# BCS(?): words sounding like "skurooba"; "oodreegablaza"



## skroobaz

Hello! I am a native English speaker who knows nothing about Yugoslavian. So please help me solve this puzzle that goes back about 40 years. 

In the early 80's I was watching football [soccer lol] in Australia. I had some football friends who also watched next to me. One was a Yugoslavian man. He had a thick European/Yugoslav accent. He would shout out words in, I presume, Yugoslav. He was a nice guy. I was about 6. I would kick a ball with him and he would shake my hand and say "shake harder, not like that, like DIS". It was me as a very young kid, my Dad [both Australian/British] , another Australian/British friend, and the Yugoslav man, and the four of us would watch a lot of local football in Melbourne. 

By the time of the early 90's the Yugoslav man was in his early seventies. Suddenly he vanished. That was just before the whole Serbian/Bosnian war of the 90's broke out. We concluded, having known him, that he had gone back to Yugoslavia to see out his days or as we put it "to go back home to die". We never knew what happened to him. If he had been caught up in the Bosnian conflict it could have become very, very bad for him. 

Now I come to my questions. What did the words that he shouted at the football mean? As a native English speaker I can only give what they sounded like to me. This in no way is a spelling. 

Word 1: Skurooba. [said with the 'U' as in hut] We called him that. Because we didn't know his real name and he never told us. We called him Mr Skurooba. He was happy with that. 
Word 2: oodreegablaza. [he shouted this a lot when a player missed a goal or did something wrong] Often followed by "Book him! Pineapple" in English. 

Can anyone help? [Google translate is useless because Yugoslav is not an option] I'll put Serbian as a tag because Yugoslav doesn't seem to be available. 
Thank you.


----------



## Panceltic

Hello!

First thing first, there is no Yugoslav language. Yugoslavia had three languages: Slovenian, Macedonian, and Serbo-Croatian. The latter was used by the biggest number of inhabitants of Yugoslavia (in Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia&Herzegovina). Nowadays it is called BCS or BCSM in linguistic contexts (Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, (Montenegrin)). Linguistically speaking it is one single language with multiple standards (a pluricentric language, a bit like English with its British, American etc. variants), because Croats, Serbs, Bosniaks (and Montenegrins to a certain degree) insist that each of them speaks a language in their own right.

I presume this man was a speaker of Serbo-Croatian. The clue is in the Word 2. The "oodreega" part is "udri ga" (hit him!)

I am not a native speaker though, so let's hope others can help to clear up the rest of the mystery!


----------



## skroobaz

Thanks! That is helpful! Amazing how complex it all gets. Thanks again!


----------



## Zec

I've no Idea what the first word might mean. The second one probably means "Hit it more gently", when judging from the context. Is the first "a" i "-blaza" pronounced as in "cake" or as in "car" ? If it's the one in "car", the word is probably "blaže", which means "more gently".


----------



## skroobaz

It was said like car. So it should mean "more gently". 
Thanks!


----------



## thegreathoo

Maybe he meant that you almost scored, meaning you missed or whiffed when you kicked the ball: Skoro Ubo, almost nailed it.


----------



## skroobaz

That would mean that we had been calling him Mr Almost Nailed it. 
That is pretty funny.


----------



## thegreathoo

That is funny!  That's why he probably laughed it at.  Back at'ya Mr. Skoroubo, you too almost nailed it!


----------



## cHr0mChIk

Hmm.. based on the way they spelled it, it doesn't seem like skoro ubo to me.. hmm.. "Skurooba" - if the "u" is as in the word "hut" - then I guess it'd be spelled "skaruba".. But I cannot think of any word remotely close to it, so I suppose "skoro ubo" is indeed the most similar thing to it.

As for the 2nd word, I'd definitely say it's "udri ga!"... You said that afterwards he'd yell "book him!" and "pineapple!" - I doubt these were English words xD I'd say they were probably some Serbo-Croatian words which sounded like the given English words. As for "book him!" when said quickly, to me it kinda sounds like "pukni!" - which also means like "hit!" or "hit it!", so it'd kinda fit in the context...

As for "pineapple!" - it kinda sounds as if it's starting with "pa ne..."

Do you think you could perhaps do an impression of him saying these words and record it? If you still remember how it was, since it was more than 40 years ago '


----------



## ajitam

The second one sounds like "Udri ga Blaž". Blaž is just a regular masculine first name, not referring to any specific person in this case, serving more for emphasis or as an intensifier in this expression.


----------

