Lesson Three, Norms


Spelling of titles/headlines, school subjects, days of the week, months

One further area where Serbo-Croatian uses initial lowercase as equivalent to the English uppercase are school subjects, days of the week, and months. Thus:
Serbo-CroatianEnglish
matematika, fizikaMathematics, Physics
petak, subotaFriday, Saturday
januar, februarJanuary, February

Similarly, in titles and headlines, only the first word is capitalized, unlike in American English, were all words are capitalized, for example: Petparačke priče 'Pulp Fiction', Zločin i kazna 'Crime and Punishment'.


Spelling of the negation

The negative particle ne 'not', although often pronounced together with the following word, is spelled separately from that word, for example: On ne radi. 'He does not work', To je student a ne profesor. 'That is a student, not a professor'. However, the prefix ne 'non-, in-, im-, un-', is spelled together with the following word, for example: praktičan 'practical' vs. nepraktičan 'impractical'. In general, nouns and adjectives use the prefix ne-, while verbs are used with the particle ne. The only exceptions to the rule that ne is spelled separately from the verb are verbs ht(j)eti and imati in the present tense: neću 'I do not want', etc., nemam 'I do not have', as well as the verb nemojmo 'let us not', and nemoj(te) 'do not', which is used only in the Imperative. A common mistake among native speakers is the spelling of the particle ne together with the following verb. This is an instance where you can correct a native speaker.


Spelling of the particle li

This particle is always spelled separately from the following and preceding words, for example: Je li to on? 'Is that he?', Da li je to on? 'Is that he?', etc. Again, owing to the fact that this particle is pronounced together with the preceding word, numerous native speakers spell it together - here is another instance where you can correct a native speaker.


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