Thank you very much, Katie, for your beautiful reply. You certainly make me keen to visit Macedonia. Good on you for keeping your language and I hope that you do find the time to learn Serbian, like your parents. My wife and stepson speak the ekavian variant of Serbian, which is standard and the most commonly spoken, and closer to Macedonian. That is what I am trying to learn now too. However, many Serbs also speak the ijekavian variant, which is standard for Croatian and Bosniak. If you learn Serbian, some knowledge of this variant is useful and virtually unavoidable. Ivo Andrić, the only Yugoslav writer to win the Nobel prize for literature, was a Bosnian Croat. After starting his career in Croatian he switched to writing in Serbian, but while his novels are written in ekavian, he was also a realistic novelist, so his dialogues are often in ijekavian. The Serbs also operate using both the Cyrillic and the Latin alphabets, but that’s really not a problem, as there is a one-to-one correspondence between the letters in the two alphabets. The Serbian Orthodox Church, at least in my experience, only operates in Cyrillic.
Mila Mulroney was born in Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital, but her father was from Novi Bečej, Vojvodina, Serbia. She was born Milica Pivnički. I met my wife through her cousin, who came to Canada as a refugee after his family lost their home in Mostar. He and his wife named their first child Mila, in Mila Mulroney’s honour. I agree with you that South Slavic people are warm and friendly. I found it unnerving when I first went there how close people would get to me, which in Canada often signifies that someone means to threaten you. I discovered that no threat was intended. People were just being sociable.
God bless you, Katie, and I hope you have a happy Orthodox Easter. Andrew (andrewbaldwin51@yahoo.com)
Thank you very much, Katie, for your beautiful reply. You certainly make me keen to visit Macedonia. Good on you for keeping your language and I hope that you do find the time to learn Serbian, like your parents. My wife and stepson speak the ekavian variant of Serbian, which is standard and the most commonly spoken, and closer to Macedonian. That is what I am trying to learn now too. However, many Serbs also speak the ijekavian variant, which is standard for Croatian and Bosniak. If you learn Serbian, some knowledge of this variant is useful and virtually unavoidable. Ivo Andrić, the only Yugoslav writer to win the Nobel prize for literature, was a Bosnian Croat. After starting his career in Croatian he switched to writing in Serbian, but while his novels are written in ekavian, he was also a realistic novelist, so his dialogues are often in ijekavian. The Serbs also operate using both the Cyrillic and the Latin alphabets, but that’s really not a problem, as there is a one-to-one correspondence between the letters in the two alphabets. The Serbian Orthodox Church, at least in my experience, only operates in Cyrillic.
Mila Mulroney was born in Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital, but her father was from Novi Bečej, Vojvodina, Serbia. She was born Milica Pivnički. I met my wife through her cousin, who came to Canada as a refugee after his family lost their home in Mostar. He and his wife named their first child Mila, in Mila Mulroney’s honour. I agree with you that South Slavic people are warm and friendly. I found it unnerving when I first went there how close people would get to me, which in Canada often signifies that someone means to threaten you. I discovered that no threat was intended. People were just being sociable.
God bless you, Katie, and I hope you have a happy Orthodox Easter. Andrew (andrewbaldwin51@yahoo.com)