EasyCroatian_r47.an

Easy Croaan (rev. 47b) / 01 Alphabet and Pronunciaon 12 / 600
but they are more or less limited to small areas and villages. They will be briefly
described in the section on dialects.
I won’t describe the stress schemes used in unshaded areas of Serbia and
Montenegro. For some words, they are a very similar or identical to the ‘western’
stress, for others, quite different.
I will also mark the stressed vowel in the ‘western’ stress, when it’s different from
the standard stress position. For many words, there’s little or no difference, and for
others, there’s an obvious difference, as demonstrated with words ponekad
sometimes and kolač cake (I have underlined the stressed vowels):
word standard ‘western’
ponekad ponekad ponekad
kolač kolač kolač
As you can see, some people pronounce the words ponekad and kolač with the
stress on the first syllable, and some others with the stress on the second syllable.
You would never know it from the normal spelling, since stress is normally not
marked.
Therefore, I marked the word ponekad and similar ones with two stress positions
(that is, I have underlined two vowels). The first mark (from left) is always the
standard position and the second mark (if indicated) the ‘western’ stress position.
the first mark (if present):
standard stress
the second mark (if present):
‘western’ stress
ponekad
The word kolač and many others are marked in the same way. (Such markings are
my invention. There are also standard stress symbols, but they are quite
complicated and used only in specialized books. You can find more in Wikipedia and
elsewhere.)
Bear in mind, if nothing is marked, the word is stressed on the first syllable. If there’s
only one mark, practically everyone pronounces the stress on the same syllable.
There are a few words where the standard stress is not on the first syllable, but the
‘western’ stress is; one of them is the word for binoculars:
standard: dalekozor
‘western’: dalekozor
= dalekozorʷ¹
For such words, I’ll underscore the standard stress position, and write in small
superscript letters ‘W1’ after the word (i.e. ‘western’ stress on the 1st syllable), as