Serbian language

“ Between the sixth and thirteenth centuries, the Serbian invaders of the Balkan peninsula grouped themselves into a number of independent tribes. The Serbian state to which the smaller units adhered politically came into being in the thirteenth century. That it was inhabited by a prosperous people is proven by numerous works of art which are still preserved in the churches of the land. A hundred years later the kingdom of Serbia attains its widest extension. Under Stephen Dushan, the country spreads from the Black Sea to the Adriatic and from the Danube and Save valleys to the Ægean. ”

“ Serbian is the language of the entire district of confluence of the Theiss and Danube as well as of many colonies in the Banat of Temesvar. Religious diversity alone has prevented fusion of these Serbians with the Hungarian majority of the land. Whenever they come into contact with Rumanians of the same religion the Serbians lose ground and become merged in the bosom of the Latin population. “A Rumanian woman in the house,” says the Serbian proverb, “means a Rumanian home.” ”

“ It soon, indeed, came to be considered quite the correct thing for visitors to Kragujevatz to come up and visit the camp, and the only relief from the monotony of showing people round, was the variety of language which had to be employed. Sometimes, simultaneously, a Serbian, who, in addition to his own language, only spoke German, another who only spoke French, another who could only talk Serbian, and perhaps an Englishman who could only talk English—these must all be entertained together. ”

“ He observes that the land is one land with Serbian soil—its frontiers are merely the artificial imposition of kings and policies. The nations, he points out, are not two but one—one in blood, in temperament, in habits, in tradition, in language; round the fireside they tell their children the same stories, sing them the same songs: the greatest poem in Serbian literature, as all the world knows, was written by a Prince-Bishop of Montenegro. Since the day when the Serbian State came into existence it has been, he says, the constant, burning desire of the Montenegrins to be joined to it. ”

“ THE Serbian is the most widely spread of the South Slavonic dialects, being spoken not only in Serbia proper, but also in Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia, Carniola, and a great part of South Hungary. It has, like the Bulgarian, been affected by the old Thracian language, but not to the same extent. The infinitive is very frequently represented by da with the finite verb. Szafarzik includes the whole of the South Slavonic dialects, except the Bulgarian, under the common name ‘Illyrian,’ and subdivides them into the three divisions of Serbian, Croatian, and Carinthian-Slovenish. ”

“ Today the political aspirations of this compact mass of Serbians are centered around the independent kingdom of Serbia, which is regarded as the nucleus around which a greater Serbia comprising all the Serbian-speaking inhabitants of the Balkan peninsula will group. ”

“ The Bulgarian language, the south-eastern Serbian dialects, as well as Roumanian and Albanian, have certain grammatical peculiarities, [14] through being influenced by the language of the Romanized Thraco-Illyrian peoples with whom they merged. Even Montenegro was to some degree influenced by this process, having lost one or two cases, such as the locative. In Serbia one uses seven cases, the Montenegrin generally contents himself with about five, and in some dialects they are all discarded.... ”

“ While Miloš Obrenović in Serbia took up the arms which Kara George had dropped, and used some others of his own, Vuk Karažić was tramping with his wooden leg round Serbia and Montenegro, Macedonia and Bulgaria, Syrmia and the Banat. He longs to find out where his country lies and, having found his people, to use their own language as the spoken and the written language of the nation. For this purpose he had to reform the Cyrillic alphabet, as it contained, like Russian and Bulgarian, letters that are not pronounced; and the Serbian produced by him is a purely phonetic language. ”

“ No Slavic race is more torn up territorially than the Serbo-Croatians. Although really one people by language and origin, they have divided themselves, or rather were subdivided by their political masters, into two national units. Their homelands include a large section of Istria and Dalmatia, together with the adjacent islands in the Adriatic, the whole of Croatia and Slavonia, a piece of southern Hungary, and all of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Besides this, there is, of course, the Serbian Kingdom and Montenegro. ”

“ Marko Kraljevitch, the popular hero-knight, feudal lord and outlaw, according as occasion demanded, embodies Serbian resistance and Serbian revolt against Moslem invaders. The stirring accents in which tales of his deep attachment to Serbia were recounted awakened exultant delight in the heart and brain [322] of listeners and inspired them to the hope of liberation from the hated yoke. Serbia was prepared for the day of national independence by means of this slow and century-long propaganda. ”

“ Natives of the northern sections of the country speak Serbian dialects and favor union with Serbia or Montenegro rather than independence. Malisori tribesmen fought side by side with Montenegrin troops in the fall of 1912 as their ancestors had done in the campaign of 1711 against the Turks. The Albanians of Ipek, however, gave assistance to Turkish regulars. The inhabitants of the valley of the upper Morava sent supplies to Serbian troops against which the chieftains of central Albania led their men. ”

“ From a geographical standpoint the area of Serbian speech presents excessive diversity of features. National unity within its bounds is therefore apt to be sorely hampered. Dalmatia, teeming with islands and fiords, enjoys the advantage of easy access to all its districts by way of the sea. The Dinaric Alps separate it, however, from the land of the ancient kingdom of Serbia which arose on the basins of the Save and Morava. ”

“ The Adriatic Sea alone provides the Serbo-Croatian peoples with a definite boundary. The line of the Drave on the north once formed a frontier for the twin group. In modern times a number of Croatian settlements have pushed forward along the Raab valley toward Slovak territory. Here they stand in danger of becoming lost in the midst of the Hungarian population, as were the Serbian settlements which in the seventeenth century were scattered as far as Budapest. On the southwest, the boundary of the Serbian linguistic area presents many obstacles to accurate delimitation. ”

“ A Serbian politician, who patiently endures my bad French or makes a brave effort to talk in English, a tongue which he is learning to speak and can read quite well, politely excuses the English for being such bad linguists. "For you English who have all the poetry, all the romance, all the science, all the philosophy a man may want in your own language, it is not necessary to learn any other. ”

“ When the Slovenes of Istria, Carniola, Styria, and Carinthia, together with the Serbo-Croats, form a strong, prosperous and free, though small State, their culture will be developed to the full, crowning and unifying Southern Slav life.
This growing civilization of Greater Serbia, which may be called Yougoslavia, will gather up the scattered threads of the history of Serbian art in the past. ”

“ By its own intrinsic excellence the Serbian folk-poetry takes a very high place indeed, but there is another reason in a different order of ideas why the ballads should be read and studied. All the members of the Serbian race, so long politically held apart, are now united in the new Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. The rivalries of the component parts are certainly bitter; the forces of disintegration are powerful and even dangerous but the Serbian race has become the Serbian nation, a gifted and imaginative nation with a future of brilliant promise before it. ”

“ For what could be more appropriate than the rich silver embroidery flowered on the purple-velvet field of her mantle—efflorescent with the poetic yearning of the race for that gorgeous Orient, a yearning as lively as the abhorrence from its yoke—an echo from the Serbian lyre—a protest against your cold foggy West—but subdued withal by a Roman-matronly coiffure wondrously becoming to the tranquil grace of Serbian motherhood? ”

“ Since the Church has ceased to be the discordant and disuniting element in the life of the nations, the Orthodox Serbians and the Roman Catholic Croats are practically one and the same people. But of all Slavonic nations the Serbians can legitimately claim to be the most poetical one. Their language is the richest and the most musical among all the Slavonic languages. ”

“ The aim of this volume is to give to the English-speaking people some glimpses into the past struggles, sufferings and hopes of the Serbian nation. I have tried to describe the Serbian life in light, in its peace, its peaceful work, its songs and prayers; in darkness, in its slavery, its sins, its resistance to evil and battle for freedom.
It is only the peoples which suffer themselves that can understand and sympathise deeply with the Serbian soul. ”

“ A fundamental doctrine of the Great Serb Idea is a refusal to recognize that history existed before the creation of the Serb Empire, or even to admit that Balkan lands had owners before the arrival of the Serbs. Nothing infuriates a "Great Serbian" more than to suggest that if he insists on appealing to history another race has a prior claim to the land, and that in any case the Great Serbia of Stefan Dushan lasted but twenty years. ”

“ The glorious forests of the Balkans, instinct with legend and romance, to which truly no other forests in Europe can compare; the ever-smiling sky of Southern Macedonia; the gigantic Black Rocks of Montenegro and Herzegovina, are well calculated to inspire even a less talented people than the Serbian inhabitants of those romantic regions for the last thirteen centuries.
The untiring Serbian muse pursued her mission alike upon the battlefield or in the forest, in pleasant pastures amid the flocks, or beneath the frowning walls of princely castles and sacred monasteries. ”

“ The Servians, namely, were converted by the missionaries of Byzantium, the Croatians by those of Rome. It is this difference of confession, of which the double name of the language Serbo-Croatian is symbolic, that has always militated against the cultural and political unity of the nation, and formed the corner-stone of the power, first of Turkey and now of Austria, in that part of the Balkans. It is this difference between the teachings and traditions of the eastern and western churches that divides the Slavonic world in general and the Serbo-Croatian nationality in particular. ”

“ It seems to every one of them like a dream: the land which has been for generations and generations the topic of poetry now stood before the Serbian warriors as a reality. The Serbian brothers from Austria-Hungary came to Macedonia, kissed the sacred soil, and each one took a handful of the sacred dust from the tombs of our kings and heroes of old. ”

“ That is one reason why Serbia has no nobles to-day. ‘Kossovo’ means ‘the field of the black bird,’ the kos being a black songbird resembling the starling. But this was to be no ordinary celebration of the holiday, for in the Balkan War of the two preceding years Serbia had consummated her independence and humbled the Turks, and a part of the Serbian racial dream was thereby realized. Mara, Gavrilo, and their parents united in urging me to return for the festival, and before departing I agreed to do so. ”

“ The thunder of Thy wrath never fall.
Bless for the Serb his village,
Field, meadow, city, and house!
When the days of battle come,
Lead his march to victory.
God, save, God, protect
The Serbian lands, the Serbian race!
From the dark deep grave
New Serbian glories shine forth.
A new era has begun;
God, give new happiness!
Protect the Serbian fatherland,
The fruit of five centuries of battle;
God, save, God, protect
The Serbian lands, the Serbian race!
This work is a translation and has a separate copyright status to the applicable copyright protections of the original content. ”

“ We are proud of our army, but we flatter ourselves that our nation may win sympathy and respect by other than military features of its national character. We wish that our British friends should know our nation such as it is. We wish them to be acquainted with our national psychology. And nothing could give a better insight into the very soul of the Serbian nation than this book.
The Serbians belong ethnologically to the great family of the Slavonic nations. They are first cousins to the Russians, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, and Bulgars, and they are brothers to the Croats and Slovenes. ”

“ He, therefore, emphasizes the geography of the home of the South Slavs and follows this admirable survey, based largely on Cvijić or Newbigin, by an account of the medieval Serbian states, borrowing heavily from Jireček, the best authority. Serbia is always the main thread of the story, although Montenegro, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia, and Dalmatia are brought in to secure a better horizon. ”

“ The Serbians are without doubt the most patriotic people that history has ever known, and Serbia is a country almost entirely devoted to agriculture, where the great majority of the inhabitants are owners of the soil, so that, in the mouth of a Serbian peasant the words "my country" refer to something more than an abstraction. ”