Languagle #6: Croatian
Besposlen pop i jariće krsti
"An idle priest will even baptise the goat kids."
What it means
Used for someone who, with nothing real to do, invents pointless busywork instead. The image specifically picks a priest, a respected, educated figure, being reduced to performing a serious ritual, baptism, on something as trivial as a goat kid.
How to say it
BES-pos-len POP ee YA-ri-cheh KR-stee
Ć is a soft ch, lighter than the č in 'church', and j sounds like the y in 'yes'. Krsti has no vowel at all: in Croatian the r can carry a syllable on its own.
Word by word
- Besposlen BES-pos-len: idle, with nothing to do (bez, without, and posao, work)
- pop pop: priest
- i ee: even (it usually means 'and')
- jariće YA-ri-cheh: young goats, kids
- krsti KR-stee: baptises
Where it was found
Croatian calls a proverb a poslovica. This one is from Croatian Wikiquote.
Similar sayings
- English: The devil finds work for idle hands
How to recognise Croatian
Croatian uses the Latin alphabet with č, ć, đ, š and ž. Having both č and ć, and the crossed đ, sets it apart from Slovenian (only č, š and ž) and from Czech and Slovak. Serbian is very close and is written in Cyrillic as well as Latin. When Serbian is in Latin, spelling helps: Croatian often has ije where Serbian has e, so milk is mlijeko in Croatian and mleko in Serbian.
About the Croatian language
Croatian is a South Slavic language spoken by around 5 million people in Croatia and in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is mutually intelligible with Serbian, Bosnian and Montenegrin, which share a common base. Croatian is written only in the Latin alphabet, using letters like č, ć, š, ž and đ, while Serbian uses both Cyrillic and Latin. Croatian has its own medieval script too, Glagolitic, still seen on old stone inscriptions.
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