What are Croatia's policies on Aspergers?

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I've been thinking about spending a college semester in Croatia and I was wondering what their policies on Aspergers are and what the policies on Aspergers are in the other Slavic countries. Would I be oppressed by society or the government there? Would I be better off going somewhere else?

They hunt them down with aspie sniffing dogs, and bake them into sausages.

Amazingly helpful

Helpful would be if he gave the oven temperature and cook time.

From what I know (and I've been living in Croatia for all my life) there isn't a policy on Aspergers, it's basically unknown among the school/college officials since there's no public awareness of it at all - if I were you I wouldn't mention it to anyone unless you want to get some weird looks. You wouldn't benefit from mentioning it nor would you be oppressed.

I've never been to Croatia but given recent history I think they would be more bothered about you being Serbian or Albanian than having aspergers.

Serbian - maybe, especially among the brainwashed and narrow-minded, Albanian not so much - we didn't have any direct conflict with them, also there's a big Croatian community in Kosovo (so called Janjevci).

I'm not sure whether there's a better situation in any other Slavic country - perhaps Slovenia, since it's the most developed of them all. I definitely wouldn't recommend any other country of former Yugoslavia - perhaps better Czechoslovakia or Poland. I have a buddy from US who studied in Warsaw and was very pleased with how it went (also has AS but I doubt that he mentioned it to any authority over there).

Or Bosnian.

But Booyakasha, what IS there for autistics in Croatia, in terms of support/help? I mean, you were diagnosed, so psychologists must be active on the subject of neurodevelopmental disorders?

(Also, I'm honestly quite a bit interested in visiting Croatia for some sightseeing/cultural trip, as well as exploring its nature. I read a couple of books on Croatia last month, following the announcement that Croatia was to join the EU next year and I realised that I knew NOTHING about Croatia, and it would be stupid to not know anything about new neighbours.)

I'm particularly interested in visiting Rijeka, Croatia because it looks like a nice city, it's near the coast, and I could also visit nearby Slovenia. I've been teaching myself how to speak Croatian, but it seems like a pretty difficult language to learn for a native speaker of English because of the suffix rules. I think I could learn it though if I put in enough effort. Plus if I learn it I can easily learn the other 3 Serbo-Croatian languages (Serbian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin) and I can say that I speak 5 languages and people will be impressed. I don't think there are really any differences at all between Croatian and Bosnian.

That is a very good question - I was "diagnosed" meaning that I went to the psycho-central at my Uni and there was a psychologist (professor with PhD) who confirmed my doubts. I heard there were some children being diagnosed by one doctor in one place in the capital city where I live, but I never managed to get into contact with him. So yes, psychologists with a PhD (like the one I spoke to at my Uni) have heard about it but there is no centre at all for support/help. There are centres for (classical) autism but whenever I tried to get in contact with them there was no response at all. if you try to talk to the common folks about it, like I did - no one has even heard about it, not even the medical personnel. I think it has got to do with the fact that AS was recognized only in 1994 by the American Psychological Association and we're lagging behind in everything including giving support to people with AS. That was also the time of war and fighting for "freedom" from the folks the Croats tried to exterminate in WWII was more important, also building a conservative, catholic country that as a flag bears one of the symbols of the Ustachi regime (a nazi puppet state in WWII).

As for your wish for visiting Croatia - well the coastline is quite beautiful, albeit being very crowded in the summer time, National parks are worth visiting, especially Plitvice, also Dubrovnik, amphitheatre in Pula and other historic monuments from the times of Romans and medieval times.

I'm probably not the most objective one to talk about Croatia since I hate living here, but most of the folks that I know (and who don't have AS) like it. It's a traditional, conservative country with strong catholic tradition and even though it's not the worst country in the world, I wouldn't mind being born/living somewhere else for zillion of reasons.

Last edited by Booyakasha on 20 Feb 2012, 2:13 am, edited 1 time in total.

Absolutely true Croatian, Serbian, Montenegrin and Bosnian are basically one and the same language (with some variations) but due to political reasons, after the collapse of ex Yugoslavia each separate country now has its own "language". Before it was Serbo-Croatian for about half a century that Yugoslavia lasted.

If you need any help with learning it let me know, since like you say, it's a difficult language to learn because of it complicated system of declensions (all in all it has about 28 declensions for nouns, adjectives and pronouns), it has more cases than Latin and it can be quite difficult to learn for a native speaker of a non-flexive language such as English which almost completely lost it's cases, except in some pronouns.

Rijeka is a nice city, it has one of the biggest carnivals in the world, and it's quite modern and industrialised. If you want to visit it - sure do, but the best universities are in the capital city of Zagreb.

http://digitaljournal.com/article/317765

Do you know any good ways to learn to speak Croatian. I don't think there's much software out there for learning it and there aren't many places where you can take a class on it in the United States. I've been practicing by using Languages 101 to learn the basics and by using Google Translations to translate Croatian Wikipedia pages into English. I've read about the grammar rules and the different types of nouns on Wikipedia, but I'm still confused by the suffix rules. I can pronounce most of the words in Croatian, but I still don't know how to pronounce some of them and Google Translations doesn't have good audio for Croatian. If you can help me with learning it I'd be grateful for your help.

Since you mention those suffixes I reckon you do understand what a declension is. (I ask since I hear that basics of grammar are not being taught in many US states, apart from maybe private schools) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declension

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbo-Croa ... mmar#Nouns

We have seven cases and for each case there is a subsequent suffix. On the Wiki page you can see some of the patterns for different types of nouns.

Cases are:
The nominative case indicates the subject of a finite verb: We went to the store.
The genitive case, which roughly corresponds to English's possessive case and preposition of, indicates the possessor of another noun: John's book was on the table. and The pages of the book turned yellow.
The dative case indicates the indirect object of a verb: The clerk gave us a discount. or The clerk gave a discount to us.
The accusative case indicates the direct object of a verb: The clerk remembered us.
The vocative case indicates an addressee: John, are you alright? or simply Hello, John!
The locative case indicates a location: We live in China.
The instrumental case indicates an object used in performing an action: We wiped the floor with a mop. and Written by hand.

For comparison, Croatian declension would look like this:

nominative: Ivana je kupila knjigu. (Ivana, the subject of the sentence, bought a book.)
genitive: Ivane nema kod kuće. (Ivana is not at home.)
dative: Prilazim Ivani. (I'm approaching Ivana.)
accusative: Vidim Ivanu. (I see Ivana - here Ivana is a direct object of the sentence).
vocative: Oj, Ivano! (Hey, Ivana! - used for addressing people - case of vocatio - or vocation).
locative: Ivana živi u zgradi. (Ivana lives in an appartment building - "locative", and other names of the cases come from Latin - locus means place, so it might help you remember that it refers to a place of some sort).
instrumental: Ključem sam otvorio Ivani vrata. (With key I opened the door to Ivana. - again "instrumentum" means some sort of instrument by which something is being done.)

So you see in each case English uses prepositions, while in my Croatian sentences I haven't used any except in prior to last sentence - but still the ending of the noun "zgrada" (apartment building) changed.

Nominative is the bare subject and it doesn't use any prepositions; "of" is used for genitive or "'s" which is a relic from old English declension, or it can use "at", dative uses "to", accusative refers to direct object of the sentence and doesn't use any preposition, vocative is a case of vocation, calling; locative uses "in" and instrumental "with".

So the difference between (mostly) non-flexive languages such as English (who once had its cases as well) is that in English you mostly use certain prepositions to determine the use of the words in the sentence and in Croatian (and other flexive languages) we use the different endings (or suffixes) for the same purpose. But there are so many different patterns to different nouns (and pronouns and adjectives) because certain vocal changes appear as well.

You have it explained here - on the page 23 http://www.seelrc.org:8080/grammar/main ... nguageID=1

Perhaps this blog would be easier than the Wiki page - http://basic-croatian.blogspot.com/p/gr ... ables.html

Also have you tried Livemocha? I used it for studying some other languages and it can be useful for pronunciation: http://www.livemocha.com/learn/view

One more thing - I wouldn't trust Google Translator for any heavily inflected language - since from what I've seen the results are usually literally laughable - there are too many noun patterns to chose from and you can only get the basic meaning (occasionally, in the best case scenario). You could send the texts to me to get them checked up, if you like.

Last edited by Booyakasha on 21 Feb 2012, 4:45 am, edited 1 time in total.

You could also watch Croatian/Bosnian/Serbian movies with the subtitles to get used to the pronunciation, either on youtube or via torrents.

Or you could also use the Croatian TV on satellite or listen to Crotian radio on i-phone?

http://www.hrt.hr/

http://www.hrt.hr/index.php?id=323&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=86708&tx_ttnews[backPid]=322&cHash=d0883f9dcb

You have a photograph of Tesla as your avatar - well there was a movie about him, played by Croatian actors - I'm trying to find the one with the subtitles:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6SR1530LIY

This is supposed to be the best Croatian movie of all times (which apparently even has subtitles):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAeRoweG_Ss

There were also some very good Serbian movies, I'm not sure whether there are any with the subtitles though:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oyypSfoJZI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkcTwryU ... re=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4R2Hxvwm_g

This one I found with the subtitles:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOYZa3BAyM4

Or use the sites for English subtitles: http://www.opensubtitles.org/en


Or you could watch some English movies/series with Croatian subtitles - like Star Trek, for instance:

http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/6871303/ ... ll_seasons

or some others:

http://www.all4divx.com/subtitles/allmovies/Croatian/1

Last edited by Booyakasha on 21 Feb 2012, 4:43 am, edited 2 times in total.

Or you could listen to some Croatian music that has translations - like Oliver Dragojević (probably not in accordance to your musical preferences, but good for educational purposes):

http://lyricstranslate.com/en/oliver-dr ... yrics.html

I personally like this one - when the author of the lyrics had his first and only baby:

http://lyricstranslate.com/en/kluc-zivota-key-life.html

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AvIUnePF-A[/youtube]

or Balašević:

http://lyricstranslate.com/en/djordje-b ... yrics.html

and his song about a cock (rooster in this context )

http://lyricstranslate.com/en/Pesma-O-J ... Petlu.html

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nn9NDW5QzPk&feature=related[/youtube]

or Rokeri s Moravu (Serbian band that did all sorts of parodies in the beginning of the eighties) - my personal favourite:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kksJlg5uTxc[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqpPN8QZzBs&feature=related[/youtube]