The autumn equinox passed during week 3 of Bosnian and almost immediately, there was a marked change in the weather. The sunny days where I could get away with wearing the tank tops and summer dresses that comprised the majority of my year-round Rangoon wardrobe suddenly left me shivering in the classroom.
We had entered the transitional period before fall where the thermostats in office buildings were still set for Virginia’s humid, hot summer despite evidence the leaves are already starting to change. One day I’d be grabbing an umbrella and a jacket and the next day wearing a short-sleeved top.
We made a similar jump in Bosnian; almost out of nowhere we went from talking about our phone numbers and family compositions to learning how to discuss signing agreements, promoting economic development, and hosting diplomatic receptions.
Part of the reason this jump was so challenging was because of new vocabulary. Fortunately, I recognize the majority of words and constructions from my prior knowledge of Russian and especially Macedonian. For me, a bigger hurdle is Bosnian grammar. The Bosnian language has what’s known as a case system. I encountered cases for the first time while studying Russian.
For native English speakers, the concept can feel completely foreign at first. But the basic idea is simple: a case tells you what a noun is doing in a sentence.
In English, we mostly communicate this through word order and prepositions. For example, “I’m going to work. I’m at work. I just came from work. It’s my work.”
The noun “work” stays the same. But in Bosnian, the noun itself often changes its ending depending on its role.
Take the word žena — “woman.” The same woman appears in several different forms:
- Žena radi. = The woman is working.
- Kuća žene. = The woman’s house.
- Dajem knjigu ženi. = I’m giving the book to the woman.
- Vidim ženu. = I see the woman.
- Ženo! = Ma’am!
- Pričam o ženi. = I’m talking about the woman.
- Idem sa ženom. = I’m going with the woman.
So we get:
žena → žene → ženi → ženu → ženo → ženi → ženom
It’s all still the same word (and the same woman). However, the ending changes because her relationship to the rest of the sentence changes. You can’t simply use the nominative form of a noun and add words like “to,” “from,” and “at” to tell the whole story. To native speakers, doing this doesn’t really communicate anything.
Bosnian takes this idea further, too, and applies it to nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and other words.
Briefly, Bosnian has seven cases:
Nominative — who or what is doing something?
Genitive — whose? of whom? from where?
Dative — to or for whom?
Accusative — whom or what is being acted upon?
Vocative — who are you directly addressing?
Locative — about whom/what? at or in what place?
Instrumental — with whom/what? by means of what?
To add additional complication, word endings not only change based on whether the word is masculine, feminine, neuter, animate, inanimate, singular, or plural, but Bosnian also uses both case endings and prepositions.
For example:
u Sarajevu = in Sarajevo
u Sarajevo = to Sarajevo
The preposition u stays exactly the same. The ending of Sarajevo changes because one means the place where you are and the other means the destination you’re going to.
That’s why learning Bosnian cases isn’t really about memorizing seven arbitrary sets of endings. Ultimately, you’re learning to recognize the relationships between words. You can communicate some basic Bosnian without mastering cases, but you can’t really become comfortable speaking Bosnian without eventually internalizing them. They’re structural, not decorative.
So I guess that’s what surprises me: how, in a relatively short amount of time, we as students have leapt from using the nominative forms of words and creating simple structures and syntax to answering questions that require us to understand and use cases the curriculum hasn’t even taught us yet.
You can’t just say you went for a walk with your dog, met up with your friends, or were in a location simply because you know the vocabulary. You have to stop and think, what’s the gender of the noun? Is it singular or plural? What case does it take? And what verb conjugation and tense do I need?
I guess the goal isn’t ultimately to become someone who mentally conjugates every noun through seven cases while speaking. It’s to get to the point where “u Sarajevu,” “u Sarajevo,” “iz Sarajeva,” “sa Sarajevom” etc. feel like different pieces of the language, and you retrieve the right one automatically.
But that is going to take a significant amount of time and dedication. In case you didn’t gather this yet, I am not a grammarphile. I’m not a trained linguist (but one of my classmates who previously studied Russian too is actually a linguist by education!). Sadly for me, I can barely diagram a sentence in English, determine direct vs. indirect object, or identify an adverb.
And yet, despite these obstacles, I feel very enthusiastic about my prospects for learning Bosnian. It isn’t simply a language I need to learn for an assignment, as Burmese was. It’s a language spoken by many of my friends and even members of my family. I want to speak it correctly, learn every word I can, and become comfortable and facile in the language beyond just my work duties by the time I get to Sarajevo.
Using Bosnian cases incorrectly every day feels like getting behind the wheel of a six-speed hot rod and being told to drive from point A to point B. Fortunately, no one is upset that we’re grinding all the gears, as long as we keep moving down the road.
Since the end of Week 3, our Friday class schedule has included informal online tests covering reading, translation, multiple-choice fill-in-the-blank questions, and typing open-ended statements and questions on introductory topics. I’ve gotten near-perfect marks on the first two tests, but the results have also provided valuable feedback on how I can improve my spelling, syntax, and grammar on my written products.
In parallel to all this, the process of settling into the apartment, almost one month on now, has continued.
Living in a very small one-bedroom apartment surrounded by large pieces of luggage and boxes, we were in desperate need of solutions to make our limited space more functional. Some of the issues were solved by purchasing and installing hooks, shelving, and organizers. But we still needed more space.
After many emails back and forth trying to determine the location, dimensions, and availability of storage units in our PCS lodging apartment building, we finally managed to secure and pay for one—only to go looking for it and discover that we were locked out of the room where we assumed it was located. It took another couple of days to finally get someone on-site to begrudgingly pause his scrolling long enough to answer my questions and provide me with a key. Since then, the apartment has begun to feel more like home.
Around my class schedule, I worked to handle other personal admin. I broke the ice with starting my PCS voucher, filed changes to our mailing address and voter registration, visited my dentist for the first time in a year (no cavities!), and attended a doctor’s appointment.
I also got my hair and nails done, and spent a couple of long afternoons walking around Arlington. I met up for dinner with an old acquaintance passing through town who I hadn’t seen since we graduated from San Diego State University 25 years ago, went to a happy hour organized by a member of our 178th A-100 class, and V and I celebrated our 13th wedding anniversary at one of our old haunts in Clarendon.
So far, everything is going well, and I’m hoping I can stay on my training wheels a little longer before they come off and things get really hard.
