r/Yugoslavia • u/Different_Poem5013 • 16d ago
My love letter trying to convince another person to learn Serbo-Croatian
[You should learn] Serbo-Croatian!
My top 10 reasons:
10: The food. Food across the former Yugoslavia is SO GOOD. Pljeskavica beats burger every day. (Especially when it’s stuffed with cheese 🤤)
9: It uses TWO SCRIPTS! Isn’t that awesome? More about that later, but I love using both scripts in one conversation. (In practice, Latin script is used the vast majority of the time in all of the ex-Yugoslav countries, but people in 3 countries can also switch to Cyrillic anytime!)
8: It’s (technically) tonal. I see you’re a Cantonese native, so this won’t be too bad haha. Of course this is never taught, and it really does not matter, but if you wanna put in a fuckton of hours, you can master the pitch accent system! (Western dialects for the most part lacks pitch accent.)
7: You can already distinguish between the two most annoying letters in the alphabet! Even Croatians have a hard-ass time with this. Ć and Č (in Cyrillic: Ћ and Ч) bug me to this day… č → like 吃 (chī), ć → like 七 (qī) in pinyin. So easy!
6: You can already distinguish between the second most annoying pair of letters! Croatians have less of a hard time with this but Dž and Đ (in Cyrillic: Џ and Ђ) bug me less. dž ≈ zh in zhī (知). đ ≈ j in jī (鸡).
5: The TV show Krv Nije Voda is such a terrible TV show, that it accidentally became comedy gold. Would ABSOLUTELY recommend. Also, once you get to higher levels, there is an insane amount of TV on Youtube from Serbia on RTS.
4: The girls. Nuff said. They’re beautiful, and they do love to talk — it’s a very extroverted culture. (If you end up going on dates, it’s a very nice way to practice. You just have to be able to hold a natural conversation — I haven’t reached quite that level yet that I would feel like i wouldn’t make myself to be a complete idiot speaking in front of a romantic interest, even in English I’m like that 😅)
3: The writing system. It is based on the principle “Write as you speak, speak as it is written.” Literally once you learn both the Latin pronounciation and the Cyrillic alphabet, you can immediately start sounding out words and be 100% correct.
2: The insults and swears. I am convinced that this language is the best for swears on this planet. “I impale you on my dick!” is a common phrase. The powerful, rapid, and brutal swears are OP. “U pičku materinu” is iconic. Take a look at my post history and you’ll find a short guide.
1: The cultural warmth. Seriously, I’ve never seen people accept me with open arms for making an attempt to learn their language. Instant connection, instant happiness, instant joy, and dear friendship. I’m friends with a good number of folks because I tried to learn the language. I got to a level where I can understand well and answer either somewhat fluently most of the time (I’d say about a B2). I was a little worried being in Montenegro, but slowly, I took my time to get used to it.
Not so many people choose to learn this beautiful language, especially people of color. Usually it’s either those with an ex-Yugoslav partner or diaspora kids. I’d recommend being one of the few who learns Serbo-Croatian out of interest.
EDIT: original post/comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/1n21z2f/. Let’s have this guy learn Serbo-Croatian so feel free to go and upvote this!
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u/LanguageKnight 13d ago
Thank you from a fellow polyglot. It is embarrassingly pleasant to see one's first language and culture portrayed in such positive light.
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u/a-potato-named-rin 15d ago
I really do want to learn it one day ❤️ love to the Balkans from America