Numbers & Time

Brojevi 1-10: Numbers 1-10

Goal: Count to ten and use numbers with food (ordering ćevapi correctly).

Ćevapi are ordered by count: 'pet' or 'deset'. Also yes, 'pet' means five, not your dog.

Brojevi 11-100: Numbers 11-100

Goal: Handle bigger numbers, ages, and 'how many/much?'

Age is expressed with 'to have': 'imam trideset godina', I HAVE thirty years. Which, honestly, is how age feels. Composition rule: the teens 11..19 are just the ones with '-naest' bolted on (jedan->jedanaest, tri->trinaest). And past twenty you simply say the tens, then 'i', then the ones: 23 = dvadeset i tri (20 + 3), 47 = četrdeset i sedam. Learn the tens once and every number in between builds itself.

Dani u sedmici: Days of the Week

Goal: Name the days and say when things happen.

'Sedmica' (from 'sedam', seven) is the distinctly Bosnian word for week. Weekend plans in a Bosnian family are simple: subota is for the wedding, nedjelja is for recovering from the wedding.

Koliko je sati?: What Time Is It?

Goal: Ask and tell the time, and anchor events in the day.

Balkan time is a real phenomenon. 'Kasnije' is a flexible unit ranging from ten minutes to next sedmica. Plan accordingly and drink your kahva polako in the meantime.

Na pijaci: brojanje: At the Market: Counting Out Loud

Goal: Add and subtract out loud the way you count marke at the pijaca.

Nana never uses a calculator at the pijaca. Dvije marke i tri marke, to je pet. This is math you actually say to a person handing you plums.

Koliko? Čaša, kilo: How Much? (Partitive)

Goal: Ask for and describe amounts (a glass of, a kilo of, a little, a lot) using the genitive.

To say 'a glass OF water' or 'a kilo OF apples', Bosnian puts the second word in the genitive: čaša vode, kilo jabuka. The same with puno (a lot) and malo (a little).

Next unit: Summer in Bosnia.