Can you learn a language alone?
No. Easy enough, right? There! Good answer. Please clap.
There’s something cathartic about looking into your heritage. Well, for me there is anyway. Looking down through the ages to understand the culture of your ancestors is extraordinary: the dress, the music, and the language strike chords deep in my heart that no other instrument could. It’s something that I’ve been longing for, but didn’t fully comprehend until somewhat recently, and it has given me an incredible appreciation for a lot of things — struggle, family, friends, loss, and the destruction of war echo hard down the hollow over the dirt road of memory.
My dad grew up in a place called Stipan, a village that doesn’t really exist anymore, when it was located in a country that doesn’t really exist anymore either. In the present day, it’s in the rural heart of Sisak-Moslavina county in Croatia. He remembers to me all manner of stories of his life growing up in a one-room hut in the country. His was a farming family, you see — non-party member Serbs in the middle of rural Yugoslavia. When he was 11, everything changed: word had come from his Grandfather that there was a place in America for him and for his family. So, they boarded a plane, and — essentially — ran like hell.
Stipan, like other Serbian villages in “Krajina” — a region of the Balkans — had been torn to shreds during World War II, so there wasn’t much left for them there. America offered almost a guarantee of a better life… and a better life they made. While it wasn’t a quick process, my father did really and truly become an American, steeped in the culture with the thanks of my mother, who saw in him the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. And, it was good.
A large feature of my childhood was Serbian parties, where we’d all meet up at someone’s house and there would be a monstrous feast — with so much food that you couldn’t possibly eat it all. There’s something really special about watching your dad and grandfather roast a pig together, and smell it as it starts to really cook. The sweet smell of garlic and apple pork on the air drew the crowd toward the roaster, and — always impressively — dad would open up the roaster and hit the pig with a little water, sending currents of savory steam through the air, gently tugging at our stomachs as we waited on the meal. All of the kids would run around and have a great time. Sometimes — not very frequently, but sometimes — an accordion would break out, and there would be singing, laughing, and dancing.
M y mom has been my biggest cheerleader for almost as long as I can remember, and this journey that I’m on — to connect with this piece of heritage I’m clinging to — has been no exception. In fact, she has been wildly supportive of it, except at times when she gets tired of hearing about how the sixth Lika division saved the marshal, or some other story I can’t seem to push out of my head. She’s excited to learn more about it — I think partly because she’s excited that I’m connecting with dad in a new way, and partly because she knows I’ll 100% be keeping her in the loop.
That’s a tough thing — to stay in the loop around people who are speaking a different language, and who have a different background than you. While mom was able to make dad an American, it was much less possible to make her a Serbian. She’s making a real effort to get interested in the new and strange things that I’m learning about the culture of my dad’s homeland, and it’s more than I could possibly ask for.
And dad’s happy, too, to say the least. Especially with the language — though knowing how fragile my newly-minted Yugoslav is, he hesitates to hit me with anything complex when we’re talking ( which I appreciate greatly ). He excitedly describes the smallest events of his childhood in what sounds almost like an alien world — from swimming in rivers and finding troves of snakes, to summoning rain out of the sky with a childhood friend, to his schoolteacher, who always had a cigarette and a pistol during class, his stories are wild, foreign, and fun.
But there’s pain, too. There’s pain that was passed down to him from his father, who had lived through WWII. While we talk at length about the fun, this pain has to come through, too. We have reasoned together that he was somewhat lucky in the way his childhood went— born long after the war, so that he wouldn’t experience the hell that it was, and left early enough so that he wouldn’t have to see it all happen again. No less, the effects were written everywhere, from the lack of old men in the village and their widows wrapped in black, to the sad songs of the war that caused men to bite their glasses at the side of the tavern.
My wife has been right here by my side this whole time. At first she was a little bit leery, but over time she’s started to get involved, which is absolutely insane to me. She’s a fantastic baker — really, I don’t mean to brag ( I really do, actually, I’m not very sorry ) but she would straight up make your grandma look stupid. Recently, she made me a burek that blew my face off, and we also sat down to a delicious meal of sarma. Very little makes it out of our kitchen without a dusting of vegeta ( no, not Vegeta ), and she has starting whistling some of the strange music I keep playing. Hearing my tiny little wife bellow “OJ KRAJINO” like a middle-aged Yugoslavian man is something I will hold dearly in my heart for a very, very long time. She has been amazing, and though she thinks ( read: knows ) I’m a little strange, she’s been here for me all the same. There’s no leaving her out, but her eyes do still get a little wide when I eat a plate of tomatoes, raw green onions and mincemeat.
The challenging parts of learning about this culture are manifold:
How do I make sure mom doesn’t feel left out, and include her as much as I can?
How do I go about understanding what she’s gone through with respect to this culture, without her having to relive so much pain?
How do I gather some understanding of dad’s culture without him having to relive so much pain?
How do I ensure that the reasons for his pain aren’t forgotten?
How do I make sure I don’t freak my wife out too much?
Yet, even with all of these challenges, we’re reeling it in, and it’s amazing. It’s working out, because we’re a family, and we love each other. My two brothers are fascinated with learning it as well, and that makes it all the better. So far, it has come down to communication, and always checking in to make sure everyone is OK.
So, all of that background is fine.
How do you do learn the culture, and the language?
T here are tons of references to read about the culture of the Balkans if you really look around, but the most helpful one ( in my opinion ) is straight up, tried and true Facebook. Especially if you have distant family and friends, they’re all on there, ready and waiting for you to show up and chat about culture. But there’s a bit of an issue, that being the language barrier. A lot of them do not speak very good English, and Google translate is… well, a shitshow when it comes to Yugoslavian. I use it rather sparingly at this point, because when I tried to ask about a pipe ( like for tobacco ) I asked for a big dick. Yikes. So, that means you have to start learning the language, which is hard.
It’s hard because there are very, very few resources that can help you. This is not Spanish or French, there aren’t 48 books awaiting you — there are like, six. Three? Four? I got started learning poems and songs which, while it’s very fun ( and I can recite like 12 Boro Drljača songs from memory, which is hilariously fun because a stunning number of his songs are about trying to get with women with wild accordion in the background) it’s basically worthless for actually learning the language. So, after 6–8 months of wasting time, I finally picked up a book — Teach Yourself Complete Serbian!
You could very easily get a book on Croatian or Bosnian — a ton of these languages are shared and are, for the most part, the same ( don’t tell them I told you that ). Although there are a lot of regionalisms and dialect stuff to think about between them, if you know one of these languages, you will probably be able to more or less speak to anyone from the Balkans.
“But Sam!”, you ask, “What about Duolingo?”
Well, you are shit out of luck. They do not have it, and will not. The next closest approximation is Ling, but it’s not free, and frankly, I didn’t think the course was very good. At the end of the day, these apps aren’t great anyway — the soul of the language is in its grammar, and without that you aren’t going to have a lot. Unfortunately, the only way out is through, and honestly, having been working through it for a few months now, it isn’t bad.
Eventually, you will be able to take flight and start reading posts on FaceBook, and talking to people. I promise it will happen — it just takes some time, that’s all. But that’s just it — no matter how much you study, you need more input than just the book.
You need cartoons. Podcasts. You need to read memes. You need to talk to people.
That’s what bothers the shit out of me about Duolingo and apps like it — without talking to anyone, you might as well not bother trying to learn the language at all. No less, even though I’m going through the book, it’s still something I miss — just being able to summon up some flashcards and start practicing.
So I made a flashcard app! Haha, I’m a programmer! This is something I can do! I was telling my wife recently that I’ve always been a big whiner about software being free, and that this is a way to put my money where my mouth is.
Really! It’s free, and while it isn’t “complete” in that there’s not a ton of vocab on there just yet, I’ll be updating it from time to time. If you’re techy, you can even clone the git repository and just run it locally yourself! ( Don’t laugh at my hot GIFs, OK? Be nice. )
S o what does it take to explore your heritage?Work. Hard work, really. It’s work to make sure I’m not hurting anyone’s feelings. It’s work to be able to read the books, and to even be able to talk to people so that I can learn more…
…but it’s some of the most fun I’ve had in a long time, too. I’m better acquainted with the culture of my family, and it’s something I get to pass along to my children, too.
My Grandmother on my mother’s side is a geneaologist. It’s an extraordinary hobby that I’ve started to pick up over the last year or so, and that she and I have discussed at length more than once. The best part about getting in touch with my heritage is that there’s so much to explore. We’re not just Serbian, after all! On my mother’s side, we’re German, Irish, and Welsh, an incredible mix I can’t wait to learn — and teach — alongside my family. This is an adventure that will last longer than just my lifetime, and one that anyone could engage in —
— if only they tried.
