Serbia - see Beautiful Belgrade and more sights, North and South

Map of Serbia.

As the map shows, Hungary is to the north of Serbia. Romania and Bulgaria are to the East. The north is at the top of the map.
You would think that having north at the top of the map would be standard and obvious but it isn't. We drove around Vienna arguing. The driver looked at the road signs and said, "We must go right. I looked at the map and said, "No we go left." Finally, the driver pulled in and grbbed the map. He looked at the arrow and found that south was at the top of the page!

We also have a train line running West-East and East-West in London, called the Central line. On some trains the maps are designed so that the maps on each side of the train are mirror images, showing you the direction of travel, with the front of the train at one end of the map. Some people think that is logical. Others find it confusing. As the Irish joke goes, "If I were you, I wouldn't start from here!"

BELGRADE



























































Belgrade Fortress. Gardoš Tower. (Gardoš rhyming with gosh!)


Belgrade -  (the name means white city) is the capital of Serbia.
Belgrade was previously the capital of Yugoslavia. The river Danube flows into Belgrade.

Novi Sad (the name means new plant) is north of Belgrade.

You are likely to fly into Serbia towards the south at Niš (pronounced like niche or neesh). If you keep looking at the twon and airport name, it is easy to remember that the bowl shape on top of the s - š - is pronounced SH.

To type it, the lower case s3, hold down the s key on a laptop keyboard. You are offered a choice of three types of s: ß ś š . You get them by holding down the s with your left hand and simultaneously tapping the keys 1 or 2 or 3. If you are typing a lot of Serbian words and placenames, it's easy to remeber that s3 is three. You hold the s down with your second finger of your left hand and reach over and tap three with your second finger of your right hand and there it is, bingo,  š! Niš.





Žiča Monastery
Exterior of žiča Monastery. Photo from Wikimedia. Photo by Vera Bukvic.

This place is a photographer's dream.
It's also a typist's nightmare. I had trouble typing the capital Z with the diacritic above. So I copied it, cut and paste, from somewhere online.

The monastery is near Kraljevo. Where's that? Looking back at the map of Serbia, you can see that Kraljevo is south of Belgrade, in fact half way between Serbia and Niš.

Medieval Castle in Golubac. Photo from Wikitravel.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

How To Type And Pronounce Accents in French and other languages?

Problem
1 I can't type accents.
2 When I do, I still don't know what they mean. How do I look them up?
3 What are their names? In English French Spanish German, Russian, Czech, Norwegian Greek, Swedish

Answers
1 Typing
Hold down the vowel key on your laptop when you type and the letters with the accents appear. Sometimes you are offered a number and you press the number key at the top of your keyboard at the same time to select the correct vowel.
On a smart mobile phone without a keyboard, you slide your fingertip across to the vowel with your chosen accent in the pop-up box.

2 Diacritics
Check Wikipedia under diacritics.
Check Wikipedia under alphabet and the language you want.

3 Accents in general
Accents have two purposes. They tell you which syllable in the one you emphasize or accent. They change the pronunciation of a consonant or vowel.

alphabetically by name
acute - see French
cedilla - used in French and Romanian
circle - see Swedish
circumflex - see French
grave - see French
tilda - see Spanish
umlaut - see German

Alphabetically by language

Czech
The wedge or downward point over the letter c changes the pronunciation to ch as in the English words Chili and church. (Note that the word Czechoslovakian uses cz for the ch sound.)

English Accents
The double dot called an umlaut in German, also known as dieresis, is rarely used except in dictionaries and tells you to pronounce both letters as in coöperative. Pronounced co - op not coop. (Another English word with a double vowel sound is a vacuum cleaner, pronounced vac-you-um, although many people rush the word so it sounds like vac-ume. When giving a scientific paper at a conference you would be sure to pronounce the word vacuum.)

French Accents
Acute  - Goes upwards from left to right
Grave - Goes downwards from left to right
Circumflex (From the Latin meaning bent around, circum is around like circle, flexible bends. The symbol looks like a pointed Chinese coolie hat or a roof on a house.

When I was taught French at Grammar school by a native French speaker I was told the hat accent often indicates a missing s, as in the French word hôpital - so an English speaking person reading the French, like me and you, can guess the translation.

Table d'hôte is the table of the host, so often the dish of the day in a restaurant, with no choice. Therefore, you can also recognize île de France as the island of France.

German
unlaut - double dot

Hungarian

The sz looks confusing, but it's simply as, with a slight z sound as on bus stops with the sign BUSZ and more clearly in the girl's name Suszanna. 

Romanian

Spanish
Tilda - wave line turns n into a n+y sound as in canyon (in English) and piña colada prounced pinya colada in Spanish.

Swedish and Norse
Circle

Useful Websites
https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/documents/Diacritical.pdf
https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,,-185751,00.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acute_accent

I'm taking a tea break. I'll add more details shortly. Come back later.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, former school teacher and home tutor, polyglot learner of languages, and teacher of English and other languages to Toastmasters International English and advanced and bilingual speaking groups and university and poly students and businesses.