Interjections & onomatopoeia
Lesson opening
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Interjections and onomatopoeia: when language cries out, sighs and barks
We have just met the particles, the tiny words that colour a sentence (“Particles & modal words”). There is a layer even closer to pure feeling: interjections (in Serbian, uzvici). Not a “well” or a “surely”, but the cry itself: jao! from pain, uf! from tiredness, opa! from surprise. They do not build a sentence, and often they replace one entirely: a single Joj! and everything is clear without another word.
Next door live their relatives, the onomatopoeic words (words that imitate a sound): the voice paints a knock (kuc-kuc), a crash (tras!), a bark (av-av). From many of these sounds Serbian grows real verbs: from mjau comes mjaukati, “to meow”; from kukuriku, kukurikati, “to crow”. This is the most playful, most human corner of the language, with a surprise for the English ear: Serbian animals often do not “speak” the way English ones do.
Feeling in one sound: jao, joj, uf, opa
The heart of the class is the cries of feeling. One and the same sound stretches across a whole range of emotions, and intonation decides everything. jao is the all-purpose cry of pain, fright, sympathy and annoyance; joj is its softer sibling, more often worry, tenderness or a small misfortune. A note on sound: the Serbian j is always the y of yes, so jao sounds like “yow” and joj like “yoy”.
Notice how flexible jao is. It comes from pain (Jao, ubo sam se, “Ow, I pricked myself”), from sympathy (Jao, siroto dete, “Oh, the poor child”) and from annoyance (Jao, zaboravih ključeve, “Oh no, I forgot my keys”). English shares these roles out among several words (ow and ouch, aw, oh no), while Serbian hangs almost all of them on jao and joj plus intonation. (Zaboravih and stigoh are the aorist, a short past alive in speech, see “The aorist”; the ordinary past is zaboravio sam, stigao sam.) And opa is not only the “hup!” of a jump: Serbs say it when they catch something that is falling, when they lift a child up in their arms, and to point out, gently, a slip of the tongue. Bravo is no concert-hall cheer but an everyday “well done!”, and good news gets Super!, “great!”.
In writing, an interjection is set off with a comma: Jao, boli!, Uh, što je hladno! (“Ugh, it’s so cold!”); in mid-sentence, with a comma on each side. Cried out on its own, it takes an exclamation mark: Opa!, Jao! Šta je to palo? A repeated sound is written with a hyphen: av-av, kuc-kuc, tik-tak.
Often the interjection is followed by the person you call on, in the vocative, the form for addressing someone (“Vocative forms”, “Direct address”), with its own comma: Jao, majko! (“oh, mother!”, used like “oh my goodness!”), Hej, druže, čekaj! “Hey, mate, wait!”, Bravo, sine! In casual speech you also hear Jao, mama!: like a short name, mama is often called in its plain form. And Bože!, Bože moj! (“God!, my God!”, “Vocative of names & titles”) are interjections in their own right.
Disgust and disdain: fuj, bljak, pih, brr
A little family of its own covers every shade of “yuck”. fuj is plain disgust (dirt, a bad smell, something nasty): Fuj, kako smrdi!, “Ugh, it stinks!”. bljak is the childish, colloquial “blech, gross” (about food and anything revolting). iju (or ijuu) does not belong here: it is a cry of fright or surprise, “eek!, whoa!”. pih is a scornful puff of breath, “pfft, nonsense”: Pih, to nije ništa, “Pfft, that’s nothing”. And brr is a shiver of cold or disgust: Brr, ala je hladno!, “Brr, it’s freezing!”. The English doubles are almost sound for sound: fuj ≈ “yuck”, brr ≈ “brr”, pih ≈ “pfft” or the old “pish”.
bre: the Balkan password, woven into speech
If there is one word by which a Serb is recognised abroad, it is bre, a word for friends only (“Direct address”, “Particles & modal words”). On its own it “means” nothing: it is an intensifier and a form of address that is woven into the sentence to turn up the emotion, whether pressure, warmth, impatience or reproach. Roll the r, as in Spanish or Scottish English.
Cheat sheet
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Interjections and onomatopoeia
An interjection (uzvik) is an unchanging word outside the sentence: an emotion, a call or a sound. A comma after it (Jao, boli!), “!” when alone (Opa!); the person addressed after it in the vocative: Jao, majko!, Hej, druže! Repeated sounds take a hyphen: av-av.
Feeling in one sound
bre and its relatives
bre: a familiar intensifier and address word, friends only.
A name softens it (Marko, bre, čekaj). Relatives: more (to a woman mori), a harsh, folksy “hey, you” (recognise only); towards the Adriatic, ajme “oh dear”.
Calls, answers, animals
Animal voices
Things that make sounds
bum “bang”, tras / tres “crash”, kuc-kuc “knock knock”, tik-tak “tick-tock”, zvrr “ring”, škljoc “click”, pljus “splash”, fijuk “wind’s whistle”, kvrc “snap”; a sneeze, apćiha, gets Nazdravlje!
From sound to verb
Also: frog krekeće, duck kvače, bird cvrkuće “chirps”, crow grakće “caws”; jaukati “to moan” (from jao). Sound av, verb lajati. “Once”: -nu-, kucnuti, jauknuti.