EasyCroatian_r47.an

Easy Croaan (rev. 47b) / A9 Bosnian, Serbian and Montenegrin 532 / 600
Croatian Serbian
pisat ću pisaću писаћу
jest ću ješću јешћу
reći ću reći ću рећи ћу
This is, however, merely a spelling convention: the words ću², ćeš² are secondposition
words; therefore, Serbian words like pisaću are limited to the 1st position
in a sentence! They are usually listed as separate verb forms in Serbian grammars.
Ekavian ‘Pronunciation’
As I have already mentioned, there are three common ‘pronunciations’: Ijekavian,
Ikavian and Ekavian (there are more in various dialects, but these three prevail in
public). The name is misleading, since the difference is visible in spelling as well. The
basic difference is: where Standard Croatian has Ijekavian mlijeko, Ikavian has
mliko and Ekavian mleko for milk.
People usually associate Ekavian (mleko, pesma) and not Ijekavian (mlijeko,
pjesma) with Serbian, but it’s not really true, since Serbs use both as standard: most
Serbs outside of Serbia (e.g. Bosnia, Croatia and Montenegro) use Ijekavian, and
Serbs in most of Serbia, including Belgrade, use only Ekavian. You can find both in
Serbian newspapers, but Ekavian clearly dominates. (The Serbian Standard is much
less strict than Croatian, there is a bigger choice of ‘acceptable’ variants.)
If you find a ‘dictionary of differences’ listing bijeli as ‘Croatian’ vs. beli as ‘Serbian’
you can immediately conclude it’s oversimplifying things.
There’s a tradition of playing down differences between Ekavian and Ijekavian: most
people, especially in Serbia, are used to hear and read both (but they can write and
speak only Ekavian). However, Ekavian forms are not completely trivial – they
cannot be completely obtained from (Standard Croatian) Ijekavian forms, and
Ijekavian forms cannot be obtained at all from Ekavian. For example, there are some
words where Ekavian has e, in comparison to Ijekavian i, like in these common
verbs:
verb Ijekavian Ekavian
heat grijati (grije) grejati (greje)
laugh smijati (smije) se² smejati (smeje) se²
hate mrziti mrzeti (mrzi)
sit sjediti sedeti (sedi)
be worth vrijediti vredeti (vredi)
These differences are sometimes surprising to native speakers as well: very few