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This is central Sarajevo, and here’s the ćevabdžinica I mentioned in the previous post in this series. The mici-like pieces of barbecued meat, called ćevapi or ćevapčići, are everywhere in Serbia and Bosnia. They normally come with pita bread (as you can see in the picture), smântână, and kajmak (a kind of cream). As I said in the previous post, in the word ćevabdžinica the unvoiced p has changed to a voiced b, matching the voiced dž. Further above, you can see Izdaje se (For rent). This comes from the verb izdavati, and is an example of a reflexive verb. The se indicates that the property is “making itself available”. Reflexive verbs seem to be common in Serbian, just like in Romanian. To ask in Serbian what someone’s name is, you say Kako se zoveš?, literally “How do you call yourself?” You reply with Zovem se Robert, or whatever your name happens to be.
This is a fairly rare example of Cyrillic from Sarajevo. It’s a plaque on the Serbian Orthodox Church; Cyrillic is often used in Serbian. Without Google Translate I was pretty clueless. In Latin, the text reads:
U slavu božiju
Ovu kapiju podigoše i podariše sabornoj crkvi i gradu Sarajevu, Olivera i Milinko Mlađen. Za blagoslov i napredak svoje porodice, a na ponos naroda srpskog.
Slava bogu za sve!
Google Translate gives me:
In the glory of God
This gate was erected and donated by the Cathedral Church and the city of Sarajevo, Oliver and Milinko Mlađen. For the blessing and progress of his family, and for the pride of the Serbian people.
Thank God for all!
There are some things I can pick up. Slava means glory: this word also exists in Romanian. Napredak comes from napred meaning “forward”, which appeared in my first post in the series. The surname Mlađen means “Young”. Porodice is the genitive of porodica, “family”. (Familija also exists.) Porodica comes from the verb poroditi, to give birth. This word has the po-prefix, which is very common. Po- signifies completion. The roditi part comes from rod, which means fruit, crop, family relation, or even gender. Rod, with a similar set of meanings (but mostly used for crops and fruit) also exists in Romanian.
There are two words for God used on the plaque, a formal, ceremonial božiji and a more general (bog-standard?) bog. Interestingly, the word bogat, which means “rich” in both Serbo-Croat and Romanian, comes from bog.
This says “Bosnia & Herzegovina public spending counter”, and is a good example of why Serbo-Croat is a notch up in difficulty from other, better-known European languages. You simply don’t get as many words for free. Counter is brojač; this comes from broj (“number”). Number is not numero or număr or nummer, it’s broj, something totally different. Javne is “public” in the feminine genitive. No, it isn’t anything nice like publico. Potrošnje is spending, again in the feminine genitive. And BiH is short for Bosna i Hercegovina. Without having some idea of Serbo-Croat, this sign could be telling you practically anything.
The sign on the shop above comes with a handy English translation, although the Serbo-Croat actually means “House of Healthy Food”. Both zdrave (healthy) and hrane (food) are in the feminine genitive. Variants of these two words also exist in Romanian: hrană means food, but I hear the word more for animal food than human food, and zdravăn describes somebody who is big and strong. The word zdravo, by the way, is used all the time in Serbo-Croat as a greeting, either “hi” or “bye”.
The name of the restaurant above, Dva Ribara, means “two fishermen”. Ribar is fisherman (this comes from riba, fish), and to talk about two fishermen you need the genitive singular, which gets an extra a in this case. It’s hard to see, but they serve Sarajevsko beer. There’s an -o ending because beer (pivo) is neuter; if it were masculine it be Sarajevski; feminine would be Sarajevska. It’s really common in this part of the world to simply name beers after the city they come from. In Montenegro I seemed to drink Nikšićko (named after Nikšić, the country’s second city, or town) most of the time. The local Timișoara beer is Timișoreana (beer is feminine in Romanian).
