# Unkown Slavic language: Drežnica



## Tagarela

Ahoj,

This word,                                                                                  *Drežnica*, has drawn my attention. It is the title of a film by a Brazilian director that is going to be shown in Festival do Rio. 


I guess that it is a Slavic a word, I've already _Czeched_ it in a dictionary but I've found nothing, perhaps in Serbo-Croatian, or Slovene ... 

Na shledanou.:


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## TriglavNationalPark

Drežnica is a mountain village in Slovenia:

http://www.kobarid.si/dreznica/dobrodosli_eng.html

It's also a village in Bosnia-Herzegovina:

http://www.geocities.com/dean_vucic/dreznica


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## Jana337

Tagarela said:


> I guess that it is a Slavic a word, I've already _Czeched_ it in a dictionary but I've found nothing, perhaps in Serbo-Croatian, or Slovene ...
> 
> Na shledanou.:


An observation for you as a learner of Czech: Dialects aside, Slavic words ending in -ica are always -ice in Czech (unless we have a totally different word for them, obviously). The only Czech word with -ica I recall is "skica", which is a borrowing.


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## TriglavNationalPark

Jana337 said:


> An observation for you as a learner of Czech: Dialects aside, Slavic words ending in -ica are always -ice in Czech (unless we have a totally different word for them, obviously). The only Czech word with -ica I recall is "skica", which is a borrowing.


 
Very true, but people should be careful: the presence of an *-ice* ending doesn't automatically mean the word or place name is Czech. In Slovenian, for instance, *-ice* is the plural form of *-ica*, which explains why both Slovenia and the Czech Republic have towns called Jesen*ice* (it's singular in Czech, plural in Slovene).


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## Tagarela

Ahoj,

Děkuju vám mnohokrát!

Both villages seem to be interesting place. 

And thank you for the tip about *-ica* ending.

Ah, as for the pronunciation, is it the same as if it was Czech _drezhnitsa/ дрежница_ ? And how about the stress ?

Na shledanou.:


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## Duya

Drežnica is actually a toponym in 4 former Yugoslav republics (http://nona.net/features/map/?loc_place=Dreznica+&loc_country=-1&search.x=0&search.y=0), although the Slovenian and Bosnian ones are the most known indeed.

Scenes from the first few seconds of the film trailer (search for Anna Azevedo on YouTube; the video doesn't work for me until I download it though) closely resemble the Slovenian one, so I think it's reasonable to assume that it inspired her somehow. Here's the author's personal page.

Yes, the pronunciation is "drezhnitsa". The stress is short, on the first syllable.


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## TriglavNationalPark

I checked this place name in Marko Snoj's just-published _Etimološki slovar slovenskih zemljepisnih imen_ (Etymological Dictionary of Slovenian Geographic Names).

According to Snoj, all *Drežnica*s (several villages and a couple of rivers), as well as close variations such as *Drežnik*, derive from the old Slavic adjective *dręzžьnъ *(= wooded, forested), which in turn derives from the noun *dręzga* (= forest).

Guess which city name comes from the same Slavic root? *Dresden*, Germany.


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## kasiam

TriglavNationalPark said:


> Very true, but people should be careful: the presence of an *-ice* ending doesn't automatically mean the word or place name is Czech. In Slovenian, for instance, *-ice* is the plural form of *-ica*, which explains why both Slovenia and the Czech Republic have towns called Jesen*ice* (it's singular in Czech, plural in Slovene).


 
Yes, in Poland we have also a lot of placenames, which end on -ice (Katowice, Gliwice, etc.), they're always in the plural.

Kasia


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## vianie

BTW, Czech "-i*ce*" can reflect also plural in geonyms - Otrokovice, Domažlice, Slušovice, Svojšice...


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