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Easy Croaan (rev. 47b) / 59 Knowing and Telling: Content and Noun Clauses 348 / 600
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® You’ll encounter rečem and so on from time to time, especially in Dalmatia, where
it’s often used in everyday speech.
Instead of kino, the word used for cinema in Serbia and most of Bosnia is bioskop.
Instead of shvaćati, a slightly different verb shvatati, is common in most parts of
Bosnia and in Serbia.
Although što is colloquially replaced by šta, and such replacement is complete in
Bosnia and Serbia, in both the standard languages and the actual speech, it’s almost
never replaced when što starts a content clause. However, it is often replaced in
colloquial speech in Dalmatia. Of course, when što starts a real question (što
misliš...?) it’s normally replaced by šta.
• Examples
The song Sve je u redu Everything is OK by Flyer, a pop-group from Zagreb, contains
a number of desire and content clauses.
The first verse uses the verb skrivati hide and, as usual, it’s just lice face – the
possession is implied:
Ne skrivam osmijeh A s lica G I’m not hiding the smile from my face
Želim [da znaš
I want [you to know
[Da sve N je u redu DL [Everything is OK
ovaj dan A ]]
on this day]]
(Mirko Kovač)
The second verse has a desire clause that contains a content clause (in the third
verse). The word je² is the third word in the clause, likely due to rhythmic reasons
(but also you can treat sve je u redu as a kind of phrase).
The following lines have a content clause in a content clause, but the inner clause
starts with kako (it could have started with da without any difference):
Mislim [da ne misliš I think [you don’t think
[kako svemu DL je kraj N ]] [everything is over]]
Al sve N je u redu DL But everything is OK
ovaj dan A
on this day
The line svemu je kraj is the construction:
biti (je² +) kraj + DL
It means something (expressed in DL) is over. The noun kraj is the (formal) subject.
The word al is just ali but, colloquially shortened, which is common.
You can listen to it on YouTube.