oprosti mi moja rano rana

madmouth commented on the word oprosti mi moja rano rana

SBC. "Forgive me, my early wound" (to a woman). It sounds a bit odd in English but I assure you, it is positively heart-wrenching in the original.

May 7, 2009

rolig commented on the word oprosti mi moja rano rana

I'm trying to figure out the grammar here. I know that rana rana means early wound" (an etymological curiosity, as Sarra would say: the adj. ran, -a, -o, -i, "early", and the noun rana, "wound", derive from different IE roots). But I don't know which is which here, or why one ran- ends in -o and the other in -a.

Is "rano" the fem. noun "wound" in the vocative case? Which would mean that "rana" is a postpositional adjective. Is the vocative case for adjectives the same form as the nominative? Help me out.

As to the meaning, it does sound strange in English, until you remember all those songs where love is described as a wound. It's really the "early" part that seems odd. Is the idea that the woman is the wound of the speaker's youth?

Fascinating.

May 7, 2009

madmouth commented on the word oprosti mi moja rano rana

yep, 'wound' in the vocative is the first in the noun phrase, and 'rana' is 'early' in the nominative, agreeing with the fem. 'rana'(wound) (it would make more sense if I placed macrons on the nouns, as 'rana' the wound has all short vowels whereas in 'rana' the early the first vowel is long. contrastive vowel length FTW)

and yes, the 'early wound' is a broken heart from youth. the song is about a wedding the author attends, featuring his former sweetheart as the bride (b/c he was too stupid to snatch her up when the snatching was good).

May 7, 2009

rolig commented on the word oprosti mi moja rano rana

The varieties of SBC stress, with their different pitches, are worse than Slovene, where no one much cares about pitch anymore (though long v. short still applies).

Thanks for the explanation, MM!

If I wanted to translate this in a way that would make sense to English speakers, I might say: "Forgive me, wound of my young heart" or "... my young heart's wound".

May 7, 2009

madmouth commented on the word oprosti mi moja rano rana

"my young heart's wound" will be the cloest to the word itself when people click on it henceforth :)

the nightmarish thing about pitch in general is that it varies every time from person to person and from statement to statement. a prof of mine was involved in a pitch mapping project--simple Y/N question rising intonation only--and they simply could not get a regular shape for it; there was so much variation in a single person's utterance from sample to sample.

when I consider the semantic pitch patterns of SBC (e.g. gore/gore/gore/gore) and how to develop a system of description, much less instruction...eeegh

May 7, 2009