[Wikipedia-l] Serbo-Croatian wikipedia

Sun Jan 8 22:21:49 UTC 2006

> They differ in reading as well as they differ in comprension. Let me
> give you an example: My friend went to Bosnia to see her relatives (she
> goes anually). When she returned from Bosnia, she was overwhelmed by the
> fact that she learned so many new words. Bosnian is constantly being
> under influence of Muslims and there you go. I'm afraid I won't
> understand them should I ever go there. Another example is the fact that
> according to my unofficial survey, most of the people my age (18 or so,
> which is an important age group) and some of the other ages don't
> actually know the names of the months in Croatian.

True that many people don't know Croatian words for months. That's why
in casual conversation, we either use international names or just
number them.

Funny you should say that Bosnian is hard to understand. Few weeks
ago, a Bosnian film "Go West" was shown in Belgrade, and it's producer
Ahmed Imamović was a guest on Belgrade radio station B92. Of course,
the film was not subtitled Bosnian->Serbian. They assumed everyone in
Belgrade can understand Bosnian.

Imamović is from Sarajevo, he talked about the film, listeners were
calling in and talking to him. There was no trouble in understanding
at all. I listened to all of it, so it was part Bosnian, part Serbian,
and I understood it all.

Also, just this morning, over my tea, I was reading Croatian weekly
Feral Tribune (http://feral.mediaturtle.com/), and among other
articles, which were all writen in Croatian, I read this:
http://feral.mediaturtle.com/look/weekly1/article.tpl?IdLanguage=7&IdPublication=1&NrArticle=12535&NrIssue=1059&NrSection=2
article by Petar Luković, who is writing in Serbian (if I am not
mistaken, he is from Serbia and lives there). I read most of this
edition of Feral Tribune, and I understood both stuff in Croatian, and
stuff written by the Serbian author. If Luković was not writing about
politics in Serbia, I would probably never notice that I am reading
two oh so different languages.

Some time ago, in Serbian daily Danas (www.danas.co.yu), which
unfortunately doesn't keep archives from more than few days, I read an
article from Croatian Novi List (http://www.novilist.hr/), which was
in its original form, so - Croatian. Iirc (they often use Novi List's
articles), this one was regarding arrest of Ante Gotovina.

And just moments ago, I wanted to check the result of basketball game between  	
Partizan (Serbia) and  Bosna ASA BHT (Bosnia), so I went to
http://goodyear.adriaticbasket.com/. I wanted to get details of the
game, as I am a fan and couldn't watch it, so I went to their
discussion forum topic:
http://forum.adriaticbasket.net/viewtopic.php?t=4794
... where fans of both Bosna and Partizan were commenting the game as
it was progressing - with usual fan teasing (ok, teasing is a weak
word). Nobody called for a dictionary.

Cheers,
Dejan

P.S. Partizan won, if anyone cares.