by This is the final part of the series.
It’s 7pm but it’s still stinking hot, and look at the weather for the coming days. The whole trip was hot. When I arrived in Belgrade on 12th August it was 37 degrees, and Mostar was the same. (I was lucky. Mostar had reached 42 a week earlier.) At least there’s not too much vlažnost (humidity). This word comes from vlažan (humid). The -ost ending corresponds to English -ness or -ity; in eighties Russia there was glasnost, “openness”. Note that vlažnost features yet another of those famous disappearing a‘s. We’ve got pretty high pritisak (pressure) and not much vetar (wind).
But what fascinated me about this electronic sign was the compass. I mean, compass directions in any language seem to be NSEW or a close variation. French is NSEO. Romanian is NSEV. But SJIZ, with S being north?! The Serbian compass points are sever (north), jug (south), istok (east) and zapad (west). Two of these happen to be English words. Istok at least sounds a little like “east”. As for zapad, that’s remarkably close to zăpadă, the Romanian word for snow. Hmmm, what’s going on there? It turns out that both zapad and zăpadă come from the same Slavic root word, meaning “fall”. Snow falls, and the sun falls (i.e. sets) in the west. Etymology can be amazing at times.
Now we come to the first of two signs that look like hieroglyphics. I bloody love the font because it looks so wonderfully primitive with all the letters made out of basic shapes, but because it’s already in a script I don’t know too well, and in a language I hardly know at all, it’s extremely hard to read. Is that a Г or a Ћ? An М or an Н? Honestly even the numbers are hard to decipher.
I got this:
По овој кући су кораци Милорада Петровића, глумца Народног Позоришта, одјекивали 1865–1928. Кућа це ова Браниславу Нушићу 1864–1938 радована и Добрицом Милутиновићем 1881–1956 славним српским глумцем поносила.
The Latin equivalent:
Po ovoj kući su koraci Milorada Petrovića, glumca Narodnog Pozorišta, odjekivali 1865–1928. Kuća ce ova Branislavu Nušiću 1864–1938 radovana i Dobricom Milutinovićem 1881–1956 slavnim srpskim glumcem ponosila.
The English translation is something like this:
The footsteps of Milorad Petrović (1865–1928), an actor in the National Theatre, echoed around this house. This house was also proud to accommodate both Branislav Nušić (1864–1938) and Dobrica Milutinović (1881–1956), famous Serbian actors.
I was confused with the word radovana, because Radovan is also a common male name. The word glumac (actor) is cognate with the Romanian word glumă, meaning “joke”. Korak means “step”, and the plural is koraci. As far as I know, the letter k changes to c when an i is added.
I didn’t think this sign could be any harder to decipher than the previous one, but it sure as hell is. Decoding these signs is a three-stage process. First, you have to figure out what Cyrillic letters are represented by these weird letter-forms. Some of them (like C, К or M) have their standard shapes on the sign, but others don’t, and some letters (like Д and Е) don’t even have a consistent shape throughout the sign. Second, you need to transpose the Cyrillic to Latin (although with a bit of experience you could skip this step). And third, you have to figure out all the words actually mean. After much head-scratching, this is what I got:
Живота горког кад год грч ме гвозденом канџом зграби; стисне; рађено срце на дну крчме ко дивља звер затули; врисне.
И нагнем пехар на грло суво сав ми се свет пред очима врти или ми циган свира на уво о слаткој страсти и о смрти.
Густав Крклец, Бумс.
The Latin equivalent:
Života gorkog kad god grč me gvozdenom kandžom zgrabi, stisne, rađeno srce na dnu krčme ko divlja zver zatuli, vrisne.
I nagnem pehar na grlo suvo sav mi se svet pred očima vrti ili mi cigan svira na uvo o slatkoj strasti i o smrti.
Gustav Krklec, Bums.
And in English, maybe, with the help of Google Translate:
A bitter drop of life grabs me with an iron claw, it squeezes; a working heart at the bottom of the tavern like a wild beast roars, it screams.
And I lean the goblet over my throat, the whole world is spinning before my eyes, or a gypsy is playing in my ear about sweet passion and death.
Gustav Krklec was a Croatian writer and translator. This is a poem; we’ve got stisne rhyming with vrisne. “Bums” appears to be title. The word zgrabi seems to be cognate with English “grab”, and possibly also the Romanian verb a se grăbi, which means “to hurry”. Cigan, “gypsy”, is basically identical to Romanian țigan, French tzigane (or tsigane), and Italian zingaro. The word krčme (tavern, inn, pub) is the genitive of krčma, which is equivalent to cârciumă in Romanian.
So that’s it, finally. Shop-front signs, handwritten notices, electronic signs, murals, graffiti, plaques, I seem to have covered just about everything. Maybe this will help me make some inroads into this rather difficult language. Let’s hope so.
