Reddit reviews Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, a Grammar: With Sociolinguistic Commentary

I learned Croatian (Kajkavski, specifically). First from a book, then in northern Croatia, then some in college. I'm American.

The first book I learned from is Colloquial Croatian. I also used Teach Yourself Croatian and saw it in more stores here in the US (it wasn't in most book stores, I had to search around). Both of them, you've noticed, are specifically for Croatian. I'm fairly certain that both of them specified ijekavica, and both had a section explaining words where you would find that phonemic change in Serbian/Bosnian.

I don't think my time in Croatia itself would be of much interest, since you've already experienced that yourself, and you're asking about BCS as foreign languages.

When I was in college, my teacher was Montenegrin, and she tried to very explicitly switch from Serbian to Croatian and back, and explain Montenegrin as well. She gave us worksheets, rather than problems from a book, so I can't cite you a link for that. The class was very explicitly called BCS though, and my teacher explained her reasoning for choosing that name. More on that in a second.

Since then, my main reference has been reading Croatian media, watching Croatian shows, Hreddit, etc. This is my main reference. It's more of a linguist's book, it explains why certain phonemic changes happened, where borders between languages/dialects fall, and more precise rules for grammatical structures.

That's my background, now your questions.

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>When people learn Serbo-Croatian as a foreign language, what exactly are they taught?

Well, every experience is different. There are no American high schools that teach it for interest (like Latin). There are very few classes you can sign up for. When people learn languages in the US, it's with the understanding that, except for Spanish, you're at least 5000 km and an ocean away from it being necessary for you to use-- a foreign language dominant, English unavailable. It's expensive for us to even go places where we might need another language. So, of the people in college I knew taking BCS, one was married to a Serbian woman, one was a child of Bosnian parents trying to firm up her grammar knowledge, and me. We all had specific reasons, needs for the language. Those needs spread from Croatia to eastern Serbia. Teaching us specifically Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian would have left the others out. The teacher was knowledgeable of the differences, and would instruct the relevant learner when their language/dialect differed.

>Do they learn ekavica or ijekavica (lepo or lijepo, belo or bijelo)

The ije/e distinction itself is pretty simple, and very regular. Those they just teach near the beginning. Where there are word differences, I think the teacher tried to make the word she taught us the one we were most likely to be understood using. As I understand, she kept an eye on reporting from all three countries to try to listen for changes, or where people would stop understanding old words. I understand that there are deeper differences (Croatian is always stress-penultimate, Serbian has more floating stress), but that only gets demonstrated, not explained, in my experience. Students have to pick those up themselves.

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>Do they learn Latin and Cyrillic both?

ćirilica was extra credit, if you were interested. All coursework was presented in latinica.

And last, for your meta-question (why call it Serbo-Croatian at all, if they're different languages?).

I certainly don't want to enter a flame-war here. That said, I think it's important to consider Spanish. It's taught in almost all US high schools. They usually focus on Latin American Spanish, and only cursorily explain how Iberian Spanish is different. Latin American Spanish is much closer to home, more relevant, and likely to be heard in their day-to-day life. That said though, Latin American Spanish is far from a coherent beast. Mexican, Argentinean, Chilean, all have different accents and local words. There are even United States-specific features of Spanish, created by the people from those different countries. Teaching to a center of gravity, though, increases the probability of being understood some majority of the time, and being slightly uncorrect, rather than more exactly correct for a single region, like Mexico or Argentina, but farther away from other dialects. Conservative vocabulary, rather than follow new slang, maximize intelligibility, maximize understanding of broad trends that will facilitate comprehension.

Hope this helps.

These languages form a dialect continuum and are largely intelligible. This is a case of "the same language" being called different languages due to language ideologies more than linguistic structures.

There is one book I see all the time which (supposedly) teaches all three: Bosnian, Croation, and Serbian, a Textbook: With Exercises and Basic Grammar and its accompanying CD. There is also a grammar.

Logically speaking, there should not be any difference in the "one" you choose to learn, and there may be advantages to learning them simultaneously and considering any variation as possible outputs for a given situation depending on the social context (e.g., the same as considering "I'm gonna" == "I will").

Note: I have not used any of these books nor do I speak any of these languages. Just a linguist with ties to multiple language departments at my university. Do additional research to choose your resource.

They have Croatian on Memrise.

You can also get these books: 1, 2

You need both because the red one doesn't do grammar, which is the hardest part.

Maybe there's a Croatian Catholic church if you live in a big city. Or a Serbian Orthodox one. (The languages are different, but a lot is the same, except that Serbian uses Cyrillic too.) They probably have classes.

Also visit /r/croatian, /r/Serbian

Really it's not that hard! goes back to studying noun declensions of the genitive case

I moved to Belgrade 2 months ago and I'm currently learning the language, too. I have some language lessons in Belgrade. The best way to really learn the language is to live in the actual country, it helps a lot just to hear people talk Serbian every day.

I can also recommend two books, which are really good and go in depth into the grammar, too.

grammar books:
http://www.amazon.com/Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian-Grammar-Sociolinguistic/dp/0299211940

or

http://www.amazon.com/Serbian-Essential-Grammar-Routledge-Grammars/dp/0415286417

torrent sites for serbian media (books, movies, tv shows etc.):
http://www.arenaelite.net/index.php
http://yubraca.net/index.php
http://drugari.info/index.php
http://exyushare.net/takelogin.php

Just gotta immerse yourself in the language.

https://www.amazon.com/Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian-Textbook-Exercises/dp/0299236544/

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https://www.amazon.com/Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian-Grammar-Sociolinguistic/dp/0299211940

Ah, I suppose you're right. I know how to conjugate verbs across all genders and situations. It's just the noun stuff that confuses me. I'll take a look at the thread. I also ordered a book (https://amzn.com/0299211940) that had great reviews, so hopefully it'll get me in the right place.

All in all, I can speak the language very well, pronunciation, etc is not an issue for me. Reading it and understanding it are not an issue. It's only the declensions I suppose that are tripping me up. I'll check out the thread - it should definitely help. Thanks!