# All Slavic languages: servus (Ukrainian сервус, Croatian serbus, etc.)



## Encolpius

Hello, I'd like to ask you if that greeting is still common just like in Austria, Slovakia or Hungary or it is rare, strange, old-fashioned just like in Czech or Polish? Thanks a lot.


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## Awwal12

Being a Russian, I never even heard before this word  - and I am almost sure that for Ukrainians it is all the same. But let's wait for native speakers.


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## Natalisha

I go to (the) Ukraine every year, but I've never heard this word. I'm sure there isn't such a word in the Ukrainian language.


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## sokol

As this by origin is an Austro-Hungarian greeting it is not unlikely that it only ever was known in Ukrainian west (Bukovina, Carpatho-Ukraine and Galicia) - if it ever was commonly used by Ukrainians, of which I cannot be sure.

So the fact that this probably is completely unknown in Kiev and east of it may not necessarily mean that it never was known at all.


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## cyanista

sokol said:


> So the fact that this probably is completely unknown in Kiev and east of it may not necessarily mean that it never was known at all.



Exactly, sokol.  Here and here it says this greeting at least used to be widespread in Lviv (which is, of course, as Western Ukrainian as it gets).


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## slavic_one

"Serbus dragi Zagreb moj" is the title of one Croatian song. Serbus is used as a greeting in Zagreb.


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## Natabka

sokol said:


> As this by origin is an Austro-Hungarian greeting it is not unlikely that it only ever was known in the Ukrainian west (Bukovina, Carpatho-Ukraine and Galicia)...



I completely agree with Sokol here. I've never heard it used in speech. Probably, if you use it today, people would understand you in the West but never in the Centre or other parts of the country, far from the former Austro-Hungarian border. In fact, I only know what it means because of this song: "Сервус, пане Воргол!" ("Servus, mister Warhol"), which uses "servus" as greeting from times of Andrew Warhol's childhood (his family originates from Slovakia, the part Austro-Hungarian empire at the beginning of the 20th c).

p.s. Compare with the example of Slavic_one, "Serbus dragi Zagreb moj"!  I guess, it was (is) only used in songs.


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## marco_2

In Poland *serwus *is a bit old-fashionable but still comprehensable. It is used jokingly (e.g. *Serwus, jestem nerwus! = *_Hello, I'm a jumpy person!_) or quite neutrally by elderly people. In the 1960s there was a popular song with a chorus *Serwus, panie chief...*


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## sokol

Mod note:
In accordance with thread opener topic broadened to All Slavic languages.


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## doorman

slavic_one said:


> "Serbus dragi Zagreb moj" is the title of one Croatian song. Serbus is used as a greeting in Zagreb.


I've never heard people use it in Zagreb. Indeed, it was used as a greeting during the Austro-Hungarian era, but died pretty quickly afterwards.

To my best knowledge, nowadays it's used only in a "humoristic" context (for example Zločesta deca)


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## Encolpius

marco_2 said:


> In Poland *serwus *is a bit old-fashionable but still comprehensable. It is used jokingly (e.g. *Serwus, jestem nerwus! = *_Hello, I'm a jumpy person!_) or quite neutrally by elderly people. In the 1960s there was a popular song with a chorus *Serwus, panie chief...*



Thanks a lot Marco2 for the excellent funny example I think my Polish colleague will be surprised when I'll use it. 

It would be great to know if there is any similar *funny greeting in Austrian German* too.


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## Encolpius

doorman said:


> ...in a "humoristic" context (for example Zločesta deca)



What do you mean, Doorman? What is zločesta deca?


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## TriglavNationalPark

I was about to say that "servus" doesn't exist in Slovenian, but look at what I found in _Slovar slovenskega knjižnega jezika_:

*



sêrvus medm. (ȇ) v meščanskem okolju, nekdaj, zlasti med prijatelji, znanci izraža pozdrav: med seboj so se pozdravljali: servus ♪
		
Click to expand...

* 
According to the dictionary, *servus* was once used as a casual greeting in bourgeois circles. However, it's now extinct and would sound very foreign to most Slovenian speakers.

By the way, how did *servus* change to *serbus* in Croatian?


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## sokol

And I actually was about to say that I'm sure "servus" must have existed in Slovenia but that it might be extinct now (I never heard it said by Slovenians - except of course Carinthian Slovenians who, like all Austrians, use the greeting frequently).

So obviously "servus" was preserved for some time by city people but over time became extinct. (It really should have been quite common under Habsburg rule - at least in towns.)


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## Duya

TriglavNationalPark said:


> By the way, how did *servus* change to *serbus* in Croatian?



I'm fairly sure (but not positive) that Doorman made a mistake, and that the song reads "servus" indeed.

Anyway, who says Croats are serbophobic?


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## sokol

Duya said:


> I'm fairly sure (but not positive) that Doorman made a mistake, and that the song reads "servus" indeed.



Now is it "serbus", or "servus"?

That's a serious question  - it happened in some cases that German "v" was loaned to Slavic as "b".


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## TriglavNationalPark

I see. By the way, was this greeting also used in Serbia -- in the parts that were under Austro-Hungarian rule for a long time (Vojvodina)?


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## doorman

Encolpius said:


> What is zločesta deca?


_Zločesta deca_ was a very popular group of comedians who performed mainly on a local radio station in Zagreb during late eighties and early nineties. Although very humoristic, they criticised the system at the time.



Duya said:


> I'm fairly sure (but not positive) that Doorman made a mistake, and that the song reads "servus" indeed.


Nope, I double-checked it. It's definitely with a _b_.



Duya said:


> Anyway, who says Croats are serbophobic?


In fact, the first time I heard it, I thought it's the name of a Serbian bus company  (bear in mind I was just a child )



sokol said:


> Now is it "serbus", or "servus"?
> 
> That's a serious question


All I know is that, for me, _ser*v*us_ and _ser*b*us_ are two different words:
_ser*v*us_ - the way Austrians greet (each other and others)
_ser*b*us_ - the way people used to greet during the Austrian-Habsburg rule (I'm not 100% sure it's true, though, but to me _serbus_ means _hello_)


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## Duya

TriglavNationalPark said:


> I see. By the way, was this greeting also used in Serbia -- in the parts that were under Austro-Hungarian rule for a long time (Vojvodina)?



It is still used by Vojvodinian Hungarians, and thus at least recognized among local Serbs. However, I've never heard it uttered between Serbs, even in a historic context (i.e. pre-WWII literature from Vojvodina). So no, I suppose.


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## sokol

doorman said:


> All I know is that, for me, _ser*v*us_ and _ser*b*us_ are two different words:
> _ser*v*us_ - the way Austrians greet (each other and others)
> _ser*b*us_ - the way people used to greet during the Austrian-Habsburg rule (I'm not 100% sure it's true, though, but to me _serbus_ means _hello_)


Well, then obviously "servus" is one of the words which was loaned as "serbus" to at least one Slavic language (Croat). As I said above, this was the case with some words.

(In Slovene however, as quoted above by Triglav, it was definitely "servus". And to answer the question of Triglav: the change /v > b/ is due to a misinterpretation of phonemes; German /b/ is voiceless and heard by Slavs as /p/, and /v/ thus has shifted to /b/ in regions where German and Slavic languages have been in contact. Some German linguistic islands in Slovenia - and Friuli for that matter - regularly have shifted /v/ to voiced /b/ and voiceless "German /b/" stayed the same, that is "Slavic /p/". Words loaned through such regions of contact show /b/ instead of /v/ while words loaned on other routes not involving this shift - show /v/.)


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## Natabka

sokol said:


> So obviously "servus" was preserved for some time by city people but over time became extinct. (It really should have been quite common under Habsburg rule - at least in towns.)



Again, a very interesting piece of information, Sokol! Now that you've mentioned it I recall that the contexts I've seen it used were urban, i.e. the slang of _batyary_ (батяри) gangs of Lviv (city in Western Ukraine).

p.s. By the way, the name of the country doesn't require the usage of definite article 'the', simply "Ukraine".


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## TriglavNationalPark

sokol said:


> (In Slovene however, as quoted above by Triglav, it was definitely "servus". And to answer the question of Triglav: the change /v > b/ is due to a misinterpretation of phonemes; German /b/ is voiceless and heard by Slavs as /p/, and /v/ thus has shifted to /b/ in regions where German and Slavic languages have been in contact. Some German linguistic islands in Slovenia - and Friuli for that matter - regularly have shifted /v/ to voiced /b/ and voiceless "German /b/" stayed the same, that is "Slavic /p/". Words loaned through such regions of contact show /b/ instead of /v/ while words loaned on other routes not involving this shift - show /v/.)


 
Thanks for the explanation, sokol! Did the same process play a role in the formation of the Slovenian word *barva* (= color)? According to Snoj's etymological dictionary, *barva* comes from Old German *varwe*.


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## Azori

In Slovakia *servus* and *sevas* are occasionally used as informal greetings.


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## doorman

sokol said:


> the change /v > b/ is due to a misinterpretation of phonemes; German /b/ is voiceless and heard by Slavs as /p/, and /v/ thus has shifted to /b/ in regions where German and Slavic languages have been in contact.


Indeed, people living in Zagreb are known as _*purg*eri_, because Zagreb was once a _*burg*_.


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## werrr

In Czech countries, _Servus_ was common greeting in German circles and in Czech-German interaction, but it never entered formal Czech where it was consistently replaced with Czech calque _služebník_ or _služebníček_. In colloquial Czech there it was used as a familiar or joking greeting. As many other greetings it turned also into an interjection of surprise (_No nazdar! No má úcta! No servus!_ ~ Wow! Good heavens!).
In some dialects, the form _serbus_ existed as well.

In contemporary Czech, the greeting _servus_ is used time to time jokingly or familiarly, _servus_ as the interjection is used only sporadically and the form _serbus_ is practically extinct.


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## sokol

TriglavNationalPark said:


> Thanks for the explanation, sokol! Did the same process play a role in the formation of the Slovenian word *barva* (= color)? According to Snoj's etymological dictionary, *barva* comes from Old German *varwe*.


That's indeed likely (by the way, I never knew there was an Old German word "varwe", completely unknown to me ).


lior neith said:


> In Slovakia *servus* and *sevas* are occasionally used as informal greetings.


The latter, "sevas", is almost identical to the way the greeting is pronounced in colloquial speech in Austria = [sɛɐ̯vas] - so both translation varieties might be loans from different styles of speech (the former from formal speech, the latter from colloquial speech/dialects).


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## trance0

In Slovenia, at least in some parts of Styria, this greeting is *very *common among young people. I have a colleague from Celje who always greets me this way. I think many people in Maribor also use this greeting. But I was never sure whether it is ser*b*us or ser*v*us.  I sometimes use this even though it is not common in Ljubljana.

P.S.: I have done some google searching and as it appears, in Slovenia most people say ser*b*us.


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## TriglavNationalPark

trance0 said:


> In Slovenia, at least in some parts of Styria, this greeting is *very *common among young people. I have a colleague from Celje who always greets me this way. I think many people in Maribor also use this greeting. But I was never sure whether it is ser*b*us or ser*v*us.  I sometimes use this even though it is not common in Ljubljana.
> 
> P.S.: I have done some google searching and as it appears, in Slovenia most people say ser*b*us.


 
Wow. You really do learn something new every day!

By the way, has the greeting just recently returned to fashion there? I'm wodering because SSKJ says: "v meščanskem okolju, *nekdaj*, zlasti med prijatelji, znanci izraža pozdrav." There is no mention of its modern-day colloquial usage, which could also mean that SSKJ is just somewhat Ljubljana-centric when it comes to colloquial usage.


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## trance0

Yes, but if you type in ser*b*us you will see there is no remark about this being an obsolete greeting.  And no, I think this is a genuine expression used continually in some parts of the Chicken.  I think it originates from Latin servus.


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## sokol

trance0 said:


> Yes, but if you type in ser*b*us you will see there is no remark about this being an obsolete greeting.  And no, I think this is a genuine expression used continually in some parts of the Chicken.  I think it originates from Latin servus.


It does.

And I can add that I never heard "serbus (servus)" when I was in Ljubljana. Strangely enough, due to circumstances then, I know Ljubljana better than Maribor even though Maribor only lies a few kilometres south of the Austrian border.

Colloquial speech styles of Maribor and Ljubljana differ vastly, thus I'm not at all surprised that something which is common in Maribor isn't even known in Ljubljana.


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## pikabu

I am very familiar with this word, but with "serbus" version. I think it's still very used around Celje (I heard it in Velenje and Žalec) and specially from the "natives". Those who came to live in Velenje already grown-up basicly never used this word. I guess it was more of a city (and perhaps even wannabe "fancy") word, not used by villagers.


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