19 Comments
I know Polish writing conventions were based on German, but could someone explain me the practical reasons why w wasn't changed to v, as it was in Czech and Slovak?
As a native Polish (and thus a person for whom "v" is a foreign letter) I would say it's easier for me to quickly handwrite "w" than "v" in a way that wouldn't make "v" look like "u" (or perhaps "r").
Yes, but I thought that Serbian, being primarily written in Cyrillic script, didn't use w in the first place.
I've got a "far friend" from Serbia. It turns out they don't all actually use Cyrillic that much. In fact Latin is more common in daily use, although you should know both to understand every text. Serbian is the few languages to use multiple scripts in that capacity. Even Serbian Wikipedia has a script switch in its articles.
Serbs in daily use much more cyrilic than latin, but on the internet, unfortunately, more latin. Politics, about 50 years ago, put Latin in serbian, beside cyrilic. You are right Kyrio, on serbian "волимо вас" (pronounce volimo vas) mean we love u. We dont have W at all.
Yes, it is. Its very complicated to explane. With using latin letter 1945-1990, we were losing our identity. Serbs since 9. century until 1945. never use a word of latin, but only cyrilic. President of Yugoslavia in that time was Croat - Tito (Serbs and Croats are traditional in bad relationship), and he demand from Croats and Serbs to use both letter. Serbs do that, but Croats never use cyrilic, so they do not have that kind of problem now. Today, slowly things go to normal, we are changing, for example, old latin road signs to cyrilic, documents must be cyrilic etc.. But everyone in former Yugoslavia know both letters perfectly.
Perhaps you are right. Having contact with Serbian on the Internet only, I may have drawn incorrect conclusions. Still, with an official accepted standard (as opposed to many ways of transliteration in some other languages), is it a bad thing?
You ask is it latin in serbian language bad thing or..? I did not understand you :)
Yes, exactly that. You wrote "unfortunately" when mentioning people on the web using Latin script more commonly.
According to Wikipedia:
In Serbia Gaj's alphabet is considered more popular, according to a survey from 2014 which showed that 47% of the Serbian population favor it whereas 36% favor the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet.
Hm, that not true exactly, that is politic. Nobody ask people anything, like everywhere. That Gaj (Ljudevit Gaj) was Croat. So imagine that Polaks like more german language and letter than polish. However, time is going in the right way, that is important. In few decades, everything will be like before 1945.
(I can't reply to your last comment so replying here) Yes, I think maintaining Cyrillic in Serbian is a right thing to do, and I'm sure it will be a success.
Why is it not "was kochamy!" As in "my was kochamy!" ? Is it because this was round gives the sentence more emphasis?
„Was” at the start of the sentence would emphasize that pronoun stronger. If you had „my”, then „my was kochamy” is okay, but then you are also emphasizing that „my” (we drop subject pronouns a lot, unless we try to emphasize them).
So would the English translation be?:
- Kochamy was = I love you
- Was kochamy = I love you
kochamy=we love.
and was kochamy is more like "it's you guys we love"
(I added guys to show the plural you)
