10
votes
Accepted
Why do Croatian and Italian contain the same grammatical endings for nouns and verbs?
These all derive from the original Proto-Indo-European inflections.
Compare Classical Latin present-tense verb endings:
sg pl
1 amō amāmus
2 amās amātis
3 amat amant
And Ancient Greek (...
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8
votes
Accepted
Why is the Croatian word "vjetar" spelt with "je" rather than "e"?
The Proto-Slavic original word for ‘wind’ did have the yat’ (ě):
*vě̀trъ m — From Proto-Balto-Slavic *wētras, from Proto-Indo-European *h₂weh₁-. Cognate with Lithuanian vė́tra (“storm”), Latvian ...
- 18.6k
7
votes
What's the difference between sr-el and sh, can someone knows Serbian help out?
https://sh.wikipedia.org is for the Serbo-Croatian language, in the Latin alphabet, in the Jekavian variety used in Croatia, Montenegro, and Bosnia, “sh” stands for srpskohrvatski — ‘Serbo-Croatian’.
...
- 18.6k
6
votes
Accepted
Is Serbian u from "buva" flea a Proto-Slavic ъ or l from *blъxa?
Likely both. In Slavic languages, sounds corresponding to Proto-Slavic lъ/ъl often go together as a unit and can change places in different forms of the same word. So do lь/ьl, rъ/ъr, rь/ьr.
Serbo-...
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4
votes
In Croatia, the first two consonants in river names are often 'k' and 'r', respectively. How to estimate the probability of that happening by chance?
I'm not sure entropy is the right measure for this, particularly collision entropy. Instead I'd recommend a simple frequency analysis.
First, come up with a criterion for what makes a word a "kr&...
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4
votes
Accepted
Why is the Croatian word "pjena" (foam) spelt with "je" as if it were from Slavic yat, rather than "i", as it is from Slavic "y"?
The ū in Latin fūmus and spūma have different sources. The ū in spūma is from the Proto-Italic diphthong *oi̯. The Proto-Indo-European root would have had an *e or *o vowel followed by a laryngeal and ...
- 18.7k
4
votes
What sounds do the graphemes ⟨ś⟩ and ⟨ź⟩ represent in Montenegrin?
Glib answer: nothing, since those letters were removed from the Montenegrin alphabet in 2017; they've been replaced with sj and zj, same as in Serbo-Croatian.
Actual answer: phonemically, they ...
- 68.2k
4
votes
Why is the Croatian word "vjetar" spelt with "je" rather than "e"?
The vjetar comes from proto-Slavic větrъ, from Proto-Balto-Slavic wētras, from PIE h₂weh₁tros, so there was no "-en-" in it.
The Latin "ventus" and English "wind" come ...
- 6,685
3
votes
Is there a phonological division in Slavic languages as important as the La Spezia-Rimini line? If not, is there a most important partition anyway?
The main classification of Slavic divides it into South Slavic, West Slavic and East Slavic.
The most important partition of Slavic languages is the band that separates South Slavic from the rest of ...
- 8,094
3
votes
In Croatia, the first two consonants in river names are often 'k' and 'r', respectively. How to estimate the probability of that happening by chance?
The null hypothesis is that phoneme distribution in words is random. This is quickly falsified by the Syllable Structure Hypothesis, to the effect that in English (for example) syllables can start ...
- 83.3k
2
votes
Accepted
Are the Croatian word "struna" (string of a musical instrument) and the English word "string" related?
Both Slavic and Germanic have str- as the regular reflex of word-initial PIE *sr- (and also *str-, although this is rarer), so genuine cognates beginning with str- in Germanic will be expected to ...
- 9,191
2
votes
Accepted
Are the Croatian word "radije" (rather) and English word "rather" related?
Probably not. "Rather" goes back to Old English hraþe "quick, soon, early" plus the comparative -er. I don't speak Croatian but it looks like your word comes from a root for "...
- 68.2k
1
vote
What's the difference between sr-el and sh, can someone knows Serbian help out?
The best place to learn about Wikipedias is Wikipedia. Its article on Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia states:
The Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia was originally launched on 16 January 2002. [...] On 12 December ...
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1
vote
When did other slavic nations adopt the Latin-inspired look of printed Cyrillic pioneered in Russia?
The adoption of Latin-type letterforms in regions using the Cyrillic script outside of the Russian Empire varied widely depending on the country and context. I will aim to provide a broad overview of ...
- 216
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