Teach Yourself Serbian - 2 Audio CDs and Book
Brand New (still shrink wrapped) 2 CDs and Book
Serbia is attracting an increasing number of visitors each year. Changing historical circumstances have made travel to the country much easier and greater stability is encouraging more foreign investment. The wars which affected parts of south-eastern Europe after the collapse of Communism and break-up of the former Yugoslavia are now over. Serbia is moving closer to integration with European institutions and markets.
Serbian is a Slavonic language. Until recently the language used in Bosnia, Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia was referred to as Serbo-Croat but the differences between them have now been recognised, although they remain mutually comprehensible. Serbian uses both the Cyrillic and the Latin alphabet. There is no rule to say which alphabet should be used on which occasion so you need to be able to use both. This book/CD pack introduces you to both the Cyrillic and the Latin alphabets - in the first three units both alternatives are given and thereafter the units alternate between the Cyrillic and Latin alphabet. There is plenty of help given at the start so that you can quickly familiarise yourself with both scripts.
'Teach Yourself Serbian' has been designed to meet the demands of growing interest in the language by providing a new course which will take you through all the stages of learning Serbian. Its graded units offer a structured approach, giving information in a user-friendly fashion, and presenting the language in everyday situations based around real places in Belgrade and Serbia. If you want to communicate in Serbian and to enjoy a degree of independence while in the country whether you are a leisure or business traveller, school or university student, whether you have family ties in the region or simply enjoy the challenge of learning a new language, this book will introduce you to the basics and beyond.
The accompanying double CD provides relevant listening material.
* Lots of practice in every unit helps you remember what you've learnt
* Comprehensive - the book covers a wide range of topics and introduces both the Latin and the Cyrillic alphabets to enable you to communicate in any situation you may encounter.
* This course will appeal to complete beginners as well as those who want to refresh existing knowledge
* There is plenty of opportunity to practise listening and speaking skills with two hours of accompanying recorded material available on CD
* This is the first widely available title covering Serbian only
About the Author:
Davis Norris has taught Serbian and Croatian Studies since 1980. He is currently Senior Lecturer at the University of Nottingham. Vladislava Ribnikar is lecturer at the School of Slavonic Studies, University of Nottingham and a native speaker of Serbian.
About the Serbian Language
The Serbian language is a South Slavic language, spoken chiefly in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia, and in the Serbian diaspora. Standard Serbian is based on Shtokavian dialect, like modern Croatian and Bosnian (formerly known as Serbo-Croatian), with which it is mutually intelligible, and was previously unified with under the standard known as Serbo-Croatian. It counts among official (and minority) languages of Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia, Romania, Republic of Macedonia and Hungary.
Two alphabets are used to write Serbian: a variation on the Cyrillic alphabet, devised by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, and a variation on the Latin alphabet, devised by Ljudevit Gaj. Serbian orthography is very consistent: approximation of the principle "one letter per sound". This principle is represented by Adelung's saying, "Write as you speak and read as it is written", the principle used by Vuk Karadžić when reforming the Cyrillic orthography of Serbian in the 19th century.
Serbian can be written in two different alphabets: Serbian Cyrillic script (ћирилица) and the Serbian Latin (latinica). Both were promoted in Yugoslavia. The Cyrillic script is Serbia's official under the 2006 Constitution of Serbia, but the Latin alphabet is equally used with the Cyrillic alphabet in Serbian language, according to the Serbian orthography. The Latin alphabet was first officially used in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later Kingdom of Yugoslavia). Also, among others, a famous Serbian literary historian and critic Jovan Skerlić proposed abandoning the Cyrillic script and accepting Latin as the only alphabet.
Before 1400, most Serbian vernaculars had two accents, both with fall intonation—the short one and the long one. That is why they are called "old accents". By 1500, the old accents moved by one syllable towards the beginning of the word, changing their quality to rising accents. For instance junâk (hero) became jùnāk. The old accents, logically remained only when they were on first syllable. Not all dialects had that evolution; those who had it are called neo-shtokavian. The irradiation point was in east Herzegovina, between Prokletije mountains and town of Trebinje. Since the 1500s people had been emigrating from this area. The biggest migrations were to the north, then toward Military Krajina and to the seaside (Dalmatia, Istria, Dubrovnik area, including islands of Mljet and Šipan). In 1920s and 1930s royal government tried to settle people from this poor mountainous area to Kosovo basin. Vojvodina was settled with inhabitants from this area after WWII.
When all old accents had moved to the beginning of the word for one syllable, this was the result:
* In words with two or more syllables the last syllable cannot be stressed
* One-syllable words can have only falling accents
* In polysyllabic words, if an inner syllable is stressed, then it can have only a rising accent (there are exceptions- in standard and in many vernaculars, for instance when there is a ` - - combination)
* In a word with two or more syllables, if the first syllable is stressed, than it can have any of the four accents.
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