In this chapter, we cover more traditional dialects; here we pay attention to western and coastal parts of Croatia.
Of course, dialects from Dalmatia were quite present in public...
Sometimes in 1993, a young, good-looking guy working on a local radio in Pula, met a rocker and songwriter Livio Morosin, from a nearby village of Vodnjan. Soon they published a song on a cassette tape, by a local record publisher, and it reached radio waves. It starts with:
Ja ne moren više tako ja ne moren bez nje ja sam bolan, ja sam munjen nek me uzme vrag, ko ne Sad mi reči, mala reči “ča sam stila, ne znan ja san vajka tvoja bila ja te svaku noć sanjan”
Also: translation of Saint-Exupéry’s Le Petit Prince to the dialect of the Rijeka region; more precisely, to the dialect of the village of Studena, near the Slovene border (because the translator was from there). Also: some original books, including picture books for children, many songs and some shows on local TV stations.
What does the first line mean, if anything? Well, magari is an Italian word meaning even. Note that standard Croatian has a very similar word: makar; both words have the same origin – Greek μακάρι – but the standard word came via Romanian, and the word in this song via Italian!
The phrase ninega ni corresponds to the standard nikog(a) nema° nobody’s there. The first word is a genitive of some form, but note it has the -a which is optional in cities and standard Croatian. However, that -a is mandatory in many dialects – and it’s, of course, the older form: some dialects gradually dropped that -a, or made it optional, while others didn’t.
The form ni is the same as in Kajkavian (i.e. it corresponds to the standard nije): negative existentials in this dialect don’t use the form nema° in the present tense, but ni°, so all tenses of negative existentials use the verb biti (je² +).
So we can now understand these lines, we note again the verb spati (spi) sleep, and the mediopassive construction with dative, and then we hit the line: pensan kadi si ti.
Very few songs performed on the Rijeka area festival MIK broke into the rest of Croatia. The most known song was performed in 1997, and became popular mostly due to great vocal abilities of its performer, Vinko Coce; the song Vilo moja – note the stress on the possessive adjective – starts with:
Skoro saki put
Almost each time
kad se mi i pogjedamo
...
ti i ne odzdraviš
...
ko [da se ne poznamo]
as [if we ...]
A da mi te sebi zvat
...
kad ćeš zaspat
when you are going to fall to sleep
prvo sna da ti rečen
...
da [volin te još]
[I still love you]
(...)
Vilo moja
O myvila
ti si moj san
...
a lagje bilo bi
And it would be easier
[da si tuja mi]
[if you were foreign to me]
[da te ne poznan]
[if I didn't know you]
[da te ne znan]
[if I didn't hear of you]
(Vlasta Juretić)
These verses were written by Vlasta Juretić, a writer from Grobnik, a village near Rijeka which is a kind of bastion of the local dialect.
After 2000, there was only a couple of such songs. One was Ne moren kontra sebeI Can’t Against Myself, originally performed by Lidija Bačić accompanied by Klapa Grobnik in 2009. It starts with:
Tribalo bi reć
It should be said
i duši i tilu
Both to soul and to body
sad moramo dalje
We have to go on now
[aš dosta je bilo]
[Because it was enough]
(...)
The chorus is:
Ne morenmoć kontra sebe
I can’t against myself
pa [da nate ne pensan]
[so that I don’t think about you]
Ne morenmoć kontra sebe
I can’t against myself
[aš si zamese[ča znan]]
[Because you’re for me everything [I know]]
(...)
Later, the chorus repeats with a variation:
Ne morenmoć kontra sebe
I can’t against myself
i ne morenmoć se kambjat
...
[aš si meniti va krvi]
[Because you’re in my blood]
i za vajka ćeš zustat
and you’ll stay forever
(...)
...
Maybe the best performance is live on the daily morning show on Croatian Public TV:
Lidija Bačić changed her direction a couple of years later, with songs like Viski and Kaktus, to break into Bosnian and Serbian dance pop markets, where such styles dominate (please watch both videos on YouTube, by clicking on these links).
Gustafi Vrhi Ćićarije
Nidan ne zna
[ča san tebi dela ja]
[ča si meni učinila
[da san nako munjen bija]] Ti i ja
Puni bisa i velena trava oko nas zelena Smotani ka i dvi zmije puštali smo [da nassunce grije] treti tote ni rabija samo Ćićarija...
Ti i ja, dvi zmije i vrhi, vrhi Ćićarije...
(Edi Maružin)
Šajeta Moji koraki
Gibonni Projdi vilo
Projdi vilo mojim versom
niz kadene od sarca mog
jubav išće tilo jako
nosin brime od žeje moje
5Easy Croatian: Variations: Traditional Dialects #2
N A D G L 24 I V UNDER CONSTRUCTION! PLEASE BE PATIENT :) In this chapter, we cover more traditional dialects; here we pay ...
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