Pirates and eggplant

[abka]

We had a fairly nice weekend. Friday night Denis worked (surprise, surprise), but Emma and I went and saw Pirates of the Carribean (on Andrew's recommendation). It was a fabulous pirate movie, I really enjoyed it. We even sat through the credits for the final monkey scene. Saturday we both worked and then I went to a WCMA opening for Nicole Cohen's "Ma Vie en Rose". The opening was nice, but I didn't stay too long. The show looks great! Sunday we were going to work, but decided we needed a day off so just hung out at home. We made eggplant parmagana together which was more of a production than I originally planned. I started out cooking myself, but had to recruit Denis and he ended up doing most of the actual cooking while I washed a mountain of dishes. It took a while, but the result was yummy. Then he even spent time with me while I worked on my Croatian (I'm a little behind). It helps tremendously to hear someone pronounce the words correctly. It was so nice to study together (ok I was studying, he was teaching/reading/repeating). Unfortuantely another weeked spent procrastinating about Fulbright/grad. school stuff (although Croatian should count). I'm going to at least start contacting more people this week.

Comments

[grumph.livejournal.com]

I envy you learning Croatian, and already knowing Italian and, was there a third besides English? German?

My lack of foreign language proficiency is something I keep regretting but like exercise not something I've managed to make myself do anything about.

Maybe this is a question for Denis, but what is the relationship between modern Croation and--I think it was called Ilyrrian? I don't have my book with me at work to look it up, but I last stopped reading in the section discussing the civil war between the Maygars and the Croations in Hungary, and it said that Ilyrrian, if I am remembering that correctly, was sort of an amalgam of a variety of Croat dialects. I also don't understand why the land of the Maygars is called Hungary (the book says Croatia was annexed to Hungary in the early middle ages and wanted out).

Actually, while I'm asking questions--Yugoslavia was created by Tito during or right after WWII?? Is that correct? Was there an independent Croatia between the World Wars, or was Croatia ruled by someone else after the collapse of Austro-Hungary? Or did Tito come to power earlier than I thought?

[grumph.livejournal.com]

I think I oversimplified that too much, because the Croatian forces ended up being loyal to the Austrian emperor; they just didn't like the Hungarians, and apparently for some good reasons. Austria and Hungary were apparently two different Kingdoms, but whose separate crowns were worn by the same hereditary monarch. Although apparently in Hungary he only got to be a King and not an Emperor, which I think is funny. Croatia if I understand correctly had been annexed to Hungary and was therefore part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire by dint of belonging to Hungary, and was not part of Austria proper. Except that much/some of Croatian land was directly controlled by the Emperor, was largely socialized, and was used as an intense military frontier to keep out the Turks.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire was a very confusing place. Please feel free to untangle my confuddled brain.

answers to Dan's questions....

[denis77.livejournal.com]

Okie:

1) Illyiran you are thinking of is actually just a different name for Croatian. Around the beginning of the 20th century, Croatia was still part of Austrian-Hungarian empire. At that time there was a movement in Croatia to reclaim the cultural heritage. The official language at the time was (I think) german, although it could have been hungarian, I am not sure. In any case, they called themselves the Illyrian movement, named after the Illyrian tribe/people that used to live in the Balkan area cc 2000BC. (even though Croatian/Serbian people are slavic tribes that moved into the area much later cc 500AD).

There is an actual ancient Illyrian language, and it is probably related to Croatian in some way since Croats settled in the area populated by Illyrian tribes.

2) In Croatian, Hungary is called Madjarska (pronounced Magyarska, "land of the Magyars")

3) After WWI The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was founded. In 1929 King Alexander I changed the name of the kingdom to Yugoslavia - land of the southern Slavs. Tito came to power after WWII and created the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. (for the full short history of Yugoslavia click here (http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/map/yugoslavia/).

Hope this is informative.

D

Re: answers to Dan's questions....

[grumph.livejournal.com]

thanks!!!

The book I'm reading says that one of the big arguments between the Maygars and the Croats was over language--the Hungarians changed the language of the Diet to Hungarian instead of German (even though most of the Hungarians themselves were only just relearning it), but they refused to let the Croatians speak Croatian in the Diet.

Was there ever a movement to annex Yugoslavia to Russia, akin to the movement to annex Austria to Germany?

[abka.livejournal.com]

Yes I also have reading knowledge of German and French (the two languages most art historians are required to learn) and can speak a (very little) of each. Italian is really what I'm most proficient in although it's been a while and with languages you tend to loose them pretty quickly without practice. Languages are one of the few art-historian skills that seem somewhat concrete to non-art history people, but they take forever to learn and often you just gain reading proficiency instead of speaking so it can be kind of frustrating to understand, but not be able to produce anything. You only really tend to gain proficiency in whatever you do your dissertation research in. I'll probably be working on one language or another for many years to come, luckily the learning process can be fun and it's a nice break from writing.