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Basic Croatian!!
Posted: 03 September 2004 05:59 AM   [ Ignore ]
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My dearest Agorans,

I would require your help for the triflest of matters: I need as quickly as possible some basic expressions in Croatian in order to answer a letter; namely, "Dear ..., thank you for your letter of (...) I look forward to hearing from you again (...) yours sincerely:".

I’m very much obliged to you!!

Best Regards,

           WS.

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[I]Nuestras horas son minutos / cuando esperamos saber / y siglos cuando sabemos / lo que se puede aprender.[/I] Antonio Machado

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Posted: 03 September 2004 09:52 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 1 ]
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http://www.hnb.hr/novcan/kovanice/slike-kovanice/2lipe_n.gifhttp://www.hnb.hr/novcan/kovanice/slike-kovanice/2lipe_l.gif

My 2 lipe’s worth, WS:
—————

Dear Mr .....,
Po¨tovani gospodine .....,

Dear Mrs/Ms .....,
Po¨tovana gospo?o .....,  (? = d with crossbar)

Dear Miss .....,
Po¨tovana gospo?ice .....,  (? = d with crossbar)

Dear Sir or Madam,
Po¨tovani gospodine ili gospo?o,  (? = d with crossbar)

Dear .....,
Dragi/draga .....,

Dear ..... and .....,
Dragi ..... i .....,

Thank you for your letter
Zahvaljujem na Va¨em pismu

I look forward to hearing from you (soon)
O?ekujem Va¨ (skori) odgovor  (? = c with ‘hook’)

Yours faithfully/sincerely
Srda?an pozdrav  (? = c with ‘hook’)

Yours
Va¨

Coemgenus

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Fundamentalism: the terrible, pervasive fear that someone, somewhere, is having fun - H.  Mencken

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Posted: 04 September 2004 12:45 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 2 ]
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Thanks Coemengus!! Could you tell me, as well, how I can "umschreiben" those letters?

Let me practice:

[I]Dragua Adrjiana,

Skori[/I] [I mean rapid answer, she used an e-mail] [I]E-mail na Vasem pismu!!

(...)

Ocekujem Vas skori odgovor.


Vas [/I]WonderingSpaniard

I think I’d only wish to know how she is… What should I write?

A thousand thanks once more!!

          WS.

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[I]Nuestras horas son minutos / cuando esperamos saber / y siglos cuando sabemos / lo que se puede aprender.[/I] Antonio Machado

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Posted: 04 September 2004 07:52 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 3 ]
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Dragi WS.

Glad you found my answer of some help. I ought to make it clear, though, that my knowledge of Croatian is extremely rudimentary! What I sent you is 90% the result of an hour’s sleuthing on the web.

My suggestion:

——-
Draga Adrjiana, (1)

Zahvaljujem na Va¨em e-mail: to je skori odgovor. (2)

(...)

Ocekujem Va¨ odgovor. (3)

Sve najbolje, (4)

WS
——-

(1: NB Draga, not Dragua)
(2: Thank you for your e-mail: this is a quick reply)
(3: Looking forward to hearing from you)
(4: Best wishes - probably better than either "yours sincerely", too formal, or just "yours", too familiar?)

The diacritics are problematical in that, depending on your respective e-mail settings they may not appear correctly at the receiver’s end anyway (I don’t think multilingualism has ever been one of Mr Gates’s strong points).

Under Windows you can get ¨ easily enough by typing 0154 on the numberpad while holding down  ALT (ALT+0138 for ¦). "Crossed d" can legitimately be replaced by "dh", as it occasionally is even in Croatia. z with "hachek" can be got from MS Word > insert > symbol—but as it probably won’t show up in your message (just as it doesn’t in this forum), you can either substitute "zh" or do what most people do (even though it offends the pedant in me) and simply use "z": your correspondent will still understand your message!

Coemgenus  

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Posted: 04 September 2004 08:39 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 4 ]
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Dagi Coemgenus,

Sorry for misspelling your name; I’m a calamity with these funny arrays of letters you people use… XD

I actually meant hers had been a prompt answer to my previous e-mail and I wanted to thank her precisely for that. She is a German whose parents inmigrated there from Croatia. The body of my e-mail shall be therefore in German; but I felt it would please her to see some of her actual mother-tongue in a message from me. wink

I really appreciate that "Sve Najbolje", it sounds much better to me than simply "Va¨".

Thankfully yours,

            WS.

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Posted: 04 September 2004 09:28 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 5 ]
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[quote author=WonderingSpaniard link=board=translate;num=1094237950;start=0#4 date=09/05/04 at 05:39:52]Sorry for misspelling your name…
I actually meant hers had been a prompt answer to my previous e-mail and I wanted to thank her precisely for that.

—I didn’t notice till you pointed it out!
—OK: change (2) to read Zahvaljujem na Va¨em skori odgovor.
The grammar may not be 100%, but the thought is there…

On another subject, I like your sign-off lines, but I’m wondering why Legolas is not "Légolas" in Spanish. After all, the "antepenultimate-stress-pattern" (*) of all those gárgolas and mandíbulas are the lines’ chief effect, are they not?

In Catalan, we find "Légolas" and "Guimli", but in Castilian "Legolas" and "Gimli"—is that the fault of the original translator of Tolkien into Castilian, do you know? Are there generations of Spanish readers of "El Señor de los Anillos" who think there is a character whose name is pronounced (IPA) /ximli/?

——
(*) I’m sure there’s a technical term for this.
No doubt some learnèd Agorite (**) will know it.

(**) "Agorite" is the term I favour for the denizens of this marketplace, but it is very much a minority appellation—most people seem to say "Agorans". I think it all depends on how you pronounce "Agora". I suspect the "Agorans" say "Agóra".
Because for me it’s Ágora (another antepenult stress), "Agorites" is not only easier to say, but more Greek (-ites = inhabitant of)—though, admittedly, the people of Sodom did not do a lot for this particular word ending.. grin

Coemgenus

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Posted: 05 September 2004 07:40 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 6 ]
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Legolas died on July 26, 2004. The famous Swedish race hourse had had trouble with his teeth and feeding for some time.

I read the Ring thing years before it became cult, and did not remember the name from there. The things you learn on the Agora!

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Posted: 05 September 2004 10:28 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 7 ]
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I know squat about Croatian, but doesn’t it possess a vocative case like Czech, Polish and Ukrainian do, just to name a few Slavic languages?  Shouldn’t it be Drago Adrijano?

Brazilian dude

Sorry for my interruption.  I possess no qualification to answer that kind of question, anyway, but I can understand 98% of the language, due to the other Slavic languages that I have learned.

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Posted: 05 September 2004 10:42 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 8 ]
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This could help: http://www.skrause.org/language/serbocroat/noun1.shtml

Brazilian dude

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Posted: 06 September 2004 12:44 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 9 ]
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Well, BD, what are you talking about? Interruptions?? Since when there’s such in a place like the Agora!?! wink

From the table you’ve provided us with… I’d say it’s neither "-i" nor "-o"; but rather should  be left without ending. However, my authority in this matter amounts to nought. Luckily, my friend is a female… No doubts in this case, are there? ;D

My sign-lines are from a song’s lyrics by a Spanish rapper (Nach), who really has some good hits. I simply thought it very adequated for this forum. wink

As to the LOTR question, I’m glad you posed it, Coemgenus!! I’m quite a fan of Tolkien’s, you know…;D

You confused me… I had written it right and then I changed it on reading your post… But it didn’t look fine to me, so I went upstairs and picked up "Las Dos Torres".... Indeed it’s without accent, albeit stressed in the antepenultimate-sylabe! ;D.

However, I still cannot infer which rule they followed on translating: they put "Éomer", "Théoden" and in general all the names of the Mark and its dwellers (Gríma, Háma…) Orkish-names, too: "Uglúk", "Lugbúrz" (Dark Tower),... Astonishingly, they even write "Sméagol", which doesn’t exactly help to improve the actual pronunciation /smi:gol/.

Nevertheless, we don’t get: "*Áragorn" or "Árathorn", and, as you see, "*Légolas", neither. Same thing for "*Bóromir", "*Fáramir" or "*Dénethor". There are still some which I don’t know what to think -whether they are so in English, too, or not-, like Anárion or Dúnedain.

Anyway, it’s a long time since I last read it in Spanish…  :-[

In English, I do remember Tolkien did use many accents to show the English readers that certain dipthongues were not such: "Fëanor". Or in order to specificate pornunciation and stress: "Andúnië" /an’dunie/  not /‘anduni:/ as an Englishman would have said. Sometimes even to indicate the weird sound of a word with respect to the average: "Khazad-dûm or "Barad-dûr". All these were kept in Spanish; but I don’t know whether some extra accents were added, for instance in "Númenóreano".

As to Gimli, I’ve never heard anyone saying /ximli/. It’s easy for a Spanish-speaker to accept that "gi" is /gi/  when s/he sees it in a word foreignly written. However, there was indeed some commotion on hearing Viggo Mortensen -with his Argentinian accent polished to fit Spanish ears- pronounce "/nazgul/!!"... Although I already knew that the "z" shouldn’t be pronounced like in Spanish, I was also taken aback in the cinema, since we always say "nathgul", which, besides, sounds much mightier ;D.

Regards,

        WS.

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Posted: 06 September 2004 03:37 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 10 ]
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I don’t know, Wondering Spaniard, the table explicitly says a>e/o under vocative feminine.  The e looks like the choice for soft nouns, and o for hard nouns (nouns can be either soft "palatized", pronounced with an extra "y" sound at the end of Slavic words; or hard, pronounced with a final consonant).

Brazilian dude

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