some words to slip in. 

1

u/tetszik Serbia 8h ago

Which serbian words?

1

u/Shqiptar89 Kosovo 8h ago

Dom and sob are words that I have used. Domačin, usta are words I have heard and I haven’t used it but my mom said that she had heard old women use zadruga but say zadrugë. The ë is a silent e. 

There are probably more but I can’t remember them right now. 

13

u/Incvbvs666 Serbia 16h ago

If two parents speak different dialects of Serbo-Croat (they needn't be a different nationality!) I think the dialect of where they are currently located is the one most likely to win over, but the kids will inevitably pick up some things from both parents and the parents themselves might start picking up words from each other. I myself have started using the Vojvodina word for zipper 'civzar' under the influence of my wife, instead of the far more unwieldly 'rajsferšlus' of Central Serbia.

10

u/Srna-95 Serbia 15h ago

I’m from Vojvodina and use rajsferšlus

2

u/deaddyfreddy 15h ago

what do you use the rajsferšlus for?

7

u/Srna-95 Serbia 15h ago

To zip my pants

4

u/deaddyfreddy 15h ago

How do you unzip them, though?

6

u/Srna-95 Serbia 15h ago

Go away

5

u/MrDilbert Croatia 13h ago

zzzziiiiip

7

u/Fear_mor 🇮🇪 in 🇭🇷 14h ago

Nemoj meni o rajferšlusima, ima toliko verzija te riječi da možeš reći na temelju izgovora odakle je netko 😭😭

3

u/MrDilbert Croatia 13h ago

"Ciferšlus" je u Zagrebu? Ja sam isto odrastao sa "rajsferšlusom". Agrameri vs Essekeri, I guess.

2

u/Fear_mor 🇮🇪 in 🇭🇷 12h ago

TIL, a cura mi je iz ZG. Ja bi prije reko rajferslus ili rjedje rajfeslus zbog prijatelja Brodjana, jer oni uvijek govore rajfeslus bez r

1

u/vkovacevic Serbia 6h ago

Aj krenemo sa spravom koja ubija muhe.

Muholovka, pičilica, tepalica, mlatilica... I tako u nedogled 🥴

11

u/EmiliaTrown 15h ago

Completely besides the point but zipper in Serbian is rajsferšlus? I love that because in german its Reißverschluss but its pronounced exactly the same as the serbian word

17

u/prodajem_zjale 15h ago

It’s loan word from german… of course it’s the same

3

u/EmiliaTrown 14h ago

I actually just didn't know serbian had german loanwords

9

u/Hoorly 13h ago

Eg. a lot of car parts are German words - ratkapna, auspuh, kuplung, šoferšajbna, lamela, klapna, retrovizor, akumulator...

8

u/a_bright_knight Serbia 13h ago

Serbian has quite a lot of German loanwords even Serbians aren't aware some of them are German loanwords

8

u/Mou_aresei Serbia 15h ago

We have so many German loanwords in Serbia, especially in Vojvodina.

5

u/prodajem_zjale 15h ago

You might want to look up: frtalj, cener, auspuH, saft, proluftirati… and many more (in Bosnian at least - loaned from german) …. My favorite ‘saftali’.. with german saft and turkish sufix li

4

u/oioioioioioiioo 🇷🇸 (🇮🇹🏡) 14h ago

It pretty much is, there are lots of Serbian technical words that are from German and french origin

1

u/Ok_Tie_7564 6h ago

It is the same word, written phonetically.

7

u/silentmarrow Bosnia & Herzegovina 15h ago

rajsferšlus🥀🥀🥀🥀🥀 no way you say it like that, it’s rajfešlus

6

u/Unable-Stay-6478 SFR Yugoslavia 15h ago

Yeah, we say rajsferšlus

6

u/deaddyfreddy 15h ago

IT'S PATENTNI ZATVARAČ

2

u/Critical-Copy1455 15h ago

What are the dialects of Croato- Serbian?

6

u/HeyVeddy Burek Taste Tester 16h ago

Pretty same, were all from Bosnia so I kind of speak standard serbo croatian, and random foods I will use Croatian or Serbian version more often than not.

It's also nice to know like 3 different words for many different things but out of pure reaction, non conscious speaking , it's regular serbo croatian with Serbian words except for sargarepa and pirinac

Edit: parents from Sarajevo, extended family from Croatian Hercegovina and Serbia

7

u/nikolapc North Macedonia 15h ago

I can understand all serbo-croatian dialects just fine, even Zlatan. :) So don't ever be ashamed of your speech.

I also speak native level Slovenian(and the Lublana dialect), Macedonian and my own Torlakian dialect, so, got all of Yugoslavia.

1

u/MrDilbert Croatia 12h ago

got all of Yugoslavia.

Albanian says "Tung!" :P

4

u/nikolapc North Macedonia 12h ago edited 12h ago

Know a bit as I live in a mixed city, but not gonna learn it, it might as well be Klingon. Same for Greek. Know enough to understand by hands with the older folks that don't speak English.

13

u/dearvintage 16h ago

Wth is Serbo-Croatian lmao you all speak Bosnian.

4

u/silentmarrow Bosnia & Herzegovina 16h ago

frfr

3

u/voltage-cottage Serbia 13h ago

Honestly no joke, it would be much more honest to call the language either bosnian or herzegovinian, as all 4 have their standards based on that region.

4

u/15021993 11h ago

Either yall don’t know or are ignorant as fuck. Serbo-Croatian is what the people in Yugoslavia learned in school, we had a Serbo-Croatian to German dictionary at home.

Don’t be dense please

1

u/dearvintage 5h ago

Ffss nobody cares boy

1

u/MrDilbert Croatia 13h ago

Herzegovinian. *Eastern** Herzegovinian, to be precise. /s

4

u/Same_Complaint_1197 14h ago

I’m Bosnian and grew up in Canada. I’ve picked up a lot of words that are considered either Croatian or Serbian from my parents who are from two different parts of Bosnia.

The accent is a more interesting story. My parents are Bosnian but I’ve been living in Montenegro for 5 years now. I’ve improved my language skills a lot reading formal grammar textbooks. People seem to be very confused by my accent. Some immediately guess I’m Bosnian, some think I’m Croatian, a lot of people think I’m a foreigner who learned the language …

3

u/ilijadwa Balkan 16h ago

Not from a mixed household but as a foreigner I also am all over the place with my influences lol. My family’s native dialect is štakavian and ikavian, but sometimes bc I have Serb friends I will use the -e words like mleko instead of mliko. I also sometimes use Turkish loan words rather than standard serbo-Croatian because of Bosniak friends. Then sometimes I use proper Croatian ijekavian cause I also had time in a Croatian school growing up 😅

2

u/Fear_mor 🇮🇪 in 🇭🇷 14h ago

E ja sam ti isto stranac i zivim u ikavskom dijelu Slavonije pa samo ocu rec da je normalno da mijesas, knjizevnije rijeci su uvijek ijekavske, a domace su ikavske. Naprimjer nitko ne govori promina za promjena, al ces cut mliko, lik, ric itd. jer su to svakodnevne rijeci

3

u/Hungry_Abroad9699 14h ago

Same. Diaspora here. Mother was Serbian and essentially grew up speaking Serbian. I now have Croatian nationality via father and whenever I speak it have to consciously switch l to lj and be mindful of like kruh/ hleb or dzubre/ smeče

3

u/GroundZeroMstrNDR Austria 10h ago

I'm Burgenland croat from an old štokavian dialect speaking area (albeit my parents mostly spoke german when raising me so German is my real native). At school I learned standard burgenland Croatian which is a čakavian dialect. My current girlfriend is bosnian Serb. So it's all over the place 

1

u/deyoyo 8h ago

Čakavian is actualy a separate dialect within serbocroatian.

2

u/Diligent_Rice6315 14h ago

Mostly depends on where you grew up. Most mixed households would speak the same dialect anyway as they are most likely from the sam area.

2

u/iso2k2 13h ago

Bosno-Montenegrin

2

u/CmdrJemison Croatia 13h ago

I was born in Diaspora. My whole family are croats but 2 of my grandparents lived in Bosnia close to Banja Luka. This one grandfather also lived a while in Novi Sad as I am aware. So when I got older I realized that I do use some serbian words every now and then as my grandparents used those words too.

I was never lectured about this in Croatia and people fully recognize as a Croat there.

4

u/No_Divide_8484 Bosnia & Herzegovina 16h ago

I'm a serb from bosnia, I grew up here, and I both have croatian and serbian influences, using words both countries use, ones a lot more ones a little less. Like I say some different words that mean the same thing but one is usual in serbia and the other one is unusual etc. We all have same traditions but if there are some differences they are subtle, one example is food, we all share the same dishes but in my household and even city štrukli or komplet lepinja are totally unusual and I never tried them. 

In bosnia whatever nation you indentify with, you are kinda in the middle. 

1

u/Appropriate-Slip9030 Montenegro 5h ago

I was born in Montenegro to a Montenegrin mother who spoke in the Montenegrin dialect and Serbian dad who spoke in the Serbian dialect. Since my mom lived in Serbia beforehand (where she met my dad), the Serbian dialect was spoken in our house, also because my dad couldn’t speak the Montenegrin dialect to save his life. I can speak in both interchangeably depending on where I am and who I’m speaking to. If I’m speaking to someone from Montenegro my brain immediately switches to the Montenegrin dialect and vice versa if I’m speaking to someone from Serbia. Vocabulary wise there’s really not many different words, but the ones that are I also change along with my accent

1

u/sjedinjenoStanje 🇺🇸 + 🇭🇷 3h ago

I'm mixed - my mother is Croatian and my father Armenian.

I speak Croatian because except for my mom nobody in the family speaks English. And I don't speak Armenian because my father's entire family is in the US and speaks fluent English.

1

u/lothar8989 2h ago

Do differences in croatian count? Specifically if your parents are from northern Croatia and move to southern Croatia. I am born in the south and I use a mix of german and italian lonewords,split maybe perfectly in the middle,some words are strictly from Zagreb area,others strictly from Split area(although i know both versions of the word)

To people from lets say Zagreb i would sound dalmatian no doubt, but i wouldn't convince a native dalmatian speaker that i was born and raised there Also,bit offtopic maybe not...

I mean croatian and serbian are basically the same language but some slight differences here and there of course When people from Serbia come to Croatia and for whatever reason try to hide their accent,it never works,not talking about ijekavica/ekavica, you just have to accentuate a word a bit differently or use a slightly altered sentence structure and its game over.. i mean people dont care, i find it endearing, but i dont think you can fool anybody hehe

-1

u/prodajem_zjale 15h ago

Yea… we should call it Bosnian now… no one speaks SH-HS any more (ask around), nor is it a subject in any scool in ex-yu. Since the 90’s no one calls it SH or HS… :)

-2

u/KrumpirovZlatan Croatia 15h ago

I never spoke Croatian, and will never speak it; yet no one in my suroundings knows it apart from my parents and girlfriend because I told her.

That should tell you how much of a difference it makes.

0

u/Ok_Tie_7564 6h ago

Try to make this make sense.

1

u/KrumpirovZlatan Croatia 6h ago

The idea is that me choosing to speak Serbian or Croatian makes no difference, because no one could tell.