Serbo-Croatian Language – A Brief Course on Dialects

Serbo-Croatian Language – A Brief Course on Dialects

Under no circumstance that I want to insult your sense of living. I encourage you to get a life. Sniffing through a long post about language is not a recommended weekend’s pastime. However, this article presents many interesting facts about the language. Hard but good to read.

One characteristic word you’ll hear among Serbs where I come from, even from Serbs who don’t speak their parents’/grandparents’ dialect but rather a more standard language, is “?e” (pronounced like the “je” in Jerry) in place of “gdje” (if you Anglophones can manage it!, with “g” as in goat, “d” as in date, pronounced together in that order in front of the “ye” in yes), meaning where.

This pronunciation is not limited to us Croatian Serbs. In fact, you will find this pronunciation among Bosnian Muslims or Bosniaks. Nevertheless, it is a form of the word “gdje” that was brought to our regions in Croatia from Montenegro, where you will also hear “?e” spoken in daily conversation. Derived forms include: “ne?e” (somewhere), “ni?e” (nowhere), “i?e” (anywhere) and “sva?e/svu?e” (everywhere).

Upon hearing me utter this simple word “gdje” without the “g” sound, my friend commented: “You speak like an uneducated person who say “dje dje.” What the heck is “dje”?

[Link via GVO]

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