Here is a video by Gazel, a fairly new group I think. You can find their CD on emusic if you have an account there. The song titles on that site are not matched correctly with the actual tracks, however, let me know if you want them in the real order. See two more of their videos on their website.
Milost Tvoja
Uvijek kada pomislim otišli su od mene svi,
Da leđa okrenuše, Milost Tvoja dođe mi,
Pa kroz dušu prođe mi,
Koja jako uzdahne kad Ti Ime spomene.
Ne može mi uzeti ovu sreću niko sad,
I planine da krenu ja Ti Ime dozivam,
I srce da šapne mi da neće izdržati
Ja ga neću slušati, jer Milost Tvoju osjetih.
Allah Allah ilallah Milost Tvoja beskrajna
Na dušu mi spusti se, hvala Ti za sve!
Your Mercy
Every time I imagine that all have abandoned me,
That they’ve turned their backs, Your Mercy comes to me,
And passes through my soul,
Which sighs heavily when it says your name.
Now it is not possible for anyone to steal this joy,
And the mountains that move when I call Your Name,
As for my heart that whispers that it cannot go on,
I will not listen to it, for I feel Your Mercy.
Allah Allah ilallah, Your Mercy is endless
It descends upon my soul, thank You for everything!
Since prices for postage stamps change so often, it’s really annoying to find an old book of stamps that have no price on them. How am I supposed to remember how much they were, and thus, how many of those little one cent stamps to put on the envelope with them?
Bosnian is not an easy language. It is a Slavic language, which means it has like a gazillion case endings, meaning I am spending more time memorizing declension tables than learning more vocabulary. Ok, well Bosnian has seven case endings (two are alike, though), but nouns are also classified by gender: masculine, neuter, and feminine. And those all decline differently. AND the plurals of each of those decline differently. Some are alike in some cases, but then I have to memorize which ones are alike and which are different. UGH! And then there are about forty or so prepositions, and they require different case endings for the nouns following them. The same preposition can mean different things depending on the case of the following noun, so it is very important to get them right!
I’m wondering if my textbook is teaching me the things I need to know. Check out this conversation from lesson one:
A: George je profesor, a Mary je profesorica. (George is a professor, and Mary is a professor.)
B: A njihov pas? (And their dog??)
A: Njihov pas nije profesor. Pas nije čovjek! Ali on jeste naš prijatelj. (Their dog is not a professor. The dog isn’t a human! But he is our friend.)
B: Jesu li pas i mačka prijatelji? (Are the dog and cat friends?)
A: I jesu i nisu. (They are and they aren’t)
And I had this sentence in my homework: Ne želim da kupiš psa crvene boje, već zelene boje. (I don’t want you to buy a red dog, but rather a green one.)
Hmm, evidently Bosnia not only has great music, but also multi-colored dogs that could be mistaken for professors!
But I am learning. My reading is improving. When I’m translating a song or reading an email or web page, I no longer have to look up every other word or figure out where the heck that case ending came from. Let’s see how the speaking goes!
I’m leaving for Bosnia in less than three weeks! I will be there for four months, mostly in Sarajevo, conducting research on ilahije.
So I’m very busy studying Bosnian and preparing for the trip right now. Any advice would be welcome! For the next two weeks, I’ll probably be asking a lot of questions on here, picking the collective minds of whoever happens to stop by.
The question for today involves laptops and the internet. I just bought a new laptop, masha’Allah, and I need to know what to do to make sure it will be internet-ready over there. Keep in mind I am technologically inept, so this might be a stupid question. It does receive wi-fi, meaning I can connect to networks (for example, I know how to connect to the wifi at Panera and the public library). I will need to use it when I get an apartment in Sarajevo. How will I do that? For example, if they say the apartment has internet, how do I connect to it? And if the apartment doesn’t have it, what do I do (probably a region-specific question but like I said, I’m inept) to get it? I guess the main question is: do I need to buy anything here for it before I leave, that will ensure my ability to use the laptop there? And should I buy a transformer or converter for the charger, or just an adapter? It does have that little “box” in the middle of the cord; is that its own transformer/converter, and would it be good enough?
Performing Identities: The Creation of a Popular Muslim Music-Culture in the United States can be found in the “Performing Identities” page at the top of this site.
Sorry there is no abstract yet (coming, I promise!); I have about a million things to do right now (more on that later), and it was all I could do to figure out how to merge the documents, convert the result into pdf, and upload it here.
