# Croatian (BCS): Ljubav ti ide super



## Frasi

Hi all,
can someone help me translate this simple sentence in English? A friend posted this on my Facebook and I have no idea of what it means!

xxx Je sazno/saznala sta mu/joj fildzan kaze:
Ljubav ti ide super

Thank you!


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## DenisBiH

Frasi said:


> Hi all,
> can someone help me translate this simple sentence in English? A friend posted this on my Facebook and I have no idea of what it means!
> 
> xxx Je sazno/saznala sta mu/joj fildzan kaze:
> Ljubav ti ide super
> 
> Thank you!




xxx found out what the fortune teller tells him/her:
You're doing great in (the area of) love



Note 1: sazno is incorrect, or more precisely colloquial. The literary standard(s) would have saznao.

Note 2: fildžan (see photo) is literally an oriental-style (Turkish) rather small coffee cup for Turkish (sometimes also referred to as Bosnian) coffee, but since one of the practices of fortune telling here is looking into an empty cup from which the person drank the coffee (I believe, never saw it done myself) I translated it simply as "fortune teller". Literally it would be "what the cup tells".


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## Duya

DenisBiH said:


> Literally it would be "what the cup tells".



...and not so literally, as this web page says (_"Very few men tell the coffee cup."_). However, the site in question is Greek and I'm not sure how the phrase would be understood by English speakers. Besides, one can only _tell_ the Turkish/Greek/Bosnian coffee (and not espresso or filter), so there's a cultural barrier whichever way you phrase it.


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## DenisBiH

Duya said:


> ...and not so literally, as this web page says (_"Very few men tell the coffee cup."_). However, the site in question is Greek and I'm not sure how the phrase would be understood by English speakers. Besides, one can only _tell_ the Turkish/Greek/Bosnian coffee (and not espresso or filter), so there's a cultural barrier whichever way you phrase it.




Regarding coffee, I always found it fascinating how the Turks nowadays prefer tea rather than coffee. I wonder when that change occurred? One of the times I was in Istanbul I made sure to find a place that served Turkish coffee. I believe I was the only one actually drinking it (it seemed it was more for tourists), and the Turkish staff and patrons were smiling and looking closely at how I was going about it (or it seemed that way). 

Sorry for the off-topic.


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## Duya

DenisBiH said:


> Regarding coffee, I always found it fascinating how the Turks nowadays prefer tea rather than coffee. I wonder when that change occurred? One of the times I was in Istanbul I made sure to find a place that served Turkish coffee. I believe I was the only one actually drinking it (it seemed it was more for tourists), and the Turkish staff and patrons were smiling and looking closely at how I was going about it (or it seemed that way).
> 
> Sorry for the off-topic.



During the collapse of Ottoman Empire in 1923, when coffee started to be too expensive import, according to this article.

Enough off-topic 

To (partially) remain on topic: Wikipedia article on tasseography claims that "_Scotland, Ireland, and England have produced a number of practitioners and authors on the subject, and English potteries have crafted many beautiful tea cup sets specially designed and decorated to aid in fortune-telling._" So it is not unknown in the English-speaking world.


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## sokol

Duya said:


> So it is not unknown in the English-speaking world.


And not only there.
To conclude this excursus, fortune telling from coffee exists in many Western cultures, even when there was no Turkish tradition of coffee making.

In Austria I saw it done with "cooked coffee" (where you put coffee into boiling water, and you didn't use any filter when pouring it into cups).
(Probably this kind of fortune telling is becoming more and more unpopular due to the taste of coffee prepared this way. )

So probably not such a huge cultural barrier, but let's return to the Slavic phrase if there's anything to add.


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## DenisBiH

Well, there may be a tiny bit of etymology of fildžan since we have discussed its use. Although HJP suggests Turkish fincan (in turn borrowed from Arabic, in turn borrowed from Persian), I distinctly remember our Arabic teachers in high-school telling us there were two Arabic versions, finjan and finjal (but not filjan). The latter seems a somewhat better candidate for borrowing to me, either directly or through Turkish, with metathesis somewhere along the way. But a tiny detail anyway.

Btw, regarding the taste of coffee without filters etc, I guess it depends on the method of preparation and personal preference (sorry for digressing again sokol, but we take our coffee very seriously here ).

Cheers.


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## sokol

Oh, no disagreement there - Austrian "boiled coffee" just is a barbarian version of it, it has nothing to do whatsoever with Turkish coffee. 

But to the topic at hand, the quote from your source is "tur. fincan ← arap. finǧān ← perz. pingān: plitka zdjela"; I consider it likely that the Turkish word should be "finçan" (and this would be /č/), so possibly there's a typo involved there.
And probably both Arabic versions were used by Turks - it is indeed the most likely explanation that the word was loaned _through_ Turkish, most Turkish words are, but I am also only guessing here.


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## DenisBiH

sokol said:


> But to the topic at hand, the quote from your source is "tur. fincan ← arap. finǧān ← perz. pingān: plitka zdjela"; I consider it likely that the Turkish word should be "finçan" (and this would be /dž/), so possibly there's a typo involved there.




Hm, I may be wrong, but I believe Turkish (modern spelling) -c- is -dž-, and -ç- is -č-. You can find an example for ç in bahçe, borrowed in BCMS as bašča / bašta.




> And probably both Arabic versions were used by Turks - it is indeed the most likely explanation that the word was loaned _through_ Turkish, most Turkish words are, but I am also only guessing here.


I would agree.


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## sokol

DenisBiH said:


> Hm, I may be wrong, but I believe Turkish (modern spelling) -c- is -dž-, and -ç- is -č-. You can find an example for ç in bahçe, borrowed in BCMS as bašča / bašta.


Oh, definitely - sorry for that, I got that wrong in my post above (which, then, is of course interesting as the BCS loan differs), thanks.  (Will correct my post. ;-)


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