Subject: Re: A dern for the better!

From: Jean-Joseph Cote <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 08:47:00 -0500

>Na srecna gdin bejo brda
>govorim dugme pes sava mrda
>ljed plavo dern
>bijana talern
>cevaptcici larevo i vrda
>
>literally:
>Everyone thought I would hit him
>with the teeth that I keep in my face
>because a libertine
>is what he called my mother
>instead, I gave him my dog.
>(the idioms don't translate well -- sorry.)
>-JJ
>
>(This doesn't match at all: brda-riverbank; govorim-speak;
>plavo-swim (not sure of form; I've heard plave); mrda-shake;
>tooth-zub; face-lico; mother-mat(er); dog-sobaka. -phma)

What can I say?  I just butchered most of the Serbo-Croatian words I
know, invented a few more, and jammed them together, figuring it would
sound vaguely like Slovenian.  You missed na-atop; srecna-happy;
dugme-button; sava-a river in Croatia; cevaptcici-sausage.  And I
modified "vrba" (willow) to "vrda" to get the rhyme, thus using all but
one of the words from my favorite Serbo-Croatian tongue-twister: "Na vrh
brda vrba mrda" (I think I spelled that right), which translates to "On
the hill (or riverbank), a willow sways"

(And I left out the little hoozies on some of the letters which makes
them be 'ch' instead of 'c', etc... not that it really matters.)

J-J

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From: Pierre Abbat <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 17:10:53 -0500

>the hill (or riverbank), a willow sways"

Na I knew, but figured it's a preposition, and prepositions tend to be used
quite differently in different languages. The rest I didn't. What I know is
Russian, not Slovenian, and the only reason I know brda and mrda is the
tonguetwister.

phma

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From: Aussie Meyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 07:44:11 -0800

> my favorite Serbo-Croatian tongue-twister: "Na
> vrh

Yikes.  No wonder them people got so much trouble.  Of course, I'm the
kinda lowbrow who can't read the Dutch signage at Schilpol Airport
without thinking of the Katzenjammer Kids.