Welcome, Michael, look around and have fun. 

LOL I should have written sth else   Thank u for the warm welcome

Last edited by Henry de Montherlant (January 19, 2014 9:13 pm)

Yea, my wife and I were very surprised to hear Serbian in Sherlock : ) Ive just played the episode again. The language is ok although with an accent which is not usually heard in Belgrade or in Serbia in general. My guess would be that the accent is from eastern parts of Croatia, maybe Bosnia or The Republika Srpska, it is hard to tell because it sounds like the actor has some kind of minor speech defect. As for Mycroft - he is not bad at all

Last edited by Henry de Montherlant (January 20, 2014 9:40 am)

Thank you, Henry!  It's good to know the show did its homework. 

Sorry for necro. I was just rewatching the series, and I'm at the "Empty Hearse" now, and I laughed so hard (again) at the part where they spoke Serbian, so I searched a bit to see if any comments on that, and this is only topic I've found.  Just wanted to give a comment. I am from Republika Srpska for the record, since OP said it might be our accent. Just to point out: Serbo-Croatian (SCBM) = Serbian, Croatian, Montenegrin, Bosniak/Bosnian language, all mutually intelligible almost 99.99% - vocabulary, accent, and pronounciation differences might come from different regions within the same country, not necessarily from other country or their language version.
I am going to talk about the Tomi May's (actor that acts Serbian torturer) Serbian. His Serbian is pretty inconsistent. He uses ekavijan pronunciation. It is almost exclusively used in Serbia. Although he used only one word -/sećaš/ (remember) that could point out the difference. On all other versions of the Serbo-Croatian it would be - /sjećaš/. Contrary to that,  his accent is closest one to Croatian version, reminescent, but not quite the thing. His vocabulary doesn't give us any clues, since he doesn't use any words that are different in any of the language versions. Only suspicious word used by him is /kupatilo/ (lit .bathroom), but not because it's not ours, but not commonly used. Most of people use WC (VC), and concerning he is a thug, I highly doubt he would ever use a word /kupatilo/ which is a bit refined word/euphemism. It would be either VC, or /kenjara/ (shithole - shithole room).
One thing, I noticed he speaks in syllables, which would give him away, no-bo-dy-spe-aks-in-sy-lla-bl-es.
And noticed he pronounces few Z's as S's or between those. And his Š's (sh) are softer than we use them. His R's are also English ones, since our R's are like cat's purrrrrRrrrRRs, frontal. So basically, as actor's heritage says, it's Serbian spoken by English person, many of those who have it as native from one parent or both but they don't use it much. Basically, his language is mostly correct and understandable, but definitely nobody speaks quite like that anywhere here, maybe foreign ambassadors. :D So if he was a spy pretending to be a Serbian, he would be sent to prison and to a torturer he portrayed, whos pronunciation would be very convincing.

Also, not bad Serbian for few hours (Mycroft) and few minutes (Gatiss)..understandable, but his character was a spy actually, and his IQ is that of genius, so I guess he knows if you are a spy who is infiltrating, it's not just knowing the words. I know I'm shitting to much about this, sowwy.

Funny thing, Mycroft says: "Znači, prijatelju, sad smo samo ti and I." Notice "and I" at the end. It was supposed to be: "Znači, prijatelju, sad smo samo ti i ja", I guess, but he couldn't remember so he just translated it to English.

Oh, and even if prisons, or should I say dungeons, like those existed around here, guards definitely wouldn't carry a šubara hat on their heads. It's a very rare sight, and mostly at population that is 70+years old. I guess the logic behind that is: Russians wear those hats. Russians are Slavic orthodox. Serbs are Slavic orthodox. Hence, Serbs wear those funny hats too lol. That's prejudice punching us back in our faces. We got prejudice about Russians wearing those hats, west has prejudice  of all slavic/eastern Europeans being same, us being mini-russians or something, HENCE!

Hence, good night, farewell, or as Brad Pit says it - aribaderchi!

Thank you indeed for that explanation, I love these kind of details. You deduce almost like Sherlock here. ;)

 

random1895 wrote:

Sorry for necro. I was just rewatching the series, and I'm at the "Empty Hearse" now, and I laughed so hard (again) at the part where they spoke Serbian, so I searched a bit to see if any comments on that, and this is only topic I've found.  Just wanted to give a comment. I am from Republika Srpska for the record, since OP said it might be our accent. Just to point out: Serbo-Croatian (SCBM) = Serbian, Croatian, Montenegrin, Bosniak/Bosnian language, all mutually intelligible almost 99.99% - vocabulary, accent, and pronounciation differences might come from different regions within the same country, not necessarily from other country or their language version.
I am going to talk about the Tomi May's (actor that acts Serbian torturer) Serbian. His Serbian is pretty inconsistent. He uses ekavijan pronunciation. It is almost exclusively used in Serbia. Although he used only one word -/sećaš/ (remember) that could point out the difference. On all other versions of the Serbo-Croatian it would be - /sjećaš/. Contrary to that,  his accent is closest one to Croatian version, reminescent, but not quite the thing. His vocabulary doesn't give us any clues, since he doesn't use any words that are different in any of the language versions. Only suspicious word used by him is /kupatilo/ (lit .bathroom), but not because it's not ours, but not commonly used. Most of people use WC (VC), and concerning he is a thug, I highly doubt he would ever use a word /kupatilo/ which is a bit refined word/euphemism. It would be either VC, or /kenjara/ (shithole - shithole room).
One thing, I noticed he speaks in syllables, which would give him away, no-bo-dy-spe-aks-in-sy-lla-bl-es.
And noticed he pronounces few Z's as S's or between those. And his Š's (sh) are softer than we use them. His R's are also English ones, since our R's are like cat's purrrrrRrrrRRs, frontal. So basically, as actor's heritage says, it's Serbian spoken by English person, many of those who have it as native from one parent or both but they don't use it much. Basically, his language is mostly correct and understandable, but definitely nobody speaks quite like that anywhere here, maybe foreign ambassadors. :D So if he was a spy pretending to be a Serbian, he would be sent to prison and to a torturer he portrayed, whos pronunciation would be very convincing.

Also, not bad Serbian for few hours (Mycroft) and few minutes (Gatiss)..understandable, but his character was a spy actually, and his IQ is that of genius, so I guess he knows if you are a spy who is infiltrating, it's not just knowing the words. I know I'm shitting to much about this, sowwy.

Funny thing, Mycroft says: "Znači, prijatelju, sad smo samo ti and I." Notice "and I" at the end. It was supposed to be: "Znači, prijatelju, sad smo samo ti i ja", I guess, but he couldn't remember so he just translated it to English.

Oh, and even if prisons, or should I say dungeons, like those existed around here, guards definitely wouldn't carry a šubara hat on their heads. It's a very rare sight, and mostly at population that is 70+years old. I guess the logic behind that is: Russians wear those hats. Russians are Slavic orthodox. Serbs are Slavic orthodox. Hence, Serbs wear those funny hats too lol. That's prejudice punching us back in our faces. We got prejudice about Russians wearing those hats, west has prejudice  of all slavic/eastern Europeans being same, us being mini-russians or something, HENCE!

Hence, good night, farewell, or as Brad Pit says it - aribaderchi!

I'm from Serbia and I think they just sound like English people talking serbian, but from all I heard as an attempt this is actually okay and not so bad (when John Travolta did it I only knew what he sad beacuse of english titles). The accent reminds me a little of the accent that mother of my friend has, beacuse she has been raised in Kosovo, but not something that central Serbia and Belgrade will use. My first guess would be bosnian, but I'm not so sure after your comment, we probably don't see a lot of differences cuz diferent just sounds - diferent.
Also word kupatilo (bathroom) is frequently used, I used it as much as WC if not more, and kenjara is a word you wouldn't like to use, it sounds very rude, but I guess maybe it's common where you are from.
Anyway, could be better but still enough worked done. And I need to say when Mycroft said "Listen: do you have any idea what it was like, Sherlock, going ‘under cover’, smuggling my way into their ranks like that? The noise; the people?" it kinda broke my serbian heart, we're not so bad.
and if you want something translated, ask (couple of years late, but still came)
 

Last edited by angelane (December 2, 2015 5:10 pm)

As for the šubara hat: I have seen Mark wearing one on set, so maybe he just contributed his favorite head warmer to the show. 

About the languages (German from TBB and MHR) I wrote somewhere already, don't remember where though... It is an old problem and I always get annoyed by it. I understand that it might be hard for the leading actor to learn to speak like a native speaker, but I don't understand why it seems to be so hard to find native speakers for small parts, or even make a dubbing with them.