How Tsar/Czar, Цар/Car and Related Words Are Used in English and Serbian
How Tsar/Czar, Цар/Car and Related Words Are Used in English and Serbian

Summary/Abstract: This paper aims to explain the use of the words czar/tsar in English and цар/car in Serbian in their various contexts. Words related to these according to historic, phonological, morphological and semantic criteria are studied and their mutual relationships established. An attempt is made to solve some controversies about the origin, spelling, meaning and associative links of the investigated words in English and Serbian. Various encyclopedias, specialized books on the topic and relevant dictionaries, together with the Internet were used and the examples of usage discussed. The paper is practically oriented, the author having primarily pedagogical aims in mind. The final goal of the paper is to establish a sort of associative networking around tsar/czar and цар/car, and to interlink the vocabulary in the two languages in order to make teaching in the realm of “verbally-oriented subjects” of the new Bologna-reformed curriculum easier for architecture students. The idea is that sketching or mapping relevant lexicons in the form of a web of associations would be more useful in teaching than the traditional method of “sequential” exposition of vocabulary. As architecture students are presupposed to remember and comprehend more visually than verbally, such a visual representation is believed to represent a valuable pedagogical instrument in the process of teaching. Researchers with educational backgrounds in history, archaeology, anthropology, etc. that is, other than a purely linguistic one (such as the one of the author of the article) are welcome to contribute to what is expressed here since the width of the topic covered is necessarily limited by the research within the individual knowledge and perspective. It is assumed by the author, therefore, that some of her observations and conclusions should be treated by others as merely unresolved questions.

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