SERBIAN LANGUAGE BETWEEN GENERATIONS

Do we understand our children? More precisely, do we understand the language our children speak?

The question can rightly be asked to parents of the generation that grows up with social networks and communicates more often between themselves by text-messages than face to face. But, things get even more interesting if we are talking about parents born in the former Yugoslavia, who are raising children in alienation, in an English-speaking area.

The combination of the new urban language, which is largely a consequence of the excessive use of social networks, and growing up in a bilingual environment, has created a completely new, in some cases hard-to-bridge language gap between the two generations. Television, flooded with "reality" TV shows, not only imported this English word, but also contributed to the fact that the small majority of what we watch on the screens does not enrich our knowledge and vocabulary, but quite the opposite: it degrades it to a level hitherto unknown by public media.

Abbreviations, English and not Serbian, dominate not only the written but also the spoken language of the new generation: OMG (Oh my God), LOL (laughing out loud). The list of words and phrases is almost endless. Here are some examples:

Селфи - Selfie

Хот - Hot

Кул - Cool

Лузер - Looser

Фрик - Freak

Боси - Bossy

Френд - Friend

Дејт - Date

Најс - Nice

Риспект - Respect

Парти - Party

Џим - Gym

Гуфи - Goofy

Скери - Scary

Епик – Epic

How was your trip?

Epic!

How did it go on your exam?

It was an epic fail!

Let's stick to the last example. In the Serbian language, epic means that which refers to an epic, or that is like an epic, as well as to that which is too extensive. In English epic = relating to or characteristic of an epic or epics.

However, in recent times in English, the adjective has begun to lose its sense and strength of meaning. In the Serbian language, unfortunately, the new slang meaning was directly taken from the English language. With their poor vocabulary, which is the result of less reading and more passive watching of programs that have nowhere near the quality of the books that their parents' generation grew up with, our children will use this adjective when they don't want to explain at length Something that deserves a long story, which is significant and most often dramatic.

I notice that parents are increasingly adopting the language of their children. Have they also succumbed to the influence of the English language and jargon in social networks, or is it an attempt to get closer to the younger generation and understand them better? There is no single answer to this question, because no two families are alike.

In the society in which we live as the first generation of emigrants, raising children who will be as much Canadians as Serbs, I have, however, also met a large number of families in which this rapprochement of the two generations is successfully taking place by nurturing the Serbian language at home, during joint activities. It may require more time and effort, but the reward for the effort is priceless.