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From: iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski)
Subject: Re: Polish month names
Message-ID: <Cy3HoI.3Hy@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK
References: <Cxw2ru.4vw@cogsci.ed.ac.uk> <383tdq$4p4@nippur.irb.hr> <Cxy8v5.5DE@inter.NL.net>
Date: Sat, 22 Oct 1994 22:12:18 GMT
Lines: 41

In article <Cxy8v5.5DE@inter.NL.net> mcv@inter.NL.net (Miguel Carrasquer) writes:
>R.G.A. de Bray's "The Slavonic Languages" has this to say about the dialects
>of Serbocroatian:
>"[...]  The _c^a_ and _s^to_ dialects are subdivided into three
>subvarieties according to whether the old YER (e^) is rendered _e_,
>_je_ or _i_: e.g. _Ve``ra_, _Vje``ra_, or _Vi``ra_.

That's the old _jatI_ (called _jat'_ in Russian), not _jerU_ or _jerI_
(which look like the Russian hard and soft sign, respectively, but in
Old Slavic stood for reduced vowels).

M Carrasquer's _``_ is a double grave accent, a tone mark in S-C.

>The _e_ variety of the _s^to_ dialect is used as the literary
>language of Serbia and most of the Voivodina, while the _je_ variety
>predominates in the rest of the _s^to_ area, including Croatia,
>Bosnia and Montenegro [...]"

On the whole, yes, but many Serbs are _jekavci_ (ie speakers of the
_(i)je_ subdialect), as I found out after reading some of the works
of the Serbian writer Branko C'opic' and wondering why the text had
_(i)je_ where I had expected _e_.  (The explanation came from Milka
Ivic', a Serbian linguist, who said that her father had also been a
_jekavec_.)

>I realize this is not the whole story (there surely are other
>phonetic and vocabulary differences), [...]

There doesn't seem to be any other regular phonetic difference (by
`regular' I mean one affecting more than a few words).  Vocabulary
... yes, there was a mention of thousands of words being different
in a news article on the subject a few years ago.  The author must
have considered that a large number, but it does not look like one
when compared to the size of the entire lexicon, which has to be
two orders of magnitude higher.

-- 
`That's yer oan problem, Judas', they telt him.  `It's nae concern tae us.'
Ivan A Derzhanski (iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk/chaos.cs.brandeis.edu)  (The G-- G--)
* Centre for Cognitive Science,  2 Buccleuch Place,   Edinburgh EH8 9LW,  UK
* Cowan House E113, Pollock Halls, 18 Holyrood Pk Rd, Edinburgh EH16 5BD, UK
