Learning Serbian
So, while my parents speak it at home intermixed with English and while I can understand it to some degree - I really don't speak it anywhere near a fluent level or even an intermediate level. Since I've been meaning to do this for some time I decided in order to help me prepare for learning Serbian, I'd have a go at Esperanto. It is often claimed that one can get fluent within 150hrs of study, and it has been shown to increase understanding of subsequent languages you learn.
I studied it for a couple weeks, and within that time I was able to hold a basic conversation. I can read something on the Esperanto Wikipedia and be able to give you a fair idea of what has been said. This is mostly due to how regular Esperanto is. Anyways, I think once I've gotten Serbian down, I'd love to go back to Esperanto and get fluent with it especially since it requires so little effort.
Anyways, I've been looking at this book I'm using to teach myself Serbian and it's really doing my head in. Serbian as a language is far more complex than any language I've looked into (including Esperanto, Japanese and German). It has 7 cases, and other grammatical rules that really give you an uphill battle in terms of being able to say anything correctly. For example, let's say you want to order a coffee:
ja bih jednu kafu
now, let's say the waiter brings you your order, he'll say
jedna kafa, izvolete
ok, you think that's not too hard to remember, right? well, it changes again depending on how many drinks you get:
dve kafe, izvolete
I'm sure I'll get the hang of it eventually, but DAYUM man.
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