# Croatian tones (BCS)



## Bosta

Does anyone know of any recordings on the net which give examples of tonal stress. I can find loads of written material with accent marks but it's not much help to a non-native to be honest. Thanks.


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## slavic_one

Don't know what exactly you mean.. try to find on YouTube any video on Croatian so you'll get the idea of the language. In Croatian stress is flexible.


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## Bosta

Thanks for the reply. I don't mean the stress. What I mean is the tones. I have Colloquial Croatian and Teach Yourself Croatian with the CDs and all. It's just that with the examples they give in the introduction of short rising, short falling, long rising, long falling tones they give written examples (gospodin, gospoda, vino and grad) but don't demonstrate them. I've got a bit obsessed by them now! I've listened to the recordings again and again. I can see that when people say 'gosp*o*dine' their voices seem to go up on the 'po'. It sounds the same on 'put*o*vnica'. Is 'Z*a*greb' long falling? And does it actually really matter that much? What about 'hvala'?


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## vput

You may want to try FSI Serbo-Croatian. If you run a search on google, you may find an online version of the course. It's an old course but it does mark the tones and stress patterns so at least you can match the audio with what you're reading. 

The thing is that native speakers in Croatia and Serbia don't really care as much now about the tones/pitch accent. Officially you learn about the four tones but what you hear in Zagreb or Beograd is different from the textbook as their use in those areas is fading. It's only among Bosnians where you may still hear the four tones / pitch-accents most frequently as described in the books.


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## slavic_one

Bosta said:


> Thanks for the reply. I don't mean the stress. What I mean is the tones. I have Colloquial Croatian and Teach Yourself Croatian with the CDs and all. It's just that with the examples they give in the introduction of short rising, short falling, long rising, long falling tones they give written examples (gospodin, gospoda, vino and grad) but don't demonstrate them. I've got a bit obsessed by them now! I've listened to the recordings again and again. I can see that when people say 'gosp*o*dine' their voices seem to go up on the 'po'. It sounds the same on 'put*o*vnica'. Is 'Z*a*greb' long falling? And does it actually really matter that much? What about 'hvala'?



That what you marked is stress  I still don't know what with tone. It's not neccessery to go up on "po" in "gospodine" (putovnica, Zagreb and so on), depanding on how you want to emphasise the whole word.
It's hv*a*la.


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## Bosta

Thanks vput, I'll give that a try. I'm very reassured by your comments by the way.
Sorry about the confusion slavic one. I meant the tone/pitch of the stressed syllable. Every time I read about it, it seems to have a different name. Tonal stress, tones, stress accent, pitch accent etc. I also feel happier after your comments. I'll stop worrying.


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## Duya

Well, I'll try to make an annotation for you:

There's a sound sample at http://www.let.rug.nl/%7Ehoutzage/humanrightsserveng.html

which is accentuated as:

*Õp*šta dekla*rá*cija o‿*prá*vima čo*vè*ka

*Svã* *lj**ù**d*ska *bí*ća *rá*đajū‿se *slõ*bodna i‿*jẽd*nāka u‿dosto*ján*stvu i‿*prá*vima. *Ò*na‿su *òb*dārena *rã*zūmom i‿*svê*šću i‿*trẽ*bā *jè*dna prema‿*drũ*gīma da‿ po*stú*pajū u‿*dù*hu *bràt*stva.

I used the following notation:
*õ - *short falling
*ù - *short rising
*â - *long falling
*á - *long rising
ū - unstressed length (however, it's not audible at all with the speaker, who is apparently from Serbia)
‿ - binding of unstressed enclitics to neighboring word 

I'm not positive if I got everything right in the first pass (I often mix short ones), so I reserve the right to correct my post later.


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## Bosta

Duya, thank you so much. That is exactly what I've been looking for. Thanks for doing all that notation. I'm really grateful. The recording is really clear too.


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## Athaulf

Duya said:


> Well, I'll try to make an annotation for you:
> 
> There's a sound sample at http://www.let.rug.nl/%7Ehoutzage/humanrightsserveng.html
> 
> which is accentuated as:



Oh, one of my favorite topics!   Here's a few comments on your transcription:



> *Õp*šta dekla*rá*cija o‿*prá*vima čo*vè*ka
> 
> *Svã* *lj**ù**d*ska *bí*ća *rá*đajū‿se *slõ*bodna i‿*jẽd*nāka u‿dosto*ján*stvu i‿*prá*vima. *Ò*na‿su *òb*dārena *rã*zūmom i‿*svê*šću i‿*trẽ*bā *jè*dna prema‿*drũ*gīma da‿ po*stú*pajū u‿*dù*hu *bràt*stva.


As you already noted, this speaker doesn't produce the post-accent lengths almost at all, so I'm not sure how you chose to place them. If you placed them according to the standard (if increasingly dead-letter) BCS pronunciation, then I think they should exist in _*õpštā *_and _*lj**ù*__*dsk*__*ā*_, but  not in _*ràzumom*_ (_*rázumom*_ also sounds OK to me, but that might be a relic of my Bosnian upbringing).  

As for the accents, I'd say you got most of them right. However, although I agree that _*õpštā*_ should have a falling accent, the speaker in the sample actually pronounces it with a rising one (**òpšta*). It also sounds to me like she's pronouncing **ljũdska*, **jèdnaka*, and **dũhu* instead of the correct (?) forms you write.


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## Duya

Athaulf said:


> As you already noted, this speaker doesn't produce the post-accent lengths almost at all, so I'm not sure how you chose to place them. If you placed them according to the standard (if increasingly dead-letter) BCS pronunciation, then I think they should exist in _*õpštā *_and _*lj**ù*__*dsk*__*ā*_, but  not in _*ràzumom*_ (_*rázumom*_ also sounds OK to me, but that might be a relic of my Bosnian upbringing).



Correct. I started adding lengths halfway through, and missed those two. As for razum, I pronounce it with falling accent, like the speaker, plus length (*rã*zūm, *rã*zūmom). But I also perceive _*rázumom *_as correct, esp. in Bosnian speech.



Athaulf said:


> As for the accents, I'd say you got most of them right. However, although I agree that _*õpštā*_ should have a falling accent, the speaker in the sample actually pronounces it with a rising one (**òpšta*). It also sounds to me like she's pronouncing **ljũdska*, **jèdnaka*, and **dũhu* instead of the correct (?) forms you write.



Correct on all counts. As I wrote it, I probably repeated words in my head as I pronounce them, not faithfully following the recording. Glad we agreed on all words but one.

If there's point to all of this, it is that the topic is so subtle and complex that one couldn't find two people--even from the same area--to agree on every issue. Worse still, for many words there's a "spectrum" of what can be perceived as a correct and/or acceptable pronunciation, and outside of it just sound horrible -- but there are no rules or well-defined borders between the two. A foreigner should probably just put a small effort to distinguish short/long and put stress on the correct syllable, listening to the natives, rather than trying to follow the book accent -- too much effort for too little gain. 

For example, even if I (think I) mastered pronunciation of all ~200  English sounds, I certainly do mix ones from different variants, and my sentence intonation is hopelessly un-english. Frankly, I can't be bothered to work on it .


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## Athaulf

Duya said:


> If there's point to all of this, it is that the topic is so subtle and complex that one couldn't find two people--even from the same area--to agree on every issue. Worse still, for many words there's a "spectrum" of what can be perceived as a correct and/or acceptable pronunciation, and outside of it just sound horrible -- but there are no rules or well-defined borders between the two. A foreigner should probably just put a small effort to distinguish short/long and put stress on the correct syllable, listening to the natives, rather than trying to follow the book accent -- too much effort for too little gain.



Yes, I definitely agree. Still, if someone is really interested in studying the accents, I found another interesting sound sample, in which the accents are pronounced more clearly than in the one above. It can be found on this page if you click on the speaker named "Agnes H." Here's my attempt at marking her accents:D*ù*brōvnīk, gr*â*d, l*ú*ka i_tur*ì*stičkō sr*ë*dīšte j*û*žnōga h*r*vatskog pr*í*mōrja, l*è*žī na_p*ó*dnōžju vapn*é*načkōg S*r*đa, u_dol*ì*ni k*ò*jū prema_jugoz*â*padu z*à*tvarā uzvis*ì*na L*â*pada i_m*ä*njī gr*è*bēn s_n*â*jstarijīm dij*é*lom D*ù*brōvnīka.
​I used the same accent marks as in Duya's above post, except that I used the umlaut for the short falling accent and the underscore for connecting clitics, because it was much easier for me to type. I can't type diacritics on *r* -- the one in _S*r*đa_ should have a long falling accent, and the one in _h*r*vatskog_ a short falling one.

Note that i tried marking the text exactly the way it's pronounced by the speaker in this sample, not according to my best knowledge of the standard pronunciation. Still, I think her accent is quite good, and even the post-accent lengths are very clear. I disagree only with the way she pronounces _hrvatskog_, _uzvisina_, and _greben_. 

Corrections are of course welcome. Duya?


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## Duya

Agree on all counts, except:

She seems to pronounce gr*é*ben (rather than gr*è*bēn, which rhymes with "grebem"); there definitely isn't post-accent length, but her first syllable is sort of semi-long. It's kind of odd to my ears; I'd pronounce gr*ë*bēn (to rhyme with "jedem") -- I guess you too?


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## Athaulf

Duya said:


> Agree on all counts, except:
> 
> She seems to pronounce gr*é*ben (rather than gr*è*bēn, which rhymes with "grebem"); there definitely isn't post-accent length, but her first syllable is sort of semi-long.



Hm... strange. I just listened to the sample again, and I'm confused about this word. I hear it as either  gr*è*bēn or gr*é*ben, depending on what I'm expecting to hear. Both syllables sound somehow semi-long to me. 



> It's kind of odd to my ears; I'd pronounce gr*ë*bēn (to rhyme with "jedem") -- I guess you too?



Yes, that's right.


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## hrvoje

Bosta said:


> Is 'Z*a*greb' long falling? And does it actually really matter that much? What about 'hvala'?



Zágreb is actually long rising, hvála as well. The tone doesn't really matter that much, different speakers have different tones or even don't have them at all depending on where they're from. 




vput said:


> The thing is that native speakers in Croatia and Serbia don't really care as much now about the tones/pitch accent. Officially you learn about the four tones but what you hear in Zagreb or Beograd is different from the textbook as their use in those areas is fading. It's only among Bosnians where you may still hear the four tones / pitch-accents most frequently as described in the books.



not really true... tone accent is preserved in large parts of Croatia and Serbia as well... but there is no tone accent for instance in the native dialect of Zagreb which has English-type dinamic accent... but for instance Osijek and Split have the usual 4 accent system the difference from the standard being that posttonic length have been shortened in some positions... in Belgrade for instance, there is no posttonic lengths at all...

PS. the woman pronounces gre``ben, quite clearly actually. There is no length because in Dubrovnik some of the nouns of that type do not have the length (the short syllable is not due to shortening but is expected historically in some cases and analogical in others). There's an article on the present-day accentuation of Dubrovnik in English oin the web but I can't post links, it seems, so google Orsat Ligorio, go to his page to the Download section and find the article. Should be simple...


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## Athaulf

hrvoje said:


> PS. the woman pronounces gre``ben, quite clearly actually.



Hm... I don't know. I normally hear the accents and lengths clearly, but it seems to me like she has mangled this word a bit so I can't tie it to the same accent every time I hear it. It definitely doesn't sound like short falling to me, though. 



> There's an article on the present-day accentuation of Dubrovnik in English oin the web but I can't post links, it seems, so google Orsat Ligorio, go to his page to the Download section and find the article.



Thanks for the pointer. Here is a link to the page, which has some other interesting stuff too:

http://www.oligorio.com/wiki/index.php?title=Download


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