Names, Language, and Leaving

Things here are still very hot, making it hard to go out and tour and do what I need to (to prepare to leave). But I'm slogging on. Yesterday I mailed a box (mostly books) back to the States. It was about 25 pounds. I lugged it to the bus stop nearest my house, took the bus into town to the stop nearest the only post office you can send heavy packages from (over two kilos). Then I carried it from the bus stop there to the post office, leaving me sore and sweating, and this was before 9 am. It cost $100 to send this package via the "slow" route. And they made me repack everything in a box I bought from them and that I'm doubtful will make it intact. I hope I see those books again!

From there I went to pay the electric bill, always a challenge here. You write down your own number from the meter in your house, go to the electric company, stand in a long line, give your information to one woman who puts it into a computer and prints out a bill for you. Then you go to another line to pay another woman. From there (on the other side of town), I walked to the center to pay the last phone bill (also a long wait). When I finished and walked into work it was after 11 am and I was completely sweaty, drained, dehydrated, and dirty.

This is just to give you an idea of life here this last week in the country. There are lots of people I’d like to see and things I’d like to do. But each outing takes a lot out of me because of the heat. I think I’m actually allergic to the sun, as I broke out in hives almost two weeks ago. After benadryl, cortisone cream, and dosing up on calcium (recommended by the pharmacist here), I am feeling better. I also take more care to always use sunblock. But what a drag to be allergic to sun in this sunny weather. No more trips to beaches.

One of the things I’ve been meaning to write about for a while are names here. I’m not claiming any expertise in the language, but I have enjoyed learning what little I have and hearing it spoken. Croatian is a Slavic language, which makes it similar to Russian and other Eastern European languages (the way Spanish and Italian and French are similar). It strikes me as a fairly melodic, appealing language, with lots of sh, ch, zh, z, nj, lj, and short vowel sounds. The letter “r” is rolled and the only sort of guttural sound is very lightly made for the letter “h” (as in thank you, “hvala”). Some of the phrases you hear most often are “Dobar dan!” (good day) “Bog!” (for hello & goodbye – based on the word for god), “mozhe”( maybe not spelled that way but my computer doesn’t have Croatian letters – a z with a mark over it to make the z a “zh” sound – means something like “you can,” or “it’ll work”), “molim” (please, also used for hello on the phone), “da” (yes), and “ne” (no). Overall Croatian has a soft and rolling sound. A linguist I work with just told me that this is probably because it contains a lot of palatal sounds, which are indicated with marks when written in Croatian. I'm not including marks here because I don't think they'd show up well.

People here are very polite in their speech too, from what I can tell. So you rarely hear people shouting. And people always greet each other coming and going (“Dobar dan” . . . “Doviđenja” – the phonetic spelling would be dovidjenya -- for goodbye). People greet each other politely even if they are relative strangers. For instance, when I’ve been eating lunch in a room with strangers, say three of us sitting at different tables, when one finishes and leaves, she’ll say a quiet “dovijenya” to the other two of us, and we say it back. Also, people are often assuring each other that things are okay – “Mozhe! Mozhe!” And if you say “pardon” or “oprostite” (sorry) if you bump someone, they are likely to respond, “Ne, nishta!” (No, it’s nothing). Also my favorite phrase is "Nema problema," which means as you might expect, "No problem."

Anyway, names are also quite different from English and interesting and appealing. In general it seems many female names end in “a,” so you have Marija (the version of my name, Mary, as “y” is never used in Croatian – instead it’s “j” – so this is pronounced Maria). There’s also Irena, Dasha, Masha, Natasha, Sasha (though none of those are spelled that way – the “sh” is replaced by an “s” with a line over it), Branka, Slavenka, Maja, Monica, Dora, Ivana, Danica (pronounced Danizza, with an ending like pizza), Sintija (like Cynthia), Jelena, Olga, Mojca, Susana, Anita, Laura, Melanija, and probably a hundred more women’s names that end in “a.” There are also some women’s names ending in other ways, like Neli.

Men’s names in contrast seem to often end in “o.” So I’ve met people named Darko, Dubravko, Vinko, Matko, Zlatko, and so on. But there are also names ending in consonants, like Goran, Kristian, Boris, Marin, Josip, Tomislav, Davor, Antun, Zvonimir, Petar, Vid, and Silvestar. And I’ve also met a few men whose names end in “a,” like Sinisha, Borna, Drashka, and Nikola.

These have all been first names. Last names are more of a challenge, since Croatian letters are unfamiliar (to me), and often seem to make names harder to pronounce. So there are many “c,” “s” and “z” letters with accents on them, making them different from how they look at first glance to an American. Croatian names that are written in English tend to be written differently (anglicized), so Jankovic is written Yankovich in English. Or we pronounce Croatian names wrong. So Monica Seles’ last name actually should be pronounced “Selesh.”