Alaina Woodford

Lexico Analysis

5/6/16

After consulting Google Translate for several hours, I can

conclude that Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian are practically identical

languages. If I had to put a number to it, I would say a percent

somewhere in the ninetiesperhaps 95%. The Serbian use of the

Cyrillic alphabet makes for the only large marked difference between

the three, but I dont believe this actually counts as a linguistic

difference, since the three languages are completely mutually

intelligible when spoken and listened to, if not when written or read. I

can tell this because Google Translate offers us the word in our own

Latin alphabet as well, so we can see that the Serbian word is

not actually a different word from ptica, the Bosnian and Croatian

word for bird.

In my official tally, 156 of the 200 words were exactly identical

across all three languages. 34 more words were nearly identical, but off

by a letter or two, like wind, which is vjetar in Bosnian and Croatian

and vetar in Serbian. This particular example actually crops up a lot,

with Serbian dropping the j or ij from the Bosnian/CroatianId

estimate it makes up the majority of the 34 nearly-identical words.

Finally, that leaves us with 10 completely different words between two

or three of the languages. Ill explain below how I dealt with those

abnormalities.

Even when the words differ between languages, like with to

blow, which is duvati in Bosnian, puhati in Croatian, and blov in

Serbian, this seems to be more of a difference in popularity of usage

than anything else, since they all share some synonym, like dahtati

the same in all three languages ( in Serbian). I say this is due

to popularity because I believe Google Translate offers back the

synonym that is most commonly used, according to the input it

receives, perhaps by number of times that word is typed into Google

Translate seeking a translation. Bars demonstrating popularity of usage

are usually offered at the bottom of each translation. If the bars were

identical between some words, I felt comfortable switching one out for

the other, putting down the word as identical in all three languages.

But if the popularity was very different, I offered both translations, such

as hair, which is first kosa and then dlaka in Bosnian, and dlaka

and then kosa in Croatian. Situations like these seem more like

dialectical variations than linguistic ones, like pop used on the East

Coast of the U.S. vs. soda on the West Coast. I make this comparison

because both words are offered in each language, but one is simply

more popular in one region compared with another.

Most of the time, I chose the word that was the same in all three

languages. I did this because of the 200 words, this identical option
was offered to me most often. I assumed that when I found the same

word in all three languages, these should be considered identical, as

opposed to other words, which should be considered synonyms. For

example, louse was most commonly vaka in Bosnian and u in

Croatian, although each word was listed as second most popular in the

other language. I assume this would be linguistically comparable to

whether someone chooses to use the word said or stated in English

two words that practically mean the same thing, but depend on

slightly different context to determine which becomes the primary

choice.

Its likely that this differing context depends in this case on what

input Google Translate receives, assuming its a learning program.

Perhaps Google Translate receives skewed input depending on whether

someone is looking to translate an identical word from Bosnian,

Croatian, or Serbiandepending on their pick, one language might

become more frequently associated with the word, rather than another.

For example, if theres a popular Croatian song with the word suprug

used for husband instead of the synonym mu, suprug may

come to be associated more strongly with Croatian. This leaves

Bosnian using the words equally, but perhaps mu is offered as the

default for some other reasonwhatever reason Google uses to

determine which equally-popular synonym to use first. I take this

example because when translating husband, suprug is indeed the

more popular word in Croatian, whereas mu is the most popular in

Bosnian.

Other times, the words given were close, but off by more than a

few letters. For example, when translating to rain, Google Translate

offered padati kia for Bosnian, kiiti in Croatian, and pada kia

( ) in Serbian. These three words share similar themes, like

ki in all three, pada in Bosnian and Serbian, and -ti in Bosnian

and Croatian. I had a difficult time coming up with an English example

of this phenomenon. I had a few ideas, but actual familiarity with the

language would, Im sure, help to clarify which example is the closest

to the Slavic original. My first thought was the difference between

doughnut and donutbut that seems more spelling-related than

anything else. Then I thought of the difference between cot and

caughttwo words pronounced either differently or exactly the

same, depending on which region of the U.S. youre from. But I figured

adding in the element of pronunciation was pushing the comparison

too far. Finally I thought of how are you doing vs. how you doin.

This is an example from two different dialects of the same English

language, containing many of the same linguistic elements, yet

differing slightly by a few letters. Therefore, I believe this to be the

closest English example to the Slavic phenomenon mentioned above.

Lastly, for the Serbian language, I included both the Latin and

Cyrillic translations of the word, in that order, separated by a forward

slash. Ive enjoyed acquiring the odd skill of translating Cyrillic Serbian

into Latin Bosnian/Croatian, while still lacking the ability to understand

either.