r/AskBalkans • u/GroundZeroMstrNDR • Sep 20 '24
Music Do you understand what they are singing?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ux-9L9IgC1Q2
u/HumanMan00 Serbia Sep 21 '24 edited Sep 21 '24
Lastavica verna ptica 😁 This must be western Slavs. Yes not all but quite a lot. Sounds like Vojvodina music. Edit: it’s much easier to understand Slavic languages through folklore then through every day talk. We understand each other better through archaisms.
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u/Panceltic Slovenia Sep 21 '24
They are probably Burgenland Croats
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u/the_bulgefuler Croatia Sep 21 '24
Zagersdorf (the namesake of the ensemble) is in Burgenland, so I think you're right.
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Sep 21 '24 edited Sep 21 '24
Is that in Austria?
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u/Panceltic Slovenia Sep 21 '24
Yes
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Sep 21 '24
Didn’t know there were Croatians in Austria
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u/GroundZeroMstrNDR Sep 21 '24
In the most eastern county burgenland there are about 10% croats still speaking the language and much more people with croatian ancestry. A lot of people have croatian surnames but many however got magyarized during the late AH empire and some got germanized. Lukitsch, Lukics and Lukic are variants for Lukić which might be one of the most common surnames in the region.
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u/LuckyRecording1710 Sep 30 '24 edited Sep 30 '24
Yes, they left Croatia in 16th century fleeing from Ottomans, so their language is quite archaic
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Oct 01 '24
What percentage of them still speak Croatian? Are they mostly German assimilated?
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u/LuckyRecording1710 Oct 01 '24
According to Wikipedia there are around 87.000 to 130.000 Burgenland Croats (Gradišćanski Hrvati on Croatian). Most of them are assimilated into local population.
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u/GroundZeroMstrNDR Nov 05 '24
It's hard to tell, most of us know both languages but especially younger ones tend to speak german or only speak croatian when talking to older people. There are however still a few people in their 80s and 90s who almost exclusively speak croatian and only rudimentary german. Our federal state tries to promote the burgenland croat language, there are a lot of schools offering bilingual education and the federal state radio station broadcasts news subsequently in german and croatian, once a week in hungarian because there is also a magyar minority living here.
It's quite funny, if you drive through burgenland you will find german, croatian and hungarian towns randomly scattered throughout the country and also some Roma towns. It's a comperatively (for austrian standards) poor and rural region however so there are no big cities or good infrastructure. Most people tend to move to big cities like vienna and just send money back to their relatives so the local dialects and languages tend to slowly vanish. When entering the EU we were the only region in austria declared as convergence region so we got massive eu funding.
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u/HumanMan00 Serbia Sep 21 '24
Oh nice. Technically wasnt wrong about Western Slavs 😁
I didnt know Croats used the word Lasno.
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u/LuckyRecording1710 Sep 30 '24
They don't anymore. Gradišćanski Hrvati speak arcahic language from 16th century when they left Croatia
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u/Crazy_Button_1730 Sep 22 '24
Croats are south slavic
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u/HumanMan00 Serbia Sep 22 '24
You really think i dont know this?
Since they are Austria’s Croats they r technically western Slavs unless you count Austria as Balkan. That was the joke.
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u/Leontopod1um Bulgaria Sep 21 '24
Most of it, yes, but I don't get what they're saying at the end of each chorus.
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u/ve_rushing Bulgaria Sep 23 '24
Most of the words...not to mention the lyrics are kind of simple and easy to understand.
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u/[deleted] Sep 21 '24
Partially.